Book Details

Encounters between modern British drama and contemporary critical and cultural theory have been sporadic and often tentative. Drama+theory unapologetically and energetically places the two in dialogue, demonstrating how theory provides fresh insights into familiar plays. Each chapter pairs a well-known play from the post-war period with a classic text of theory. The theoretical text is not simply applied to the dramatic one; instead, the play and the theoretical text reflect on each other in a mutual illumination. Among the encounters, Look Back in Anger is read by and reads Lacan's 'Signification of the Phallus'; Pinter's The Homecoming is made uncanny with Freud; Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead finds affinities with Lyotard's Postmodern Condition; Caryl Churchill's Top Girls rethinks temporality with Benjamin's 'Theses on the Philosophy of History'; Brenton and Hare's Pravda struggles with Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation; Timberlake Wertenbaker's Our Country's Good agrees and disagrees with Edward Said; Sarah Kane's Blasted thinks through trauma with Shoshana Felman. In each case, the theoretical position is explained lucidly and economically. The result is a series of new interpretations not only of the plays, but of the theoretical texts, which take on new relevance when linked with modern British drama.