| Description |
Whereas in the nineteenth century, the medium to debate the condition-of-England question was the novel, today this role unequivocally belongs to the theatre. Whilst in the 1990s, most new British plays could be categorised as belonging to the so-called In-Yer-Face theatre with its aesthetics and themes that intended to shock audiences, the landscape of what is considered ‘new writing’ has now become increasingly diverse – both stylistically and thematically. What the works of such playwrights as Mike Bartlett, Lucy Prebble, Roy Williams, Kwame Kwei-Armah, and Laura Wade do, however, have in common, is that all of them dramatise the current state of the nation. Such recent examples include, for instance, plays about the London housing crisis, immigration, the #MeToo movement, and – unsurprisingly – the climate leading up to the Brexit referendum as well as its aftermath.
In this course, we will consider a number of different plays on various topics, exploring how all of them provide intricate responses to the increasingly difficult question of how to define ‘Britishness’ or ‘Englishness’ in the twenty-first century. Specifically, we will discuss how these works and their critical reception do not simply comment on political and societal debates from a distance but, rather, play an active role in shaping them. |
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