Download or read book Howard Barker s Theatre Wrestling with Catastrophe written by James Reynolds and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-07-30 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Howard Barker and The Wrestling School have been seen as marginal to the major concerns of British theatre, problematic in their staging and challenging in the ideas they explore. Yet Barker's writing career spans six decades, he is the only living writer to have been accorded an entire season with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and The Wrestling School produces theatre of such a striking quality that it earned continuous Arts Council funding for nearly 20 years. Wrestling with Catastrophe challenges existing ways of reading Barker's theatre practice and plays and provides new ways into his work. It brings together conversations with theatre makers from in and outside The Wrestling School, with first-hand accounts of the company's practice, and a selection of critical readings. The book's combining of testimony from key Wrestling School practitioners with alternative practical perspectives, and with analysis by both established and emerging scholars, ensures that a spectrum of understanding emerges that is rich in both breadth and depth. In its consideration of the full range of Barker's aesthetic concerns - including text, direction, design, acting, narrative form, poetry, appropriation, painting, photography, electronic media, technology, puppetry, and theatre space - the volume makes a radical re-evaluation of Barker's theatre possible.

Download or read book Theatre of Catastrophe written by Karoline Gritzner and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-03-02 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifteen essays on the style, language and vision of one of Britain’s most influential and controversial playwrights. Focusing on different aspects of what Barker has called the Theatre of Catastrophe, an international range of academics offer illuminating interpretations of his work. Includes analyses of the political, moral and historical aspects of his writing, its poetry and eroticism, its depiction of the figure of the artist, and Barker’s writing in performance. Includes contributions from Elisabeth Angel-Perez, Mary Karen Dahl, Helen Iball, Christine Kiehl, Charles Lamb, Chris Megson, Roger Owen, Dan Rebellato, James Reynolds, Elizabeth Sakellaridou, Andy Smith, Liz Tomlin, Heiner Zimmerman.

Download or read book Howard Barker Plays Two written by Howard Barker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-05-03 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes the plays The Castle, Gertrude - The Cry, Animals in Paradise and 13 Objects. Howard Barker is one of the most significant and controversial dramatists of his time. His plays challenge, unsettle and expose. The plays in this volume examine collisions of culture, gender and creed at moments of turmoil, developing the tragic form Barker defines as Theatre of Catastrophe. The Castle is set at the end of Crusades and describes the clashes that occur when returning soldiers bring an Arab architect home with them as a prisoner. Barker's abiding interest in interrogating the great classics for their 'silences' is shown in Gertrude - The Cry, his re-writing of the Hamlet story. Scarcely examined in Shakespeare, the passion of Gertrude for Claudius is made the centre of this harrowing tragedy, casting new light on the personality of Hamlet himself. Animals in Paradise was commissioned by the Swedish and Danish governments to celebrate their connection by bridge, a symbolic finish to centuries of antagonism. Barker's unexpected treatment of the theme provoked unrest on its first showing. 13 Objects movingly reveals the investment we make in inanimate things, their power to unsettle us, and how their talismanic qualities license new ways of seeing the world.

Download or read book Arguments for a Theatre written by Howard Barker and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Howard Barker, author of over thirty plays, has long been an implacable foe of the liberal British establishment, and champion of radical theatre world-wide. His best-known plays include The Castle, Scenes from an Execution and The Possibilities. All of his plays are emotionally highly charged, intellectually stimulating and far removed from the theatrical conventions of what he terms 'the Establishment Theatre'. These fragments, essays, thoughts and poems on the nature of theatre likewise reject the constraints of 'objective' academic theatre criticism. They explore the collision (and collusion) of intellect and artistry in the creative act. This book is more than a collection of essays: it is a cultural manifesto for Barker's own 'Theatre of Catastrophe'.

Download or read book Scenes from an Execution written by Howard Barker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-08-24 with total page 81 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Commissioned to paint a vast canvas celebrating the triumphant Battle of Lepanto, the free-spirited Galactia creates instead a breathtaking scene of war-torn carnage. In her fierce determination to stay true to herself, she alienates the authorities and faces incarceration. Her younger lover Carpeta is approached to take over and seizes the assignment for himself. Howard Barker's Scenes from an Execution makes sixteenth-century Venice the setting for a fearless exploration of sexual politics and the timeless tension between personal ambition and moral responsibility, between the patron's demands and the artist's autonomy. Art is opinion, and opinion is the source of all authority. This edition includes a new essay by Howard Barker, entitled The Sunless Garden of the Unconsolled: Some Destinations Beyond Catastrophe

Download or read book Blok Eko written by Howard Barker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-06-18 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Howard Barker’s theatre is characterized by its tragic scale and its distinctive way of exposing the unconscious resistances that underlie apparent social unanimity, both in the sexual and political spheres. Barker’s play, BLOK/EKO, is a large-scale drama about death and its status in the world. Eko, an ageing despot, seemingly on a whim liquidates the entire medical profession, asserting that consolation – in the form of song – is a better way with sickness than drugs or surgery. A connoisseur herself, she knows great song is itself the distillation of suffering and so deliberately exposes her greatest poet Tot to a life of crime, poverty and humiliation in order to extract from him his finest work. BLOK/EKO is the first outcome of Barker’s residence as Creative Fellow at the University of Exeter (2010-2012) and the main element of his Plethora/Bare Sufficiency project.

Download or read book Howard Barker Plays Ten written by Howard Barker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-10-04 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tenth collection of plays by Howard Barker, one of the most significant and controversial dramatists of our time. His plays challenge, unsettle and expose. Plays Ten comprises the plays Ahno, Distance, Critique of Pure Feeling, Irrespective, Immense Kiss, Exquisite. In Ahno, A Prince of Now, a youthful dictator is revealed as simultaneously revolutionary and reactionary, in politics and in love. His shocking efforts to create a new social order are mirrored in his unconventional passion for a seventy-five year old woman, who along with his devoted commissar, a group of fanatical priests, and a disturbingly perceptive Dalmatian, make up a menacing court of activists. In Exquisite, Barker's theme is the ethical ambiguity of slavery. In a dimly feudal setting, but constantly referring to our time, unsolved murders decimate a stable community. The protagonist, a loyal and uncritical serf, declines to speculate on the cause, whilst at the same time possessing the power to put an end to it. His ambiguous relationship with authority, and his refusal to quarrel with his own status, reveals Barker's heretical manner with moral platitudes. Alongside full-scale and even epic dramas, Barker has always written short works for small casts. In Distance he views the horrors of The Great War from an unusual perspective, that of the mother of a killed son, who arrives at her own philosophy of mourning. In Irrespective, a reclusive intellectual – in his final years – finds himself pestered for moral teaching by a wretched populace which has hitherto ignored him. In Critique of Pure Feeling, an old woman, sceptical of love but not of property, finds herself recklessly participating in an erotic duel. Immense Kiss, one of Barker's most terrible visions, takes place as an army enters a besieged city, where a young conscript, discovering a woman abandoned in a room, finds himself stretched between longing and civility.

Download or read book Slowly Hurts Given and Received written by Howard Barker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-06-18 with total page 107 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two new plays by Howard Barker Slowly As barbarians approach the palace of a decaying culture, four princesses debate their fate. Decorum demands suicide. But, for some, the possibility of life is all too compelling. In a culture of conformity, it may not be up to the individual to decide... Hurts Given and Received Howard Barker re-examines the creative life of the artist through one of his most fascinating and appalling creations. Provocative ideas, pungent poetic language, and savage wit build a thought-provoking allegory of the artist's relationship with society.

Download or read book Lot and His God written by Howard Barker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-11-02 with total page 47 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I came to the city. I saw the people were filthy. And those who were not filthy were still filthy..." Sodom. The day before the city's total annihilation. Among the grimy tables of a run-down café, an angel tells Lot that God wants him to flee, before the city is obliterated. However, Lot's irresistible wife has other ideas... As the angel and Lot's wife embark on a dangerous game of seduction, cruelty and desire, we are drawn ever deeper into the dark and impenetrable forest that is the marriage between Lot and the bewitching woman he worships...

Download or read book Barker Plays Three written by Howard Barker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-05-03 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes the plays Claw, Ursula, He Stumbled and The Love of a Good Man The plays in this volume range over twenty years, beginning with Barker's first major work for the stage, Claw, a study of urban discontent and political impotence, developed over three stylistically contrasting acts. Its terrible conclusion marked the debut of a vivid dramatic imagination. In Ursula Barker's engagement with the pains of the past, and his way of reinvigorating ancient arguments reaches a high point in his treatment of the legend of St Ursula and the martyrdom of 11,000 virgins, where the virtues of celibacy and marriage are set against the catastrophic passion of a woman described as a 'perfect liar'. Barker's scrutiny of the body and its complex meanings is never more intense than in He Stumbled, the tragedy of a celebrated anatomist whose last dissection becomes his own. The body as a site of political and personal investment is also at the heart of The Love of a Good Man, an early work set on the empty battlefields of the Great War, where the burial of the dead becomes a pretext for private ambition as well as national grief.

Download or read book The Scenography of Howard Barker written by Lara Maleen Kipp and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-18 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Influential contemporary British playwright and director Howard Barker has been engaging with the scenography of the Wrestling School’s productions since 1998. Despite this active involvement in the design of set, costume, lighting, and sound, no in-depth published study on this aspect of his work exists to date. This monograph therefore offers the first comprehensive and detailed analysis of Barker’s scenographic practice. Combining aesthetic analysis of play texts and production records with original interview materials, this book presents the first full-length foray into Barker’s scenography. It features extracts from conversations with designers working with Barker, and with Barker himself. In addition, it presents the first printed versions of select set and costume designs by Barker. With the first fully detailed analysis of Barker’s scenographic work, this book will be a vital read for scholars and postgraduates of Barker Studies, contemporary British and European drama, theatre, and scenography.

Download or read book Researching and Writing on Contemporary Art and Artists written by Christopher Wiley and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-06-27 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Researching and writing about contemporary art and artists present unique challenges for scholars, students, professional critics and creative practitioners alike. This collection of essays from across the arts disciplines—music, literature, dance, theatre and the visual arts—explores the challenges and complexities raised by engaging in researching and writing on living or recently deceased subjects and their output. Different sections explore critical perspectives and case studies in relation to innovative, distinctive or otherwise leading work, as well as offering innovative modes of discourse such as a visual essay and a music composition. Subjects addressed include recent scandals of Canadian literary celebrity, late-career output, the written element of music composition PhDs, and the boundaries between ethnography and hagiography, with case studies ranging from Howard Barker to Adrian Piper to Sylvie Guillem and Misty Copeland.

Download or read book The Fence in its Thousandth Year written by Howard Barker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-06-18 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Fence in its Thousandth Year was inspired by the long distance fence whilst it was under construction in the Gaza to separate the Palestinian and Jewish communities. Set in a world of rising frontiers and illegal immigration, The Fence uses powerful poetic language, provocative ideas and rich, dark humour to build a compelling epic about scandal in a ruling monarchy and its subsequent downfall. At the heart of this tale is the intensely personal story of a blind boy’s struggle to discover his true identity in a world where nothing is what it seems... The Fence, produced by the Wrestling Company, opened at the Birmingham Rep in June 2005, followed by a UK tour.

Download or read book Barker Plays One written by Howard Barker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-05-03 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes the plays Victory, The Europeans, The Possibilities and Scenes From An Execution. Howard Barker is one of the most significant and controversial dramatists of his time. His plays challenge, unsettle and expose. These plays are among his best-known works, and their energy, poetic language and imagination have fixed them firmly in the international repertoire. Exploring the tragic form defined by Barker as Theatre of Catastrophe, three of the plays speculate on human behaviour in moments of historical crisis. Victory is set in the English Civil War and follows the ethical voyage of a widow towards personal reconstruction. The Europeans takes one of the great eruptions of Islamic imperialism asthe background for a young woman's insistence on her right to her own identity. Scenes from an Execution shows the struggle of an independently-minded artist against the power of the Venetian state. The Possibilities, a disturbing series of short plays set in various times and cultures, reveals Barker's unconventional way with moral dilemmas.

Download or read book Howard Barker Plays Eleven written by Howard Barker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-09-24 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The latest collection of plays from one of the most celebrated, influential and studied playwrights in the English-speaking world. Howard Barker's plays continue to challenge, unsettle and expose. Barker's theatre has never sought to reproduce the real world on stage, but 1870 is the first of his plays to be set in Hell. An executed traitor, whose passion for betrayal is akin to a faith, meets other victims of that terrible year in a sordid room. Inevitably they are inspected by God, but in a shape none could have predicted and only he can delight in. In Dans Le Palais Je, Barker's nihilistic landowner at once establishes a different tone as she survives waves of social unrest and outbids the cruel with her own cruelty. In this chaos, she relies on the delivery of obscure but meaningful words which arrive in sealed envelopes to prepare her for a succession of ordeals. Deep Wives and Knowledge and a Girl are short pieces, firmly established in the European theatre repertoire. In the first, a revolutionary movement called the Alterations puts a rich woman in the hands of her servants. The body, and its political meanings, is at the heart of this uncanny work, written for two actresses and a mechanical dog. In Knowledge and a Girl, Barker reinterprets the Snow White fable from the perspective of the Stepmother.

Download or read book Arguments for a Theatre written by Howard Barker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-02-23 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new edition of Barker’s seminal text Arguments for a Theatre outlinesthe theory and practice of his ‘Theatre of Catastrophe’. Author of over thirty plays, Howard Barker has long been an implacable foe of the liberal British establishment, and champion of radical theatre world-wide. His best-known plays are The Castle, Scenes from an Execution and The Possibilities. All his plays are emotionally highly charged, intellectually stimulating and have no truck with the theatrical conventions of what he terms the ‘Establishment Theatre’. These fragments, essays, thoughts and poems on the nature of theatre likewise reject the constraints of ‘objective’ academic theatre criticism. Rather they explore the collision (and collusion) of intellect and artistry in the creative act. This book is more than a collection of essays: it is a cultural manifesto.

Download or read book Barker Plays Four written by Howard Barker and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-05-03 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes the plays I Saw Myself, The Dying of Today, Found in the Ground and The Road, the House, the Road Howard Barker is one of the most significant and controversial dramatists of his time. His plays challenge, unsettle and expose. In I Saw Myself a woman's longing to understand her compulsion to transgress the laws of her society comes into collision with the conventions of an art form. In the weaving of a tapestry Barker's13th century heroine privileges private life over public responsibility. If she is cruelly punished she is also granted self-awareness. A critical moment in social decay is also at the centre of The Dying of Today, in which a stranger who luxuriates in the telling of bad news observes the effects of his devastating narrative on a humble barber. The barber's recovery from pain, and the beauty of his sensibility, bring the two strangers into an emotional proximity. Barker's most experimental work in form and content is probably Found in the Ground, a mobile, musical work set during the last days of an aged Nuremberg judge whose baying hounds and burning library form an uncanny background to his wayward daughter's struggle to make meaning from the atrocities of the 20th century. The contradictions of the humanist personality are explored in The Road, the House, the Road. Erasmus' obscure colleague Aventinus was found dead on a wintry road. How he arrived at his solitary death forms the subject of this speculation on scholarship, mischief and the murderer's vocation.