Ebook: A Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama 1880-2005

This wide-ranging Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama offers challenging analyses of a range of plays in their political contexts. It explores the cultural, social, economic and institutional agendas that readers need to engage with in order to appreciate modern theatre in all its complexity.

• An authoritative guide to modern British and Irish drama.
• Engages with theoretical discourses challenging a canon that has privileged London as well as white English males and realism.
• Topics covered include: national, regional and fringe theatres; post-colonial stages and multiculturalism; feminist and queer theatres; sex and consumerism; technology and globalisation; representations of war, terrorism, and trauma.

Content:
Chapter 1 Domestic and Imperial Politics in Britain and Ireland: The Testimony of Irish Theatre (pages 7–21): Victor Merriman
Chapter 2 Reinventing England (pages 22–34): Declan Kiberd
Chapter 3 Ibsen in the English Theatre in the Fin De Siecle (pages 35–47): Katherine Newey
Chapter 4 New Woman Drama (pages 48–60): Sally Ledger
Chapter 5 Shaw Among the Artists (pages 63–74): Jan McDonald
Chapter 6 Granville Barker and the Court Dramatists (pages 75–86): Cary M. Mazer
Chapter 7 Gregory, Yeats and Ireland'S Abbey Theatre (pages 87–98): Mary Trotter
Chapter 8 Suffrage Theatre: Community Activism and Political Commitment (pages 99–109): Susan Carlson
Chapter 9 Unlocking Synge Today (pages 110–124): Christopher Murray
Chapter 10 Sean O'Casey's Powerful Fireworks (pages 125–137): Jean Chothia
Chapter 11 Auden and Eliot: Theatres of the Thirties (pages 138–150): Robin Grove
Chapter 12 Empire and Class in the Theatre of John Arden and Margaretta D'Arcy (pages 153–163): Mary Brewer
Chapter 13 When Was the Golden Age? Narratives of Loss and Decline: John Osborne, Arnold Wesker and Rodney Ackland (pages 164–174): Stephen Lacey
Chapter 14 A Commercial Success: Women Playwrights in the 1950S (pages 175–187): Susan Bennett
Chapter 15 Home Thoughts from Abroad: Mustapha Matura (pages 188–197): D. Keith Peacock
Chapter 16 The Remains of the British Empire: the Plays of Winsome Pinnock (pages 198–209): Gabriele Griffin
Chapter 17 Wilde's Comedies (pages 213–224): Richard Allen Cave
Chapter 18 Always Acting: Noel Coward and the Performing Self (pages 225–236): Frances Gray
Chapter 19 Beckett'S Divine Comedy (pages 237–246): Katharine Worth
Chapter 20 Form and Ethics in the Comedies of Brendan Behan (pages 247–257): John Brannigan
Chapter 21 Joe Orton: Anger, Artifice and Absurdity (pages 258–268): David Higgins
Chapter 22 Alan Ayckbourn: Experiments in Comedy (pages 269–278): Alexander Leggatt
Chapter 23 'They Both Add up to Me': the Logic of Tom Stoppard'S Dialogic Comedy (pages 279–288): Paul Delaney
Chapter 24 Stewart Parker's Comedy of Terrors (pages 289–298): Anthony Roche
Chapter 25 Awounded Stage: Drama and World War I (pages 301–315): Mary Luckhurst
Chapter 26 Staging ‘The Holocaust’ in England (pages 316–328): John Lennard
Chapter 27 Troubling Perspectives: Northern Ireland, the ‘Troubles’ and Drama (pages 329–340): Helen Lojek
Chapter 28 On War: Charles Wood's Military Conscience (pages 341–357): Dawn Fowler and John Lennard
Chapter 29 Torture in the Plays of Harold Pinter (pages 358–370): Mary Luckhurst
Chapter 30 Sarah Kane: from Terror to Trauma (pages 371–382): Steve Waters
Chapter 31 Theatre Since 1968 (pages 385–397): David Pattie
Chapter 32 Lesbian and Gay Theatre: All Queer On the West End Front (pages 398–408): John Deeney
Chapter 33 Edward Bond: Maker of Myths (pages 409–418): Michael Patterson
Chapter 34 John Mcgrath and Popular Political Theatre (pages 419–428): Maria DiCenzo
Chapter 35 David Hare and Political Playwriting: Between the Third Way and the Permanent Way (pages 429–440): John Deeney
Chapter 36 Left in Front: David Edgar's Political Theatre (pages 441–453): John Bull
Chapter 37 Liz Lochhead: Writer and Re?Writer: Stories, Ancient and Modern (pages 454–465): Jan McDonald
Chapter 38 ‘Spirits That Have Become Mean and Broken’: Tom Murphy and the ‘Famine’ of Modern Ireland (pages 466–475): Shaun Richards
Chapter 39 Caryl Churchill: Feeling Global (pages 476–487): Elin Diamond
Chapter 40 Howard Barker and the Theatre of Catastrophe (pages 488–498): Chris Megson
Chapter 41 Reading History in the Plays of Brian Friel (pages 499–508): Lionel Pilkington
Chapter 42 Marina Carr: Violence and Destruction: Language, Space and Landscape (pages 509–518): Cathy Leeney
Chapter 43 Scrubbing up Nice? Tony Harrison's Stagings of the Past (pages 519–529): Richard Rowland
Chapter 44 The Question of Multiculturalism: the Plays of Roy Williams (pages 530–540): D. Keith Peacock
Chapter 45 Ed Thomas: Jazz Pictures in the Gaps of Language (pages 541–550): David Ian Rabey
Chapter 46 Theatre and Technology (pages 551–562): Andy Lavender