Helen Heusner Heusner Lojek, "The Spaces of Irish Drama: Stage and Place in Contemporary Plays"
Helen Heusner Heusner Lojek, "The Spaces of Irish Drama: Stage and Place in Contemporary Plays"
Publisher: Macmillan | 2011 | ISBN: 0230115233 | English | PDF | 192 pages | 1.21 Mb
Publisher: Macmillan | 2011 | ISBN: 0230115233 | English | PDF | 192 pages | 1.21 Mb
Contemporary Irish drama communicates not only through words but also through the non-verbal use of space – both the geographical places in which plays are set and the ways stage space is used. The work of cultural and physical geographers, brought to bear on plays by Friel, McPherson, Carr, and McGuinness, illuminates the extent to which perceptions of themes and characters are determined by the plays’ uses of space. The plays shape reactions to issues of belonging and not belonging, home and homeland, by locating characters in specific places and by establishing stage spaces that inform perceptions of both Irish characters and Irish locales.
"Though Lojek's focus is narrow, this systematic analysis can be extended to a range of plays in an increasingly global world of contemporary drama. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, researchers." - CHOICE
"The subject of space is at the cutting edge of critical discourse on contemporary Irish drama and theatre. Lojek's deeply researched, fluently written, and probing study puts her at the forefront of such investigations. Instead of a fixed, immutable Ireland, she uncovers in four canonical contemporary plays a series of multiple, fluid, and accommodating spaces in both the public and private spheres." - Anthony Roche, author of Contemporary Irish Drama and Brian Friel: Theatre and Politics
"With an astute understanding of the territory of Irish drama, Lojek opens up the discussion of theatrical space, from intimate interiors to public places, in an intelligent and readable book that illuminates the ways in which Brian Friel, Conor McPherson, Marina Carr, and Frank McGuinness create 'a country of the mind'. By concentrating on four plays, this book presents an in-depth, local argument with a national reach, decoding space as both a metaphor and a reality on the Irish stage." - Emilie Pine, author of The Politics of Irish Memory: Performing Remembrance in Contemporary Irish Culture and assistant editor of the Irish University Review
"A timely and significant study. Each of the four main chapters explores one play in depth under the polyvalent rubric of 'space', literal and metaphoric, theatrical and extra-theatrical, landscape, and mimesis. This rich and diverse term here raises issues equally rich and varied, among them history and identity, home and belonging, gender and social status, and Lojek is alive both to all that's going on in each text and outside of it. By focusing on a central dynamic her selection of plays provides in little a masterly examination of contemporary Irish drama and opens in the reader's mind new spaces for further study." - Christopher Murray, author of Twentieth-Century Irish Drama: Mirror Up to Nation
"The subject of space is at the cutting edge of critical discourse on contemporary Irish drama and theatre. Lojek's deeply researched, fluently written, and probing study puts her at the forefront of such investigations. Instead of a fixed, immutable Ireland, she uncovers in four canonical contemporary plays a series of multiple, fluid, and accommodating spaces in both the public and private spheres." - Anthony Roche, author of Contemporary Irish Drama and Brian Friel: Theatre and Politics
"With an astute understanding of the territory of Irish drama, Lojek opens up the discussion of theatrical space, from intimate interiors to public places, in an intelligent and readable book that illuminates the ways in which Brian Friel, Conor McPherson, Marina Carr, and Frank McGuinness create 'a country of the mind'. By concentrating on four plays, this book presents an in-depth, local argument with a national reach, decoding space as both a metaphor and a reality on the Irish stage." - Emilie Pine, author of The Politics of Irish Memory: Performing Remembrance in Contemporary Irish Culture and assistant editor of the Irish University Review
"A timely and significant study. Each of the four main chapters explores one play in depth under the polyvalent rubric of 'space', literal and metaphoric, theatrical and extra-theatrical, landscape, and mimesis. This rich and diverse term here raises issues equally rich and varied, among them history and identity, home and belonging, gender and social status, and Lojek is alive both to all that's going on in each text and outside of it. By focusing on a central dynamic her selection of plays provides in little a masterly examination of contemporary Irish drama and opens in the reader's mind new spaces for further study." - Christopher Murray, author of Twentieth-Century Irish Drama: Mirror Up to Nation
Helen Heusner Lojek is Emeritus Professor of English at Boise State University. She is the author of Contexts for Frank McGuinness’s Drama (2004) and the editor of The Theatre of Frank McGuinness: Stages of Mutability (2002).
Helen Heusner Heusner Lojek, "The Spaces of Irish Drama: Stage and Place in Contemporary Plays"
