Acts of Resistance in Late-Modernist Theatre

Acts of Resistance in Late-Modernist Theatre presents a close analysis of the theatre practice of three ground-breaking artists - Richard Foreman, Jenny Kemp and Richard Murphet - active over the late twentieth and the early twenty-first century. Richard Murphet argues that these three auteurs have developed subversive alternatives to the previously dominant forms of dramatic realism in order to re-think the relationship between theatre and reality. They write and direct their own work, and their artistic experimentation is manifest in the tension created between their content and their form. Murphet closely investigates how the works are made, rather than focusing upon an interpretation of their meaning. Through an examination of working practices, we gain a deeper understanding of the nature of the paradigm shift in theatre launched by late modernism.