Clare Finburgh Delijani

Staff details

Position Professor

Email c.finburgh (@gold.ac.uk)

I first came to Theatre Studies through Modern Languages, having been inspired by playwrights like Marguerite Duras, Jean Genet and Bertolt Brecht. This initial passion has developed into a research area, and I have published widely on modern and contemporary European theatre. My books in this area include Jean Genet (2012), Contemporary French Theatre and Performance (2011), and Jean Genet: Performance and Politics (2006).

Academic Qualifications

PhD French Studies, University College London
Diplôme d’Études Avancées en Lettres Modernes, Université de Toulouse II
BA Hons. French and German, University of Manchester

Teaching

I have previously taught at the Universities of Kent and Essex, where I won an “Excellence in Teaching Award”. I teach across a broad spectrum of undergraduate and postgraduate modules which include approaches to French, Francophone, German, Belgian and other theatres, political performance, representations of war in theatre, critical theory, and practice-based performance workshops. I have also supervised many PhD candidates to successful completion.

A number of values inform my teaching. First, I believe that students have as much knowledge to share as teachers, and I will always encourage students to develop their own opinions and skills. Second, being a specialist in European theatre, I strive to internationalise and diversify the curriculum to reflect the great range of different performance traditions within and beyond the European continent and to inspire students from all backgrounds to believe that they too can shape the future of world theatre.

Professional Experience

I have also translated several plays from French into English and I have worked as a dramaturg for productions of British plays in France, and French works in the UK. I am also on the editorial committee for one of France’s leading theatre journals, Théâtre/Public.

Selected Work

How to Drift, two-day festival of performances and papers around the Situationist International, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow (June 2017).
Situation/Détournement, two-day festival of performances and papers around the Situationoist International, Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers and Théâtre de L’Échangeur, Paris (March 2017).

Research Interests

I have written widely on French and francophone playwrights and directors including Kateb Yacine, Valère Novarina, Noëlle Renaude, François Tanguy and Michel Vinaver. I received the CHOICE “Outstanding Academic Title” 2012 for Jean Genet (with David Bradby, Routledge, 2011). This monograph offers philosophical, historical, political and aesthetic readings of Genet’s theatre, and an account of his plays in production – scenography, lighting, acting style – that spans 60 years, and provides detail on stagings from France, Spain, Germany, the UK, the USA and Japan.

More recently, my research has reflected two of the most pressing political and social issues of the modern world: the ecological crisis, and global conflict. I have co-edited a volume of eco-critical essays, Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd: Ecology, the Environment and the Greening of the Modern Stage (2015) and written a monograph on representations of war on in recent British theatre, Watching War on the Twenty-First-Century Stage: Spectacles of Conflict (2017).

I have also led an AHRC-funded team of researchers and artists to investigate the legacy in contemporary performance of the Situationist International, a group of radical artists and political agitators who were active during the 1950s and 1960s. This project is called Reviewing Spectacle, and has involved staging two performance festivals, in Paris and Glasgow, which illustrated the impact of the Situationist International on contemporary performance. The project has also resulted in the publication of two internationally co-edited special issue journal editions: Théâtre/Public: Internationale situationniste, Théâtre, Performance (2019) and Performance Research: On Drifting (2019).

Areas of supervision

I have extensive experience of postgraduate and undergraduate supervision, having supervised numerous students to successful completion within the maximum period. I am happy to supervise dissertations and theses in the following areas: any aspect of modern and contemporary European theatre; any aspect of French theatre; Francophone and Anglophone postcolonial theatre; radical and activist performance; representations of war and conflict in the arts; performance theory and critical theory; scenography.

Publications

Article

Finburgh Delijani, Clare. 2020. The Anti-Monumental Cemetery: Ghosts in Jean Genet’s “Quatre heures à Chatila”. French Studies, pp. 1-19. ISSN 0016-1128

Finburgh, Clare. 2017. ‘Violence without Violence’: Spectacle, War and Lola Arias’s MINEFIELD (CAMPO MINADO). Theatre Research International, 42(2), pp. 163-178. ISSN 0307-8833

Finburgh, Clare. 2017. Théâtres de violence : Les nouvelles écritures théâtrales britanniques. Théâtre/Public, 223, pp. 31-64.

Finburgh, Clare. 2014. Press, Patrols and Power: The British Army in Recent UK Theatre. Double jeu - Figurations du pouvoir, pp. 45-55. ISSN 1762 -0597

Finburgh, Clare. 2014. Derrière l’écran : La Guerre à la télévision sur la scène anglaise. Théâtre/Public, 212, pp. 99-108. ISSN 978-2-84260-660-2

Finburgh, Clare. 2014. Theatre’s Other: Event and Testimony in British Verbatim Plays. Sillages critiques, 18, ISSN 1969-6302

Finburgh, Clare. 2012. French Theatre ‘dans la merde’. Contemporary Theatre Review, 22(2), p. 287. ISSN 1048-6801

Finburgh, Clare. 2011. “‘Vérité’ ou ‘mensonge’ ? Le Théâtre politique en Grande-Bretagne post-11 septembre”. Agôn (Special Issue),

Finburgh, Clare. 2010. Internal and External Dramaturgies: The French Context. Contemporary Theatre Review, 20(2), pp. 203-213. ISSN 1048-6801

Finburgh, Clare. 2008. Women in Howard Barker’s Theatre: Object or Subject? Études britanniques contemporaines, 35, pp. 127-139. ISSN 1168-4917

Finburgh, Clare. 2007. Un monstre bariolé : Les Paravents de Jean Genet, mis en scène par Frédéric Fisbach. Alternatives théâtrales, 93(summer), pp. 24-27. ISSN 0774-4145

Finburgh, Clare. 2007. Les Mille plateaux de Noëlle Renaude : Par les routes. Théâtre/Public, 183, pp. 26-31. ISSN 0335-2927

Finburgh, Clare. 2007. Voix/Voie/Vie: The Voice in Contemporary French Theater. Yale French Studies, 112, pp. 99-115. ISSN 0044-0078

Finburgh, Clare. 2005. The Tragedy of Optimism: Kateb Yacine's Le cadavre encercle and Les ancetres redoublent de ferocite. Research in African Literatures, 36(1), pp. 115-129. ISSN 0034-5210

Finburgh, Clare. 2004. Speech Without Acts: Politics and Speech-Act Theory in Genet's The Balcony. Paragraph, 27(2), pp. 113-129. ISSN 0264-8334

Finburgh, Clare. 2004. Unveiling the Void: The Presence of Absence in the Scenography of Jean Genet's The Screens. Theatre Journal, 56(2), pp. 205-224. ISSN 0192-2882

Finburgh, Clare. 2002. Jean Genet and the Poetics of Palestinian Politics: Statecraft as Stagecraft in 'Quatre heures a Chatila'. French Studies, 56(4), pp. 495-509. ISSN 0016-1128

Finburgh, Clare. 2002. Facets of Artifice: Rhythms in the Theater of Jean Genet, and the Painting, Drawing and Sculpture of Alberto Giacometti. French Forum, 27(3), pp. 73-98. ISSN 0098-9355

Finburgh Delijani, Clare. “‘Ces portes entrouvertes qui filtrent le monde’. Graeme Miller : Entretien avec Clare Finburgh Delijani”. Internationale situationniste, Théâtre, Performance, special issue, Théâtre/Public, 231, pp. 82-92.

Finburgh Delijani, Clare. “‘Déborder le cadre’. L’Internationale situationniste, le théâtre et la performance”. Internationale situationniste, Théâtre, Performance, special issue, Théâtre/Public, 231, pp. 16-27.

Finburgh Delijani, Clare. “‘Élargir la part non médiocre de la vie’. La situation construite et le théâtre Contemporain”. Internationale situationniste, Théâtre, Performance, special issue, Théâtre/Public, 230, pp. 46-56.

Finburgh, Clare. “Un metteur en scène, un théâtre, un continent, un monde. Thomas Ostermeier et la Schaubühne. Entretien réalisé par Clare Finburgh”. Théâtre/Public, 230, pp. 4-23.

Book

Finburgh, Clare. 2017. Watching War on the Twenty-First Century Stage: Spectacles of Conflict. Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781472598660

Finburgh, Clare and Bradby, David. 2012. Jean Genet. Routledge. ISBN 9780415375061

Book Section

Finburgh, Clare. 2017. Introduction. In: Chris Campbell, ed. The Oberon Anthology of Contemporary French Plays. Oberon. ISBN 9781786820723

Finburgh, Clare. 2016. Genet mis en scène : Table ronde avec Philippe Adrien, Antoine Bourseiller, Frédéric Fisbach et Sébastien Rajon. In: Agnès Vannouvong, ed. Genet et les arts. Dijon: Les Presses du Réel, pp. 147-160. ISBN 9782840666837

Finburgh, Clare. 2016. Jean Genet et l’art du comédien: Un jeu maladroit. In: Agnès Vannouvong, ed. Genet et les arts. Les Presses du Réel, pp. 119-132. ISBN 9782840666837

Finburgh, Clare. 2015. Mises en scène de l’événement historique: la Terreur dans le théâtre anglais contemporain. In: Catherine Courtet; Mireille Besson; Françoise Lavocat and Alain Viala, eds. Corps en scènes. CNRS, pp. 189-200. ISBN 9782271086747

Finburgh, Clare. 2014. Entries on Jean Genet, Eugène Ionesco and Michel Vinaver. In: Maggie B. Gale and John F. Deeney, eds. Fifty Modern and Contemporary Dramatists. London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415630368

Finburgh, Clare. 2014. Jean Genet Eugène Ionesco, Michel Vinaver. In: Maggie Gale and John Deeney, eds. Fifty Contemporary and Modern Dramatists. Routledge, pp. 101-116. ISBN 9780415630351

Finburgh, Clare. 2012. Quel est le rôle des Nègres de Genet à Londres en 2007 ? The Blacks Remixed au Theatre Royal Stratford East. In: Eden Martin, ed. L'Héritage de Genet. Méthode !, pp. 91-98. ISBN 9782906591610

Finburgh, Clare. 2011. Le théâtre britannique contemporain post-11 septembre 2001: du théâtre verbatim à l’allégorie. In: David Lescot and Laurent Véray, eds. Les mises en scène de la guerre au XXè siècle Théâtre et cinéma. Paris: Presses Universitaires de Paris Ouest, pp. 583-603. ISBN 2847365761

Finburgh, Clare. 2011. “Display and Disguise in Michel Vinaver’s 11 septembre 2001”. In: Manon Mathias; Maria O'Sullivan and Ruth Vortsman, eds. Essays in French Literature, Thought and Culture. Peter Lang, pp. 183-203.

Finburgh, Clare. 2011. Jean Genet et le théâtre de l’‘ornement’. In: Hadrien Laroche, ed. Pour Genet. Editions MEET. ISBN 9782911686719

Finburgh, Clare. 2011. La Théâtralisation de l’attentat : la représentation du terrorisme dans le théâtre britannique contemporain. In: Christine Douxami, ed. Théâtres politiques en mouvement. Besançon: Les Cahiers de la MSHE, pp. 17-27. ISBN 9782848673943

Finburgh, Clare. 2011. Translating Contemporary French Theatre: How ‘Linguistic Translation’ becomes ‘Stage Translation’. In: Roger Baines; Cristina Marinetti and Manuela Perteguella, eds. Staging and Performing Translation. Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 230-249. ISBN 9780230228191

Finburgh, Clare. 2010. Croisements. In: Michel Corvin, ed. Noëlle Renaude : Un atlas alphabétique. Paris: Éditions Théâtrales, pp. 136-138. ISBN 9782842603267

Finburgh, Clare. 2010. La Vue d'ailleurs. In: Michel Corvin, ed. Noëlle Renaude : Un atlas alphabétique. Paris: Éditions Théâtrales, pp. 162-163. ISBN 9782842603267

Finburgh, Clare. 2006. 'Micro-treatise on a Mini-politics': Genet, Individualism and Collectivity. In: Clare Finburgh; Carl Lavery and Maria Shevtsova, eds. Jean Genet: Performance and Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 79-91. ISBN 9780230595439

Edited Book

Finburgh, Clare and Boenisch, Peter, eds. 2018. The Great Stage Directors, volume 6: Littlewood, Planchon, Strehler. London: Bloomsbury Methuen. ISBN 9781474254168

Lavery, Carl and Finburgh, Clare, eds. 2015. Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd: Ecology, the Environment and the Greening of the Modern Stage. Bloomsbury. ISBN 9781472513205

Finburgh, Clare and Lavery, Carl, eds. 2011. Contemporary French Theatre and Performance. Palgrave. ISBN 9780230305663

Finburgh, Clare; Lavery, Carl and Shevtsova, Maria, eds. 2006. Jean Genet: Performance and Politics. Palgrave. ISBN 9780230595439

Edited Journal

Finburgh, Clare, ed. 2014. Migration, Comparative Critical Studies, 11(2-3). 1744-1854