Anti-war Theatre After Brecht ― Dialectical Aesthetics in the Twenty-first Century

Examiningthe ways in which contemporary Western theatre protests against the ‘War onTerror’, this book analyses six twenty-first century plays that respond to thepost-9/11 military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine. The plays arewritten by some of the most significant writers of this century and the lastincluding Elfriede Jelinek, Caryl Churchill, Helene Cixous andTony Kushner.

Anti-war Theatre After Brecht grapples with theproblem of how to make theatre that protests the policies of democraticallyelected Western governments in a post-Marxist era. It shows how the Internethas become a key tool for disseminating anti-war play texts and how onlinesocial media forums are changing traditional dramatic aesthetics and broadeningopportunities for spectator access, engagement and interaction with a work andthe political alternatives it puts forward.?

Dr Lara Stevens was the 2014 Hugh Williamson Postdoctoral Fellow inthe Australian Centre at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She is theeditor and translator of a collection of essays on performance by feministphilosopher and playwright Helene Cixous, Politics, Ethics andPerformance: Helene Cixous and the Theatre du Soleil.