Death in Modern Theatre : Stages of Mortality

This book offers a unique account of modern Western theatre, focusing on the ways in which dramatists and theatre-makers have explored historically informed ideas about death and dying in their work. 

The book re-examines what has hitherto been regarded as a largely unrelated and idiosyncratic set of activities. It provides an ambitious overview of how death and dying are treated in modern theatre, covering a time-span of over a hundred years and engaging multiple cultural contexts. It investigates the opportunities theatre affords to reflect on the end of life in a compelling and socially meaningful fashion.

In a series of interrelated, mostly chronological, micronarratives beginning in the late nineteenth century, this book considers how and why death and dying are represented at certain historical moments using dramaturgy and aesthetics that challenge audiences’ conceptions, sensibilities and sense-making faculties. Chapters focus on the ambiguous evocation of death in symbolist theatre; fantastical representations of death in plays about the First World War; satires of death denial in absurdist drama; ‘theatres of catastrophe’ after Auschwitz and Hiroshima; and drama about dying in the early twenty-first century. The book includes a mix of well-known and lesser-known plays and performance pieces from an international range of dramatists and theatre-makers. It offers original interpretations through close reading and performance analysis, informed by scholarship from diverse fields, including history, sociology and philosophy.

Written in a lively, accessible style, this book will be of interest to scholars of modern Western theatre and those interested in death studies.