Challenging, original, provoking, moving - what literature doesn’t angle to be described in this way?  It is the job of the arts to challenge orthodoxy, but how many of our most prized modern British dramatists actually do that?  Or even - following post-modernism’s move to deny communal meaning - feel that they have the right to try? We will look at what a range of recent political plays advocate, the literary and dramatic techniques they use, and the audience’s response - did its members actually go out and change the world?

1.         read a wide range of contemporary political plays

2.         understand what genres, modes, and dramatic techniques are available to the overtly political writer

3.         assess whether and how this literature tries to change its political circumstances

Students will learn through 167 hours of reading and 33 contact hours (arranged as weekly two-hour seminars, and either play readings or screenings). If there is any modern political drama on in Cardiff, we will go to see it.

WHAT IS EXPECTED OF ME?

Students are expected to attend and participate in the lectures and seminars for all modules on which they are enrolled. Students with good cause to be absent should inform their module leaders, who will provide the necessary support. Students with extenuating circumstances should submit the Extenuating Circumstances Form in accordance with the School’s procedures.

The total number of hours which students are expected to devote to each 20-credit module is 200. Of these, 30 hours will be contact hours with staff (lectures and seminars); the remaining 170 hours should be spent on self-directed learning for that module (reading, preparation for seminars, research, reflection, formative writing, assessed work, exam revision).  There are also additional seminars and workshops that students are able to attend.

reading closely and critically

analysis of texts and discourses, and responding to the affective power of language, using appropriate approaches and terminology

developing independent and imaginative interpretations of literary, critical, linguistic or creative material

articulating a critical understanding of complex texts and ideas (and of their historical relations where appropriate)

writing clearly, accurately and effectively

applying scholarly bibliographic skills appropriate to the subject.

Essay (3200 words) = 100%
Approx date of assessment in January

Week 1: Gregory Burke, Black Watch (2007)

Week 2: David Hare, Stuff Happens (2004)

Week 3: Victoria Brittain & Gillian Slovo, Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom (2007)

Week 4: James Graham, This House (2012)

Week 5: Lolita Chakrabarti, Red Velvet (2012)

Week 6: Reading Week

Week 7: Clare Bayley, The Container (2007)

Week 8: David Hare, The Power of Yes (2009)

Week 9: Lucy Prebble, Enron (2009)

Week 10: Richard Bean, The Heretic (2011)

Week 11: Stella Feehily, Bang, Bang, Bang (2011)

Seminars will ask the following questions of every play:  unusual composition or rehearsal techniques? When and where played, and to whom? What did theatre reviewers say? What genre is it? What is its main point? Does it argue against itself? What effect does it expect to have, and on whom? Did or does it, and how would you know? What do literary critics say about it? Do you, in the final analysis, think it shows strategic penetration or outright resistance?

INDICATIVE SECONDARY READING

D. Rebellato, The Making of Modern British Drama

W. Hammond and D. Steward, eds., Verbatim, Verbatim: Contemporary Documentary Theatre

J. Bull, New British Political Dramatists

M. Patterson, Strategies of Political Theatre: Post-war British Playwrights

C. Itzin, Stages in the Revolution: Political Theatre in Britain since 1968

D. Rabey, British & Irish Political Theatre in the Twentieth Century: Implicating the Audience

R. Eyre, Changing Stages: a View of British Theatre in the Twentieth Century

A. Kritzer, Political Theatre in Post-Thatcher Britain, 1995-2005

J. Carroll et al, eds., Post-dramatic Theatre and the Political

J. Kelleher, Theatre and Politics