Englisches Seminar, room 11
Organizer:
PD Dr Christiane Schlote
State of the Nation: British Identity and its Playwriting Discontents
New Writing for the British theatre is one of the national culture’s most creative achievements. Ever since the triumphant arrival of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger at the Royal Court in 1956, the genre of New Writing has been central to the story of British postwar drama. It’s easy to remember its significant milestones, such as Waiting for Godot, The Birthday Party, Saved, Plenty, Top Girls, Leave Taking, The Pitchfork Disney and Blasted, as well as more recent work such as Sugar Mummies, Jerusalem, Chimerica, A Museum in Baghdad and Nye. I propose to revisit some of the classic plays that contribute to this narrative, distinguishing between the mainstream and the leftfield side of the phenomenon, and showing how many of these writers and their works both imagined aspects of the nation’s identity and, often simultaneously, criticised it. The theatre of the state has been a mirror of the state of the nation.
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