Our Country's Good: Based on the novel 'The Playmaker' by Thomas Keneally

ISBN-13: 9781350097889 / Angielski

Timberlake Wertenbaker

Opis

Australia 1789. A young married lieutenant is directing rehearsals of the first play ever to be staged in that country. With only two copies of the text, a cast of convicts, and one leading lady who may be about to be hanged, conditions are hardly ideal... Winner of the Laurence Olivier Play of the Year Award in 1988, and many other major awards, Our Country's Good premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 1988 and opened on Broadway in 1991. 'Rarely has the redemptive, transcendental power of theatre been argued with such eloquence and passion.' Georgina Brown, Independent It is published here in a new Student Edition, alongside commentary and notes by Sophie Bush. The commentary includes a chronology of the play and the playwright's life and work as well as discussion of the social, political, cultural and economic context in which the play was originally conceived and created.

Recenzje

Wertenbaker has searched history and found in it a humanistic lesson for hard modern times: rough, sombre, undogmatic and warm The Sunday Times

Spis treści

CommentaryChronology:A timeline of Wertenbaker's life and works, set alongside key theatrical, social and political events of the period.Contexts:- The 1780s: Attitudes to Crime and Punishment; The First Fleet and the Penal Colony of New South Wales; Theatrical Styles and Conventions; The Recruiting Officer- The 1980s: Attitudes to Crime and Punishment; Theatre Funding; The Royal Court, Max Stafford-Clark and the 'Joint Stock Method'; The Playmaker- Timberlake WertenbakerThemes:- Guilt and Innocence; Punishment, Rehabilitation and Redemption; The Value of Theatre; Language, Silence and Voice; ColonialismDramatic Devices:- Language(s): Regional Dialects; Articulacy and Inarticulacy; The Aborigine- Episodic Structure- Theatrical Style: Multi-roling and Cross-casting; Brechtian Aesthetic- Options for DesignProduction History- A TimelineCritical Reception- Critical response, recognition and influence- The Play TodayAcademic Debate:A brief discussion of academic responses to the playFurther Study:A bibliography of texts for further study- A discussion of Comparative Literature (by Wertenbaker and others)PLAY TEXT - OUR COUNTRY'S GOOD

O autorze

Timberlake Wertenbaker is herself an eminent playwright. In 1985 The Royal Court staged her 'The Grace of Mary Traverse' which won her the Plays and Players Most Promising Playwright Award. She also received the 1988 Olivier Award for Play of the Year for 'Our Country's Good'. Sophie Bush is Head of Stage and Screen at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. She is the editor of student editions of Our Country's Good (2020), Top Girls (2018) and My Mother Said I Never Should (2015), and a GCSE Student Guide to My Mother Said I Never Should (2015), all published with Methuen Drama. She is also the author of The Theatre of Timberlake Wertenbaker (Methuen Drama, 2013).