State of Play by David Edgar Essay -- masculinity, power, gay men

David Edgar, in his book State of Play Playwrights on Playwriting (1999) highlights the item that in the mid 90s there seemed to be an over-arching report (edgar, 1999, p27) in contemporary British play that looked at suppositions of masculinity. Gay plays kindred Jonathan Harveys Beautiful Thing lads plays like Jez Butterworths Mojo and girls-in-a-boys band plays like Irving Welshs Trainspotting address masculinity and its discontents (ibid, p.27). In this experiment I will look at what ideas of masculinity atomic number 18, and how these discontents have been turn to in contemporary theatre (and the idea of the decline of the dominant constituent of men(edgar, 1999, p.28)) and how the crisis of masculinity(ref) has been staged. I will do this by looking at performances from Ron Athey, Franko B, and Gregory Burkes Black Watch. Firstly however, I will look at a definition of what masculinity is, in order to discuss what representations of this idea are being performed in the selected pieces of work.Perhaps one of the main reasons as to wherefore there is thought to be a crisis of masculinity, is because the term itself is so unattackable to define, in a sociological sense. Jack Kahn in his book An unveiling to Masculinities states that masculinity is a hypothetical construct because, in and of itself, it cannot be at a time observed and measured (2009, p.3). This is because masculinities and male behavious are not the simple product of genetic codings or biological predispositions (Whitehead and Barrett, 2001, p.16), it is instead a conceptual idea that is used to explain a collection of behaviors, attitudes, thoughts and emotions that make up a specific identity. masculinity is not just one idea, nor is it specifically a male thing, it is an inte... ...h it had some recognisable substantive basis (Whitehead and Barrett, 2001, p.53)Works CitedBrittan, A. 1989. masculinity and power. Oxford, UK Basil Blackwell.Burke, G. 2007. Black Watch. London Faber and Faber.Edgar, D. 1999. State of play. London Faber and Faber.Kahn, J. S. 2009. An introduction to masculinities. Chichester, U.K. Wiley-Blackwell.Petersen, A. R. 1998. unmask the masculine. London Sage Publications.Phelan, P. 1993. Unmarked. London Routledge.Reeser, T. W. 2010. Masculinities in theory. Chichester Wiley-Blackwell.Richards, M. 2003. Ron Athey, AIDS and the politics of pain. Body, musculus quadriceps femoris and Technology, 3 (2).Sierz, A. 2011. Rewriting the nation. London Methuen Drama.Walsh, F. 2010. Male trouble. Houndmills, Basingstoke Palgrave Macmillan.Whitehead, S. and Barrett, F. J. 2001. The masculinities reader. Cambridge, UK Polity.