This submission comprises an example of creative practice in writing verse drama dealing with contemporary settings and political concerns for mainstream theatre performance in England, together with an examination of the challenges this posed and the theoretical research and creative practice that resulted in the decisions made.
The project arose from the perception that the most urgent political issue of the time was the rise of “post-truth” populism in most major liberal democracies, and that verse drama offered the form most suited to its full dramatic interrogation. This arises from the form’s ability to depict how the presentation of that movement’s charismatic central figures relies heavily upon their construction of personae and idiolects, personal styles of discourse that deliberately challenge or break the conventions of more politically orthodox forms, how these personae and idiolects then try to create alternative realities, facts and modes of discourse in which they can dominate, and how the battle for dominance within and against these modes forms a central conflict they create.
The resulting play, Mulvaney, is written in a conventional five act structure using a combination of heroic couplets and iambic pentameter with some short sections in prose. The accompanying commentary examines the justification for the use of verse in addressing this subject matter and in contemporary theatre more generally. In so doing it identifies in particular how verse rhythm and form and their variation can depict the idiolect of a character, how the strict verse forms adopted for the play and the characters’ exploitation and control of those forms can convey personality, and how the competition between characters to dominate the formal patterns created can be used as an expressive device in depicting the dynamics between them.
Detailed examination of the recent work of two poet-playwrights, Tony Harrison and Simon Armitage, identifies important examples of analogous technical devices which were further evolved in the creation of the play for these expressive purposes. A detailed account of the genesis of the play and the results of practical trials in the form of workshop performances of sections from it provides an account of the evolution of these techniques and their disposition in the play.
The result is an example of creative practice embodying verse techniques which derive from the examples identified in the work of Armitage and Harrison, but differ materially from them in the manner in which they are used, and extend and refine these techniques further in the depiction of dynamics between characters by their competition for control and dominance within the formal patterns of the verse. This is accompanied by a detailed examination of those techniques and the process of their evolution within a project dominated by considerations of dramatic effectiveness.
