Decades of Modern American Drama


Book Description

The definitive history of modern American drama from the 1930s to the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century




Modern American Drama: Playwriting in the 1930s


Book Description

The Decades of Modern American Drama series provides a comprehensive survey and study of the theatre produced in each decade from the 1930s to 2009 in eight volumes. Each volume equips readers with a detailed understanding of the context from which work emerged: an introduction considers life in the decade with a focus on domestic life and conditions, social changes, culture, media, technology, industry and political events; while a chapter on the theatre of the decade offers a wide-ranging and thorough survey of theatres, companies, dramatists, new movements and developments in response to the economic and political conditions of the day. The work of the four most prominent playwrights from the decade receives in-depth analysis and re-evaluation by a team of experts, together with commentary on their subsequent work and legacy. A final section brings together original documents such as interviews with the playwrights and with directors, drafts of play scenes, and other previously unpublished material. The major playwrights and their works to receive in-depth coverage in this volume include: * Clifford Odets: Waiting for Lefty (1935), Awake and Sing! (1935) and Golden Boy (1937); * Lillian Hellman: The Children's Hour (1934), The Little Foxes (1939), and Days to Come (1936); * Langston Hughes: Mulatto (1935), Mule Bone (1930, with Zora Neale Hurston) and Little Ham (1936); * Gertrude Stein: Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights (1938), Four Saints in Three Acts (written in 1927, published in 1932) and Listen to Me (1936).




Modern American Drama: Playwriting in the 1940s


Book Description

Introduction: Living in the 1940s -- Prelude to World War II -- Leaders of the decade -- World War II -- The war's impact on civilian life -- Post-war domestic life and consumerism -- Children -- Teen-agers -- Communications, media, and transportation -- Women and fashion -- The culture -- Cold War anxieties -- 1. The American theatre in the 1940s -- The late 1930s: forebodings of war -- Idiot's delight -- Influential organizations -- It can't happen here -- Broadway plays and musicals -- Radio drama -- The 1940-41 and 1941-42 seasons -- African American theatre -- Broadway plays and musicals -- Lady in the dark -- The American Theatre Wing and other war service organizations -- Radio drama -- The war years, 1942-1943 -- Broadway plays and musicals -- This is the army -- Oklahoma! -- The Paul Robeson Othello -- Post-war theatre, 1946-1950 -- African-American theatre -- Broadway plays and musicals -- Modern dance and theatrical dance -- Tributary theatres -- Directors and producers -- 2. Introducing the playwrights -- Introduction -- Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953) -- Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) -- Tennessee Williams (1911-1983) -- Arthur Miller (1915-2005) -- 3. Eugene O'Neill: love and loss of the soul by Zander Brietzske -- A touch of the poet -- The iceman cometh -- Long day's journey into night -- A moon for the misbegotten -- 4. Thornton Wilder: seeing beyond dark times by Felicia Hardison Londre -- Our town -- The skin of our teeth -- Shadow of a doubt -- The alcestiad -- 5. Tennessee Williams: experimentation and "The great American play" by Thomas Keith -- Battle of angels -- Stairs to the roof -- The glass menagerie -- Summer and smoke -- A streetcar named desire -- 6. Arthur Miller: the individual and social responsibility by Valleri J. Robinson -- All my sons -- Death of a salesman -- The crucible -- 7. Documents: A high-school perspective on theatre in 1947 by Ann Crisp; Collecting O'Neill by Lamar Lentz; Acting in The skin of our teeth with Helen Hayes by Hank Whittemore; Tennessee Williams in Provincetown by David Kaplan; Mapping Arthur Miller's Brooklyn by Steven Marino; Retrospective by Thomas D. Pawley III -- Afterword




Modern American Drama: Playwriting 2000-2009


Book Description

The Decades of Modern American Drama series provides a comprehensive survey and study of the theatre produced in each decade from the 1930s to 2009 in eight volumes. Each volume equips readers with a detailed understanding of the context from which work emerged: an introduction considers life in the decade with a focus on domestic life and conditions, social changes, culture, media, technology, industry and political events; while a chapter on the theatre of the decade offers a wide-ranging and thorough survey of theatres, companies, dramatists, new movements and developments in response to the economic and political conditions of the day. The work of the four most prominent playwrights from the decade receives in-depth analysis and re-evaluation by a team of experts, together with commentary on their subsequent work and legacy. A final section brings together original documents such as interviews with the playwrights and with directors, drafts of play scenes, and other previously unpublished material. The major playwrights and their plays to receive in-depth coverage in this volume include: * Theresa Rebeck: Omnium Gatherum (2003), Mauritius (2007), and The Understudy (2008); * Sarah Ruhl: Eurydice (2003), Clean House (2004), and In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play) (2009); * Lynn Nottage: Intimate Apparel (2003), Fabulation or Re-Education of Undine (2004), and Ruined (2008); * Charles Mee: Big Love (2000), Wintertime (2005), and Hotel Cassiopeia (2006).







The Theater of Trauma


Book Description

The Theater of Trauma is a groundbreaking rereading of the relations between psychology and drama in the age of Eugene O'Neill, Susan Glaspell, and their many brilliant contemporaries. American modernist Theater of Trauma drew its vision from the psychological investigation of trauma and its consequences - among them hysteria and dissociation - made by French and American psychiatrists such as the great Pierre Janet, Alfred Binet, William James, Morton Prince, and W.E.B. Du Bois; the European and American «dissociationist culture» that developed around their work; and the resulting trauma of World War I. American dramatists' deep resistance to Freud's suppression of trauma challenges the equation of Freud and modernism that has become commonplace in modernist criticism.




Modern American Drama: Playwriting in the 1960s


Book Description

The Decades of Modern American Drama series provides a comprehensive survey and study of the theatre produced in each decade from the 1930s to 2009 in eight volumes. Each volume equips readers with a detailed understanding of the context from which work emerged: an introduction considers life in the decade with a focus on domestic life and conditions, social changes, culture, media, technology, industry and political events; while a chapter on the theatre of the decade offers a wide-ranging and thorough survey of theatres, companies, dramatists, new movements and developments in response to the economic and political conditions of the day. The work of the four most prominent playwrights from the decade receives in-depth analysis and re-evaluation by a team of experts, together with commentary on their subsequent work and legacy. A final section brings together original documents such as interviews with the playwrights and with directors, drafts of play scenes, and other previously unpublished material. The major playwrights and their plays to receive in-depth coverage in this volume include: * Edward Albee: The American Dream (1960), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), A Delicate Balance (1966) and Tiny Alice (1964 ); * Amiri Baraka: Dutchman (1964), The Slave (1964) and Slaveship (1967); * Adrienne Kennedy: Funnyhouse of a Negro (1964), Cities in Bezique (The Owl Answers and A Beast's Story, 1969), and A Rat's Mass (1967); * Jean-Claude van Itallie: American Hurrah (1966), The Serpent (1968) and War (1963).




Modern American Drama: Playwriting in the 1960s


Book Description

The Decades of Modern American Drama series provides a comprehensive survey and study of the theatre produced in each decade from the 1930s to 2009 in eight volumes. Each volume equips readers with a detailed understanding of the context from which work emerged: an introduction considers life in the decade with a focus on domestic life and conditions, social changes, culture, media, technology, industry and political events; while a chapter on the theatre of the decade offers a wide-ranging and thorough survey of theatres, companies, dramatists, new movements and developments in response to the economic and political conditions of the day. The work of the four most prominent playwrights from the decade receives in-depth analysis and re-evaluation by a team of experts, together with commentary on their subsequent work and legacy. A final section brings together original documents such as interviews with the playwrights and with directors, drafts of play scenes, and other previously unpublished material. The major playwrights and their plays to receive in-depth coverage in this volume include: * Edward Albee: The American Dream (1960), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1962), A Delicate Balance (1966) and Tiny Alice (1964 ); * Amiri Baraka: Dutchman (1964), The Slave (1964) and Slaveship (1967); * Adrienne Kennedy: Funnyhouse of a Negro (1964), Cities in Bezique (The Owl Answers and A Beast's Story, 1969), and A Rat's Mass (1967); * Jean-Claude van Itallie: American Hurrah (1966), The Serpent (1968) and War (1963).




Modern American Drama: Playwriting in the 1950s


Book Description

The Decades of Modern American Drama series provides a comprehensive survey and study of the theatre produced in each decade from the 1930s to 2009 in eight volumes. Each volume equips readers with a detailed understanding of the context from which work emerged: an introduction considers life in the decade with a focus on domestic life and conditions, social changes, culture, media, technology, industry and political events; while a chapter on the theatre of the decade offers a wide-ranging and thorough survey of theatres, companies, dramatists, new movements and developments in response to the economic and political conditions of the day. The work of the four most prominent playwrights from the decade receives in-depth analysis and re-evaluation by a team of experts, together with commentary on their subsequent work and legacy. A final section brings together original documents such as interviews with the playwrights and with directors, drafts of play scenes, and other previously unpublished material. The major writers and their works to receive in-depth coverage in this volume include: * William Inge: Picnic (1953), Bus Stop (1955) and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1957); * Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Laurents and Jerome Robbins: West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959); * Alice Childress: Just a Little Simple (1950), Gold Through the Trees (1952) and Trouble in Mind (1955); * Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee: Inherit the Wind (1955), Auntie Mame (1956) and The Gang's All Here (1959).




Modern American Drama: Playwriting in the 1990s


Book Description

The Decades of Modern American Playwriting series provides a comprehensive survey and study of the theatre produced in each decade from the 1930s to 2009 in eight volumes. Each volume equips readers with a detailed understanding of the context from which work emerged: an introduction considers life in the decade with a focus on domestic life and conditions, social changes, culture, media, technology, industry and political events; while a chapter on the theatre of the decade offers a wide-ranging and thorough survey of theatres, companies, dramatists, new movements and developments in response to the economic and political conditions of the day. The work of the four most prominent playwrights from the decade receives in-depth analysis and re-evaluation by a team of experts, together with commentary on their subsequent work and legacy. A final section brings together original documents such as interviews with the playwrights and with directors, drafts of play scenes, and other previously unpublished material. The major playwrights and their plays to receive in-depth coverage in this volume include: * Tony Kushner: Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, Part One and Part Two (1991), Slavs! Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness (1995) and A Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds (1997); * Paula Vogel: Baltimore Waltz (1992), The Mineola Twins (1996) and How I Learned to Drive (1997); * Suzan-Lori Parks: The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (1990), The America Play (1994) and Venus (1996); * Terrence McNally: Lips Together, Teeth Apart (1991), Love! Valour! Compassion! (1997) and Corpus Christi (1998).