2024, Vol.37, No.3

Journal of Modern English Drama 2024 KCI Impact Factor : 0.21

pISSN : 1226-3397
https://journal.kci.go.kr/medak

David Greig’s Dunsinane, a sequel to Shakespeare’s Macbeth, captures the political and cultural feelings of Scottish independence in the 21st century. The critical tendency to link the play with a Scottish longing for independence has become more prominent with the pro-independence Scottish National Party’s landslide victory in the 2011 Scottish Parliament election. In contrast to the 2010 London premier, where Siward, the ‘tragic’ commander in the invading English army, had a monopoly on the audience’s sympathy, the focus completely shifted to the colonized Scottish characters in the Scottish productions in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Therefore, Dunsinane stands as a work urging for Scottish independence with an emphasis on the insurmountable cultural difference between Scotland and England. When the formidable and effective Scottish queen Gruoch, a dramatic reinvention of the character of Lady Macbeth, advises Siward to leave Scotland immediately, the play is no less than an indisputable metaphor for disengagement. It is Siward, a failed Englishman, who has to learn the steps in ‘a dance of leaving.’ With the growing divide between Scotland and England in mind, this paper argues that Dunsinane writes back to Shakespeare, challenging and rectifying the ideological bias in the representation of Scotland in Macbeth. For this purpose, it examines how Greig readjusts or subverts some of the premises, the central characters and linear narrative structure in the orignal play. The reconstruction of England-Scotland relationship in Dunsinane is investigated in three parts: Scottish landscape and politics, reinterpretation of Macbeth and Malcolm, and the relation between Gruoch and Siward.

This study explores the ontology of performance through the lens of disappearance, proposing that performance exists as an entity within memory. It argues that understanding performance as a form of disappearance does not render it void or meaningless; instead, it suggests that performance virtually persists as an image of a present/absent object within an atemporal unconscious, manifesting as an alternate present. To substantiate this claim, the study draws on Peggy Phelan’s theory in Unmarked, which frames performance as an effort to value the non-productive and non-metaphorical, grounded in Lacanian psychoanalysis and post-structuralist deconstructivist thought. It then examines André Lepecki’s perspective on Phelan’s performance ontology, which emphasizes the concept of the potential present of performance as shaped by memory. Additionally, it engages with the Bergsonian understanding of memory as a virtual state that supplements the real. This duality of memory as having fidelity to the past and shaping the present is applied to the concept of representation in theater and performance, highlighting the parallels between performance and memory. Anchored in this theoretical framework, the study examines Jérôme Bel’s audience-participatory metatheatrical performance, Cour d’honneur (2013). This study examines how the notion that performance exists as memory is explored in a meta-theatrical manner in this work, thereby situating the discourse on performance as memory within contemporary art and establishing a foundation for future research on the ontology of performance.

This paper examines Sarah Kane’s Phaedra’s Love through its depictions of sex, violence, and death. Through the staging of this play, the dramatic realism suggested by Antonin Artaud’s ‘Theatre of Cruelty’ is powerfully expressed. Paul Woodruff’s theater theory, defining theater as a ‘mask of wisdom,’ also provides an interpretive context for Kane’s play, which captures uncomfortable but primitive human behavior rather than expressing the beauty of humanity packaged on stage. Through Georges Bataille’s framework of Erotism, the paper explores how Hippolytus’ sex is portrayed as a futile act of excretion rather than the moment of unity or transcendence which Phaedra had wanted. Phaedra’s chosen expression of love, and its devastating consequences, culminate in her death - a pivotal moment that paradoxically leads to Hippolytus’s death and his symbolic rebirth. This play also portrays various forms of violence, both visible and invisible, emphasizing its pervasive role in human life. Kane juxtaposes Theseus’s cruel violence toward his children with police brutality and mob violence, illustrating how reason and rationality are often fragile constructs. Death, as the inevitable consequence of violence, is central to the narrative in this play. Kane’s bold representation of sex, violence, and death ultimately reflects the inescapable realities of human existence, challenging audiences to confront these truths.