“Opera Singing Interrupted”: Simon Stephens’s Carmen Disruption
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Lianna Mark
Abstract
Simon Stephens’s Carmen Disruption (2014, Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg; 2015, Almeida Theatre, London) is a contemporary rewriting of Bizet’s Carmen, which depicts a day in the life of five individuals in an atomised urban landscape. This paper focuses on the formal and thematic disruptions that inform the play and imbue it with political resonance. I consider the play’s intertextual structure as the first and most evident of these disruptions, then go on to explore the disrupted representation of time and communication, addressing, finally, Stephens’s problematic engagement with the British realist tradition. The playwright’s poetics and previous works shed light on his systematic desecration of dramatic conventions, and allow us to read these disruptions both as a means of portraying contemporary alienation and, more importantly, as acts of creative transgression. Stephens’s reliance on dramatic empathy thus acquires significance as the most vital of these transgressions, encouraging the audience to transcend the isolation portrayed in the drama. I conclude by briefly considering possible controversies related to Stephens’s dramatic style, which seems, at times, to mimic the logic of consumer capitalism. This, I argue, serves not to validate the mechanisms of alienation but rather to bring them onstage, in order to catalyse a sociopetal movement within the audience, and return the contemporary individual’s predicament to a collective state.
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© 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Spectatorship in the Theatre, the Cinema and Photography
- People, Places & Things: Addiction, Identity and Performance
- Safe Distance, Dark Tourism, and Ambivalent Spatial Relation in Gillian Plowman’s Yours Abundantly, From Zimbabwe, and Christine Evans’s Trojan Barbie
- Hell and Redemption in Greig Coetzee’s Johnny Boskak is Feeling Funny
- The Messy Business of Art, Research, and Collaboration: Audience Engagement in Home/Less/Mess
- “A community of storytellers and translators”: Ubu and the Truth Commission
- Dismantling Recognition: Reading Isolation in The Goat
- Caryl Churchill’s 21st Century Poetics: Theatre Form and Feminism from Far Away to Ding Dong the Wicked
- “Opera Singing Interrupted”: Simon Stephens’s Carmen Disruption
- Reviews
- Yvette Hutchison. South African Performance and Archives of Memory. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013, xii + 238pp., £65 (hardback).
- Claudia Georgi. Liveness on Stage: Intermedial Challenges in Contemporary British Theatre and Performance. CDE Studies. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2014, vii + 274 pp., $140.00 (hardback), $140.00 (PDF ebook).
- Faedra Chatard Carpenter. Coloring Whiteness: Acts of Critique in Black Performance. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2014, ix + 299 pp., $80.00 (hardcover), $34.95 (paperback and PDF ebook). Thomas F. DeFrantz and Anita Gonzalez, eds. Black Performance Theory. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014, ix + 279 pp., $89.95 (hardcover), $24.95 (paperback).
- Piotr Woycicki. Post-Cinematic Theatre and Performance. Palgrave Studies in Performance and Technology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, x + 268 pp., £55.00.
- Patrick Duggan and Victor Ukaegbu, eds. Reverberations Across Small-Scale British Theatre: Politics, Aesthetics and Form. Bristol: Intellect, 2013, 250 pp., £35.00 (hardback).
- Ramón H. Rivera-Servera and Harvey Young, eds. Performance in the Borderlands. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, xii + 283 pp., £ 18,99.
- Marlis Schweitzer and Joanne Zerdy, eds. Performing Objects & Theatrical Things. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, xv +264 pp. £ 55.00 (hardback).
- Joanne Tompkins. Theatre’s Heterotopias: Performance and the Cultural Politics of Space. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, xi + 231 pp., €85,59 (hardback), €66,99 (PDF ebook).
- Rustom Bharucha. Terror and Performance. London: Routledge, 2014, xvii + 236 pp., $ 130.00 (hardback), $ 49.95 (paperback).
- Franziska Bergmann. Die Möglichkeit, dass alles auch ganz anders sein könnte: Geschlechterverfremdungen in zeitgenössischen Theatertexten. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2015, 347 pp., € 48.00.
- Norma Bowles and Daniel-Raymond Nadon, eds. Staging Social Justice: Collaborating to Create Activist Theatre. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2013, xiv + 274 pp., $95.00 (paperback). Peter Lichtenfels, and John Rouse, eds. Performance, Politics and Activism. Baskingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, xxiv + 299 pp., $35.00 (hardcover).
- Margaret Inchley. Voice and New Writing, 1997 – 2000: Articulating the Demos. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, vii + 204 pp., £55.00 (hardback), £55.25 (PDF ebook).
- David Ian Rabey. The Theatre and Films of Jez Butterworth. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015, 225 pp., £17.99 (paperback).
- David Dean, Yana Meerzon, and Kathryn Prince, eds. History, Memory, Performance. Studies in International Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015, xii + 312 pp., £55.00 (hardback). Bryoni Trezise. Performing Feeling in Cultures of Memory. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015, x + 216 pp., £55.00 (hardback).
- Tom Maguire. Performing Story on the Contemporary Stage. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. vii +216pp., £55.00 (hardback), £55.00 (PDF ebook).
- Christopher Collins and Mary P. Caulfield, eds. Ireland, Memory and Performing the Historical Imagination. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, xiv + 244 pp., £58.00 (hardback), £45.99 (PDF ebook).
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Spectatorship in the Theatre, the Cinema and Photography
- People, Places & Things: Addiction, Identity and Performance
- Safe Distance, Dark Tourism, and Ambivalent Spatial Relation in Gillian Plowman’s Yours Abundantly, From Zimbabwe, and Christine Evans’s Trojan Barbie
- Hell and Redemption in Greig Coetzee’s Johnny Boskak is Feeling Funny
- The Messy Business of Art, Research, and Collaboration: Audience Engagement in Home/Less/Mess
- “A community of storytellers and translators”: Ubu and the Truth Commission
- Dismantling Recognition: Reading Isolation in The Goat
- Caryl Churchill’s 21st Century Poetics: Theatre Form and Feminism from Far Away to Ding Dong the Wicked
- “Opera Singing Interrupted”: Simon Stephens’s Carmen Disruption
- Reviews
- Yvette Hutchison. South African Performance and Archives of Memory. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013, xii + 238pp., £65 (hardback).
- Claudia Georgi. Liveness on Stage: Intermedial Challenges in Contemporary British Theatre and Performance. CDE Studies. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2014, vii + 274 pp., $140.00 (hardback), $140.00 (PDF ebook).
- Faedra Chatard Carpenter. Coloring Whiteness: Acts of Critique in Black Performance. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2014, ix + 299 pp., $80.00 (hardcover), $34.95 (paperback and PDF ebook). Thomas F. DeFrantz and Anita Gonzalez, eds. Black Performance Theory. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014, ix + 279 pp., $89.95 (hardcover), $24.95 (paperback).
- Piotr Woycicki. Post-Cinematic Theatre and Performance. Palgrave Studies in Performance and Technology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, x + 268 pp., £55.00.
- Patrick Duggan and Victor Ukaegbu, eds. Reverberations Across Small-Scale British Theatre: Politics, Aesthetics and Form. Bristol: Intellect, 2013, 250 pp., £35.00 (hardback).
- Ramón H. Rivera-Servera and Harvey Young, eds. Performance in the Borderlands. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, xii + 283 pp., £ 18,99.
- Marlis Schweitzer and Joanne Zerdy, eds. Performing Objects & Theatrical Things. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, xv +264 pp. £ 55.00 (hardback).
- Joanne Tompkins. Theatre’s Heterotopias: Performance and the Cultural Politics of Space. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, xi + 231 pp., €85,59 (hardback), €66,99 (PDF ebook).
- Rustom Bharucha. Terror and Performance. London: Routledge, 2014, xvii + 236 pp., $ 130.00 (hardback), $ 49.95 (paperback).
- Franziska Bergmann. Die Möglichkeit, dass alles auch ganz anders sein könnte: Geschlechterverfremdungen in zeitgenössischen Theatertexten. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2015, 347 pp., € 48.00.
- Norma Bowles and Daniel-Raymond Nadon, eds. Staging Social Justice: Collaborating to Create Activist Theatre. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2013, xiv + 274 pp., $95.00 (paperback). Peter Lichtenfels, and John Rouse, eds. Performance, Politics and Activism. Baskingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, xxiv + 299 pp., $35.00 (hardcover).
- Margaret Inchley. Voice and New Writing, 1997 – 2000: Articulating the Demos. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, vii + 204 pp., £55.00 (hardback), £55.25 (PDF ebook).
- David Ian Rabey. The Theatre and Films of Jez Butterworth. London: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015, 225 pp., £17.99 (paperback).
- David Dean, Yana Meerzon, and Kathryn Prince, eds. History, Memory, Performance. Studies in International Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015, xii + 312 pp., £55.00 (hardback). Bryoni Trezise. Performing Feeling in Cultures of Memory. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2015, x + 216 pp., £55.00 (hardback).
- Tom Maguire. Performing Story on the Contemporary Stage. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. vii +216pp., £55.00 (hardback), £55.00 (PDF ebook).
- Christopher Collins and Mary P. Caulfield, eds. Ireland, Memory and Performing the Historical Imagination. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, xiv + 244 pp., £58.00 (hardback), £45.99 (PDF ebook).
