Gwybodaeth Modiwlau

This is a course of directed reading and weekly discussions, analyzing recent material which is purposefully challenging in both form and content, and is often imperfectly navigated by most of the existing literary criticism which ostensibly relates to it. Consequently, there is a strong emphasis on students developing original ideas about the specifically theatrical dimensions and demands of the texts under review.
Course issues are likely to recur in more than one session, but likely to include: successive dramatic bids to find language and images which interrogate conventional relationships between power, sexuality and morality; movements away from Naturalism and towards a New Expressionism; challenges posed to theatrical design, physical performance and audience comprehension; subversions of previous dramatic conventions and texts; the problems of staging violence; the role of humour; issues of national and sexual identity.

Provisional schedule of lectures:

Lecture 1: The Division of the Kingdom: Bond's Lear and Rudkin's The Sons of Light
Lecture 2: Power and the Body: Howard Barker's The Castle and Gertrude - The Cry
Lecture 3: Engendered Rage: Churchill's The Skriker and Wertenbaker's The Love of the Nightingale
Lecture 4: Urban Dystopias: Cartwright's I Liked a Slag's Deoderant and Hannan's Shining Souls
Lecture 5: Out of Control: Crimp's Attempts on Her Life and No One Sees the Video
Lecture 6: Split Subjects on the Edge: Kane's Crave and 4:48 Psychosis and Thomas's Stone City Blue
Lecture 7: Small Stories, Wider Resonances: Marber's Closer, Lichtenstein's The Pull of Negative Gravity
Session 8: 'It's incidents like this does put tourists off Ireland': Jones's Stones in his Pockets and A Night in November, McDonagh's The Lieutenant of Inishmore
Lecture 9: Flow or Fight: McPherson's Port Authority and O'Rowe's Howie the Rookie
Lecture 10: Last Ditch: Rabey's Lovefuries: plus conclusion and preparation for the exam