Arguments for a TheatreHoward Barker, author of over thirty plays, has long been an implacable foe of the liberal British establishment, and champion of radical theatre world-wide. His best-known plays include The Castle, Scenes from an Execution and The Possibilities. All of his plays are emotionally highly charged, intellectually stimulating and far removed from the theatrical conventions of what he terms ‘the Establishment Theatre’. These fragments, essays, thoughts and poems on the nature of theatre likewise reject the constraints of ‘objective’ academic theatre criticism. They explore the collision (and collusion) of intellect and artistry in the creative act. This book is more than a collection of essays: it is a cultural manifesto for Barker’s own ‘Theatre of Catastrophe’. |
Contents
Preface | 9 |
Forty nine asides for a tragic theatre | 17 |
Conversation with a dead poet | 25 |
Radical elitism in the theatre | 32 |
Notes to The Bite of the Night | 38 |
Honouring the audience | 45 |
The consolations of catastrophe 51 7 | 51 |
Juha Malmivaaras Scenes from an Execution | 61 |
Eleven building bricks | 126 |
The development of a theory of beauty for the stage | 132 |
On plethora | 139 |
am no playwright | 149 |
Whats new ? | 158 |
Disputing Vanya | 168 |
Creating a death | 179 |
The Play of Seven Days | 190 |
The offer the reward and the need to disappoint | 67 |
the theatre of moral speculation | 91 |
The theatre lies under a shroud | 112 |
The idea of promiscuity in the Theatre of Catastrophe | 119 |
A conversation with Charles Lamb | 207 |
Afterword David Ian Rabey | 223 |
Common terms and phrases
ABRAHAM action actor aesthetic art form articulation artist assertion audience authentic authority Barker beauty becomes BENZ Bite Brecht Brechtian Brutopia character Chekhov clarity collective comedy communication complexity conscience contemporary theatre conventional critical realism critical theatre culture darkness demands desire discipline dominant drama dramatist effect emotion enlightenment entertainment essentially existence experience exposed function Helen Helen of Troy horror Howard Barker human humanist theatre Ian McDiarmid idea ideology imagination individual insist instinct invention judgement language Last Supper Lear liberal Lvov meaning moral narrative never Nigel Osborne Night obscure obsession pain passion performance perhaps pity play political populist possible production Rabey repudiation response Royal Shakespeare Company satire SAVAGE scene secret seduction sense sexual silence social society solidarity spectacle speculation speech stage Theatre of Catastrophe theatre of tragedy theatre's things tion tragedy tragic truth Uncle Vanya witnessing Women Beware Women words writer