Backpages 31.1&2

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.

Notes

¹ First delivered as part of State of Play, the 2019 Judith E. Wilson Lecture, delivered at the University of Cambridge on 31 January 2019, now updated.

² See Writ Large: New Writing on the English Stage 2003-2009, a Report for Arts Council England by the British Theatre Consortium, July 2009 http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/publication_archive/writ-large/, British Theatre Consortium, UK Theatre and the Society of London Theatre, British Theatre Repertoire 2013, May 2015 http://britishtheatreconference.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/British-Theatre-Repertoire-2013.pdf and British Theatre Consortium, UK Theatre and the Society of London Theatre, British Theatre Repertoire 2014, May 2016 http://britishtheatreconference.co.uk/british-theatre-repertoire-2014/.

³ Dan Rebellato ‘The Playwright: Collectivity and Collaboration’, in The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre since 1945, ed., Jen Harvie and Dan Rebellato (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

⁴ Ibid.

⁵ Interview with Nick Hern, Nick Hern Books, January 15, 2019.

⁶ Arts Council England Annual Playlists, quoted in Arts Council England, Writ Large, 31.

⁷ Interviews with Matt Applewhite and Robin Booth, Nick Hern Books, January 8, 2019, and with Dinah Wood and Steve King, Faber and Faber, September 9, 2020.

⁸ Interview with James Hogan, Oberon Books, November 29, 2018.

⁹ Interview with Applewhite and Booth.

¹⁰ Interview with Hern.

¹¹ Interviews with Hern and Matt Applewhite, Nick Hern Books, September 10, 2020.

¹² Interview with Hogan.

¹³ Interviews with Applewhite and Booth, and Dom O’Hanlon, Bloomsbury, January 8, 2019.

¹⁴ Interviews with Dinah Wood, Faber & Faber, January 23, 2019, and O’Hanlon, 2019.

¹⁵ Interview with Dom O’Hanlon, Bloomsbury, September 17, 2020.

¹⁶ Interviews with O’Hanlon, 2019, and Applewhite and Booth.

¹⁷ Interview with Applewhite.

¹⁸ Ibid.

¹⁹ Alex Wheatle, Crongton Knights (London: Atom Books, 2016).

²⁰ ‘Backpages’, Contemporary Theatre Review 29, no. 4 (2019): 487-501.

²¹ Stage Text, ‘Digital Access Training | 02 – What Are the Benefits of Subtitles?’, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHpta24XXqQ (accessed December 14, 2020).

²² National Theatre, ‘Relive the Memories | 16 World-Class Productions | National Theatre at Home’, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_HhFCFMNr4 (accessed August 1, 2020).

²³ Pilot Theatre, ‘The Cooking Song (with open subtitles) | Crongton Knights Cast’, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JE4psTqOQE (accessed August 1, 2020).

²⁴ Pilot Theatre, ‘Pilot Connects’, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZF0cYpgm3h_by73Wtcd-ieRQxkXkoB71 (accessed August 1, 2020).

²⁵ Pilot Theatre, ‘Crongton State of Mind (with open subtitles) | Crongton Knights Cast’, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYLrxI0A1JA (accessed August 1, 2020).

²⁶ ‘Crongton Knights Youth Festival’, Young Talented, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLldwo0DRfB-ux_4lMMFEW8yYqCQU2uaE- (accessed August 1, 2020).

²⁷ ‘Pay the wi-fi or feed the children’: Coronavirus has intensified the UK’s digital divide https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/digitaldivide (accessed August 1, 2020).‘Exploring the UK’s digital divide’, Office of National Statistics https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/householdcharacteristics/homeinternetandsocialmediausage/articles/exploringtheuksdigitaldivide/2019-03-04 (accessed August 1, 2020).

²⁸ Emteaz Hussain/Conrad Murray with the Company, Crongton Knights (unpublished script, 2020).

²⁹ Ibid.

³⁰ The Coronavirus Time Capsule is a project for groups of young people everywhere, created by Company Three, https://www.coronavirustimecapsule.com/home (accessed September 20, 2020).

³¹ ‘Prime Minister’s Statement on Coronavirus (COVID-19)’, Gov.uk, March 23, 2020 https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-address-to-the-nation-on-coronavirus-23-march-2020 (accessed October 9, 2020).

³² ‘Coronavirus: West End Shuts Down as Boris Johnson’s Advice Sparks Anger’, BBC, March 17, 2020 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-51906370 (accessed October 9, 2020).

³³ Theatres Trust, ‘How Many Theatres are there in the UK?’, Theatres Trust http://www.theatrestrust.org.uk/discover-theatres/theatre-faqs/167-how-many-theatres-are-there-in-the-uk#:~:text=We%20estimate%20there%20are%20over%201%2C100%20active%20theatres%20in%20the%20UK (accessed October 9, 2020).

³⁴ Quotes from ‘Week 9: When This is Over’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gebQdN3Z5E.

³⁵ Company Three, https://www.companythree.co.uk/(accessed September, 22 2020).

³⁶ Ibid.

³⁷ Ibid.

³⁸ Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, ‘The Magnificent Workings of the Adolescent Brains’, TED Talks, June 2012 https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_jayne_blakemore_the_mysterious_workings_of_the_adolescent_brain?language=en.

³⁹ The online, on-demand streaming service provided by the BBC in the UK.

⁴⁰ Ned Glasier, Emily Lim, and Company Three, Brainstorm (London: NHB Modern Plays, 2016).

⁴¹ Ned Glasier, ‘Interview with author’, April 5, 2019.

⁴² ‘Week 1: The Coronavirus Time Capsule’, has had 5215 views as at September 22, 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hikwmiuicQA.

⁴³ bell hooks, Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 1989), 5.

⁴⁴ Nancy Fraser, ‘Reframing Justice in a Globalizing World’, New Left Review, 36 (2005): 1–19.

⁴⁵ Arjun Appadurai, ‘The Capacity to Aspire: Culture and the Terms of Recognition’, in Culture and Public Action, ed., Vijayendra Rao, and Michael Walton (Standford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 59-84.

⁴⁶ Arjun Appadurai, The Future as Cultural Fact: Essay on the Global Condition (London: London, 2013).

⁴⁷ Selina Busby, ‘A Pedagogy of Utopia’, Research In Drama Education, 20, no. 3 (2015): 413-16 and ‘Finding A Concrete Utopia In The Dystopia Of A “Sub” City: Applied Theatre in Dharavi’, Research In Drama Education, 22, no. 1 (2017): 92-103.

⁴⁸ Henry A. Giroux, Dangerous Thinking: In the Age of the New Authoritarianism (London: Routledge, 2016), 40.

⁴⁹ David Bolt, The Metanarrative of Blindness: A Rereading of Twentieth-Century Anglophone Writing (Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 2013), 85.

⁵⁰ Critics agree that the show was ‘sinister’ (Guardian); ‘fear-inducing’ (The Stage); a ‘realm of nightmares’ (Telegraph).

⁵¹ Kae Tempest, Twitter, https://twitter.com/kaetempest/status/1291396030794260483 (accessed August 6, 2020).

⁵² Recorded for Dazed and Confused Magazine as part of their #AloneTogether series, https://vimeo.com/422542729 (accessed July 20, 2020).

⁵³ Marlon James, note to Kate Tempest, The Book of Traps and Lessons (London: Republic Records, 2019). On Rick Rubin’s role in the development of this aesthetic see https://www.loudandquiet.com/podcasts/kate-tempest-midnight-chats-episode-76/(accessed July 20, 2020).

⁵⁴ Katie Beswick, ‘Build A Fortress’, Loud And Quiet, 2016, https://www.loudandquiet.com/interview/kate-tempest/(accessed July 2, 2020).

⁵⁵ James, ‘Note to Kate Tempest’.

⁵⁶ Glastonbury, https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p07dj022/glastonbury-kate-tempest (accessed July 21, 2020).

⁵⁷ Kate Tempest, Let Them Eat Chaos (London: Picador, 2016), 30.

⁵⁸ In Julia Novak’s terms, this is part of the work’s ‘audiotext’. See Live Poetry: An Integrated Approach to Poetry in Performance (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011), 75-144.

⁵⁹ Mick Jacobs, ‘Hold Your Own: An Interview with Kate Tempest’, Pop Matters, July 2019 https://www.popmatters.com/kate-tempest-2019-interview-2639168836.html (accessed July 28, 2020).

⁶⁰ Mike Baker, Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, Manny Fernandez, and Michael LaForgia, ‘Three Words. 70 Cases. The Tragic History of “I Can’t Breathe.”’, New York Times, June 29, 2020 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/28/us/i-cant-breathe-police-arrest.html (accessed July 29, 2020).

⁶¹ Anna Fenemore, ‘Every Body: Performance’s Other Bodies’, in Performance Perspectives: A Critical Introduction, ed., Jonathan Pitches & Sita Popat (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 38-51 (42-3).

⁶² Silvia Antosa, ‘Performing Epic in Contemporary British Poetry’, Textus: English Studies in Italy 32, no. 2 (2019): 195-212, (202; 211).

⁶³ On extra-textual elements in Brand New Ancients see Stephe Harrop, ‘Unfixing Epic: Homeric Orality and Contemporary Performance’, in Epic Performances from the Middle Ages into the Twenty-First Century, ed., Fiona Macintosh, Justine McConnell, Stephen Harrison, and Claire Kenward (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 262-74, (268-72).

⁶⁴ Konstantinos Thomaidis, Theatre & Voice (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 21.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 20.

⁶⁶ Emily Spiers, ‘Kate Tempest: A “Brand New Homer” for a Creative Future’, Homer’s Daughters: Women’s Responses to Homer in the Twentieth Century and Beyond, ed., Fiona Cox and Elena Theodorakopoulos (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 105-24).