British Theatre Companies 1980–1994: Joint Stock Theatre Company, Gay Sweatshop, Théâtre de Complicité, Forced Entertainment, Women’s Theatre Group, and Talawa

About the Author

Graham Saunders is Reader in Theatre Studies at the University of Reading. He has written extensively on contemporary British theatre, including three volumes on the work of Sarah Kane, is the author of Patrick Marber's Closer (Continuum/Bloomsbury, 2008) and co-editor of Cool Britannia: Political Theatre in the 1990s (Palgrave, 2008).

John Bull is the University of Reading, UK, and Professor of Drama at the University of Lincoln, UK. His many publications include Stage Right: Crisis and Recovery in British Contemporary Mainstream Theatre (1994). Recently, he was Associate Editor for Modern Drama on the New Oxford Companion to English Literature, and editor of the three volume series, British and Irish Playwrights Since World War II.

Product Description

This series of three volumes provides a groundbreaking study of the work of many of the most innovative and important British theatre companies from 1965 to the present. Each volume provides a survey of the political and cultural context, an extensive survey of the variety of theatre companies from the period, and detailed case studies of six of the major companies.

Volume Two, 1980–1994, covers the period when cuts under Margaret Thatcher's Tory government changed the landscape for British theatre. Yet it also saw an expansion of companies that made feminism and gender central to their work, and the establishment of new black and Asian companies.

Leading academics provide case studies of six of the most important companies, including:
* Monstrous Regiment, by Kate Dorney (The Victoria & Albert Museum)
*Forced Entertainment, by Sarah Gorman (University of Roehampton, London, UK)
* Gay Sweatshop, by Sara Freeman (University of Puget Sound, USA)
* Joint Stock, by Jaqueline Bolton (University of Lincoln, UK)
* Theatre de Complicite, by Michael Fry
* Talawa, by Kene Igweonu (Canterbury Christ Church University, UK)

Book Description

This is the second volume in this series of groundbreaking studies looking at the work of many of the most innovative and important British theatre companies from 1965 to the present.