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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 January 2009
The plays of Howard Barker are probably more fervently admired and resolutely disliked than those of any other British dramatist of his generation. Although we have twice published interviews with the playwright about his life and work – first in the original Theatre Quarterly, TQ40 (1981), and more recently in NTQ8 (1986) – subsequent articles in NTQ have tended to be critical of his achievements: we are therefore pleased to present here a view of two of his latest plays, The Last Supper and The Bite of the Night, which, while recognizing precisely those qualities for which Barker has often been attacked, suggests that there is a social as well as a highly theatrical purpose behind the ‘postmodern’ approach to theatricality here identified. Th e author, Günther Klotz, teaches and researches in English studies in Berlin, where he has published numerous critical studies and editions of British dramatists and other writers.
1. Pavis, Patrice, ‘The Classical Heritage of Modern Drama: the Case of Postmodern Theatre’, Modern Drama, XXIX, No. 1 (1986), p. 9.Google Scholar
2. Huyssen, Andreas, The Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986, p. 189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3. Barker, Howard, interviewed by Donesky, Finlay, ‘Oppression, Resistance, and the Writer's Testament’, New Theatre Quarterly, II, No. 8 (1986), p. 340.Google Scholar See also Barker, , interviewed by Hay, Malcolm and Trussler, Simon, ‘Energy – and the Small Discovery of Dignity’, Theatre Quarterly, X, No. 40 (1981), p. 3–14Google Scholar; and Barker, , interviewed by Dunn, Tony, Gambit, No. 41 (1984), p. 33–44.Google Scholar
4. Barker, , The Last Supper: a New Testament. London: Calder; New York: Riverrun, 1988, p. 23.Google Scholar
5. Cf. Barker, , The Bite of the Night: an Education. London: Calder; New York: Riverrun, 1988, p. 34Google Scholar (subsequent page numbers in the text refer to this edition).
6. Barker, , ‘The Triumph in Defeat’, The Guardian, 22 08 1988, p. 34.Google Scholar
7. Ibid.