Overview

Now out in paperback, this highly personal and comprehensive survey of contemporary drama which celebrates the plays and playwrights at the forefront of theatre today All the way from A-Z, Dromgoole's engaging and provocative short essays include his thoughts on Sebastian Barry, Edward Bond, April de Angelis, Pam Gems, David Hare, Sarah Kane, Martin McDonagh, Conor McPherson, Harold Pinter, Mark Ravenhill, and many, many more. Intelligent, partisan, enthusiastic and always illuminating, this is an insider's guide to the key shapers of theatre over the last decade, and essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary theatre. This edition includes a new afterword. ""We are living in the middle of a carnival, a free festival, a fête, a flower show, a harvest home, a steam fair, a rock festival, a grand glorious tender wild burst of new plays."" Dominic Dromgoole

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9780413771346

Table of Contents

Reviews

Here are 113 short essays (between 450 and 750 words each) written by Dromgoole about contemporary playwrights. Some are very well-known indeed - Alan Ayckbourn, Alan Bennett, Athol Fugard, Harold Pinter, David Hare; some have yet to make their mark with the general public - Billy Roche, Phyllis Nagy, Lesley Bruce. The text is lively, witty and often on the mark. 'Still the biggest ship in the fleet. Still the aircraft carrier, from which many planes take off on shorter, less majestic trips,' begins the piece on Pinter. The subsequent analysis is serious and insighted, as are most of the essays - though (inevitably) it is easy to see where Dromgoole's real sympathies lie. And why not? As he points out in his Introduction, this is not a book of criticism: 'I am not right. Nothing I say is right. There is no right,' he says, wisely. What he has written is a book celebrating the diversity of dramatic writing which is being produced and performed at the moment, when 'never before in the history of humans wandering, waving, shouting and scrawling their way across the face of the earth, have so many of them been engaged in the peculiar business of writing plays'. This is a book which will appeal to everyone who enjoys going to the theatre, a useful reminder of the main thrust of the best-known playwrights - Osborne, Poliakoff, Mamet, Fugard - and an introduction to the work of the lesser-known. And it will be a boon to those who, living far from a theatre, enjoy actually reading the plays which show us, perhaps more than any other genre of literature, how we live now. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Dominic Dromgoole is an English theatre director and writer. He began his career as an assistant director at the Bush Theatre, London, before becoming Artistic Director there from 1990-6. He went on to become Head of new plays for Sir Peter Hall's company at the Old Vic, before taking over the Oxford Stage Company (now Headlong) from 1999-2005, directing numerous productions during this time. In 2005, he replaced Mark Rylance as Artistic Director of the Globe.

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