Introduction

This chapter covers the related areas of aesthetics and politics, both on the stage of the world and in the world of the stage. Each author shows how drama subverts the foundations of accepted modes of perception and how it meditates on its own conventions. Taboo-breaking in theatre practice is the field John Arden and Margaretta D'Arcy have chosen to discuss, drawing from their own personal experience. When it goes beyond limits, and blurs the frontier between illusion and reality, performance art can involve physical violence done to the audience, as MaryBeth Inverso critically shows in her article. In this essay on Peter Barnes, John Elsom reflects on the use of sensational shock-tactics in the post-censorship age. Edward Bond's lurid dramatic world is unconventionally examined through his approach to female characters by Ruth Freifrau von Ledebur. Christine Dymkowski offers a challenging counterpart, with her exploration of Sarah Daniels's pungent plays about sexual politics.