engleski

Stupid, Old Fashioned or Backward or How British In-Yer-Face Becomes New European Drama?

European theatre in the last decade of the twentieth century was marked by two interesting phenomena. The first is loss of audience. The second is the return of the playwright. After decades of domination of theatre directors who staged mostly classics deliberately neglecting contemporary plays, the audience left mainstream theatre. In order to react to that problem, theatre directors started to search for “New European Drama”. All of a sudden new plays were staged all over Europe but all these plays were full of explicit violence and vulgar language, following one specific trend in contemporary British drama that started with the plays by Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill (called new brutalism or in-yer-face). Although at the end of the 20th century European theatre appeared unified around that wave of new playwrights, very few of them became popular right across Europe (Marius von Mayenbourg, Biljana Srbljanović, Nikolaj Koljada, and Lars Noren). This article shows how this trend was actually imposed: first, through German theatre directors who took British plays and, then, though a system of festivals, awards and workshops, along with a media campaign full of demagogies and half truths. Analyzing the phenomena of imposing this trend, the article proves the existence of "circles of power" in European theatre and also the domination of theatre directors in European theatre. It also presents proofs of the decline and consequences of that trend (higher level of violence on the stage, specific required topics, reign of directors again... and so on).

Mark Ravenhill, Sarah Kane, European drama and theatre, violence, nineties

nije evidentirano