Editing Howard Barker (section)

==The Theatre of Catastrophe==
Barker has coined the term "Theatre of Catastrophe" to describe his work.<ref name="Barker">{{cite book |last=Barker |first=Howard |title=Arguments for a Theatre |publisher=Manchester University Press |location=Manchester, UK |edition=third |date=15 November 1997 |isbn=978-0-7190-5249-1}}</ref> His plays often explore [[violence]], [[Human sexuality|sexuality]], the desire for [[Power (philosophy)|power]], human [[motivation]] and the limits of language.

Rejecting the widespread notion that an audience should share a single response to the events onstage, Barker works to fragment response, forcing each viewer to wrestle with the play alone.{{Citation needed|date=December 2008}} "We must overcome the urge to do things in unison", he writes. "To chant together, to hum banal tunes together, is not collectivity."<ref name="Barker"/> Where other playwrights might clarify a scene, Barker seeks to render it more complex, ambiguous, and unstable.{{Citation needed|date=December 2008}}

Only through a tragic renaissance, Barker argues, will beauty and poetry return to the stage. "Tragedy liberates language from banality", he asserts. "It returns poetry to speech."{{Citation needed|date=October 2015}}