ABSTRACT

Contemporary European Playwrights presents and discusses a range of key writers that have radically reshaped European theatre by finding new ways to express the changing nature of the continent’s society and culture, and whose work is still in dialogue with Europe today.

Traversing borders and languages, this volume offers a fresh approach to analyzing plays in production by some of the most widely-performed European playwrights, assessing how their work has revealed new meanings and theatrical possibilities as they move across the continent, building an unprecedented picture of the contemporary European repertoire. With chapters by leading scholars and contributions by the writers themselves, the chapters bring playwrights together to examine their work as part of a network and genealogy of writing, examining how these plays embody and interrogate the nature of contemporary Europe.

Written for students and scholars of European theatre and playwriting, this book will leave the reader with an understanding of the shifting relationships between the subsidized and commercial, the alternative and the mainstream stage, and political stakes of playmaking in European theatre since 1989.

chapter |20 pages

Introduction

ByMaria M. Delgado, Bryce Lease, Dan Rebellato

chapter 1|23 pages

European playwriting and politics, 1945–89

ByDan Rebellato

chapter 2|22 pages

Elfriede Jelinek and Werner Schwab

Heimat critique and dissections of right-wing populism and xenophobia
ByKaren Jürs-Munby

chapter 3|10 pages

Weronika Szczawińska and Agnieszka Jakimiak

Dramaturg as a figure of transition
ByBryce Lease

chapter 4|19 pages

András Visky and Matéi Visniec

Challenging boundaries of cultural specificity
ByJozefina Komporaly

chapter 5|17 pages

Lars Norén and Jon Fosse

Nordic grey or theatre innovators?
ByRikard Hoogland

chapter 6|17 pages

Martin Crimp and Simon Stephens

British playwrights as European playwrights
ByDavid Barnett

chapter 7|21 pages

Marius von Mayenburg and Roland Schimmelpfennig

Dissecting European lives under global capitalism
ByPeter M. Boenisch

chapter 8|18 pages

Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill

The ‘blood and sperm’ generation
ByAndrew Haydon

chapter 9|17 pages

Vasilii Sigarev and the Presniakov Brothers

Staging the new Russia
ByNoah Birksted-Breen

chapter 10|18 pages

Paweł Demirski and Dorota Masłowska

Painful pasts, transformative presents 1
ByBryce Lease

chapter 11|23 pages

Jordi Galceran and Juan Mayorga

Unravelling the present, narrativising the past 1
ByMaria M. Delgado

chapter 12|18 pages

Ivan Vyrypaev and Natalia Vorozhbyt

Language, memory, and cultural mythology in Russian and Ukrainian new drama
ByMolly Flynn

chapter 13|17 pages

Enda Walsh and Martin McDonagh

Reimagining Irish theatre
ByPatrick Lonergan

chapter 14|16 pages

Yasmina Reza and Florian Zeller

The art of success
ByDominic Glynn

chapter 15|19 pages

Lena Kitsopoulou and Yannis Mavritsakis

Greek theatre at the antipodes of crisis
ByElizabeth Sakellaridou

chapter 16|17 pages

Emma Dante and Fausto Paravidino

Families, national identity, and international audiences
ByMargherita Laera

chapter 17|21 pages

Biljana Srbljanović and Ivana Sajko

Voice in the place of silence
ByDuška Radosavljević

chapter 18|18 pages

Debbie Tucker Green And Alice Birch

‘Angry feminists’ on the European stage
ByMarissia Fragkou

chapter 19|12 pages

Peter Handke

Inhabiting the world together
ByHans-Thies Lehmann

chapter 20|10 pages

Jonas Hassen Khemiri

Writing out of the binary
ByBryce Lease

chapter 21|15 pages

Marie NDiaye

Eliding capture
ByKélina Gotman

chapter |12 pages

Afterword

The constructed space
ByDavid Greig