Twenty-First Century Drama

Within this landmark collection, original§voices from the field of drama provide rich analysis of a selection of the most§exciting and remarkable plays and productions of the twenty-first century. But what makes the drama of the new millenium so distinctive? Which events, themes, shifts, and paradigms are marking its stages? Kaleidoscopic in scope, Twenty-First§Century Drama: What Happens Now creates a broad, rigorously critical§framework for approaching the drama of this period, including its forms,§playwrights, companies, institutions, collaborative projects, and directors. The collection has a deliberately British bent,§examining§established playwrights - such as Churchill, Brenton, and Hare - alongside a§new generation of writers - including Stephens, Prebble, Kirkwood, Bartlett,§and Kelly. Simultaneously international in scope, it engages with significant new work from the US,§Japan, India, Australia, and the Netherlands, to reflect a§twenty-first century context that is fundamentally globalized. The volume's§central themes - the financial crisis, austerity, climate change, new forms of§human being, migration, class, race and gender, cultural politics and issues of§nationhood - are mediated through fresh, cutting-edge perspectives.