Startseite ‘Provincializing’ Post-Wall Europe: Transcultural Critique of Eurocentric Historicism in Pentecost, Europe and The Break of Day
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‘Provincializing’ Post-Wall Europe: Transcultural Critique of Eurocentric Historicism in Pentecost, Europe and The Break of Day

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Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 1. Mai 2015
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Abstract

In British post-wall plays of the 1990s, the turn to Eastern Europe’s most recent history not only stimulates reflection on British national identity but also points to a cultural shift in the transition from ‘old’ to ‘new’ Europe. Scrutinizing this shift, the article presents a comparative case study of David Edgar’s Pentecost (1994), David Greig’s Europe (1994) and Timberlake Wertenbaker’s The Break of Day (1995). It concentrates on three aspects: (1) The plays’ representation of space reveals a crisis of nationalist imagination to which Europe provides a transcultural alternative. (2) Their critique of Eurocentric historicism – aptly expressed in Dipesh Chakrabarty’s project of ‘provincializing Europe’ – erodes the idea of Europe as a stable cultural space. In each play, this critique is formulated with the help of different strategies, i.e. by contesting historicism’s narrative of modernity (Pentecost), by negotiating conflicting European identities (Europe) and by delineating transnational identities (The Break of Day). (3) The use of multilingualism and epic elements points to an aesthetic that continues the critique of Eurocentrism in performance by extending the experience of transcultural complexity to performers and audiences alike.

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Acknowledgment

This work was supported by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO).

Published Online: 2015-05-01
Published in Print: 2015-05-01

© 2015 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Frontmatter
  3. Special Issue: Theater and History – Cultural Transformations
  4. Articles
  5. Introduction: Theater and History – Cultural Transformations
  6. Anthropo-Scenes: Theater and Climate Change
  7. ‘Provincializing’ Post-Wall Europe: Transcultural Critique of Eurocentric Historicism in Pentecost, Europe and The Break of Day
  8. Utopian Histories: Transforming Past Ideals in Stoppard’s Plays
  9. A Historiography of Protest and the Politics of Commemoration in Lucy Kirkwood’s Chimerica
  10. Je Me Souviens – Re/Writings of History in Contemporary Canadian Drama
  11. David Greig’s The American Pilot and Earlier Dramatizations of Political Hostage Takings
  12. Time and Temporalities in Contemporary British War Plays – Roy Williams’s Days of Significance and Owen Sheers’s The Two Worlds of Charlie F.
  13. Women and Historical Agency in Contemporary British Plays
  14. From History to ‘Ourstories’ in Martin Crimp’s Metanarratives
  15. Locating History on the Contemporary Stage
  16. Reviews
  17. Vicky Angelaki. The Plays of Martin Crimp: Making Theatre Strange. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, x + 228 pp., $ 85.00 (hardback); available as eBook.Clara Escoda Agustí. Martin Crimp’s Theatre: Collapse as Resistance to Late Capitalist Society. CDE Studies Volume 24. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2013, xi + 336 pp., $ 140.00 (hardcover or eBook), $ 210.00 (hardcover and eBook).
  18. Sophie Bush. The Theatre of Timberlake Wertenbaker. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2013, viii + 337 pp., £ 16.99 (paperback and eBook).
  19. Peter Fifield and David Addyman (eds.). Samuel Beckett: Debts and Legacies: New Critical Essays. London: Bloomsbury, 2013, 244 pp., £ 58.50 (hardback), £ 19.99 (eBook).Katherine Weiss. The Plays of Samuel Beckett. Critical Companions. London: Methuen Drama, 2013, 286 pp., £ 50.00 (hardback), £ 16.99 (paperback).
  20. Anne Cremieux, Xavier Lemoine and Jean-Paul Rocchi (eds.). Understanding Blackness Through Performance: Contemporary Arts and the Representation of Identity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 282 pp., $ 90.00 (hardback).
  21. Denise Varney, Peter Eckersall, Chris Hudson and Barbara Hatley. Theatre and Performance in the Asia-Pacific: Regional Modernities in the Global Era. Studies in International Performance. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, xiii + 253 pp., $ 85.00 (hardback).
  22. Clare Wallace. The Theatre of David Greig. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2013, ix + 259 pp., £ 50.00 (hardback), £ 15.29 (paperback).
  23. Gareth White. Audience Participation in Theatre: Aesthetics of the Invitation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, x + 224 pp., $ 90.00 (hardback), $ 29.00 (paperback).
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