Ethical Speculations in Contemporary British Theatre. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009

Transcription

1 Ethical Speculations in Contemporary British Theatre Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009

2 Also by Mireia Aragay BOOKS IN MOTION: Adaptation, Intertextuality, Authorship (editor) BRITISH THEATRE OF THE 1990s: Interviews with Directors, Playwrights, Critics and Academics (editor with Hildegard Klein, Enric Monforte, Pilar Zozaya) Also by Enric Monforte BRITISH THEATRE OF THE 1990s: Interviews with Directors, Playwrights, Critics and Academics (editor with Mireia Aragay, Hildegard Klein, Pilar Zozaya)

3 Ethical Speculations in Contemporary British Theatre Edited by Mireia Aragay and Enric Monforte

4 Selection and editorial matter Mireia Aragay & Enric Monforte 2014 Foreword Aleks Sierz 2014 Individual chapters Contributors 2014 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act First published 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number , of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.

5 To our families

6 Contents Foreword by Aleks Sierz Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors ix xii xiii 1 To Begin to Speculate: Theatre Studies, Ethics and Spectatorship 1 Mireia Aragay Part I (Post-)Holocaust Representations 2 Violence, Testimony and Ethics in Martin Crimp s The Country and The City 25 Clara Escoda 3 Bearing Witness and Ethical Responsibility in Harold Pinter s Ashes to Ashes 42 Hanna Scolnicov 4 How to Mourn: Kane, Pinter and Theatre as Monument to Loss in the 1990s 59 Mark Taylor-Batty Part II Theoretical Speculations 5 Two: Duologues and the Differend 79 Dan Rebellato 6 The Undecidable and the Event: Ethics of Unrest in Martin Crimp s Attempts on Her Life and debbie tucker green s truth and reconciliation 96 Martin Middeke Part III Spectatorial Ethics 7 Playing with Proximity: Precarious Ethics on Stage in the New Millennium 117 Clare Wallace 8 Witness or Accomplice? Unsafe Spectatorship in the Work of Anthony Neilson and Simon Stephens 135 Vicky Angelaki vii

7 viii Contents 9 Witnessing, Sexualized Spectatorship and the (De)construction of Queer Identities in Mother Clap s Molly House, The Pride and Cock 152 Enric Monforte Part IV Ethics and Institutions 10 From Front Page to Front Stage: War Correspondents and Media Ethics in British Theatre 173 Christiane Schlote 11 Kicking Tots and Revolutionary Trots: The English Stage Company Young People s Theatre Scheme Graham Saunders Index 207

8 Foreword Aleks Sierz Like any other audience member, the Critic sets out for the theatre accompanied by mild anxiety. Will the tube and bus deliver him in good time? Is he in the mood for this slice of naturalism? Will he be able to do justice to the show within the slender word limit allocated to him? This time, he arrives early, lingers outside the theatre and dreams for a moment of lighting up a cigarette, although he has long since given up smoking. He greets his colleagues and participates in a few desultory conversations about the hot topics of the day. The bell rings, and the first-night audience troops in. At the interval, the Critic avoids the scrum at the bar, and tries to focus on his notes, which have been scribbled in the dark and are, in parts, barely legible. In his mind, he begins to frame the opening of his review. Then he returns for the second half. At the end, after the applause, in which the Critic politely joins in, he makes a rush for the exit, aided by the fact that he has an aisle seat and motivated by the deadline he has to meet. He rushes home, maybe hailing a cab outside the theatre. He bursts into his house, and boots up his computer. Then he gets to work. Amid all of these kinds of quotidian concerns, where is our ethical sensibility most acutely engaged? The Critic has been part of a crowd watching a show, a public witnessing which is an innately political and ethical act. Wherever it comes from, our sense of ethics is a constant companion, which perhaps tugs hardest at our sleeve during moments of crisis. In Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark s soliloquy in Act Three, Scene 1 arguably the most famous speech in all theatre history is a good example. Hamlet starts off with one of the handful of fundamental questions: to be or not to be? Then he outlines some ethical choices: is it better to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take action to end such troubles? Should he kill the king, or kill himself? How much humiliation can a person take? In this scene, Hamlet shows how ethical reflections can sometimes make cowards of us all (Shakespeare, 1994, pp. 239, 241). Perhaps. But, equally, ethical reasoning can be a spur to action. The following chapters explore ethical questions in a variety of plays and contexts. The unique quality of theatre as a forum for the face-toface interaction between whatever is happening on stage and the collective being of the audience is what makes ethics such a political concern. ix

9 x Foreword We may muse in private on Hamlet s problems, but it is in public that we witness them in performance. The big questions of traditional ethics are: how do you define the good life? How should you behave to your fellow men and women? What does it mean to be true to yourself? In the postwar era, after the twin shocks of the Holocaust and the Atom Bomb, these questions have been clarified by a range of philosophers, among whom Emmanuel Levinas has been predominant, and the greatest inspiration. Yet the quest today is surely not to find definitive answers, but rather to explore better questions. Which reminds me of De Sade s haunting lines at the end of Peter Weiss s Marat/Sade (1964), which could easily be a manifesto for all intellectual adventures in ethics: Our play s chief aim has been to take to bits great propositions and their opposites see how they work then let them fight it out The point Some light on our eternal doubt I have twisted and turned them every way and find no ending to our play [... ] So for me the last word can never be spoken I am left with a question that is always open. (1966, pp ) This is an apt epigraph for this excellent book, which is edited by Mireia Aragay and Enric Monforte, members of Contemporary British Theatre Barcelona, a research group whose main field of inquiry is the great explosion of theatrical energy and creativity that has, since the mid-1990s, widened the parameters of British theatre ( ub.edu/cbtbarcelona/). Based at the University of Barcelona, since the early 2000s the group has been engaged in a series of three-year research projects, the first of which, supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Education (BFF ), gave rise to the publication of British Theatre of the 1990s: Interviews with Directors, Playwrights, Critics and Academics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). The present volume emerges out of the group s second project, The representation of politics and the politics of representation in post-1990 British drama and theatre (FFI ), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, and it signals the group s shift from a focus on politics to a greater concern with ethics, which is confirmed in the title of the group s current project, Ethical issues in contemporary British theatre since 1989: globalization, theatricality, spectatorship (FFI ),

10 Foreword xi supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. As the Critic hurries out to see another show, he remembers to slip his copy of this book into his pocket. Reading its chapters is a good way of sharpening his ethical sense. London, May 2013 Works cited Shakespeare, W. (1994) Hamlet, ed. G.R. Hibbard (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Weiss, P. (1966) The Persecution and Assassination of Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (London: Calder and Boyars).

11 Acknowledgements Research towards this book was supported by the research projects The re presentation of politics and the politics of representation in post-1990 British drama and theatre (FFI ), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, and Ethical issues in contemporary British theatre since 1989: globalization, theatricality, spectatorship (FFI ), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. We would like to extend our gratitude to Paula Kennedy, Ben Doyle, Sacha Lake and Peter Cary at Palgrave Macmillan for their generous care and unfailing commitment through the publication process of this book. Thanks also to the anonymous readers of the manuscript for their thoughtful, encouraging feedback. Our special gratitude goes to Pilar Zozaya, Emeritus Professor of English Literature and Theatre Studies at the University of Barcelona, who was the first to teach contemporary British theatre in the Department of English and German over 30 years ago, infected us with her passion for the subject, and has provided invaluable support, both moral and material, throughout the gestation of this volume. We are also very grateful to Aleks Sierz for his support and for taking the time to write the Foreword. Last but not least, we wish to thank our contributors for their immense generosity, intellectual rigour and enthusiasm for the subject. It has been a great pleasure working with them all. xii

12 Notes on Contributors Vicky Angelaki is Lecturer in Drama at the University of Birmingham. Her research is internationalist in its scope, with a specialism in modern and contemporary British and European theatre, translation, adaptation, spectatorship and citizenship, aesthetics and politics, as well as performance, critical/cultural theories and philosophy, with a focus on phenomenology. Major publications include The Plays of Martin Crimp: Making Theatre Strange (2012) and Contemporary British Theatre: Breaking New Ground (2013). Mireia Aragay is Senior Lecturer (accredited as Full Professor) in English Literature and Theatre Studies at the University of Barcelona, and Life Fellow of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. Her research interests focus on Harold Pinter and contemporary British theatre, film adaptations of literary classics, Shakespeare and critical theory. She has edited Books in Motion: Adaptation, Intertextuality, Authorship (2005) and co-edited (with Hildegard Klein, Enric Monforte and Pilar Zozaya) British Theatre of the 1990s: Interviews with Directors, Playwrights, Critics and Academics (2007). She was Principal Investigator of The representation of politics and the politics of representation in post-1990 British drama and theatre, a three-year research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (FFI ) and is currently Principal Investigator of Ethical issues in contemporary British theatre since 1989: globalization, theatricality, spectatorship, funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FFI ). Clara Escoda teaches drama and English literature at the University of Barcelona. She is the author of Martin Crimp s Theatre: Collapse as Resistance to Late Capitalist Society (2013). She has also published articles on Martin Crimp and the ethics of testimony and witnessing in Ariel, New Theatre Quarterly and Platform. She is a member of Ethical issues in contemporary British theatre since 1989: globalization, theatricality, spectatorship, a three-year research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FFI ). Martin Middeke is Chair of English Literature at the University of Augsburg, and Visiting Professor of English at the University of Johannesburg. He is co-editor of The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary xiii

13 xiv Notes on Contributors Irish Playwrights (with Peter Paul Schnierer, 2010), The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary British Playwrights (with Peter Paul Schnierer and Aleks Sierz, 2011) and The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary American Playwrights (with Peter Paul Schnierer, Christopher Innes and Matthew C. Roudané, 2013), and of The Literature of Melancholia: Early Modern to Postmodern (with Christina Wald, 2011). He is co-editor of Anglia: Journal of English Literature and editor in chief of JCDE: Journal of Contemporary Drama in English. Forthcoming publications include Theory Matters: The Place of Theory in Literary and Cultural Studies Today and The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary South African Drama. He is a member of Ethical issues in contemporary British theatre since 1989: globalization, theatricality, spectatorship, a three-year research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FFI ). Enric Monforte is Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Theatre Studies in the Department of English and German, University of Barcelona. He specializes in Caryl Churchill and contemporary British theatre, film studies and critical theory, with a special focus on gender and sexuality. He has published Gender, Politics, Subjectivity: Reading Caryl Churchill (2001) as well as studies on other contemporary British playwrights. He has co-edited (with Mireia Aragay, Hildegard Klein and Pilar Zozaya) British Theatre of the 1990s: Interviews with Directors, Playwrights, Critics and Academics (2007). He is a member of Ethical issues in contemporary British theatre since 1989: globalization, theatricality, spectatorship, a three-year research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FFI ). Dan Rebellato is Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he teaches theatre, philosophy and creative writing. He has published 1956 and All That (1999), Theatre & Globalization (2009), Contemporary European Theatre Directors (co-edited with Maria Delgado, 2010), Modern British Playwriting: : Voices, Documents, New Interpretations (2013) and The Suspect Culture Book (co-edited with Graham Eatough, 2013), as well as numerous articles on contemporary theatre, playwriting, and theatre and philosophy. He is also a playwright and his plays and performance texts for stage and radio include Whistleblower, Chekhov in Hell, Static, My Life Is a Series of People Saying Goodbye, Mile End, Beachy Head, Cavalry, Outright Terror Bold and Brilliant, Negative Signs of Progress and Theatremorphosis. Graham Saunders is Reader in Theatre Studies at the University of Reading. He is author of Love me or Kill me : Sarah Kane and the Theatre

14 Notes on Contributors xv of Extremes (2002), Patrick Marber s Closer (2008), and About Kane: The Playwright and the Work (2009) and co-editor of Cool Britannia: Political Theatre in the 1990s (with Rebecca D Monté, 2008) and Sarah Kane in Context (with Laurens de Vos, 2010). He is Principal Investigator for the five-year AHRC-funded project Giving a Voice to the Nation : the Arts Council of Great Britain and the Development of Theatre and Performance in Britain and co-investigator on the threeyear AHRC-funded project Staging Beckett: The Impact of Productions of Samuel Beckett s Drama on Theatre Practice and Cultures in the United Kingdom and Ireland. He has contributed articles to Modern Drama, Journal of Beckett Studies, Contemporary Theatre Review, Theatre Research International, New Theatre Quarterly and Studies in Theatre and Performance. Christiane Schlote teaches drama and postcolonial literatures and cultures at the University of Zurich. She has published extensively on postcolonial and transnational literatures, British Asian theatre, postcolonial cityscapes, Anglophone Arab writing, war and commemoration and Latina/o American and Asian American culture. She is the author of Bridging Cultures: Latino- und asiatisch-amerikanisches Theater in New York (1997) and co-editor of New Beginnings in Twentieth-Century Theatre and Drama (with Peter Zenzinger, 2003) and Constructing Media Reality: The New Documentarism (with Eckart Voigts-Virchow, 2008). She is currently editing the manuscript for a book on transnationalism in British Asian and South Asian American drama and fiction and coediting Representations of War, Migration and Refugeehood: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (with Daniel Rellstab) and a study on literature from the Middle East and its diasporas. Hanna Scolnicov is Professor Emerita of Theatre Studies at Tel-Aviv University and Life Fellow of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. She is the author of Experiments in Stage Satire (1987) and Woman s Theatrical Space (1994) and co-editor, with Peter Holland, of The Play Out of Context: Transferring Plays from Culture to Culture (1989) and Reading Plays: Interpretation and Reception (1991). Among her publications are over sixty essays, in English and Hebrew, on Elizabethan theatre, intertextuality, Shakespeare, Stoppard and Pinter, among other topics. She has taught as Visiting Professor at universities in North Carolina, Rome, Beijing, Venice and Cagliari. Her book The Experimental Plays of Harold Pinter was published in Aleks Sierz FRSA is Senior Research Fellow at Rose Bruford College, and author of In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today (2001), The Theatre of

15 xvi Notes on Contributors Martin Crimp (2006), John Osborne s Look Back in Anger (2008), Rewriting the Nation: British Theatre Today (2011) and Modern British Playwriting: The 1990s (2012). He is editor of The Methuen Drama Book of 21st Century British Plays (2010) and co-editor of The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary British Playwrights (with Martin Middeke and Peter Paul Schnierer, 2011). He also works as a journalist, broadcaster, lecturer and theatre critic. He is a member of Ethical issues in contemporary British theatre since 1989: globalization, theatricality, spectatorship, a threeyear research project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FFI ). Mark Taylor-Batty is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at the Workshop Theatre, University of Leeds. He is co-author, with Juliette Taylor-Batty, of Samuel Beckett s Waiting for Godot (2008) and has authored two books on Harold Pinter s writings, Writers and their Work: Harold Pinter (2001) and About Pinter (2005). He is editor for Methuen Drama s new Engage series of books on theatre practitioners and movements, and co-editor of Performing Ethos, a journal that publishes work on matters of ethics and performance. Clare Wallace is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at Charles University, Prague and also teaches at the University of New York in Prague. She is author of Suspect Cultures: Narrative, Identity & Citation in 1990s New Drama (2006) and The Theatre of David Greig (2013), and has edited various other volumes including Monologues: Theatre, Performance, Subjectivity (2006) and Stewart Parker Television Plays (2008), and co-edited Cosmotopia: Transnational Identities in the Work of David Greig (with Anja Müller, 2011).