WSPÓŁCZESNY DRAMAT UKRAIŃSKI WOBEC WOJNY: NA PRZYKŁADZIE SZTUKI NATALII WOROŻBYT ZŁE DROGI

The subject of this study is the play Bad roads (2017) written by the Ukrainian playwright Natalya Vorozhbit. The text was commissioned by the Royal Court Theatre (London). It was also staged in Kiev and received the award for “Best Direction” (Tamara Trunova, GRA Festival, 2019). The action in the drama takes place during the war in eastern Ukraine in 2014-2016. The writer visited these areas and conducted many interviews. In Bad roads N. Vorozhbit focuses not on warfare but on the catastrophic impact of war on everyday life. The author is interested in how war damages the human mentality and psyche, how it influences building interpersonal relationships in new conditions, how war produces the desire to hurt people close to us, as well as unfamiliar ones, and how it affects the formation of intimate relationships. It is significant that an important role in the drama was intended for women and aspects such as love, sex and erotic feelings. The author of the publication focuses on the three most important problems raised in the text: violence, trauma and the creation of a hero (first glorification and then de-heroisation).

Royal Court Theatre – A Casa do New Writing

Neste artigo, iremos deter-nos na produção de peças de teatro, denominadas de new writing, com base no trabalho levado a cabo no Royal Court Theatre. Pretendemos explorar o modo como as peças de teatro de cariz político evoluíram nos conteúdos e formas, em correlação com as mudanças sociais e políticas, e como isso permitiu transitar as perceções do “político” no “teatro”. O escopo será delimitado ao período de cada direção artística, analisando a sua linhas programáticas, inserindo-as no contexto social e político que determinou a escrita e produção das peças. Essa relação permitir-nos-á selecionar as peças mais relevantes e procedimentos técnicos dominantes em cada direção artística, de modo a analisar as possibilidades da prática do new writing na criação de Teatro Político. Deste modo podemos colocar algumas questões adicionais: Como evoluíram os processos e metodologias da escrita, denominada new writing, até hoje? Analisando os seus conteúdos e formas, como refletiu e absorveu o new writing novos mecanismos, processos de pensamento e estruturas da sociedade? Existe ou não, e quais são as consequências desta dramaturgia na transformação da sociedade?

Racism in the 21st Century: Debbie Tucker Green’s Eye for Ear

Does equality exist in the 21st century, or, are minorities still forced to fight for equality? In nineteenth century, Britain, racism was blatant in all spheres of cultural, social, and economic life to the point that it crossed over into literature and theatre. In 1978, UNESCO adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Forty years have since passed, but has it made any difference? Contemporary British playwright Debbie Tucker Green’s Eye for Ear (2018), staged at the Royal Court Theatre, reminds us that racism and inequality is still a key social-political issue. This three-act, avant-garde, colloquial play depicts how both African-Americans as well as Black British people still live with racism today. It also highlights racism’s linguistic and legal past. Tucker Green particularly focuses on the violent aspect of that racism through the lens of different characters: an academic, a black student, a black boy, and black parents. The play concludes with crushed hope, for it deduces that Caucasians both in the United States and in Great Britain still dominate practically every facet of society. This study will examine Green’s Ear for Eye, racial discrimination in the 21st century, and how Tucker Green projects her views upon her work through the theory of race and racism.

4. ‘Puritan’

‘Puritan’ focuses on George Bernard Shaw’s moulding of stage comedy to dramatize the workings of his emerging religion, christened ‘Creative Evolution’ in 1916. Under the aegis of the Life Force, Shaw’s ambition to create a ‘big book of devotion for modern people’ was fortified by an evangelism that would yoke all of his varied writings. The chapter then looks at Shaw’s Man and Superman (1901–2), which premiered at the Royal Court Theatre. Two other plays by Shaw—John Bull's Other Island (1904) and Major Barbara (1905)—continue his enquiry into how the institutions of worldly power can best be of service to the Life Force.

“Can I Tell You about It?”: England, Austerity and “Radical Optimism” in the Theatre of Anders Lustgarten

Over the past decade, the plays of Anders Lustgarten have taken a prominent place in the English theatre repertoire. Performed by companies including Red Ladder, Cardboard Citizens, and the Royal Shakespeare Company, Lustgarten’s dramatic writing places social and political issues centrestage, ranging from the housing crisis and the electoral ascendancy of far-right parties to the alienation of the urban working class and the racist scapegoating of immigrants. This article focuses on Lustgarten’s landmark play inspired by the Occupy movement, If You Don’t Let Us Dream, We Won’t Let You Sleep (Royal Court Theatre, 2013). I explore how the play engages with, and reflects on, economic austerity, forms of contemporary mass protest, and, indirectly, evolving conceptions of English nationhood. I also examine Lustgarten’s notion of “Radical Optimism” – a term he identifies with the global anti-austerity protests following the 2007-8 financial crisis – and consider its importance to what he calls “anti-prop” political theatre. The first part of the article probes the relationship between If You Don’t Let Us Dream and the established “tradition” of state-of-the-nation playwriting; the second part identifies the play’s challenge to this “tradition,” which is informed by its proximity to the Occupy protests.

Krapp and His Relations

<em>Krapp Last Tape</em><em> is one-act play written in 1958, translated by Samuel Beckett and his friend Pierre Leyris as La Dernier bande. The first production took place in London at the Royal Court Theatre in 1958.It was directed by Donald McWhinnie and Patrick Magee played the role of Krapp. Like other Beckettians, Krapp in a physical sense, is an outsider, cut from the world of social activity. He is alone in his den fumbling through the tapes made thirty years before for his human relations. Krapp’s Last tape recounts the inescapable reality of human suffering and the persistent efforts made by Man to circumvent his pain through living in his past. The main topic addressed in this paper is Krapp and his human relationships.</em>

Barry Reckord, the Race Relations Narrative, and the Royal Court Theatre

“Barry Reckord, the Race Relations Narrative, and the Royal Court Theatre” shifts its analysis of the race relations narrative to the forefront of postwar London drama. Jamaican playwright—and one of the quintessential “angry young men”—Barry Reckord was among the first to have a play selected by the English Stage Company for production at the reborn Royal Court Theatre. By examining Reckord’s first three plays, Flesh to a Tiger, You in Your Small Corner, and Skyvers, in the context of the Royal Court’s rise to cultural ascendancy, this chapter demonstrates how Reckord helped build the so-called cultural revolution that would write him out of its history.

West Indian Generation

Between Britain’s imperial victory in the Second World War and its introduction of race-based immigration restriction ‘at home,’ London’s relationship with its burgeoning West Indian settler community was a cauldron of apprehension, optimism, ignorance, and curiosity. The West Indian Generation revisits this not-quite-postcolonial moment through the careers of a unique generation of West Indian (British Caribbean) artists that included actors Earl Cameron, Edric Connor, Pearl Connor, Cy Grant, Ronald Moody, Barry and Lloyd Reckord, and calypso greats Lord Beginner and Lord Kitchener. Colonial subjects turned British citizens, they tested the parameters of cultural belonging through their work. Drawing upon familiar and neglected artefacts from London’s cultural archives, Amanda Bidnall sketches the feathery roots of this community as it was both nurtured and inhibited by metropolitan institutions and producers hoping variously to promote imperial solidarity, educate mainstream audiences, and sensationalize racial conflict. Upon a shared foundation of language, education, and middle-class values, a fascinating collaboration took place between popular West Indian artists and cultural authorities like the Royal Court Theatre, the Rank Organisation, and the BBC. By analyzing the potential—and limits—of this collaboration, Bidnall demonstrates the mainstream influence and perceptive politics of pioneering West Indian artists. Their ambivalent and complicated reception by the British government, media, and populace draws a tangled picture of postwar national belonging. The West Indian Generation is necessary reading for anyone interested in the cultural ramifications of the end of empire, New Commonwealth migration, and the production of Black Britain.