The Contemporary History Play: New Readings, New Audiences

• 40 minute talk, followed by Q&A and refreshments.
• All are welcome.
• The event will also be streamed via Zoom - please book an online ticket to receive a link.

History plays make up a significant proportion of all the new work produced in UK theatres, and yet it has been unfashionable to discuss this fact since the 1990s. Instead, history plays are usually bracketed under the rubric of ‘new writing’ or ‘political theatre’. 

Poore's and Benzie's work on historical drama on stage broadens the definition of ‘history play’ to include any play which makes a claim to being set in the past. They posit that history plays draw upon three sources of authority in order to legitimise their representation of the past: heritage, the historical record, and creative licence.

In their new books, they argue that the history play has been changing during the twenty-first century to represent, and address, underrepresented groups and perspectives. They propose that collecting and naming these patterns and practices can empower theatre-makers and audiences to consider the relationship between product and process more reflexively, leading to a more developed understanding of how theatre performs the past.

In his work, Poore considers plays from England and the United States to explore how a new generation of playwrights has overturned the established conventions of historical realism. With a focus on feminist discourse, Benzie interrogates the gender politics of contemporary representations of the past and explores the role of historiography in the playwriting process.

Speaker Bios

Benjamin Poore is Professor of Theatre at University of York, UK. His books include Heritage, Nostalgia and Modern British Theatre: Staging the Victorians, Theatre & Empire, and Sherlock Holmes from Screen to Stage. Ben’s research interests are centred on histories of playwriting, revival and adaptation in the theatre, particularly from the Victorian era to the present day. He has published widely on the stage and screen afterlives of characters from Victorian literature and culture. These have included Sherlock Holmes, Charles Dickens, the Bronte sisters, and the villains of fin de siècle popular fiction. Ben’s most recent book is The Contemporary History Play: Staging English and American Pasts (Methuen Drama Engage, 2024).

Dr Rebecca Benzie is a Lecturer in Theatre at the University of York, UK. Her research interests include feminist theatre practices, new playwriting, and acts of commemoration. She is an experienced theatre practitioner and dramaturg, specialising in devised theatre and textual adaptation. Her first book, Feminism, Dramaturgy, and the Contemporary British History Play (2024), has been published with the Methuen Drama Engage Series. Additionally, her recent publications comprise a chapter in The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre of the First World War (2023) and a co-authored journal article on the history play for Studies in Theatre and Performance (2023).

Host or Publisher Institute for the Understanding of the Past