The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of many powerful ‘myths’ about Europe. Ideological and geo-political divisions that had been firmly in place for more than forty years crumbled with disturbing suddenness. As the decade progressed, however, it became clear to many that if the epitomic emblematic Wall had collapsed, new barriers had been all too quickly erected in its place, and borders still remained a central feature in the construction of the new order. Many plays written in Britain after 1989 tackle the myths and narratives that have come to surround the notion of a ‘new’ Europe. This process often involves a redefinition of the position of British playwrights within a broader European context, as well as an assessment of the responsibility of theatre and the arts in general towards the future of the European construction. Taken as a corpus, moreover, these New Europe plays can be seen to articulate a ‘counter-myth’ which draws on a set of images, topics and motifs encoded in the foundational European myth, that of Europa and the bull. The first part of my study illustrates the topoi that these recent plays about Europe share with the Europa myth; the central section focuses on the analysis of three representative plays by David Greig, Sarah Kane and Peter Whelan; while the final one provides a tentative interpretation of this structural homology between ancient myth-making and present-day myth-blasting.
New Order, New Borders: Post-Cold War Europe on the British Stage
SONCINI, SARA FRANCESCA
2007-01-01
Abstract
The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of many powerful ‘myths’ about Europe. Ideological and geo-political divisions that had been firmly in place for more than forty years crumbled with disturbing suddenness. As the decade progressed, however, it became clear to many that if the epitomic emblematic Wall had collapsed, new barriers had been all too quickly erected in its place, and borders still remained a central feature in the construction of the new order. Many plays written in Britain after 1989 tackle the myths and narratives that have come to surround the notion of a ‘new’ Europe. This process often involves a redefinition of the position of British playwrights within a broader European context, as well as an assessment of the responsibility of theatre and the arts in general towards the future of the European construction. Taken as a corpus, moreover, these New Europe plays can be seen to articulate a ‘counter-myth’ which draws on a set of images, topics and motifs encoded in the foundational European myth, that of Europa and the bull. The first part of my study illustrates the topoi that these recent plays about Europe share with the Europa myth; the central section focuses on the analysis of three representative plays by David Greig, Sarah Kane and Peter Whelan; while the final one provides a tentative interpretation of this structural homology between ancient myth-making and present-day myth-blasting.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
