CONSTANTLY WIRED WORLD: OBVIOUS BENEFITS AND HIDDEN COSTS

• Main Author: Yevgeniya Nikolayevna Shilova
• Format: Article
• Language: Russian
• Published: Ural State Pedagogical University 2017-02-01
• Series: Филологический класс
• Subjects: theatres, playwriting, plays, british literature, british writers, creative writing
• Online Access: https://filclass.ru/en/archive/2017/49/constantly-wired-world-obvious-benefits-and-hidden-costs
• ISSN: 2071-2405; 2658-5235

The article analyses the play «Love and Information» (2012) written by the contemporary British dramatist C. Churchill. Special attention is paid to the experimental structure of this drama: it consists of several dozen of episodes which are but arbitrarily linked by an abstract common topic. However, when working with the text of the play closely, a reader is able to make inferences as to the logic of the conversation and an approximate number of interlocutors. Churchill is at her best as a master of style that feels the subtleties of drama language perfectly. In «Love and Information» the dramatist deliberately complicates comprehension of the action on stage, and it compels the audience to take part in the performance, make their own conclusions and construct the meaning of the play together with theatre directors and actors. The article briefly features the reaction of critics and theatre audience to «Love and Information». The contributor arrives at the conclusion that changes in the comprehension and functioning of modern drama are inevitably connected with the rapid development of technology and its increasing role in everyday life as well as with the changes of the ways of thinking provoked by globalization. Modern theatre which still remains an important social arena fights for the attention and active comprehension of the audience and some of the means of achieving this goal are kaleidoscopic montage and Brechtian estrangement in drama.