Synopses & Reviews
This book provides an in-depth look at the work of British writer Trevor Griffiths, who has been a powerful and unique presence in British theater, television, and film for the past thirty years. Griffiths's theatrical works, including
Occupations (1970),
The Party (1973),
Comedians (1975),
Oi for England (1982) and
Real Dreams (1984) have been highly acclaimed by critics such as Benedict Nightingale, who called Griffiths "as articulate and eloquent a thinker as the British stage possesses." Griffiths has also written successfully for British television, and collaborated with Warren Beatty on the Academy-award winning film
Reds (1981).
Garner's study is the first to present and critically discuss the full range of Griffiths's works. The works are shown to reveal an intense awareness of class and its material underpinnings, a concern with the power of realism, an overarching commitment to history as a field of political and cultural intervention, and a willingness to examine the terms and parameters of this intervention. Garner traces the influence of New Left historical activism on Griffiths's earliest plays and considers the evolution of his historical understanding throughout his career. He proposes that Griffiths sees history as a scene for the staging of counter-discourses and as a representational course for the establishment of dialectic (and dialogic) relationships between the present and the past, between the received and the revisionist, and between ideological positions.
Trevor Griffiths: Politics, Drama, History will appeal to a range of readers who share an interest in contemporary theater, literature, and politics.
Stanton B. Garner, Jr. is Professor of English, University of Tennessee.
Synopsis
Assesses the contributions of one of the leading figures of post-1968 British political theater
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 275-304) and index.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Educations -- Occupying history -- Politics and sexuality -- Medium, reflexivity, counternarrative: Griffiths in television -- Class comedy, classic texts -- Thatcherism and the myth of nation -- Screen/plays -- Politics over the gulf -- Specters of history -- Notes -- Index.