Looking through gender: post-1980 British and Irish drama

Product Description 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. Review 'Dr Grassi draws extensively from debates carried out by contemporary theorists in support of the political implication of his volume. A cutting-edge and much needed record of key plays from a queer-theory perspective, the book undermines the foundation of debates concepts like gender essentialism, power and the political.'' --Dr Fiorenzo Fantaccini, University of Florence'Samuele Grassi is adept at expanding an engagement with queer theory into wider cultural and political contexts. While he chooses to work with current theory, that approach is well integrated with shrewd and original social perceptions, with a concern for historical changes as informing influences on creativity and with a genuine understanding of dramaturgy and the ways in which ideas may be shaped into performance. It is the complexity of his engagement with gender issues and his ability to trace subtle discriminations between Irish and English cultural expression of such issues that continually impress one in reading Dr. Grassi s study.' --Prof. Richard Cave (Royal Holloway) About the Author Samuele Grassi holds a PhD in English Studies at the University of Firenze. He is the author of a monograph on AIDS, and has written on Neil Jordan and Glasshouse Productions. He is currently researching the connections of queer ethics and poststructuralist anarchism and its possible application for the study of drama. He is a member of the Editiorial Board of Studi Irlandesi: A Journal of Irish Studies.