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Formal Departures (1)

Formal Departures (1). Caryl Churchill and Sarah Kane. The 1990s: Post-political?. Thatcherism (1979-): A right-wing ‘revolution’ Reduction of subsidies: Theatre as a commodity End of the Cold War: Political apathy Postmodernism: Suspicion of ideological discourses

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Formal Departures (1)

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  1. Formal Departures (1) Caryl Churchill and Sarah Kane

  2. The 1990s: Post-political? • Thatcherism (1979-): A right-wing ‘revolution’ • Reduction of subsidies: Theatre as a commodity • End of the Cold War: Political apathy • Postmodernism: Suspicion of ideological discourses • ‘In-Yer-Face Theatre’: Thatcher’s children? • Experiential drama • No clear political agenda • Breaking taboos: (onstage) violence, foul language • Masculinity in crisis

  3. The 1990s: Post-feminist? • THEN (1970s)... “Feminism brought women together, united them, gave them a ‘group’ identity” (Aston and Harris 4).In the theatre, this meant the creation of women’s companies – such as Monstrous Regiment - and the search for a new language in performance. • NOW (1990s onwards)... “Feminism has not revolutionized or effectively combated the majority of the injustices, cruelties and inequalities that it brought to the public attention in the 1970s. Nor has it yet challenged the ‘new’ ones that have arisen as a result of these processes” (10).

  4. Sarah Kane (1971-99) Ever a feminist playwright? CarylChurchill(b.1938) Still a feministplaywright?

  5. Blasted (1995) • ‘This Disgusting Feast of Filth’ (Daily Mail) • Content: From private to public, from local to global* • Form: Realism itself is ‘blasted’ *‘The logical conclusion of the attitude that produces an isolated rape in England is the rape camps in Bosnia. And the logical conclusion to the way society expects men to behave is war’ (Kane quoted in Bayley 20)

  6. Far Away (2000) • ‘Churchill’s vision of a world brought to catastrophe by war, ecological disaster and scientific perversion seems merely silly rather than terrifying’ (Daily Telegraph) • Content: Same trajectory as Blasted, in a dystopian structure (a warning?) • Form: Realism › Expressionism › Absurdism

  7. The Personal and the Political Compare the ending of each play... • Blasted: “Cate […] returns like a latter-day Jane Eyre to feed and care for the blinded, traumatised Ian” (Saunders31) Is this a return to the private realm? Does it restore traditional gender roles? • Far Away: Joan also comes back from war to see her husband. Is this “a sign of hope [...] based on personal desire and commitment rather than abstract ideals” (Kritzer 75)? Or is it the culmination of a dystopian warning against the personal without the political?

  8. Bibliography • Aston, Elaine. ‘But Not That: Caryl Churchill’s Political Shape Shifting at the Turn of the Millennium’. Modern Drama 56.2 (2013):145-164 • ---. Feminist Views on the English Stage: Women Playwrights, 1990-2000, Cambridge: CUP, 2003. • Aston, Elaine and Geraldine Harris. ‘Feminist Futures and the Possibilities of “We”?’ Feminist Futures? Theatre, Performance, Theory. Ed. E. Aston and G. Harris. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 1-16 • Bayley, Clare. ‘A Very Angry Young Woman’. Independent 23 January 1995: 20. • Kritzer, Amelia Howe. Political Theatre in Post-Thatcher Britain: New Writing 1995-2005. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. • Iball, Helen. Sarah Kane’s Blasted. London: Continuum, 2008. • Saunders, Graham. 'Love Me Or Kill Me': Sarah Kane and the Theatre of Extremes. Manchester: MUP, 2002. • Sierz, Aleks (2001) In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today, London: Faber and Faber.

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