Backpages 24.3

Abstract

Backpages is an opportunity for the academy to engage with theatre and performance practice with immediacy and insight and for theatre workers and performance artists to engage critically and reflectively on their work and the work of their peers. Featuring short, topical articles and debates, polemics where necessary, it’s a place of intellectual intervention and creative reflection. It’s also where we hope to articulate, perhaps for the first time, the work of new and rising theatre artists in an academic forum. This issue of Backpages begins with a special section on the work of playwright Martin Crimp, complementing the theme of this overall Special Issue. Thanks to Vicky Angelaki and Dan Rebellato.

Martin and Me Bringing In the Republic of Happiness to the Royal Court Stage Writing Music for In the Republic of Happiness Martin Crimp Has Arrived The Fiscal State of Our Theatre Nation: A Report from Ireland The Cracks Are Everywhere: Extended Life Performances in the Heat of the Financial Crash in Iceland In Memoriam: Adrian Howells In Memoriam: Philip Seymour Hoffman

Notes

1. As Duška Radosavljevic notes a ‘noticeable divide between male and female critics’ responses would resurface once again following Kneehigh’s adaptation of A Matter of Life and Death at the National Theatre in 2007, leading Nicholas Hytner to come up with the much-quoted term for British mainstream critics – “dead white males”. Duška Radosavljevic, Theatre-Making: Interplay Between Text and Performance in the 21st Century (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), p. 58.

1. That Was Us: Contemporary Irish Theatre and Performance, ed. by Fintan Walsh (London: Oberon Books, 2013).

2. National Campaign for the Arts, <http://createsend.com/t/i-2CDC26E907529040> [accessed 7 May 2014].

3. Arts Lives: Fintan O’Toole: Power Plays. First aired by RTÉ One on 7 June 2011.

4. Fintan O’Toole, ‘Can Irish Dramatists Tackle the Big Questions Again?’, Irish Times, 7 June 2011, p. 12.

5. Fintan Walsh, ‛The Power of the Powerless: Theatre in Turbulent Times’, in That Was Us, pp. 1–20 (p. 13).

6. Ibid., p. 15.

1. Quoted from author’s memory. Original reports on the event can be found here: http://www.mbl.is/frettir/innlent/2009/06/17/eydilagdi_ibudarhusid/