Howard Barker’s Theatre: Wrestling with Catastrophe

Description

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. The book brings together 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 – and in doing so, makes a radical re-evaluation possible. Cover Half Title Series Title Copyright Dedication Contents List of Photographic Plates Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction to Howard Barker’s Theatre: Wrestling with Catastrophe Part One Howard Barker and The Wrestling School 1 A Company and Its Origins 2 From the Actor, to the Actor Nicholas Le Prevost Philip Franks James Clyde Sean O’Callaghan Jules Melvin Victoria Wicks Suzy Cooper 3 Directing Slowly 4 Amplifying Catastrophe Considerations of form Pakhuis 17 – A new aesthetic emerges Bespoke subversion Lighting techniques for enhanced presence Production rehearsal with The Wrestling School The exordium 5 On Discipline Part Two Readings/Inversions 6 ‘To experience a thing as beautiful’: The Photographic Practice of Howard Barker Bodies Objects The mysterious Eduardo Houth 7 Vintage Barker: New Writing in Old Bottles Waves and brands The dramaturgy of New Writing Legacy 8 Howard Barker and the Return of Religion Barker and Genesis: Return to the beginning Christianity and Islam in The Castle Apocalypse and rebirth in The Europeans Meister Eckhart The One Conclusion 9 Going Underground ‘Stage space’ ‘Presentational space’ ‘Fictional place’ Going underground . . . Part Three Other Barkers 10 Acting Barker 11 Staging Barker in America 12 Barker from a Viewpoint: Staging Ursula: Fear of the Estuary A physical tension Setting the tone Gesture Source work What is the hat? Future considerations 13 Staging Barker at Scotland’s Conservatoire 14 ‘A Gallery of Images’: From the Aberystwyth Students Welcome stranger The 1980s The 1990s and 2000s Pot of Thieves, 2011–12 The Forty (Few Words): ‘In mid-wickedness’ Inconclusion: ‘I will say it and go’ Notes Index Plates