Dead Hands

Dead Hands
ISBN-10
184002464X
ISBN-13
9781840024647
Series
Dead Hands
Category
Drama / General
Pages
72
Language
English
Published
2004
Publisher
Bloomsbury Academic
Author
Howard Barker

Description

Howard Barker's play for three actors and a corpse exemplifies both his dramatic method and his philosophical concerns. Rejecting all forms of social realism, his plays are celebrations of speech in theatre, swooping from heightened artifice to coarse slang in the space of a sentence. Dead Hands also reveals his continuing obsession with the concept of free will, particularly insofar as it affects sexuality.
The protagonist Eff arrives too late to be present at the death of his father. Instead he is immediately preoccupied with the mischievous idea of seducing the dead man's mistress. Barker's disturbing revelation is that death - far from oppressing the spirit of those who witness it - produces a surge of passion for existence that is exaggerated and even grotesque. In this instance, Eff's ecstasy is accompanied and then undermined by a growing suspicion that he is being manipulated from beyond the grave. Is the woman genuinely drawn to Eff, or is she a sinister legacy?

Get the book

Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Search the book
eBay.com
eBay.com
Search the book

Other editions

Similar books

  • Oz Before the Rainbow: L. Frank Baum's the Wonderful Wizard of Oz on Stage and Screen to 1939
    Oz Before the Rainbow: L. Frank Baum's the Wonderful Wizard of Oz on Stage and Screen to 1939
    By Mark Evan Swartz

    Edward Hudlin maintains that the book follows very closely the structure of the heroic myth as outlined by Joseph Campbell ... Carol Pearson and Katherine Pope look at Dorothy's adventures from a mythological and feminist perspective.19 ...

  • Aristophanes Thesmophoriazusae
    Aristophanes Thesmophoriazusae
    By Aristophanes, Colin Austin, S. Douglas Olson

    Cf. Ach. 849; Av. 8o0 on 6é koshiyo ye okóðtov d'Irote TuApévo ('and you [resemble] a blackbird plucked in a bowl-cut'; not a flattering description); Eup. fr. 313. 2 with K-A ad loc.; Hermipp. fr. 13; Poll. ii. 29; Pearson on S. fr.

  • Euripides' The Trojan Women: A New Version
    Euripides' The Trojan Women: A New Version
    By Brendan Kennelly

    Follows the fates of Hecuba, Andromache, Cassandra and the other women of Troy after their city has been sacked, their husbands killed, and their remaining families about to be taken away as slaves (it runs parallel to the events in ...

  • Intimate Exchanges
    Intimate Exchanges
    By Alan Ayckbourn

    And one actor and one actress play all 10 characters. This is Ayckbourn's most unusual look yet at the foibles of middle class living.1 woman, 1 man

  • Ibsen Plays: 3: Rosmersholm , Little Eyolf and Lady from the Sea
    Ibsen Plays: 3: Rosmersholm , Little Eyolf and Lady from the Sea
    By Henrik Ibsen

    Henrik Ibsen Plays : Three Rosmersholm , The Lady from the Sea , Little Eyolf This is the third volume of a six - volume collection presenting all of Ibsen's famous prose plays written in the twenty - five years from 1875 to the end of ...

  • Life's a Dream (La Vida Es Sueño)
    Life's a Dream (La Vida Es Sueño)
    By Pedro Calderon de la Barca

    A beautiful and haunting tale of love, betrayal, knowledge, and power, Life's a Dream (La vida es sueño, 1636) is the best known and most widely admired play of Catholic Europe's greatest dramatist, Pedro Calderón de la Barca.

  • Queer Girls and Popular Culture: Reading, Resisting, and Creating Media
    Queer Girls and Popular Culture: Reading, Resisting, and Creating Media
    By Susan Driver

    Camp is a tender feeling Susan Sontag , “ Notes on Camp ” I personally think , that if you're a queer girl , you better have a damn good sense of humor , otherwise you're gonna get shit on a lot more . Marnie , age 17 Most of the queer ...

  • 해리 포터와 저주받은 아이 1, 2부: 오리지널 웨스트엔드 프로덕션 공식 대본
    해리 포터와 저주받은 아이 1, 2부: 오리지널 웨스트엔드 프로덕션 공식 대본
    By Jack Thorne, John Tiffany, J. K. 롤링

    오리지널 웨스트엔드 프로덕션의 공식 대본.해리 포터로 사는 일은 늘 힘들고, 어른이 되어서도 상황은 크게 나아지지 않는다. 그는 마법부 직원으로 격무에 시달리면서도 한 ...

  • 莎士比亚文集
    莎士比亚文集
    By （英）莎士比亚（ShakespeareW.）

    本书收录了《错误的喜剧》、《爱的徒劳》、《罗密欧与朱丽叶》、《理查二世的悲剧》、《温莎的风流娘儿们》、《裘力斯·凯撒》、《皆大喜欢》、《第十二夜》等13个莎士比亚 ...

  • Parker Plays: 2: Northern Star; Heavenly Bodies; Pentecost
    Parker Plays: 2: Northern Star; Heavenly Bodies; Pentecost
    By Stewart Parker

    "Stewart Parker was a playwright whose sense of history and elegance of wit and feeling were unusual in the British Theatre" (Observer) This volume includes three of Stewart Parker's most striking plays - Northern Star: 'Only an Irishman ...