Time and Temporalities in Contemporary British War Plays – Roy Williams’s Days of Significance and Owen Sheers’s The Two Worlds of Charlie F.
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Janina Wierzoch
Abstract
This article investigates notions of time and history in two contemporary British stage plays addressing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, namely Roy Williams’s Days of Significance (2007) and Owen Sheers’s The Two Worlds of Charlie F. (2012). As the plays explore fictional biographies affected by war, it is the representation of individual temporalities that is especially relevant to this investigation. While Williams’s play already carries a sense of historicity in its title, time consciousness is an even more decisive characteristic of Sheers’s play. In both plays war can be read as a clash of time and temporalities. The characters’ experiences of war cause complex frictions in which temporal levels are suspended, blended and/or modified. What the individual initially experiences as unmanageable, is rendered accessible when embedded in trans-individual notions of the historical. The plays ultimately blend the time of war and the personal temporalities, resulting in modified versions of temporality under the impression of history.
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© 2015 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Special Issue: Theater and History – Cultural Transformations
- Articles
- Introduction: Theater and History – Cultural Transformations
- Anthropo-Scenes: Theater and Climate Change
- ‘Provincializing’ Post-Wall Europe: Transcultural Critique of Eurocentric Historicism in Pentecost, Europe and The Break of Day
- Utopian Histories: Transforming Past Ideals in Stoppard’s Plays
- A Historiography of Protest and the Politics of Commemoration in Lucy Kirkwood’s Chimerica
- Je Me Souviens – Re/Writings of History in Contemporary Canadian Drama
- David Greig’s The American Pilot and Earlier Dramatizations of Political Hostage Takings
- Time and Temporalities in Contemporary British War Plays – Roy Williams’s Days of Significance and Owen Sheers’s The Two Worlds of Charlie F.
- Women and Historical Agency in Contemporary British Plays
- From History to ‘Ourstories’ in Martin Crimp’s Metanarratives
- Locating History on the Contemporary Stage
- Reviews
- 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).
- Sophie Bush. The Theatre of Timberlake Wertenbaker. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2013, viii + 337 pp., £ 16.99 (paperback and eBook).
- 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).
- 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).
- 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).
- Clare Wallace. The Theatre of David Greig. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2013, ix + 259 pp., £ 50.00 (hardback), £ 15.29 (paperback).
- Gareth White. Audience Participation in Theatre: Aesthetics of the Invitation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, x + 224 pp., $ 90.00 (hardback), $ 29.00 (paperback).
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Frontmatter
- Special Issue: Theater and History – Cultural Transformations
- Articles
- Introduction: Theater and History – Cultural Transformations
- Anthropo-Scenes: Theater and Climate Change
- ‘Provincializing’ Post-Wall Europe: Transcultural Critique of Eurocentric Historicism in Pentecost, Europe and The Break of Day
- Utopian Histories: Transforming Past Ideals in Stoppard’s Plays
- A Historiography of Protest and the Politics of Commemoration in Lucy Kirkwood’s Chimerica
- Je Me Souviens – Re/Writings of History in Contemporary Canadian Drama
- David Greig’s The American Pilot and Earlier Dramatizations of Political Hostage Takings
- Time and Temporalities in Contemporary British War Plays – Roy Williams’s Days of Significance and Owen Sheers’s The Two Worlds of Charlie F.
- Women and Historical Agency in Contemporary British Plays
- From History to ‘Ourstories’ in Martin Crimp’s Metanarratives
- Locating History on the Contemporary Stage
- Reviews
- 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).
- Sophie Bush. The Theatre of Timberlake Wertenbaker. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2013, viii + 337 pp., £ 16.99 (paperback and eBook).
- 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).
- 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).
- 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).
- Clare Wallace. The Theatre of David Greig. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2013, ix + 259 pp., £ 50.00 (hardback), £ 15.29 (paperback).
- Gareth White. Audience Participation in Theatre: Aesthetics of the Invitation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, x + 224 pp., $ 90.00 (hardback), $ 29.00 (paperback).
