Jeremy Collier Research Paper

He attended a one-room school run by his mother and grandmother through the 8th grade. He was an intellectually curious child whose education proceeded according to the Montessori system, Wales spent considerable amounts of time reading encyclopedias. He credits this self-directed upbringing with

This allowed Cary to distance herself from the popular theatres associated with lower social classes and associate herself with elite, aristocratic groups of writers. Prior to 1660, women had no role in public theatre; even the simple act of writing pushed the boundaries of acceptable female behaviour. By creating a closet drama, Cary becomes a perfect example of how early women dramatists created acceptable spaces for their dramatic voice, using theatrical settings, which helped them to justify female self-expression. Marta Straznicky (2004) uses the following statement to underscore the advantages of private play reading: `Not only does private play reading secure corporeal boundaries, it also enables the subject to pass by all obscene or amorous passages, all profane or Scurrill Jests, all heathenish oaths and execrations, thus restoring moral control over theatrical allusion'. Straznicky explains how the closet drama allows for the discussion of radical issues that would be considered distasteful and shocking in the context of a public performance. Although it was considered to be a transgression of societal mores for women to write at all, such activities were far less threatening to the patriarchal structure of early modern England when they were limited to the private sphere of play reading. According to the patriarchal

Shakespeare plays provide a broad and fluid platform for post-modern theatre makers to explore upon various subjects. Yet, it is particularly interesting when actors are dancing around with genders and sexualities with Shakespeare text, however ahead of time he was, which was written in a time that women and queer were oppressed or not acknowledged.

Homophobia in America is often contextualized through America’s Judeo-Christian values, through historical movements which supported xenophobia, and also through the arts which seemed to reject homophobia. No artform is more often cited as a safe-haven for homosexual artists, than the theater. However, in my paper, I wish to discuss not only homosexuality in the theater, and homophobia in American at large, I wish to talk about the signs of internalized homophobia in the theater which has very clearly been influenced by external forces. The works of Paula Vogel and Jordan Harrison bring these questions by setting homosexuality as explicitly at odds with the romanticized American family and the struggles of their characters because of this.

During the Elizabethan Theater era, better known as the English Renaissance era, theaters and acting were banned from cities. Even though Queen Elizabeth enjoyed acting and some of the other things that happened in the theater, “the authorities didn't like it and didn't allow acting in the city itself” (“English Online”). They thought theater was a bad influence on it's audience. They also believed that theater would keep people from going to church. On the other hand, Queen Elizabeth liked it and decided to help make theater popular by attending the “inn-yards” and building theaters outside the city.

When you hear the term ‘gay theatre’ the first thought that may come to mind is that it describes theatre written for and by homosexuals.  If this is true, then before the decriminalization of male homosexual sex in 1967, there was no ‘gay theatre’ in existence due to the political and social landscape of that time. Spanning as far back as Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare, themes of homosexuality have been rampant within theatrical content, but because theatre always reflects the social conditions of its time period, the theatre’s behavior toward homosexuality was a microcosm of its contemporary governing attitudes.  Before the 1960s, theatre was subject to

By the eighteenth century, drama had changed yet again during the restoration period. This time, the focus had shifted from royalty and drama was now based on the upper class society. The plays written during the restoration period were all to do with dramatic irony and comedy of manners. This type of comedy meant that the main issues dealt with during the play were concerned with up-to-date dress and fashion standards as well as the behaviour of men and women under the new code of permissiveness. The code of permissiveness which prevailed that society was able to do basically anything they pleased, came about with the restoration of Charles II to the throne. As a result in the change of throne, the attitudes of

American playwright Tony Kushner’s momentous two-part production Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes documents the varied lives of five men residing in New York City throughout the 1980s AIDS epidemic. A truly unique aspect, which pertains to Kushner’s dramatized narrative, is that each focal male character is homosexual. Although these men may share a collective sexual orientation, they experience their sexuality in their own individualistic ways. Through the lenses of Kushner’s male protagonists—Roy Cohn, Joseph Pitt, Louis Ironson, Prior Walter and Belize—the play endeavours to eradicate conventional perceptions of sexuality as a dichotomized view: heterosexuality/homosexuality. As the narrative progresses, it becomes apparent that Angels in America contends the monolithic stereotype attributed to a homosexual orientation, by reconceptualising the notion of sexuality as one that can be situated upon a spectrum.

During the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, plays where highly criticized and had to please the royal court. While play writes of this movement were jailed for writing political productions, William Shakespeare, however, avoided this and continued to produce many plays’ that are still performed today. Although people of power had been exposed, political theatre was also used to support rising empires and corrupting the general public.

New writing demonstrates a prevailing variety of structural effects and notions in British theatre which resonate through contemporary society. “What to do? How to act? Who to be? These are focal questions for everyone living in circumstances of late modernity – and ones which, on some level or another, all of us answer, either discursively or through day- to-day” (Giddens, 1991, p.80). Identity is a powerful umbrella radiating through the ever more challenging, fast paced living, and diversification of the present contemporary world, under which humanity ‘categorises’ individuals. More specifically, the current state of personal, political and social identity as depicted through recent plays such as ‘Posh’ by Laura Wade and ‘Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage’ by Robin Soan, will be explored. This essay will critically examine controversial perceptions and understanding of self and others, reflected in the portrayal of homosexuality, class, alienation, feminism, masculinity and ‘Ladism’ present in contemporary society. Quintessentially, new writing is in its element in British theatre, providing a liminal space for discovery to engage with human condition on an emotional and intellectual level in a representation of our cultural infrastructure.

What the playwright was trying to say about life is that everyone is different. It raised universal questions of who am I? What is my identity? To what are the differences in gender identity and sexual orientation? It truly posed some fascinating questions about these identities. It even provoked the question of what ensues in matrimony when one of the partners begins to represent both genders. What happens? Is one simply cut off? Is there room for them both? It brings out the central conflict of illusion versus reality in my eyes. This is because these are grown adult men, married with a spouse of the opposite sex. Yet in spite of all this,

Alan Austen, a young man who is passionately in love with a young woman who is indifferent to him, comes to the establishment of a mysterious old man who deals in magic potions. Austen has been told that he can buy a potion that will make the object of his affections fall madly in love with him. The old man shows little interest in the financial profit to be gained from selling Alan a love potion. Instead, he devotes most of his sales talk to recommending a potion that he calls a spot remover or a life cleaner, a powerful poison that is undetectable in an autopsy. Without ever saying so directly, the old man is suggesting that the time will inevitably come when Alan will want to murder the woman whom he now loves so desperately.

Compare and contrast the two Acts of Cloud 9, and examine the extent to which the play is about sexual liberation.

In 1979, Caryl Churchill wrote a feminist play entitled Cloud Nine. It was the result of a workshop for the Joint Stock Theatre Group and was intended to be about sexual politics. Within the writing she included a myriad of different themes ranging from homosexuality and homophobia to female objectification and oppression. “Churchill clearly intended to raise questions of gender, sexual orientation, and race as ideological issues; she accomplished this largely by cross-dressing and role-doubling the actors, thereby alienating them from the characters they play.” (Worthen, 807) The play takes part in two acts; in the first we see Clive, his family, friends, and servants in a Victorian British Colony in

Even though it was a time of sexual liberation that doesn’t mean that homosexuality was accepted and therefore might not have been permitted on stage. This is a similar situation to the historical acceptance of the concept of homosexuality. Which I believe Churchill suggests through the setting of Cloud 9. If the setting is considered as more than a performance tool we can see Cloud 9 as more than a feminist analysis of gender and sexuality but an analysis of history as well. Elin Diamond considers this point of view in “Refusing the Romanticism of Identity: Narrative Interventions in Churchill, Benmussa, Duras.” She says that Churchill tried to “represent history without using the illusionistic apparatus of the stage to tell just another story in which female rather than male identity is valorized”(275). Even her characters acknowledged the importance of history to the drama they were in in relation to the time periods covered.