Alisa Zhulina shows how canonical fin-de-siècle playwrights interrogated the meaning of capitalism, staging economic questions as moral and political concerns and challenging contemporary socioeconomic theories within the boundaries of bourgeois theater.
Alan C. Dessen's Johnson's Moral Comedy asks the question about the character of Ben Jonson’s comedies: were they sentimental or were they didactic and moralistic comedies? Dessen’s...
Four decades ago Tom F. Driver brought theater into discussion with religion and modern theology. It has been a rich ongoing dialogue, but one that now demands a bold new engagement. In Theater and Integrity, Larry D. Bouchard argues that while the “antitheatrical prejudice” regards theater as epitomizing the absence of integrity, theater’s ways of being realized in ensembles, texts, and performances allow us to reenvision integrity’s emergence and ephemeral presence.
Since their first meeting in Santa Monica, California in 1942, Eric Bentley has been Bertolt Brecht's other, offstage voice. Just as Brecht reshaped modern theater, Bentley's writings on Brecht helped shape his reputation in the United States and the rest of the world. Bentley on Brecht represents a lifetime of critical and personal thoughts on both Brecht as friend and Brecht as influential literary figure. Brought together in this volume are Brecht-Bentley correspondence, Bentley's personal recollections of his years with Brecht, including Charles Laughton's production of Galileo, Brecht's testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and Bentley's analysis of Brecht's plays.
Edited by Mary Floyd-Wilson and Garrett A. Sullivan, Jr.
Renaissance Drama, an annual and interdisciplinary publication, is devoted to drama and performance as a central feature of Renaissance culture. The essays in each volume explore traditional...
Renaissance Drama, an annual and interdisciplinary publication, is devoted to drama and performance as a central feature of Renaissance culture. The essays in each volume explore traditional...
Playwright and critic Albert Bermel examines thirteen modern plays to assess the underpinnings of dramatic conflict. Contradictory Characters inspects the three well-known types of dramatic conflict-between characters, between character and environment, and within the protagonist himself-and argues that the "character-against-himself" is not only a type of conflict, but is indeed the prototypical conflict underlying the others
Renaissance Drama, an annual and interdisciplinary publication, is devoted to drama and performance as a central feature of Renaissance culture. The essays in each volume explore traditional...
To see through the eyes of essayist and dramaturge Jan Kott is to gain in knowledge not just of the theater but also of human culture. Since his Shakespeare Our Contemporary appeared in English in 1964, Kott's work has altered--and strengthened--the way critics and the public approach the theater as a whole. The Memory of the Body highlights a number of dramatic personalities and personages: authors and directors Witkiewicz, Brecht, Kantor, Grotoswki, Ingmar Bergman, Wedekind; Tilly Newes on the stage in turn-of-the-century Vienna; the all-too-mortal, two-thirds divine Gilgamesh; and a shaman in rural Korea. In a style flecked with passion, poignancy, and wit, Kott moves beyond a mere discussion of theater to speak of eroticism, painting, love, and death.
In this lively collection of essays and talks from 1967-80, Heathcote shares the findings of her groundbreaking work in the application of theater techniques and play to classroom teaching. She provides a time-tested philosophy on the value of dramatic activity in breaking down barriers and overcoming inertia. Her insistence that teachers must step down from their pedestals and immerse themselves in the possibility of the moment makes for magical and challenging reading.
