Drama + Theory: Critical Approaches to Modern British Drama

by Peter Buse

In this original book, Peter Buse illuminates the relationship between modern British drama and contemporary critical and cultural theory. The author demonstrates how theory allows fresh insights into familiar drama, pairing well-known plays with classic theory texts. The theoretical text is more than applied to the dramatic text, instead Buse shows how they reflect on each other. Drama + Theory provides not only provides new interpretations of popular plays, but of the theoretical texts as well.

224 pages, Hardcover

Published January 4, 2002

About the author

Peter Buse is Professor in Visual Culture at the University of Salford

Reviews

[Phillip · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read one of the essays and skimmed a few of the others. This book is excellent for what it does. Unfortunately what it does is not tremendously interesting (critically, that is). Basically Buse reads a number of important post-war British plays through specific theoretical lenses--Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead through Lyotard, Osborne's Look Back in Anger through Lacan, etc. This is interesting to the extent that it shows how non-theatre based critical theory can be applied productively to dramatic texts, but the readings Buse provides are merely readings. He doesn't necessarily push the conversation about either the theories or the plays in any particular way. The book is an interesting resource for anyone working on the specific plays about which Buse writes (unfortunately for me, I was writing about two of Stoppard's other plays, so the RGD and Lyotard essay was only peripherally useful).