Syllabus
See http://www.english-department-prague.cz/
Annotation
This course explores the wealth of new writing that has appeared on British stages over the last twenty years. Our point of departure will be Aleks Sierz’ book In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today (2000) and some of the writers he discusses in relation to the theatre of provocation that hit the Anglophone theatre world in the mid-1990s.
We will then consider the debates around experiential theatre, postmodernity, thesis drama and verbatim theatre as well as paying attention to those playwrights and practitioners who are sidelined by the In-Yer-Face label. At the heart of the seminar will be the question of theatre’s relationship with the political, ethics and spectatorship. Our readings will combine recent theoretical works on these issues with plays and performances from the period.