Sex, Gender, and Sexualities in Edward Albee's Plays


Book Description

Sex, Gender, and Sexualities in the Plays of Edward Albee contains a general introduction and eleven essays by American and European Albee scholars on Albee’s depictions of gender relations, sexual relations, monogamy, child-rearing, and homosexuality. The volume includes close readings of individual plays and more general theoretical and historical discussions. Contributors: Henry Albright, Mary Ann Barfield, Araceli Gonzalez Crespan, Andrew Darr, John M. Clum, Paul Grant, Emeline Jouve, T. Ross Leasure, David Marcia, Cormac O’Brien, Donald Pease, Valentine Vasak




American Dream


Book Description

For use in schools and libraries only. American Dream and Zoo story: two plays




Cast Out


Book Description

This collection by leading theater performers, practitioners, critics, and passionate spectators offers a backstage pass to the personal and creative lives of some of the most important and influential theater artists of the past fifty years: Edward Albee discusses the homophobic critical attacks he endured in the 50s and 60s; Cherry Jones talks about the first time she accepted a Tony Award - and her decision, in that moment, to come out; Peggy Shaw speaks of the drag queen who first inspired her stage career; Craig Lucas issues an impassioned call for theater practitioners and other artists to unite for the sake of art, creativity, and social change. Also included are memoirs by and interviews with Kate Bornstein, Lisa Kron, Tim Miller, and George C. Wolfe, among others. These diverse voices dispel forever the cliche of theater as a safe haven and replace the stereotype with a nuanced group portrait of the ways in which theater and queerness intersect in our lives.




The Cambridge Companion to Edward Albee


Book Description

Edward Albee, perhaps best known for his acclaimed and infamous 1960s drama Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, is one of America's greatest living playwrights. Now in his seventies, he is still writing challenging, award-winning dramas. This collection of essays on Albee, which includes contributions from the leading commentators on Albee's work, brings fresh critical insights to bear by exploring the full scope of the playwright's career, from his 1959 breakthrough with The Zoo Story to his recent Broadway success, The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? (2002). The contributors include scholars of both theatre and English literature, and the essays thus consider the plays both as literary texts and as performed drama. The collection considers a number of Albee's lesser-known and neglected works, provides a comprehensive introduction and overview, and includes an exclusive, original interview with Mr Albee, on topics spanning his whole career.




Eminent Outlaws


Book Description

This “standard text of the defining era of gay literati” tells the cultural history of the interconnected lives of the 20th century's most influential gay writers (Philadelphia Inquirer). In the years following World War II a group of gay writers established themselves as major cultural figures in American life. Truman Capote, the enfant terrible, whose finely wrought fiction and nonfiction captured the nation's imagination. Gore Vidal, the wry, withering chronicler of politics, sex, and history. Tennessee Williams, whose powerful plays rocketed him to the top of the American theater. James Baldwin, the harrowingly perceptive novelist and social critic. Christopher Isherwood, the English novelist who became a thoroughly American novelist. And the exuberant Allen Ginsberg, whose poetry defied censorship and exploded minds. Together, their writing introduced America to gay experience and sensibility, and changed our literary culture. But the change was only beginning. A new generation of gay writers followed, taking more risks and writing about their sexuality more openly. Edward Albee brought his prickly iconoclasm to the American theater. Edmund White laid bare his own life in stylized, autobiographical works. Armistead Maupin wove a rich tapestry of the counterculture, queer and straight. Mart Crowley brought gay men's lives out of the closet and onto the stage. And Tony Kushner took them beyond the stage, to the center of American ideas. With authority and humor, Christopher Bram weaves these men's ambitions, affairs, feuds, loves, and appetites into a single sweeping narrative. Chronicling over fifty years of momentous change-from civil rights to Stonewall to AIDS and beyond. Eminent Outlaws is an inspiring, illuminating tale: one that reveals how the lives of these men are crucial to understanding the social and cultural history of the American twentieth century.




Gender, Sexuality, and the Cold War


Book Description

As Marko Dumančić writes in his introduction to Gender, Sexuality, and the Cold War, "despite the centrality of gender and sexuality in human relations, their scholarly study has played a secondary role in the history of the Cold War. . . . It is not an exaggeration to say that few were left unaffected by Cold War gender politics; even those who were in charge of producing, disseminating, and enforcing cultural norms were called on to live by the gender and sexuality models into which they breathed life." This underscores the importance of this volume, as here scholars tackle issues ranging from depictions of masculinity during the all-consuming space race, to the vibrant activism of Indian peasant women during this period, to the policing of sexuality inside the militaries of the world. Gender, Sexuality, and the Cold War brings together a diverse group of scholars whose combined research spans fifteen countries across five continents, claiming a place as the first volume to examine how issues of gender and sexuality impacted both the domestic and foreign policies of states, far beyond the borders of the United States, during the tumult of the Cold War.




Trifles


Book Description




Edward Albee and Absurdism


Book Description

In Edward Albee and Absurdism—the inaugural volume in the new book series, New Perspectives in Edward Albee Studies—Michael Y. Bennett has assembled an outstanding team of Edward Albee scholars to address Albee’s affiliation with Martin Esslin’s label, “Theatre of the Absurd,” examining whether or not this label is appropriate. From scholarly essays and lengthy review-essays to an important interview with the noted playwright and director, Emily Mann, the aim of this collection is to, at last, directly (and indirectly) confront Esslin’s label in regards to Albee’s plays in order to create a scholarly atmosphere that allows future Albee scholars to move on to new and, frankly, more relevant lines of inquiry. Contributors are: Michael Y. Bennett, Linda Ben-Zvi, David A. Crespy, Colin Enriquez, Lincoln Konkle, David Marcia, Dena Marks, Brenda Murphy, Tony Jason Stafford, and Kevin J Wetmore Jr.




Out on Stage


Book Description

This intriguing, authoritative book tracks stage representations of lesbians and gay men from Oscar Wilde to the present day and examines scores of British and American plays and playwrights, including works by Wilde, Maugham, Coward, Hellman, O'Neill, Le Roi Jones, and Joe Orton.




100 Greatest American Plays


Book Description

Theatre in America has had a rich history—from the first performance of the Lewis Hallam Troupe in September 1752 to the lively shows of modern Broadway. Over the past few centuries, significant works by American playwrights have been produced, including Abie’s Irish Rose, Long Day’s Journey into Night, A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, A Raisin in the Sun, Fences, and Angels in America. In 100 Greatest American Plays, Thomas S. Hischak provides an engaging discussion of the best stage productions to come out of the United States. Each play is discussed in the context of its original presentation as well as its legacy. Arranged alphabetically, the entries for these plays include: plot details production history biography of the playwright literary aspects of the drama critical reaction to the play major awards the play’s influence cast lists of notable stage and film versions The plays have been selected not for their popularity but for their importance to American theatre and include works by Edward Albee, Harvey Fierstein, Lorraine Hansberry, Lillian Hellman, Tony Kushner, David Mamet, Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill, Sam Shepard, Neil Simon, Gore Vidal, Wendy Wasserstein, Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, and August Wilson. This informative volume also includes complete lists of Pulitzer Prize winners for Drama, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for American Plays, and the Tony Award for Best Play. Providing critical information about the most important works produced since the eighteenth century, 100 Greatest American Plays will appeal to anyone interested in the cultural history of theatre.