Kategoria BISAC: Literary Criticism >> Drama

The plays of Tennessee Williams are some of the greatest triumphs of the American theatre. If Williams is not the most important American playwright, he surely is one of the two or three most celebrated, rivaled only by Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller. In a career that spanned almost five decades, he created an extensive canon of more than 70 plays. His contributions to the American theatre are inestimable and revolutionary. "The Glass Menagerie" (1945) introduced poetic realism to the American stage; "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1947) explored sexual and psychological issues that had...

Since its Golden Age, Spanish drama has evolved in considerably unintended and unexpected ways with the contemporary playwrights of any present time engaging in experimental forms and treating current political issues intended to modernize, reformulate, and re-conceptualize the State and the stage. This reference includes alphabetically arranged entries on 33 Spanish dramatists from the eighteenth century to the present. Some of these figures have been translated, anthologized, and studied for centuries; others remain known chiefly to specialists; still others are active in contemporary...

This book is designed to educate the reader about the evolution and development of arms, armor, and personal combat for the stage. It is the perfect guide for locating books, articles, and videos for those involved in the historical reenactment of duels and battles. It simultaneously offers historical context and points the reader toward useful and easily obtainable resources to inform their fights, costumes, and stage weaponry. This resource text is a must have for fight directors, teachers of stage combat, historical re-enactors, costumers, and weapons makers.

The body of the work is...

Traditions of folk drama exist throughout the world, ranging from simple forms that involve few people, rudimentary texts, and crude performance practices, to complex forms involving entire towns, highly elaborated texts, and performance practices that have developed over hundreds of years. Yet folk drama lacks, to this day, a full-length study from the perspectives of either folkloristics or drama studies. This work seeks to fill that lack by undertaking a bi-disciplinary study of the idea of folk drama, drawing on examples from around the world, including Yangge (China), Ta'ziyeh (Iran),...

Born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin in 1622, the French playwright Moli DEGREESDere became one of the most influential dramatists of the 17th century. His comedies shaped the development of theater in Europe, inspired his contemporaries in England, and left a lasting dramatic legacy after his death in 1673. Moli DEGREESDre has also inspired a vast body of scholarship, and recent work has dispelled many of the myths surrounding his career. This reference provides English-speaking readers with a current and comprehensive guide to his life and works.

Hundreds of A-Z entries cover topics related to...

In the late nineteenth century, Asian American drama made its debut with the spotlight firmly on the lives and struggles of Asians in North America, rather than on the cultures and traditions of the Asian homeland. Today, Asian American playwrights continue to challenge the limitations of established theatrical conventions and direct popular attention toward issues and experiences that might otherwise be ignored or marginalized. While Asian American literature came into full bloom in the last 25 years, Asian American drama has yet to receive the kind of critical attention it warrants. This...

"Twelfth Night" is one of the most accessible and yet elusive of Shakespeare's plays. It has enjoyed enormous popularity in performance, but it continues to challenge students. This guide provides a thorough introduction to the play. Included are chapters on the play's background, contexts, themes, dramatic art, critical reception, and performance history. The volume cites current scholarship and closes with a bibliography.

"Twelfth Night" is one of the most accessible yet elusive of Shakespeare's plays. It has enjoyed enormous popularity in performance, but it continues to challenge...

How can the most silent member of the family carry the message of subversion against venerated institutions of state and society? Why would two playwrights, writing 300 years apart, employ the same dramatic methods for rebelling against the establishment, when these methods are virtually ignored by their contemporaries? This book considers these and similar questions. It examines the historical similarities of the eras in which Shakespeare and Shaw wrote and then explores types of father-daughter interactions, considering each in terms of the existing power structures of society.

These...

"Fences" is the story of a responsible yet otherwise flawed black garbage collector in pre-Civil Rights America who, in August Wilson's hands, rises to the level of an epic hero. Deemed a generational play, it mirrors the classic struggle of status quo, tradition, and age, versus change, innovation, and youth. During its 1987 Broadway run, "Fences" garnered four Tony Awards, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. It has been produced around the world and is one of the most significant African-American plays of the 20th century. This reference is a comprehensive...

The uniquely thematic approach of this resource will help teachers and librarians identify pertinent works of modern drama for students, and will enhance readers' understanding of these works. Organized alphabetically around 33 themes, each chapter presents an engaging essay exploring different perspectives of the theme in three representative plays. Readers will encounter themes of historical significance such as the heritage of slavery and the Holocaust, as well as timeless themes such as betrayal and guilt, growing up, and ambition and fame.

Ninety-nine plays are discussed,...

The North of Ireland has long been plagued by violent conflict, and dramatic works from that region often reflect the ongoing social turmoil. This book uses trauma theory to analyze dramatic productions from the North of Ireland. After a person is initially exposed to violence, their sense of identity is ruptured. In an effort to shield themselves from trauma, victims then construct identities, but those identities do not fully integrate traumatic experiences. Ultimately, some individuals successfully assimilate their exposure to traumatic events. This book examines how dramatic...

Shakespeare knew actors because he was one. The first book-length study of its kind, this volume investigates Shakespeare as a member of his acting company, dating and casting all the plays they presented from 1594 to 1614, and exploring the effects of actors on his writing. Much has been written about Shakespeare and a great deal is known about the Elizabethan theater. Yet little has been done to examine Shakespeare in relation to his acting company. This book casts light on Shakespeare's life in drama and the creation and staging of his plays. More precisely than any other work, it...

This study explores the relationship between humans and machines during an age when technology became increasingly domesticated and accepted as an index to the American dream. The marriage between dramatic art and dramatic technology stems from the physical realities of staging and from the intimate connection of technology with human labor inside and outside the household. This book examines how American dramatists of the 1920s drew upon European Expressionism and innovative staging techniques to develop their characters and themes, and how later playwrights, such as Tennessee Williams...

Using a psychoanalytic approach, the author assesses the consequences of judging persons of color by an impure gaze that undermines their humanity and psychological health. "Color Struck Under the Gaze" examines the characters in the plays of Georgia Douglas Johnson (1880-1966), Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), Alice Childress (1916-1994), and Adrienne Kennedy (1931- ). The author employs the theories of Kristeva, Freud, Lutz, Foucault, Lacan, and Laing to support a psychoanalytic approach that penetrates beneath the surface of the characters, exposing the pathologies therein. A fascinating...

One of the most important playwrights of the Irish Renaissance, John Millington Synge is receiving renewed attention as his works are reread in light of the political and cultural contexts of his time. This book argues that his plays are far more deeply rooted, thematically and aesthetically, in the ancient native literature than was previously believed. It demonstrates that Synge borrowed themes and ideology from the ancient culture, serving as a nationalist agenda far more radical and modern than the agendas of the most common nationalists in his day. Synge rejects these nationalists,...

Whether written for Renaissance law students or the popular crowds at the Globe Theatre, Shakespeare's Coriolanus appeals to a wide audience. With thematic consistency, the play presents the class conflict between Roman patricians and plebeians in terms of metaphors, images, and symbols of the human body and its basic needs for nourishment, love, and security. The play considers the compromises individuals must make if they are to thrive in a social order, and its exploration of the responsibility of individuals to others has never been more timely. This book is a comprehensive...

American playwrights have made enormous contributions to world drama during the last century, and their works are widely read and performed. This reference conveniently introduces 10 of the most important modern American plays read by students. An introductory essay concisely overviews modern American drama, and each of the chapters that follow examines a particular play. Among the plays discussed are Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun," and August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Each chapter includes a biography, a...

Aeschylus' "Oresteia," Sophocles' "Oedipus" plays, Euripides' "Medea" and "Bacchae," and Aristophanes' "Birds" and " Lysistrata" are discussed in this lively and scholarly volume. The author's experience teaching these plays to gifted high school students makes this volume particularly useful. The drama festivals, the adaptations of myth, the relevance of Aristotelian criteria, and the political and cultural background of each play are described fully, and the nature of tragedy and comedy, plot construction, stagecraft, theme, character, imagery and individual odes and speeches are...

Modern British and Irish dramatic works are among the plays most widely read by students. This volume conveniently introduces 10 major plays by British and Irish dramatists. Each chapter is devoted to a particular play and includes a brief biography, a plot synopsis, a discussion of major themes and characters, an overview of the play's historical background, an analysis of the work's dramatic style, an overview of the play's critical reception, and a list of works for further reading.

Modern British and Irish dramatic works are widely enjoyed by general readers and high...

Eugene O'Neill is the only American dramatist ever to have received the Nobel Prize for Literature. He wrote over 50 plays; a number are virtually unknown by the general public; several are considered classics of the American stage; all of them demonstrate, in one way or another, how O'Neill challenged the conventional boundaries of the drama of his time and thereby paved the way for modern American theatre. This volume will provide guides to eight of O'Neill's plays that are most often studied in schools and colleges: "The Hairy Ape, Anna Christie," "The Emperor Jones, Desire Under the...