RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article
T1 Hitler on the Ballachulish Beat: The Plays of C. P. Taylor
A1 Calder, Robert R.
A1 Mergenthal, Silvia
AB Although seven of his plays were performed at the 1992 EdinburghInternational Festival, the Scottish playwright C.P. Taylor (1929-81) ismuch less well-known than some of this younger colleagues. This isparticularly unfortunate as C.P. Taylor’s thematic concerns, and the dramaticvocabulary he employs to voice them, are unique in their contemporaryScottish context, albeit strongly indebted to European, specificallyGerman, Modernism.The article will first provide a brief survey of C.P. Taylor’s life andwriting career, focussing on his Jewish background (which informs,for example, such plays as Walter and The Black and White Minstrels),and on the conditions of writing in exile (as a Scot in England). Thesecond part will consist of a detailed, comparative examination of threeplays, namely, Bread and Butter, The Ballachulish Beat, and Good. Inspite of their considerable differences —Bread and Butter explores thelives of two young Jewish couples in Glasgow, The Ballachullish Beatfollows the career of a rock band, and Good discusses the question ofeuthanasia before the sinister background of 1930s Germany —all threeplays are concerned with the responses of individuals to the pressures,but also the allure, of various kinds of totalitarianism. In addition, allthree plays associate totalitarianism with music, as a pre- or non- rationalform of experience; as a consequence, the role of music in theseplays, both as a theme and as a dramatic technique, will have to beexplored.
SN 0211-5913
YR 2000
FD 2000
LK http://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/30415
UL http://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/30415
LA en
DS Repositorio institucional de la Universidad de La Laguna
RD 24-nov-2024