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Proseminar: British and Irish Theatre and Drama in the 1990s

Course Description

In the mid-1990s a new posse of young playwrights from Britain and Ireland burst on to the theatre scene with plays that were clearly designed to shock their audiences by Quentin Tarantino-style actionism and the explicit portrayal of violence, cannibalism, sodomy, and any kind of perversity. Literary critics and historians have meanwhile begun to identify this new trend as the third wave of the New British Drama and have pointed out its affinities with Jacobean revenge tragedies of the early seventeenth century.
Assuming that the violence and aggression in these plays is more than simply coincidental or collateral, we will have to subject these plays to some serious crossexamining: What are the motives behind such an aesthetics of violence and its mediation through drama? In how far does such ‘cool’ dramaturgy reflect the values of contemporary society? Are these plays then a reflection of/on the much vaunted socio-politics of ‘Cool Britannia’ (UK) or the ‘Celtic Tiger’ (Ireland)?
The following plays and playwrights (that have also made their mark on the German stage) will be on the agenda:
Sarah Kane Blasted (1995), Mark Ravenhill Shopping and F***ing (1996), Enda Walsh Disco Pigs (1996),Mark O’Rowe Howie the Rookie (1999), Martin McDonagh The Lieutenant of Inishmore (2001).
A Reader containing the plays will be available for purchase at UniCopy Dietze (copy shop near Mensa) from the beginning of March. Students are expected to have read the plays before the start of the course.

Recommended Reading:

Die Londoner Theaterszene der 90er (1998). Ed. Nils Tabert. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt.

Prerequisites:

In order to participate, students of Anglistik/Amerikanistik need to have completed the lecture course “Introduction to the Study of Literature” successfully. Please present the Schein in the first session of the course.

Requirements:

regular and active participation, oral (group) presentation, term paper (10-15 pp.), deadline for term papers: 16 July 2007 (for BA students) and 1 October (for Magister students).

Please click here to go to the course pages.

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