This dissertation seeks to create a vocabulary and a theoretical framework with which to examine the political implications of nonlinear, non-realistic depictions of time in recent English history plays. I explore plays by Howard Barker, Howard Brenton, Caryl Churchill, Michael Frayn, Sarah Kane, and Tom Stoppard using close readings of texts in combination with research into the plays' original productions and their immediate social and political context. I look specifically at how the plays' temporal shapes reflect upon history and historiographic methods, drawing from the historiographic theories of Carl Becker, Michel Foucault, Michel de Certeau, and Michal Kobialka. I use my own phenomenology of time for the stage to explore my overriding question, what are the political implications of non-traditional depictions of time on stage? Chapter One discusses the intersection of time, history, and politics. I suggest that theatrical time can be examined from three different perspectives: audience time, which is experienced individually by spectators in the house; dramatic time, which is expressed by the plot or dramatic action; and narrative time, which is lived by the characters in the fictional world of the play. Together, these three types of time constitute a play's temporal shape, which impacts meaning by phenomenally orienting the audience's perception of the work. Using Michel Foucault's concept of the disciplines and the tenets of second wave feminist criticism, I define politics as operations of power in the realm of governmental or public affairs, with the understanding that what often seems personal is also public and that power reaches into the nooks and crannies of the human body. Furthermore, the historiographic approaches of Becker and de Certeau suggest that history is an imaginative creation that depends more on what people believe to be true than what actually happened. History plays contribute substantially to this mythos of history via the reality effect, defined by Roland Barthes as the process whereby depicting an event within a historical narrative makes that event a reality in the public consciousness. Non-realistic depictions of time on stage can challenge the assumptions that go into the creation of history, thereby exposing historic myths as myths and repoliticizing public speech. The remaining chapters take specific plays as case studies. I explore how the temporal shape of each text is expressed in performance as a way of speaking back to its immediate political context, with a sensitivity to the material conditions of production (via Ric Knowles) and a focus on audiences' shifting horizons of expectation (per Susan Bennett's reception theory). Chapter Two examines The Castle, The Bite of the Night, and Gertrude'The Cry, by Howard Barker, and asks how ruptures in time affect the viewing experience and if form alone can create a subversive political system. Chapter Three looks at Howard Brenton's The Romans in Britain and H.I.D. and asks how nonlinear form exposes the methods by which the State writes and rewrites history and if time can be used to address the problem of national identity. Chapter Four examines Tom Stoppard's Arcadia in conjunction with Michael Frayn's Copenhagen, investigating how alternate models of time can perturb the audience's relationship with the past. Chapter Five uses several plays by Caryl Churchill, including Traps, Blue Heart, Mad Forest, and This Is a Chair, to discuss how fractured stagetime be used to perpetuate a counterdiscourse of time. Finally, Chapter Six uses the affect theory of Brian Massumi as a framework for exploring Sarah Kane's Blasted and 4.48 Psychosis. This last chapter diverges from the others in terms of methodology (affect theory) and content (Kane is a generation and a genre apart from the others), but I do this to show how Kane's radical use of time can potentially redefine the very nature of history and agency. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2010. / October 27, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references. / Mary Karen Dahl, Professor Directing Dissertation; James O‘Rourke, University Representative; Natalya Baldyga, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_254384 |
| Contributors | Gipson-King, Jay M. (authoraut), Dahl, Mary Karen (professor directing dissertation), O‘Rourke, James (university representative), Baldyga, Natalya (committee member), School of Theatre (degree granting department), Florida State University (degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource, computer, application/pdf |
| Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
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