Overview
- conceptually informed by political and social theory
- covers a number of urgent social and political issues
- offers lively and accessible analysis of a range of important plays and performances.
Part of the book series: Contemporary Performance InterActions (CPI)
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About this book
Focusing on contemporary English theatre, this book asks a series of questions: How has theatre contributed to understandings of the North-South divide? What have theatrical treatments of riots offered to wider debates about their causes and consequences? Has theatre been able to intervene in the social unease around Gypsy and Traveller communities? How has theatre challenged white privilege and the persistent denigration of black citizens? In approaching these questions, this book argues that the nation is blighted by a number of internal rifts that pit people against each other in ways that cast particular groups as threats to the nation, as unruly or demeaned citizens – as ‘social abjects’. It interrogates how those divisions are generated and circulated in public discourse and how theatre offers up counter-hegemonic and resistant practices that question and challenge negative stigmatization, but also how theatre can contribute to the recirculation of problematic cultural imaginaries.
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Keywords
Table of contents (5 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Nadine Holdsworth is Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Warwick, UK. She is author of Joan Littlewood’s Theatre (2006) and Theatre & Nation (2010), co-author of The Ecologies of Amateur Theatre (2018), editor of Theatre and National Identity: Re-Imagining Conceptions of Nation (2014) and co-editor of A Concise Companion to British and Irish Drama (2008).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: English Theatre and Social Abjection
Book Subtitle: A Divided Nation
Authors: Nadine Holdsworth
Series Title: Contemporary Performance InterActions
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59777-9
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-59776-2Published: 19 August 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-59777-9Published: 18 August 2020
Series ISSN: 2634-5870
Series E-ISSN: 2634-5889
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 237
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations, 5 illustrations in colour
Topics: Performing Arts, Theatre Industry, Contemporary Theatre, National/Regional Theatre and Performance, Performers and Practitioners, Theatre and Performance Studies