230483 British Drama of the 20th and 21st Centuries (S) (WiSe 2020/2021)

Familiarising students with British drama in the 20th and 21st centuries, this seminar provides an overview of major dramatists, plays and developments. Beginning with the Theatre of the Absurd, we will discuss Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (originally published in French, first staged in English in 1955), before we move on to the Angry Young Men by studying John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (first produced in 1956, published in 1957), a landmark in the history of a socially and politically engaged theatre. Caryl Churchill’s dystopian play Far Away (2000) will be subject to our analysis as well as the Frankenstein adaptation by Nick Dear (2011), which was put on stage by the acclaimed Hollywood film director Danny Boyle, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller who alternate between the roles of Frankenstein and his creation. In our analyses, we will put to practice theoretical concepts such as feminism, gender studies, cultural materialism, (post-)structuralism, postmodernism and adaptation.

Bibliography

Please purchase the following plays – any editions will do:
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
John Osborne, Look Back in Anger
Caryl Churchill, Far Away
Nick Dear, Frankenstein