Among the countless afterlives of William Shakespeare’s playwriting there is a strong presence of his visions of state and political powers. In universal, philosophical ways Shakespeare was addressing issues concerning the state power, social organization, hierarchy, and rank in what inevitably were the origins of modern, capitalistic societies. Therefore, many of his powerful images resonate today in the works of contemporary writers who intend to compose stories of utopian or dystopian character which diagnose the condition of modern society. This article aims to present three plays by post-war English dramatists (Edward Bond’s Bingo, Frank McGuinness’s Mutabilitie, and David Greig’s Dunsinane) which reuse Shakespearian themes, motifs, or characters to build politically contentious and subversive plots within a narrower context of their specific cultures, societies, and historical periods. It is assumed that the Shakespearean legacy the writers engage with is not merely a dramatic text, but a complex cultural structure of accumulated narratives, interpretations, and myths which contemporary dramatists rewrite and recycle. The aim of the article is to show how this multifaceted legacy of Shakespeare’s life and work helps build dystopian visions of contemporary communities or images of state and political justice. In other words, the article intends to analyse ways of visualizing modern societies through the palimpsestic presence of the Renaissance master.
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The article discusses Mark Ravenhill's pool (no water) from two perspectives: that of a dramatic text and of performative potential. Central to this debate is the concept of the body and a variety of ways of its coding, framing, and ultimately obliterating. Ravenhill's drama is presented as an intriguing example of a play created in the process of collaborative workshopping. The article traces how such attempts lead to imposing an aesthetic discipline onto a living body. It is suggested that the play was composed with a particular way of its theatrical use in mind, having thus a decisively performance-rather than text-oriented structure. The article refers to Frantic Assembly's production of pool (no water) in order to explain how the play was used to subvert theatrical and dramatic conventions through improvisation and elements of physical theatre. It suggests that Ravenhill's play reveals a sceptical view on the body's possibility to communicate a 'true' and undisrupted meaning as is suggested by some performance theories. The article argues that Ravenhill's play highlights the key dilemmas of contemporary theatre and illustrates significant debates within theatre studies of the last couple of decades.Mark Ravenhill's dramatic oeuvre is driven by a persistent need to trace bodily sensations, to locate where, when, and how his characters feel. However, what seems to lie deeper behind bodily experience is a question concerning the being of the body, its phenomenological, semantic, ontological, and epistemological constitution. Ravenhill attempts to reflect on the limits as well as possibilities of representing the body, on the mediated way we connect with our bodies and the bodies of others. The worlds of his plays are often presented as spaces taken over by alienating discourses of power. Yet, significantly, Ravenhill also dramatises the opposite drive by showing individuals struggling to rediscover raw feelings, to locate the real in spite of the mediating influence of language, gender stereotyping, or aggressive media presence. His dramatic images can therefore be seen
The review article comments on major themes and ideas analysed by S.E. Wilmer’s Performing Statelessness in Europe (Palgrave 2018). Wilmer’s analysis offers an overview of most recent as well as historical approaches to the concept of citizenship and the state which have been developed by avant-garde artists and theatre makers. The overall aim of Wilmer’s survey of political art is to “assess strategies by creative artists to address matters relating to social justice”. He also gives a significant amount of attention to various projects carried by German theatres which attempt to integrate resident immigrants into German society. The central thrust of his argument falls on a variety of contemporary theatrical initiatives directly concerned with the life of refugees and asylum seekers. The review highlights those aspects of Wilmer’s argument which directly concern the concept of modern society, nation state and identity. Wilmer shows precisely these aspects of modern state as most destructive. The review questions that assumption, arguing that the criticism of modern society should be more subtle and nuanced and that the potential failure of responding properly to the crisis does not necessarily lie entirely on the side of the state
The article reflects on the issues of European social, political and ethical disintegration by looking at two plays which represent both geographic and mental migration of European citizens. Zinnie Harris’s play dramatizes a journey by an energetic businesswoman from the state of seeming success to the condition of collapse of the entire continent. Masłowska’s drama tells the story of a couple who have lost their geographic but also existential bearings after a prolonged bout of drug abuse and partying. The article aims at presenting the European continent as a space of alienated social and personal experience, as a community of people in permanent exile from both the private space and the public ideologies. The two plays offer a reflection on the condition of pre-Brexit Europe with the power of capturing representative lives of those individuals who have lost the sense of the common cause.
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