{"id":17867,"date":"2019-05-16T16:21:54","date_gmt":"2019-05-16T15:21:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/?post_type=tribe_events&p=17867"},"modified":"2019-05-16T16:21:54","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T15:21:54","slug":"the-politics-of-form-exploring-the-role-different-dramaturgies-play-in-determining-the-political-character-of-a-play-film-theatre-and-television-seminar","status":"publish","type":"tribe_events","link":"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/event\/the-politics-of-form-exploring-the-role-different-dramaturgies-play-in-determining-the-political-character-of-a-play-film-theatre-and-television-seminar\/","title":{"rendered":"The Politics of Form: Exploring the role different dramaturgies play in determining the political character of a play (Film Theatre and Television Seminar)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Within the context of British theatre, plays are generally considered political if they address current social and political issues within the content of their narrative. Little attention is paid to the political character of the dramaturgical forms that shape the play\u2019s content. As Rebellato notes, there is a \u2018puritan attitude\u2019 within British theatre that \u2018thinks form a distracting nuisance\u2019 and privileges plays that provide audiences with a series of \u2018pungently instructional points\u2019 (Contemporary Theatre Review<\/em> 18:4, p.530).<\/p>\n

This seminar will look at the importance of considering a play\u2019s form when determining the political character of a play. It will explore the role that different dramaturgies play in shaping a play\u2019s politics, arguing that the dramatic structure can act as a prism though which to re-imagine the structures of everyday social reality.<\/p>\n

These ideas will be explored through an analysis of Charlotte Jones\u2019s Humble Boy<\/em> (National Theatre, 2001) and Nick Payne\u2019s Constellations<\/em> (Royal Court, 2012); two plays that explore the ways in which advances in contemporary physics are reshaping our understanding of the nature of the universe. While both plays draw on the same source material, Brian Greene\u2019s The Elegant Universe<\/em>, they articulate his ideas through very different dramaturgical forms and, in doing so, take on very different political characters.<\/p>\n

Biography
\n<\/strong>
\nSarah Grochala is Senior Lecturer, Writing for Theatre at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, where she leads the MA\/MFA in Writing for Stage and Broadcast Media. Her first monograph,\u00a0The Contemporary Political Play <\/em>(Bloomsbury, 2017), was shortlisted for the 2018 TaPRA Early Career Research Prize.\u00a0In 2018, she was awarded a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award for a project examining the lack of contemporary European drama in translation on British stages in the run up to Brexit. As a playwright, her plays include\u00a0S-27<\/em> (Finborough Theatre 2009), which won the 2007 Amnesty International\/iceandfire Protect the Human Playwriting Competition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Within the context of British theatre, plays are generally considered political if they address current social and political issues within the content of their narrative. Little attention is paid to…Read More ><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"__cvm_playback_settings":[],"__cvm_video_id":"","_tribe_events_status":"","_tribe_events_status_reason":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[362,874],"tribe_events_cat":[971],"class_list":["post-17867","tribe_events","type-tribe_events","status-publish","hentry","tag-film-theatre-and-television","tag-theatre","tribe_events_cat-heritage-creativity","cat_heritage-creativity"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Politics of Form: Exploring the role different dramaturgies play in determining the political character of a play (Film Theatre and Television Seminar) - Connecting Research<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/research.reading.ac.uk\/research-blog\/event\/the-politics-of-form-exploring-the-role-different-dramaturgies-play-in-determining-the-political-character-of-a-play-film-theatre-and-television-seminar\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Politics of Form: Exploring the role different dramaturgies play in determining the political character of a play (Film Theatre and Television Seminar) - Connecting Research\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Within the context of British theatre, plays are generally considered political if they address current social and political issues within the content of their narrative. 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