Forms of Conflict: Contemporary Wars on the British Stage (Exeter Performance Studies). This item is unavailable.Forms of Conflict: Contemporary Wars on the British Stage (Exeter Performance Studies)

This full-length study of the representation of contemporary warfare on the British stage investigates the strategies deployed by theatre practitioners in Britain as they meet the representational challenges posed by the 'new wars' of the global era. To say that drama is intimately bound up with conflict - and conflict resolution - is almost a platitude. Even the quintessentially theatrical nature of the vocabulary that we commonly use to describe war would seem to point to the stage as a suitable space to interrogate the mechanics of conflict. The representation of war in the theatre has systematically raised the issue of representability, testing both the limits and the potential of the medium. The book questions how dramatists have responded aesthetically to the changing nature of conflict, focusing mainly on plays written and performed around or after the September 11 terrorist attacks. By establishing a connection between models of conflict and modes of representation, the book aims to assess the impact on dramatic form and theatrical representation of a consequential paradigm shift in the way wars are waged and perceived. Soncini examines how the works of popular playwrights such as Caryl Churchill, David Hare, Martin Crimp and Sarah Kane have provided an interpretative means to enlarge our understanding of the new patterns of conflict, ensuring theatre's continued cultural and political relevance. Drawing predominantly on textual material while also considering performance dimension and actual productions, Forms of Conflict explores the relationship between new forms of warfare and new forms of drama, illustrating what dramatic form can reveal about the post-9/11 landscape. The author has selected a group of dramatists for study who are already extremely popular in literature and drama departments and students will benefit from fresh insights into their respective contemporary works.

Dr Sara Soncini is a researcher in the Department of Philology, Literature and Linguistics at the University of Pisa. Her research interests include 20th and 21st-century British drama and theatre, with specific emphasis on the representation of war and conflict, and the aesthetics and politics of intertextual and metatheatrical strategies.