Description: An essential item for all those who are concerned with modern British theater, including students, academics, and practitioners.
Brief description: Howard Barker is an internationally renowned dramatist, whose first plays were performed at the Royal Court and by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Since 1992 his work has been presented by his own company The Wrestling School. Barker's theatre is characterized by its poetic, non-naturalistic form and inhabits worlds of contradiction, suffering and sexual passion. Barker is also a poet and theorist of theatre, whose 'Theatre of Catastrophe' defines a new form of tragedy for our times.
Review Quotes: "If you buy this collection, do it for (Uncle) Vanya, a dazzlingly intellectual rewrite of Chekhov's 1897 work of the less parenthetic name. At once critical and in awe of the Russian dramatist, Barker interrogates the balance between culture and instinct. Barker's characters are confused by the literary symbolism which surrounds them, hearing the crash of the waves yet unable to place the sea. Tantalisingly erudite, these poetic pieces are certainly worth a read."--Buzz Magazine