UNIT 1. Introduction: Some Key Terms and Ideas.

From Contemporary British Drama by Catherine Rees.

What is contemporary?

“Contemporary” means recent or present. David Lane’s Contemporary British Theatre (2010)
kicks off with Sarah Kane’s Blasted (1995), instigator of the 1990s In-Yer-Face theatre. But
there are other collections that begin much earlier including John Osborne or Tennessee
Williams. In fact, John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (1956) is marked as a breakthrough in
modern British Theatre.

However, the earliest play examined in this book is Edward Bond’s Saved premiered in 1965.
Therefore, we are going to consider “contemporary” every play after 1965. 1

For other critics, the contemporary starts in 1968, with the abolition of stage censorship and
the political revolutions taking place. Moreover, Bond’s Saved helped end of stage censorship.

The importance of critical response to contemporary British theatre.

Newspaper reviews, magazines, and articles are important because they capture a moment
and are published very quickly after a performance. We can also see that the attitudes and
responses to that representation in that very time, varies and is very different as time passes.
This event is of course never neutral or unbiased, but ideologically built. This way, The
Guardian and the tabloid The Mirror are considered to offer a left-wing liberal response to the
news while The Times, Telegraph, Mail, Sun, and Express are usually more right-wing and
conservative. The Independent is generally centrist. The critics working in these media usually
write about plays driven by the ideological beliefs of these media. Ideology then refers to a
series of values and ideals, often political. In the book we are examining shifting ideologies that
have given shape to British contemporary theatre.

For instance, Saved was a very controversial play when it was premiered in 1965, and as time
passed, the play became accepted as part of the theatrical canon. The same has occurred to
the critical reaction first received by Sarah Kane’s Blasted, what it shows that over time, tasted
and audiences change as well as critics, becoming less sensitive to controversial subject-
matter.

The process of selection and deselection of the plays inserted in the canon is crucial because it
allows some writers to be critically discussed and celebrated, and others to be forgotten. If a
collective of scholars and critics agree that a play is important, they write about it, then, it is
included in anthologies of work, other scholarly editions, school and university curriculums,
and it is performed more often.

This may seem like a natural process, but it is in fact a highly artificial one, and it depends upon
critics agreeing that certain plays are important enough to be admitted into the theatrical “hall
of fame” with certain writers privileged over others. You might assume that a playwright not
included in this collection is not important or considered by critical opinion to be mainstream.
However, the playwrights included are the choice made by some critics and the discard by
others. This process becomes obviously politically charged.

1
We should take into consideration that this initial date and play is only for this book (Contemporary British Drama),
provided that the subject begins with the study of Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (1956) as mentioned in the
paragraph above.

1
So, we are also going to examine labels such as “political”, “feminist”, or “in-yer-face” among
others.

In chapter 1 (unit 3 of the syllabus) we are seeing many plays considered “political” in some
way. How political plays look like and how that definition can shift over time depending on the
political context of the country is something we should borne in mind.

Edward Bond, David Hare, Howard Brenton, and Harold Pinter will be examined under this
label. In these cases, “political” became synonymous with “left-wing” in British Theatre. The
contemporary critical response to the plays when they were first performed will be also
examined, since “political” was considered a criticism of the work.

Chapter 2 (also part of unit 3 in the syllabus of the subject) explores two successful female
playwrights of the 1980s – Sarah Daniels and Caryl Churchill. The assumptions and prejudices
accompanying the term “feminist” will be analyzed as well as some other labels such as
“white” and “male” that are often invisible in British playwriting.

Chapter 3 (unit 4 of the syllabus) examines the importance of political theatre in contemporary
British drama. The term “In-Yer-Face” is used to make sense of plays in the late 1990s which
disturbed and unsettled audiences with their extreme violence and explicit sex with a tone of
critical commentary and new and challenging theatrical forms. We will examine specifically
Sarah Kane’s Blasted.

Chapter 4 (unit 5 of the program) returns to the evolving shape of political drama in an
examination of documentary or verbatim theatre – that is, theatre that aims to address “real”
world events. Again, we consider the relationship between theatre and newspapers with a
reflection that provokes questions that surround the authenticity of documentary theatre and
examine the function of theatre in contemporary society.

Chapter 5 (also unit 5 of the program) explores global theatre and theatre that engages with
ethnicity and religion, addressing cultural difference and freedom of speech. A debate about
whether plays by black writers should be integrated thematically into other chapters or
considered separately is given. Questions regarding national identity, tensions between
identity signifiers and the role of national institutions such as the National Theatre and the BBC
play an important role in shaping our sense of national cohesion. The work by debbie tucker
green, stoning mary, will be analyzed.

Bibliography:

Rees, Catherine. Contemporary British Drama. Red Globe Press, 2020.