Investigating the politics of intimacy: a Brechtian production of Patrick Marber's Closer

• Critical and creative encounters

Speaker: Professor David Barnett (University of York)

This paper reflects on an AHRC-funded project that allowed me to apply Brechtian directing approaches to a play that appears to resist them.  I will consider what a Brechtian theatre seeks to explore in terms of its political ends, and how it can be reconciled with a play that offers little social or political material.  Using documentation of the final production, I will discuss the relationship between Brechtian theory and theatrical practice, point to the concrete problems we faced in realizing the politico-philosophical aims of the project and how we sought to address them. 

David Barnett is Professor of Theatre at the University of York. He is the author of Heiner Müller’s ‘The Hamletmachine’ (Routledge, 2016), A History of the Berliner Ensemble (CUP, 2015), Brecht in Practice: Theatre, Theory and Performance (Bloomsbury, 2014), Rainer Werner Fassbinder and the German Theatre (CUP, 2005) and a monograph on Heiner Müller (Peter Lang, 1998). He has written several articles and essays on German-, English-language, political and postdramatic theatre.

Venue: Orchard Learning Resource Centre, Selly Oak

All welcome, no booking required.