Blood Brothers

(Paperback, 2nd edition)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

A new Student Edition of Willy Russell's enduring 1983 play, Blood Brothers, offering accessible and vivid insights into the play and the context in which it was written through a C21st lens. As well as exploring the key themes, characters and dramatic devices of the play, and how they map onto our experience today, it conveys how groundbreaking Blood Brothers was at the time in representing working-class lives on stage, as well as explicitly exposing the flaws of the British class system. The commentary by Rebecca Hillman encourages students to: * consider what it must have been like to be at the very first performance of the play in a school classroom in Liverpool; * consider the significance of key phrases in the text, such as "living on the never never" and "the debt must be paid" * make comparisons between life in 1980s Britain and today - "the shrinking pound, the global slump and the price of oil"; * think about what the play celebrates - friendship, family, community, neighbourhood * create their own show based on the story of Blood Brothers to engage their own community This edition offers a much-needed analysis of the play with a lens that today's students will appreciate and be inspired by.

Author Bio

Willy Russell is a playwright and songwriter, and one of the most-produced writers of his time. His plays and musicals for stage and TV including John, Paul, George, Ringo ... and Bert (1974), Breezeblock Park (1975), One for the Road (1976), Our Day Out (television 1977; stage musical version 1983), Stags and Hens (1978; filmed as Dancin' thru the Dark, 1990), Educating Rita (1979), Blood Brothers (1981; musical version 1983), and Shirley Valentine (1986). Rebecca Hillman is Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter, UK. Her research and teaching concerns performance as political activism and agitprop theatre. She focuses on theatre made by activists and trade unions in Britain since the 1960s.