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In Search of a Radical Discourse for Theatre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Dorrian Lambley
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Abstract

How to accommodate and utilize the insights and the methodology of marxism – and, simply, its potential as a vehicle for social change – at a time when the popular perception of its political ideology stands discredited? Dorrian Lambley explores the dilemma through the specifics of developments in British theatre since 1968 – the stifling of the early radical impulses under political and economic pressures, which has produced, at best, a sense of marginalization, at worst a conviction of impotence. In proposing ways of working within this situation, Lambley draws on the writings of dramatists such as Edward Bond to suggest that marxism must recognize the most important of the liberal humanist emphases – ‘the presence of the subject’, but perceived within a marxist understanding of social relations. Dorrian Lambley is presently working on her doctoral thesis in the University of Exeter, where she helped to organize the conference ‘Theatre and the Discourses of Power’, on which she wrote in the ‘Reports and Announcements’ section of NTQ28 (1991).

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 8 , Issue 29 , February 1992 , pp. 34 - 47
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

Notes and References

1. See Gottlieb, Vera, ‘Thatcher's Theatre – or, After Equus’, in New Theatre Quarterly, IV, No. 14 (05 1988), p. 99–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Williams, Raymond, Keywords (Fontana, 1988), p. 251Google Scholar.

3. Itzin, Catherine, Stages in the Revolution: Political Theatre in Britain since 1968 (Methuen, 1980), p. xGoogle Scholar.

4. Ibid.

5. See, for example, Catherine Itzin, 1980.

6. Marwick, Arthur, British Society since 1945 (Penguin, 1982), p. 172Google Scholar.

7. Catherine Itzin, 1980, p. 2.

8. See, for example, Eagleton, Terry, Criticism and Ideology (Verso, 1978)Google Scholar.

9. See, for example, Williams, Raymond, Problems in Materialism and Culture (Verso, 1980)Google Scholar; Marxism and Literature (Oxford University Press, 1977).

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11. See Dews, Peter, Radical Philosophy Reader: the ‘New Philosophers’ and the End of Leftism, ed. Edgley, Roy and Osborne, Richard (Verso, 1985)Google Scholar.

12. See Catherine Itzin, 1980, p. 7; also, for an account of Terry Griffiths and his conflict with the WRP over The Party, ibid., p. 167–8.

13. Catherine Itzin, 1980, p. 167.

14. Dews, 1985, p. 383.

15. Dews, 1985, p. 365.

16. Catherine Itzin, 1980, p. 57.

17. McGrath, John, The Bone Won't Break (Methuen, 1990)Google Scholar.

18. Dews, 1985, p. 366.

19. Ibid., p. 383.

20. Vera Gottlieb, 1988, p. 104.

21. Bond, Edward, ‘Notes on Post-Modernism’, Two Post-Modern Plays (Methuen, 1990), p. 213Google Scholar.

22. Vera Gottlieb, 1988, p. 103.

23. Ibid.

24. See for example Maria Shevtsova, ‘The Sociology of the Theatre’ in New Theatre Quarterly, V, Nos. 17, 18, 19.

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36. Eagleton, Criticism and Ideology, p. 169.

37. Ibid., p. 171.

38. Vera Gottlieb, 1988, p. 103.

39. Catherine Belsey, 1985, p. x.

40. Ibid., p. 15.

41. Ibid., p. 26.

42. See, for example, Lechte, John, Julia Kristeva (Routledge, 1990)Google Scholar; Lyotard, , The Post-Modern Condition: a Report on Knowledge (University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p. 71–82Google Scholar.

43. Eve Tavor Bannett, 1989, p. 95.

44. ‘Introduction’ by Roudiez, Leon S. to Kristeva, Julia, Desire in Language: a Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art (Blackwell, 1982), p. 18Google Scholar.

45. See Julia Kristeva, 1982, Chapter 5.

46. Shaughnessy, Robert, ‘Howard Barker, the Wrestling School, and the Cult of the Author’, New Theatre Quarterly, V, No. 19 (08 1989)Google Scholar.