COSMOTOPIA
Transnational Identities in David Greig's Theatre

eds Anja Muller and Clare Wallace
ISBN 978-80-7308-355-7 (paperback) 232pp
Publication date: June 2011

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David Greig is one of Scotland's most important contemporary dramatists. Yet his extensive achievements and the popularity of much of his work notwithstanding, Greig has yet to receive his due in terms of critical consideration. Transnational Identities in David Greig's Theatre is framed by a critical introduction surveying the playwright's drama and its significance within the context of contemporary theatre. The volume offers the first sustained and multifocal analysis of his work with a collection of twelve original scholarly essays and a specially commissioned interview with the author, focused upon a major and recurring theme in his plays, and one that is of keen theoretical importance in cultural studies today--the ways in which globalisation and postmodernity have transformed contemporary identity politics and the possibility of an engaged theatre. As Dan Rebellato has observed in the introduction to Plays 1, a prominent feature of Greig's work is the impact of globalisation upon notions of identity, belonging and citizenship. Whereas Victoria, The Architect and Outlying Islands are located in Scotland, the greater part of Greig's dramatic works explores the significance of place and non-places from various perspectives. Temporally too Greig's work roams across significant periods or events in (notably European) history, be it the emergence of Capitalism in Eighteenth-Century Europe (The Speculator), the World Wars (Outlying Islands), the Holocaust (Dr Korczak's Example), the war in former Yugoslavia (Europe) or the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq (The American Pilot). The representations of the modern world that emerge in Greig's work, suggest a transnational space, a contact zone where characters with diverse national, ethnic, class or religious backgrounds negotiate their different positions, perspectives and identities.

CONTENTS:
Muller, Anja and Clare Wallace
Introduction: Transnational Identities and David Greig

Fisher, Mark
Interview with David Greig

Zaroulia, Marilena
"What's missing is my place in the world": The Utopian Dramaturgy of David Greig

Pattie, David
Scotland and Anywhere: The Theatre of David Greig

Inchley, Maggie
David Greig and the Return of the Native Voice

Muller, Anja
Cosmopolitan Stage Conversations: David Greig's Adapted Transnational Characters and the Ethics of Identity

Thompson, Charlotte
Beyond Borders: David Greig's Transpersonal Dramaturgy

Raab, Michael
"No turnips on stage, please": David Greig in the German-speaking Theatre

Fowler, Dawn
David Greig's Conflict Spaces

Wilkie, Fiona
"What's there to be scared of in a train?": Transport and Travel in Greig's Europe

Billingham, Peter
"The bombing continues. The gunfire continues. The End." Themes of American Military-Cultural Globalisation in David Greig's The American Pilot

Heinen, Sandra
The Staging of Intercultural Encounter in David Greig's Damascus

Wallace, Clare
Unfinished Business: Allegories of Otherness in David Greig's Dunsinane

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