Introductory description

This module looks at how English, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish theatre institutions, playwrights, theatre-makers and performance artists have engaged with conceptions of the nation, nationalism and national identity during the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Week One: Nation, Nationalism and National Identity
This session will introduce the broad concerns of the module and begin to consider some theories, ideas and concepts central to an understanding of what we might mean when we talk about the nation, nationalism and national identity. In particular, we will look at these questions through the lens of Brexit and what the vote might tell us about competing notions of national identity and how the National Theatre in London responded with My Country: a Work in Progress (2016).

STATE-OF-THE-NATION PLAYS AND PERFORMANCES
Week Two: Reclaiming the Highlands: 7:84 Scotland’s The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil. This session will explore a seminal performance event widely credited with reinventing the form, subject matter, performance strategies and geography of Scottish theatre.

Week Three: Memory, Mourning and Survivial: Brith Gof’s Gododdin Drawing on the theoretical concept of ‘deep maps’, this session will consider how the Wales-based performance company Brith Gof created a multi-dimensional, site-specific cultural encounter to explore issues around notions of history, heritage, cultural legacies, political projects, cultural memory and national identification.

Week Four: Negotiating the Past through the Present: Tinderbox’s Convictions
In 2000 Tinderbox Theatre Company staged a series of performances in Crumlin Road Courthouse in Belfast. This session will explore how the pieces negotiated the histories, memories and reverberations of the site in order to destabilise fixed narratives and understandings of Northern Ireland’s past.

Week Five: There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack: Roy Williams’s Sing Yer Heart out for the Lads (2002) In this session, we will look at how Roy Williams explores questions of migration, racial identity, racism and integration. We will think about what it means to be ‘English’ and question when does patriotism end, xenophobia begin and violent nationalism emerge.

Week Six: Reading Week

NATIONAL THEATRES AND BEYOND
Week Seven: Reimaging the National Theatre for the Twenty-First Century: The National Theatre of Scotland
In this session we will explore the long cultural fight to generate the National Theatre in Scotland. With specific reference to the NTS’s inaugural piece Home and Gregory Burke’s Black Watch we will consider the ways that NTS has reconceptualised what a national theatre can be and mean in the twenty-first century.

Week Eight: Reimaging the National Theatre for the Twenty-First Century: National Theatre Wales
Following on from the previous week, we will explore the establishment of NTW and in particular its approach to its inaugural year and the culmination in the large-scale staging of The Passion, which is documented in The Gospel of Us.

Week Nine: British Asian identities: community, comedy and post-apocalypse
This session will explore two contrasting examples of British Asian playwriting, and their complicated reflections on migrant identities and narratives. In particular, we will explore how each play’s chosen style (family comedy and science fiction drama) enables both historical and contemporary reflections on the construction of identity in multicultural Britain.

Week 10: Introduction to 2nd assignment and feedback/tutorials on the 1st assignment

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• By the end of the module, students should be able to discuss the ways in which late twentieth century and twenty-first century performance artists, theatre practitioners and playwrights have explored ideas around nation and national identity in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
• By the end of the module, students should be able to identify key themes and theatrical strategies that reoccur in plays and performances emanating from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern that are concerned to explore, negotiate and contest ideas of nationhood.
• By the end of the module, students should be able to demonstrate an understanding of how key conceptual frameworks can inform the creation and analysis of contemporary theatre/performance.
• By the end of the module, students should be able to analyse a wide range of plays and performances in relation to their historical and cultural contexts.
• By the end of the module, students should be able to engage in research-based investigation of appropriate primary and secondary source material.
• By the end of the module, students should be able to communicate what they have learnt both orally and in writing.

Indicative reading list

Adams, David, Stage Welsh: Nation, Nationalism and Theatre, (Gomer, 1999)

Blandford, Steve, Theatre & Performance in Small Nations (Bristol: Intellect, 2013)

Brown, Ian, Scottish Theatre: Diversity, Language, Continuity (Rodopi, 2013)

Harvie, Jen, Staging the UK (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005)

Holdsworth, Nadine, Theatre & Nation (Palgrave, 2010)

Holdsworth, ed. Theatre and National Identity (Routledge, 2014)

Jones, Anwen, National Theatres in Context, (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2007)

McCrone, David, The Sociology of Nationalism (London: Routledge, 1998)

McCrone, David and Frank Bechhofer, Understanding National Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2015)

Rebellato, Dan, Theatre & Globalization (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2009)

Reid, Trish, Theatre & Scotland (Palgrave, 2013)

Stevenson, Randall and Gavin Wallace, eds., Scottish Theatre Since the Seventies (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1996)

Taylor, Anna-Marie, ed., Staging Wales: Welsh Theatre 1979-1997 (Cardiff: University of Wales
Press, 1997)

Wilmer, S. E. ed., National Theatres in a Changing Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008)

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Research element

Both assessments require the students to engage in independent research into the theory and practice of performance in its historical, national and social context.

Interdisciplinary

Students will be looking as theories of nation, nationalism and national identity drawn from political theory and sociology.

Subject specific skills

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Discuss the ways in which twentieth century and twenty-first century performance artists, theatre practitioners and playwrights have explored ideas around nation and national identity in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
• Identify key themes and theatrical strategies in plays and performances emanating from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that are concerned to explore, negotiate and contest ideas of nationhood.
• Demonstrate an understanding of how key conceptual frameworks can inform the creation and analysis of contemporary theatre/performance.
• Analyse a wide range of plays and performances in relation to their historical and cultural contexts.
• Engage in research-based investigation of appropriate primary and secondary source material.
• Communicate what they have learnt both orally and in writing.

Transferable skills

research skills
analytical skills
communication skills
presentation skills
group work