Aoise Stratford

A winner of the Knight Award for Writing Exercises and Handouts, this work originates from Performing and Media Arts 1108, Drama Down Under: Theatre of Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific. The worksheets aim to help students turn close reading into clear analysis, through pre-writing for the second essay of the semester. The sequence brings together three activities—(1) developing strategies for active close reading; (2) integrating sources into writing; and (3) improving clarity of sentences—as preparation for writing a basic analysis paper on a character in a play who is used to express one of the play's central ideas. 8 page pdf

This article seeks to reclaim the maligned term Gothic for contemporary theatre in a feminist and postcolonial context. It does so by offering a feminist, postcolonial Gothic reading of Sarah Kane’s controversial first play, Blasted (1995). Gothic hermeneutics make clear the often overlooked feminist and postcolonial critiques embedded in Blasted’s apparent inconsistencies, its bloody imagery, its hybridization of known forms and influences, its innovative slippage between mimetic and metaphorical registers, and its sensational national and global politics. The article focuses on Kane’s reinvention of four iconic Gothic conventions: the chamber, the ruin, the unspeakable narrative, and the vampire. Analysing these features, I demonstrate that the Gothic offers an illuminating approach to Kane’s work that situates her in an important genealogy, one with significant potential for feminist theatre and performance in the twenty-first century.

Page 1. archives, Heather Nathans has done a remarkable job of hunting and gathering. ... By M. Susan Anthony. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008; pp. 203. $39.95 paper. doi:10.1017/ S0040557411000238 Reviewed by Aoise Stratford, Cornell University ...

Page 1. archives, Heather Nathans has done a remarkable job of hunting and gathering. ... By M. Susan Anthony. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008; pp. 203. $39.95 paper. doi:10.1017/ S0040557411000238 Reviewed by Aoise Stratford, Cornell University ...