“Tangled Passions”: Realism and Lyricism in the Plays of Peter Gill

Modern Drama ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 442-457
Author(s):  
William McEvoy
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Time Perspective ◽  
Social Deprivation ◽  
Young Male ◽  
Male Characters ◽  
History Of ◽  
Class Representation ◽  
Key Terms ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

This article argues that the work of Welsh theatre director and playwright Peter Gill occupies a unique place in post-1960s’ British playwriting. It explores Gill’s plays as – using theatre critic Susannah Clapp’s phrase – the “missing link” between kitchen-sink realism and more self-consciously poetic forms of theatre text. Gill’s plays make an important contribution to the history of working-class representation in UK theatre for three main reasons: first, the centrality he gives to Wales, Welsh working-class characters, and the city of Cardiff; second, his emphasis on the experience of women, especially mothers; and third, his focus on young male characters expressing and exploring the complexities of same-sex desire. The plays make advances in terms of realist dialogue and structure while also experimenting with layout, repetition, fragmentation, poetic description, and monologue narration. Gill’s work realistically documents the impact of poverty, cramped housing conditions, and social deprivation on his characters as part of a political project to show the lives of Welsh working-class people on stage. While doing so, Gill innovates in his handling of time, perspective, viewpoint, and genre. His plays occupy a distinctive place in the history of British, working-class, gay theatre, helping us to rethink what each of these three key terms means.

The Landscape of War and the Transformations of the Public Sphere

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 62-67
Author(s):  
Dijana Alic
Keyword(s):  
The European Union ◽  
Independent State ◽  
The Public ◽  
Time Space ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Modern Warfare ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City ◽  
Edward Soja

On 6 april 1992, the european union (eu) recognised bosnia and hercegovina as a new independent state, no longer a part of the socialist federal republic of Yugoslavia. The event marked the start of the siege of sarajevo, which lasted nearly four years, until late february 1996. It became the longest siege in the history of modern warfare, outlasting the leningrad enclosure by a year. During its 1425 days, more than 11,500 people were killed. The attacks left a trail of destruction across the city, which began to transform it in ways not experienced before. This paper explores how the physical transformation of sarajevo affected the ways in which meaning and significance were assigned to its built fabric. I argue that the changes imposed by war and the daily destruction of the city challenged long-established relationships between the built fabric and those who inhabited the city, introducing new modes of thinking and interpreting the city. Loosely placing the discussion within the framework of ‘Thirdspace', established by urban theorist and cultural geographer edward soja, i discuss the relationship that emerged between the historicality, sociality and spatiality of war-torn sarajevo. Whether responding to the impacts of physical destruction or dramatic social change, the nexus of time, space and being shows that the concept of spatiality is essential to comprehending the world and to adjusting to and resisting the impact of extraordinary circumstances. Recognising the continuation of daily life as essential to survival sheds light on processes of renewal and change in a war-affected landscape. These shattered urban spaces also show the ways in which people make a sense of place in relation to specific socio-historical environments and political contexts.

scholarly journals Colonial Values and Asylum Care in Brazil: Reclaiming the Streets Through Carnival in Rio de Janeiro

2020 ◽  
pp. 155-161
Author(s):  
Julia Evangelista ◽  
William A. Fulford
Keyword(s):  
Local Community ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Self Confidence ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Mental Well Being ◽  
The City

AbstractThis chapter shows how carnival has been used to counter the impact of Brazil’s colonial history on its asylums and perceptions of madness. Colonisation of Brazil by Portugal in the nineteenth century led to a process of Europeanisation that was associated with dismissal of non-European customs and values as “mad” and sequestration of the poor from the streets into asylums. Bringing together the work of the two authors, the chapter describes through a case study how a carnival project, Loucura Suburbana (Suburban Madness), in which patients in both long- and short-term asylum care play leading roles, has enabled them to “reclaim the streets,” and re-establish their right to the city as valid producers of culture on their own terms. In the process, entrenched stigmas associated with having a history of mental illness in a local community are challenged, and sense of identity and self-confidence can be rebuilt, thus contributing to long-term improvements in mental well-being. Further illustrative materials are available including photographs and video clips.

Rethinking the Twentieth-Century History of Mumbai

2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 1435-1449 ◽  
Author(s):  
DOUGLAS E. HAYNES
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Urban Planning ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Social History ◽  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Linear Models ◽  
Class Politics ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

AbstractThis review examines three major books on the history of Bombay. Historians of the city have tended to focus primarily on the period before 1930; this tendency has seriously limited our understanding of the dramatic transformations that have taken place in Bombay over the course of the twentieth century. Each of the studies reviewed here devotes considerable attention to developments since the 1920s. Collectively these works make a significant contribution to the appreciation of such matters as working-class politics, the changing character of workers’ neighbourhoods, land use, urban planning, and the ways the city has been imagined and experienced by its citizens. At the same time, these works all shift their analytic frameworks as they approach more contemporary periods and this restricts the authors' ability to assess fully the character of urban change. This paper calls upon historians to continue to apply the tools of social history, particularly its reliance on close microcosmic studies of particular places and groups over long periods of time, as they try to bridge the gap between the early twentieth century and the later twentieth century. At the same time, it suggests that historians need to consider Gyan Prakash's view of cities as ‘patched-up societies’ whose entirety cannot be understood through single, linear models of change.

scholarly journals Reconsidering Hilberseimer’s Chicago

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-248
Author(s):  
Philip Denny ◽  
Charles Waldheim
Keyword(s):  
Urban History ◽  
American City ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

The German architect and urbanist Ludwig Hilberseimer spent the second half of his career as an internationally influential urbanist, author, and educator while living and working in Chicago. The city of Chicago provided both context and content to inform his theories of planning the American city. While in Chicago, Hilberseimer taught hundreds of students, authored dozens of publications, and conceived of his most significant and enduring professional projects. Yet, in spite of these three decades of work on and in Chicago, the relationship between Hilberseimer’s planning proposals and the specific urban history of his adopted hometown remains obscure. This commentary reconsiders the role that Chicago played in Hilberseimer’s work as well as the impact that his work had on the planning of the city.

scholarly journals Shaping the image of a city on the example of a development of parts of waterfront in Bydgoszcz - a relation of Rother’s Mills and Nordic Haven buildings

2021 ◽  
Vol 1203 (2) ◽  
pp. 022061
Author(s):  
Iga Grześkow
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
Urban Landscapes ◽  
Commercial Development ◽  
River Bank ◽  
History Of ◽  
Street Furniture ◽  
Mutual Relations ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

Abstract According to Alexander Wallis, the city's cultural values relate to its historic and architectural, symbolic and religious, artistic and prestigious values. They are represented by individual buildings, monuments, sculptures, street furniture and entire urban complexes - streets, squares, parks, engineering works, and finally entire districts and urban landscapes. [1] In Bydgoszcz these values are represented by the Mill Island. After years of neglect, together with its immediate surroundings it has been re-incorporated into the city's structure, becoming a full-fledged, attractive and highly prestigious social area. The article presents a history of creation, functions and mutual relations of revitalized historic Rother’s Mills complex and Nordic Haven - a modern residential and commercial development and also aims to analyze the impact these buildings had on the space and surroundings of the Mill Island. The two architectural ensembles, arranged in mutual spatial relations, shape the landscape of the downtown, river bank part of Bydgoszcz on different principles. These buildings, as part of a historical urban layout of the city, represent extremely different methods of developing its areas requiring special protection and attention.

The Politics of Black Self-Determination and Neighborhood Preservation in Lincoln Park

2018 ◽  
pp. 162-185
Author(s):  
Courtney Elizabeth Knapp
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Historically Black ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Community Building ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Advocacy Group ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City ◽  
Lincoln Park ◽  
Neighborhood Level

Chapter 9 discusses the politics of public space and neighborhood self-determination in the historically Black, working class neighborhood of Lincoln Park. The work describes a thirty-year history of neighborhood-level community building and planning, including the present struggles of the Coalition to Save Lincoln Park, an advocacy group that emerged in 2013 after the city announced its plans to extend Central Avenue through the historic park space and neighborhood.

Epilogue

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rashad Shabazz
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Urban Agriculture ◽  
Stress Reduction ◽  
Agricultural Production ◽  
Fruits And Vegetables ◽  
White Neighborhoods ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
The City ◽  
Retail Access

This epilogue focuses on Chicago's changing racial geography, arguing that this change is creating not only gentrification in parts of the city, but also openings for Black Chicagoans to augment their geography. Since the mid-1990s abandoned lots all over Chicago have been turned into spaces of agricultural production. Not limited to middle-class white neighborhoods, urban gardens have sprung up in poor and working-class communities on the South and West Sides of the city. This is not the first time Chicagoans have performed agriculture in the city. The city has a long history of urban agriculture. This epilogue shows that green spaces can undo the consequences of carceral space by enabling Black Chicagoans to eat fresh fruits and vegetables in places with little retail access to them and creating environments of stress reduction for the entire community. It also demonstrates that the poor and the working class can be architects and planners, that they can augment their geographies in ways that produce healthy people and vital, vibrant communities—on their own terms.

Prologue

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Joe William Trotter
Keyword(s):  
Working Class ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Metropolitan Area ◽  
Social Service ◽  
Living Conditions ◽  
Urban League ◽  
Labor Exploitation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Black Poor ◽  
The City

This history of the Urban League of Pittsburgh (ULP) examines the organization’s century of social service and activism in the Greater Pittsburgh metropolitan area. It complements existing studies of the Urban League movement and deepens our understanding of the Urban League as a national phenomenon. Most important, this book addresses the debate over the Urban League movement’s impact on the lives of poor and working-class blacks as they made the transition from farm to city. Some scholars and popular writers argue that the Urban League movement was largely a conservative force that rarely improved the lives of the black poor. Others defend the Urban League as a progressive interracial social movement that eased the painful impact of migration, labor exploitation, and poor living conditions on thousands of southern black newcomers to the city....

2. Assyrian places

2015 ◽  
pp. 8-44
Author(s):  
Karen Radner
Keyword(s):  
Core Region ◽  
Capital City ◽  
13Th Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Key Sites ◽  
Central Turkey ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City ◽  
Insight Into

‘Assyrian places’ considers the exploration of key sites that provide insight into Assyria’s rediscovery since the mid-19th century. Firstly, it looks at the city where everything started—Aššur, at the southern edge of the core region—where the empire of the first millennium first came together. Aššur and Kalhu (which replaced Aššur as capital city) are two of Iraq’s most significant archaeological sites. A glimpse at the trading colony at Kaneš in Central Turkey serves to investigate Assyrian history of the early second millennium bc further afield, while Dur-Katlimmu, an important provincial centre in Syria, serves to emphasize the impact of Assyria’s expansion from the 13th century bc onwards.

Imagining Jerusalem in the Medieval West

2012 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
University Education ◽  
Printed Books ◽  
Devotional Practices ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

Jerusalem was the object of intense study and devotion throughout the Middle Ages. This book illuminates ways in which the city was represented by Christians in Western Europe, from the 600s the 1500s. Focusing on maps in illuminated manuscripts and early printed books, it also considers views and architectural replicas, and treats depictions of the Temple and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre alongside those of Jerusalem as a whole. The chapters draw on new research and a range of disciplinary perspectives to show how such depictions responded to developments in the West, as well as to the shifting political circumstances of Jerusalem and its wider region. One central theme is the relationship between text, image and manuscript context, including discussion of images as scriptural exegesis and the place of schematic diagrams and plans in the presentation of knowledge. Another is the impact of trends in learning, such as the reception of Jewish scholarship, the move from monastic to university education, and the creation of yet wider audiences through mendicant preaching and the development of printing. The book also examines the role of changing liturgical and devotional practices, including imagined pilgrimage and the mapping of Jerusalem onto European cities and local landscapes. Finally, it seeks to elucidate how two- and three-dimensional representations of the city both resulted from and prompted processes of mental visualization. In this way, the book is conceived as a contribution to manuscript studies, the history of cartography, visual studies and the history of ideas.

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