Carnival Texts

Front matter

V

CARNIVAL

To Martin Harvey - who brought my best work to life

Contents

Preface 7 PART ONE: TEXTS 11 Strangers To Paradise 13 Brides, Bombs and Boardrooms 77 Fete 145 PART TWO: ESSAYS 217 Fear into Laughter 219

Bodies in Pain: Realism and the Subversion of Spectacle in Brides, Bombs and Boardrooms 227 John Lutz

Blowing Up the Nation: Vulnerability and Violence in James MacDonald’s Post-national England 239 Jessica O'Hara

Preface

The realization of the productions, like the coming to pass of this volume, was quintessentially a collaborative achievement and needs to be acknowledged as such. This was all the more vital for the death of my father, which coincided with the production of Brides, Bombs and Boardrooms. Withstanding their own real needs to make a success of the project, the performers embodied compassion and sensitivity to a degree that my father would have cherished. All three groups paid me the ultimate tribute of claiming ownership of the texts and giving owners’ commitments to their realization. Martin Harvey, the volume’s dedicatee, crowned nearly a quarter century’s working together by making these the best texts we have ever brought to performance. Our colleague, Jon Primrose, managed the technical side of the performances with consummate skill and also provided the photos for this volume. Thomas Fahy and I have worked together for nearly ten years, an association whose brilliance is reflected in the excellence of the essays he organized. Tom it was, also, who alerted me to the relevance of Bakhtin’s Carnival in his own inspired research. And his colleagues’ excellence is more than enough to convince any interested reader that cultural discourse in the 21st century is more vibrant - and necessary — than it has ever been, conclusions certified by the continuing courage and enterprise of Intellect and its staff. Of course, I am especially indebted to Roberta Mock and to Jelena Stanovnik for their instrumental work in bringing this volume to life. Everyone here mentioned deserves my heartfelt thanks. Without any one of them, this project would not be the solid thing that it is. I consider it nothing less than the best thing I have done, and this is largely because of what these collaborators have done in bringing it to life.