Crisis, Representation and Resilience: Perspectives on Contemporary British Theatre

A collection of incisive investigations into the ways that 21st-century British theatre works with - and through - crisis. It pays particular attention to the way in which writers and practitioners consider the ethical and social challenges of crisis.

Anchored in an interdisciplinary approach that draws from sociology, cultural theory, feminism, performance and philosophy, the book brings multi-faceted ideas into dialogue with the diverse aesthetics, practices and themes of a range of theatrical work produced in Britain since 2005.

Topics discussed include:

Ageing
Austerity
Gender
Migrancy
Multiculturalism
Aesthetics

Companies discussed include:

Theatre Uncut
Lost Dog
Camden People’s People
Lung
Brighton People’s Theatre
Phosphoros Theatre

Playwrights discussed include:

Jez Butterworth
Caryl Churchill
Tim Crouch
Vivienne Franzmann
James Graham
debbie tucker green
Ella Hickson
Charlene James
Lucy Kirkwood
Simon Longman
Cordelia Lynn
Simon Stephens
Jack Thorne
Chris Thorpe
Gloria Williams

Building on recent publications in the area and engaging in dialogue with them, Crisis, Representation and Resilienceconsiders how crisis is being re-thought and re-orientated through theatrical performance and the ways theatre invites us to respond to the many challenges of the contemporary times.

Clare Wallace is a member of the Contemporary British Theatre Barcelona research group and author of The Theatre of David Greig (Bloomsbury, 2013) and Suspect Cultures: Narrative, Identity and Citation in 1990s New Drama (Litteraria Pragensia, 2007). She has edited a number of volumes including Monologues: Theatre, Performance, Subjectivity (2008) and Cosmotopia: Transnational Identities in David Greig’s Theatre (2011). Her work broadly focuses on the relations between theatre, ethics and politics. She is currently on the editorial board of the Journal of Contemporary Drama in English (DeGruyter).

Clara Escoda is a member of the Contemporary British Theatre Barcelona research group and author of Martin Crimp’s Theatre: Collapse as Resistance to Late Capitalist Society (DeGruyter, 2013). She has published articles on Martin Crimp’s and Alice Birch’s plays in journals such as Performing Ethos, Contemporary Theatre Review and New Theatre Quarterly. Her recent work explores the intersections between feminism, neoliberalism and aesthetics in plays by female writers, such as Alice Birch or Ella Hickson.

Enric Monforte teaches English Literature and Theatre Studies, with an emphasis on Shakespeare and contemporary British theatre. He is a member of the Contemporary British Theatre Barcelona research group and author of Gender, Politics, Subjectivity: Reading Caryl Churchill (PPU, 2001). She has also co-edited British Theatre of the 1990s: Interviews with Directors, Playwrights, Critics and Academics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and Ethical Speculations in
Contemporary British Theatre (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

José Ramón Prado-Pérez is a member of the Contemporary British Theatre Barcelona research group and has co-edited World Political Theatre and Performance: Theories, Histories, Practices (Brill, forthcoming). He specialises in contemporary British theatre with an emphasis on post-war political drama and he has published articles on Caryl Churchill, Pam Gems, Punchdrunk and Theatre Uncut. He has been involved with Theatre Uncut as a performer and translator since 2013. He contributes regularly to the Gale Cengage Learning Encyclopedia, Shakespearean Criticism Series and Drama Criticism Series as academic advisor. He is on the board of the journal Culture, Language and Representation (Universitat Jaume I).