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in this deceptively slight volume, Howard Barker writes with an unprecedented emotional immediacy and arc of conceptual ambition.... Death, the One and the Art of Theatre represents an important advance on Arguments for a Theatre ... surpassing even the range and depth of the earlier collection.... A landmark achievement
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David Ian Rabey, University of Wales AberystwythHoward Barker is an internationally renowned playwright whose works are regularly produced throughout Europe and the US. He is widely known for his controversial and satirical explorations into contemporary tragedy, and his anti-Brechtian focus on the irrational and the catastrophic. He is often credited as a major influence on the generation of playwrights which includes Sarah Kane and Mark Ravenhill.Death, the One and the Art of Theatre is the latest collection of Barker's distinctive and revelatory philosophical musings on theatre. It is a stunning array of speculations, deductions, prose poems and poetic apercus, which cast a unique and unflinching light on the nature of tragedy, eroticism, love and theatre.
Exploring the juncture between aesthetics and metaphysics, the books looks at the human experience of love and death as life at its most intrinsically theatrical. It is a profoundly unsettling and inspiring piece of writing which extends Barker's challenge to orthodox morality first presented in Arguments for a Theatre-which he described as men and women's secret longing for the incomprehensible nature of pain.
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Copyright (C) Muze Inc. 2005.
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Set in the near-future, this swirling comedy/epic revolves around a tennis academy, a residence for recovering substance abusers, a tight group of Quebecois-separatist terrorists, and Infinite Jest, a film so funny that it literally kills. Perhaps one of the most ambitious attempts to capture the spirit of the age, Wallace's pervasive theme is the oceanic sadness and loneliness of an American society that is spiritually vacant but tirelessly and relentlessly addicted to its various addictions; addicted to capitalism and consumerism, addicted to entertainment, addicted to drugs, and addicted to competition and success.
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This novel by humorist Dave Barry is about an offshore gambling ship, The Extravaganza of the Seas, and the gamblers and other characters (including a band called Johnny and the Contusions) who are aboard when a devastating tropical storm strikes the Florida coast.
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A peaceful land, Eutracia has finally managed to put its violent and ancient past behind it and is set to move forward under the leadership of a new King. Unfortunately, the evil wizards who engineered the land's past atrocities have, after centuries in exile, managed to escape and return to the scene of their original crimes.
Copyright (C) Muze Inc. 2005.
For personal use only.
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