Okay, so, the other day I was trying to dive deep into this whole “Methuen Drama” thing. I’d heard the name tossed around, you know? Like it’s some big deal in the world of plays and stuff. So, I started digging.
First thing I did was just a simple search, just to get my bearings. I mean, what even is Methuen Drama? Turns out, it’s like this big publisher, or part of a publisher, that puts out a whole bunch of plays. And they’ve got these guides, these “authoritative guides,” to contemporary playwrights – both British and Irish, it seems. Like, these guides are supposed to be the real deal, you know?
So, I started looking into these guides. I found one, The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary British Playwrights. And it’s got a list of like 25 playwrights, people who got big after the 1980s, apparently. Then I see another one, The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary Irish Playwrights. This one seems pretty similar, except it’s all about Irish writers. 50 years of playwrights!
I gotta say, finding all this was a bit of a maze. I ended up looking at different entries about these guides. Each one was all about “authoritative guides” and a bunch of playwrights. Then there were all these names attached to them. Like, there’s this Martin Middeke, who’s apparently some big shot professor, and Peter Paul Schnierer, and Aleks Sierz. I guess these guys are like the experts who put these guides together.
And then, I found out Methuen Drama isn’t just about these guides. They’ve got a whole series, the Play Collections series, where they put out anthologies of plays from all over the place. Different styles, different forms. It’s like a whole world of plays I didn’t even know existed.
There was some history book too. The Methuen Drama Handbook of Theatre History and Historiography. I guess it was a prize winning one. Sounds pretty heavy, right?
So, I kind of went down this rabbit hole, just clicking and reading. And what I realized is, Methuen Drama, it’s this big thing, this big resource for anyone who’s into plays. I mean, there are playwrights I’d never heard of, plays I’d never seen. It was really eye-opening, you know?
- Spent hours just searching and reading.
- Got lost in all these names and titles.
- Felt like I discovered a whole new world of drama.
It wasn’t a quick search. I got some info about names called Martin Middeke, Peter Paul, maybe some other ones, and a publishing company called Bloomsbury. It was a whole journey, but I feel like I’ve got a better handle on what Methuen Drama is all about now. It’s like this massive library of plays and information, just waiting to be explored.
