The Tears of Dionysus: the Birth of Catastrophic Theater in British Drama Público

Abstract

Abstract

The Tears of Dionysus: the Birth of Catastrophic Theater in British Drama

By: Matthew J. Roberts II

The Tears of Dionysus: the Birth of Catastrophic Theater in British Drama argues that catastrophe is an important twentieth- and twenty-first-century theatrical aesthetic category, and situates it in relation to Artaud and Beckett's critical engagement with tragic and naturalistic theater. While tragedy is the theatrical genre most associated with the representation of trauma and other catastrophic events, the dissertation arranges a series of readings that examine plays by Howard Barker, Harold Pinter, and Sarah Kane in order to distinguish catastrophic theater from tragedy. Specifically, catastrophic theater undermines the classical argument that theater makes pleasurable that which would otherwise be painful. Therefore, as Barker, Pinter, and Kane challenge the redemptive or life-affirming metaphysics often associated with tragedy and the figure of Dionysus, I argue that these playwrights demonstrate that catastrophe escapes representation. As a result, they have created innovative theatrical forms that untangle theatrical art from the mimetic framework in which plays are often written and interpreted. Following the insights of W.B. Worthen and Hans-Thies Lehmann, the dissertation illustrates that catastrophic theater ultimately challenges the dynamic between text and performance as it has been conceived by theories of performance and theater, and it reframes the antagonistic relationship between text and performance that currently situates the constitutive difference between theater studies and performance studies.

Table of Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: Catastrophic Theater and the New Dramatic Text

I. Signaling through the Flames…………………………………………………………………...1

II. The Tears of Dionysus, or on the Birth of Catastrophic Theater………………………………6

III. Chapter Abstracts…………………………………………………………………………….14

Chapter One: A Mother's Touch: Trauma and the Law of Obsequence in Harold Pinter's Political Plays……………………………………………………………………………………19

I. The "Pinter Problem" Revisited……………………………………………………………….19 II. Before the Law………………………………………………………………………………..25

III. The "Mother Tongue" and the Law of Obsequence…………………………………………33

IV. Echoes of the Dead…………………………………………………………………………..40 V. The Ashes of History…………………………………………………………………………59

Chapter Two: The Language of Grief and the Grief of Language: Sarah Kane's Impossible Theater…………………………………………………………………………………………...69

I. The Burden of Survival: Metaphors of Loss in Sarah Kane's Theater………………………..69

II. Love's Strife…………………………………………………………………………………..73

III. To Carry You with Me………………………………………………………………………86

IV. From Page to Stage…………………………………………………………………………..94

V. And there's the Drama………………………………………………………………………102

Chapter Three: From Pain, Poetry: Howard Barker and the Poetics of Catastrophic Theater…113

I. Howard Barker's Theatre of Catastrophe: towards a Deconstructive Poetics……………….113

II. History as Catastrophe: Howard Barker's The Europeans………………………………….122

III. Catastrophe and the Plethoric Text: Howard Barker's Blok/Eko…………………………...141

Notes……………………………………………………………………………………………163

Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………………….179

About this Dissertation

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Comparative Literature
Degree	PhD
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Literature, Comparative Literature, English Theater
Palavra-chave	Sarah Kane Comparative Literature Harold Pinter Trauma Studies Theater Studies Howard Barker
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Bennington, Geoffrey, Emory University
Committee Members	Marder, Elissa, Emory University Robbins, Jill, Emory University Evenden, Michael, Emory University

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