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Published to tie in with performances by Claire Dowie at the Drill Hall, London Two new plays by Claire Dowie which focus on sex and repression and friendship among gay and lesbian characters.
The latest collection of plays from "the female counterpart to Quentin Crisp" (Evening Standard) The Year of the Monkey, originally written for BBC Radio 3, comprises Bonfire Night, in which a daughter takes her sweet revenge; Arsehammers, where a grandson is sure that his grandfather's strange disappearances reveal supernatural powers; The Allotment, in which a quiet community of pensioners create a radical, anarchic commune by mistake; and The Year of the Monkey, where a mother yearns for some bad behaviour to puncture the boredom of her middle-class life.Designs for Living is a modern love story, challenging conventions of identity and sexuality. Sodom reveals Old Testament morality alive and well in middle England. "Claire Dowie is the supreme advocate of rebellion. She debunks conformity, non-conformity - or almost anything which can be defined" - The Stage "She makes you laugh as she kicks you in the teeth" - Guardian
I don't understand it. I've still got muscles, tendons, sinews, whatnots – nothing's changed skeleton wise, body wise. It's still all intact. Yet it doesn't work. It won't move itself. Leaping barriers of age, sexuality and gender, Gloria prepares to dance the Can Can one last time. Written and performed by the pioneering Claire Dowie, When I Fall If I Fall tells Gloria's story, a story about growing up feeling different and not fitting in... With this new work, Dowie continues her ground-breaking subversion of gender expectations and stereotypes. This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, in August 2019.
Five stand-up theatre plays from 'the female counterpart to Quentin Crisp' (Evening Standard) Who does Claire Dowie think she is? In Adult Child/Dead Child she invented an imaginary friend to be all the things she wasn't allowed to be... In Why is John Lennon Wearing A Skirt? She hated being a girl but what's the alternative? In Death and Dancing she was determined to be anything she wanted to be... In Drag Act Mother would have been proud. In Leaking From Every Orifice she was a lesbian, had a sexual relationship with a gay man and ended up pregnant... 'She makes you laugh as she kicks you in the teeth' (Guardian)
Almost wherever we look, depictions of sexuality, both subtle and not-so-subtle, are omnipresent. Whatever the medium, popular culture representations tell us something about ourselves and about the ideologies of which they are symptomatic. These essays examine the strategies of power implicit in popular representations of sexuality. The authors--scholars in fields such as sociology, philosophy, biology, political science, history, and English literature-- eschew rigid disciplinary boundaries.
The story of a self-sufficient community founded at the end of the 1960s by a bunch of university drop-outs, and of their first born - Chaos, a mixture of Swampy, John Lennon, Bob Geldof and Princess Diana.
Arguing that women use autobiography and performance for expression and as a means of controlling their public and private selves, the contributors of these 11 essays examine the lives and work of a variety of artists ranging from actors as working women in the eighteenth century to monologists and performance artists today. Subjects include several performers, including Alma Ellerslie, Kitty Marion, Ina Rozant, Susan Glaspell, Adrienne Kennedy, Emma Robinson, Lena Ashwell, Tilly Wedekind, Clare Dowie, Janet Cardiff, Tracey Emin, and, in an interview, Bobby Baker, as well as essays on Latina theater and lesbians as performers constructing themselves and their community. Annotation : 2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).
An anthology bringing together a selection of Claire Dowie's plays for young people, which are ideal for performance with a large cast. The anthology includes the following plays and an introduction by the author. Why Is John Lennon Wearing A Skirt? (Stage2 version, large cast) portrays a 14-year-old girl who dresses like a boy and would rather play football than anything else. This version can be performed by a cast of up to 100. Arsehammers (Stage2 version, large cast) is about a boy's relationship with his grandfather, who is suffering from Alzheimer's (or "Arsehammers", as the boy hears it). He believes his grandad to have superpowers on account of his routine disappearances. A brilliant...
Hysteria, trauma and melancholia are not only powerful tropes in contemporary culture, they are also prominent in the theatre. As the first study in its field, Hysteria, Trauma and Melancholia explores the characteristics and concerns of the Drama of Hysteria, Trauma and Melancholia through in-depth readings of representative plays.
This contribution to Theatre Studies explores the shaping and performing of gender identity in British and Irish theatres since the 1980s. It highlights contact zones, conflict areas, and divergencies between the two theatre contexts with reference to historic, socio-political, and cultural clusters. Largely from a queer theory standpoint, this book reads several plays in their attempt to unmask exploiting mechanisms of sexuality and gender regulation. It focuses on alternative notions of sociality, shared spaces, and bodies, and offers political suggestions in order to resist confining notions of identity and gender.