Staging Violence and its Impact in Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good

Year 2021, Volume: 3 Issue: 1, 308 - 318, 13.06.2021

Mustafa Canlı Tavgah Saeed

Abstract

Postmodern playwrights since World War II have started to deal with themes of violence on different levels. What the war caused has made them think of the indispensability of staging violence and its different types. The present article aims at dealing with the different ways violence is delineated and staged in Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good (1988). It also aims at showing the different types of violence and the impact they have on the characters in the play. Wertenbaker manages to deal with different types of violence and showing that violence has become a fixed sign of human life after the second world war. Wertenbaker aims at stirring people against many of the oppression, violence, and injustice done in this world. She wants people not to remain silent.

Keywords

Injustice, Our Country's Good, Violence, Wertenbaker

References

• Aston, Elaine. Feminist Views on the English Stage. Cambridge: CUP, 2003.
• Brater, Enoch. Feminine Focus. Oxford: OUP, 1989.
• Bush, Sophie, Roger Hodgman and Debby Turner. The Theatre of Timberlake Wertenbaker. (Eds.) Erin Hurley, and Patrick Lonergan. London: Methuen, 2013.
• Bush, Sophie. “The inevitable need to speak in order to be: On the loss of voice in two plays by Timberlake Wertenbaker.” Forum 9 (2009): 1-9. Web. 20 Mar 2021. <http://www.forumjournal.org/article/view/625/910>
• Carlson, Susan. “Language and identity in Timberlake Wertenbaker’s plays.” The Cambridge Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights (2000): 134-149.
• Clark, Ralph. The Journal and Letters of Lt. Ralph Clark 1787-1792. Sydney: U of Sydney Library. 2003. Web. 20 Mar 2021. http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/pdf/clajour.pdf>
• Foster, Verna A. “After Chekhov: The Three Sisters of Beth Henley, Wendy Wasserstein, Timberlake Wertenbaker, and Blake Morrison”. Comparative Drama 47.4 (2013): 451-472. Project Muse. Web. 20 Mar 2021.
• Foster, Verna A. “Convicts, Characters, and Conventions of Acting in Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good.” Connotations 7.3 (1997): 417-432. Web. 20 Mar 2021. <http://www.connotations.uni-tuebingen.de/foster00703.htm>
• Freeman, Sara. “Tragedy After Darwin: Timberlake Wertenbaker Remakes “Modern” Tragedy.” Comparative Drama 44.2 (2010): 201-227. Project Muse. Web. 20 March 2021.
• Gibson, Jane. A Level Notes on Our Country’s Good. Leicestershire: Cotton & Jarrett, 2007.
• Mackenzie, Suzie. “A play for life.” The Guardian (Women Section), 4th September 1991. (Found in Wertenbaker Archive, Add 79383).
• Shih, Yi-chin. “Travel and Empire in Wertenbaker’s Our Country’s Good” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 14.5 (2012): 1-8. Web. 20 Mar 2021. http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol14/iss5/19/
• Wertenbaker, Timberlake. Our Country’s Good. Dramatic Publishing: London, 1989.
• Wilson, Ann. “Our Country’s Good: Theatre, Colony and Nation in Wertenbaker’s Adaptation of The Playmaker.” Modern Drama 34.1 (1991): 23-34. Utpjournals. Web. 20 March 2021.