In American Drama: The Bastard Art, Susan Harris Smith looks at the many often conflicting cultural and academic reasons for the neglect and dismissal of American drama as a legitimate literary form. Covering a wide range of topics - theatrical performance, the rise of nationalist feeling, the creation of academic disciplines, and the development of sociology - Smith's study is a contentious and revisionist historical inquiry into the troubled cultural and canonical status of American drama, both as a literary genre and as a mirror of American society.

What role does food and cooking play in how people imagine themselves and their communities? In this book Wendy Wall argues that representations of housework in the early modern period helped to forge crucial conceptions of national identity. Rich with a detailed account of household practices in the period, Staging Domesticity reads plays on the London stage in the light of the first printed cookbooks in England. Working from original historical sources on wetnursing, laundering, sewing, medical care and butchery, Wall shows that domesticity was represented as deeply familiar but also enticingly alien. Wall analyses a wide range of the repertoire, including some now little-known plays, as well as key works in the period by Shakespeare and others. Wall concludes that, rather than dramatizations of only court-based and aristocratic domestic life, literature of the period drew on work from the more common household.

Exploring Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality in Four Spanish Plays explores society's influence on identity in Spanish theatrical works and discusses parallels to these works in contemporary popular culture. The Spanish plays El retablo de las maravillas (The Marvelous Puppet Show) by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1615), Virtudes vencen senales (Virtues overcome Signs) by Velez de Guevara (1620), El publico (The Audience) by Federico Garcia Lorca (1929), and La llamada de Lauren (Lauren's Call) by Paloma Pedrero (1985) all deal with characters in the midst of a crisis of identity. Using an eclectic approach supported by contemporary theories of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, the author analyzes the four plays in terms of identity and shows how society imposes the construction of identity. As the characters reach to define themselves, internal and external pressures guide them in interpreting acceptable behavior. This book offers a close reading of the psychological struggle of each character driven by society to cover their differences with a symbolic mask which, if donned, will eventually devour their true identity.

Who is the proper occupant of the nursery? The obvious answer is the child, and not an archive, a seductive troll-princess, or poor fosterlings. Nevertheless, characters in Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder, and Little Eyolf intend to host these improper occupants in their children's rooms. Dr. Gunn calls these dramas 'the empty nursery plays' because they all describe rooms intended for offspring, as well as characters' plans for refilling that space. One might expect nurseries to provide an ideal setting for a realist playwright to dramatize contemporary problems. Rather than mattering to Ibsen in terms of naturalist detail or explicit social critique, however, they are reserved for the maintenance of characters' fears and expectations concerning the future. Empty Nurseries, Queer Occupants intervenes in scholarly debates in child studies by arguing that the empty bourgeois nursery is a better symbol for innocence than the child. Here, 'emptiness' refers to the common construction of the child as blank and latent. In Ibsen, the child is also doomed or deceased, and thus essentially absent, but nurseries persist as spaces of memorialization and potential alike. Nurseries also gesture toward the domains of childhood and women's labor, from birth to domestic service. 'Bourgeois nursery' points to the classed construction of innocence and to the more materialist aspects of this book, which inform our understanding of domesticity and family in the West and uncover a set of reproductive connotations broader than 'the innocent child' can convey.

First published in 1980, Mediations supplements, extends, and deepens Martin Esslin's earlier writings on Samuel Beckett and Bertolt Brecht. In the third section of this collection of essays, Esslin discusses the mass media as dramatic art and their effects - radio as a medium for drama; television's insatiable appetite for artistic skills, its commercials, and its series, which he labels modern folk epics. Intimately acquainted with the cultural implications of several languages and ideologies and with the possibility for distortion inherent in translating them, Esslin's Mediations gathers together decades of his rich experience and reflections on cross linguistic and artistic boundaries, as well as theatre. This book will be of interest to students of literature, drama, and media studies.

The most important theatrical movement in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Europe, the commedia dell'arte has inspired playwrights, artists, and musicians including Moliere, Dario Fo, Picasso, and Stravinsky. Because of its stock characters, improvised dialogue, and extravagant theatricalism, the commedia dell'arte is often assumed to be a superficial comic style. With Befriending the Commedia dell'Arte of Flaminio Scala, Natalie Crohn Schmitt demolishes that assumption.

By reconstructing the commedia dell'arte scenarios published by troupe manager Flaminio Scala (1547-1624), Schmitt demonstrates that in its Golden Age the commedia dell'arte relied as much on craftsmanship as on improvisation and that Scala's scenarios are a treasure trove of social commentary on early modern daily life in Italy.

In the book, Schmitt makes use of her intensive research into the social and cultural history of sixteenth-century Italy and the aesthetic principles of the period. She combines this research with her insights drawn from studying with contemporary commedia dell'arte performers and from directing a production of one of Scala's scenarios. The result is a new perspective on the commedia dell'arte that illuminates the style's full richness.

This book discusses Irish Passion plays (plays that rewrite or parody the story of the Passion of Christ) in modern Irish drama from the Irish Literary Revival to the present day. It offers innovative readings of such canonical plays as J. M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World, W. B. Yeats's Calvary, Brendan Behan's The Hostage, Samuel Beckett's Endgame, Brian Friel's Faith Healer and Tom Murphy's Bailegangaire, as well as of less well-known plays by Padraic Pearse, Lady Gregory, G. B. Shaw, Sean O'Casey, Denis Johnston, Samuel Beckett and David Lloyd. Challenging revisionist readings of the rhetoric of "blood sacrifice" and martyrdom in the Irish Republican tradition, it argues that the Passion play is a powerful political genre which centres on the staged death of the (usually male) protagonist, and makes visible the usually invisible violence perpetrated both by colonial power and by the postcolonial state in the name of modernity.

The important influence of the Tudor 'interlude' on later Elizabethan drama is now widely recognized and the inherent theatrical values of these short plays of the era which preceded the opening of permanent theatres have become increasingly apparent through modern productions and study. Largely written for performance by travelling players in a variety of situations, their dramatic technique and methods of staging provide valuable clues for an understanding of Shakespearean theatre. The plays given here represent the interlude in its popular and courtly forms. All are newly edited from the earliest originals and the volume includes an introduction and full explanatory notes.

A unique play anthology featuring five gripping docudramas originally commissioned by L.A. Theatre Works that each explore pivotal moments in 20th century U.S history. With ensemble casts and innovative staging potential these plays are perfect for theatre companies, schools and educational groups looking to stage familiar historical stories in new and original ways. Each play is accompanied by dramaturgical notes that help contextualize and analyze both the events themselves and the dramatic form in which they are presented. The scripts included are: The Great Tennessee Monkey Trial by Peter Goodchild The Real Dr. Strangelove by Peter Goodchild RFK: The Journey to Justice by Murray Horwitz and Jonathan Estrin The Chicago Conspiracy Trial by Peter Goodchild Top Secret: The Battle for the Pentagon Papers by Geoffrey Cowan and Leroy Aarons (Winner of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Best Live Entertainment Award, 1992) As well as five scripts this anthology includes a foreword by Professor Michael Hackett, professor of directing and theatre history at UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.

A guide to the contemporary London stage as well as an argument about its future, the book walks readers through the city's performance spaces following the Brexit vote. Austerity-era London theatre is suffused with the belief that private ownership defines full citizenship, its perspective narrowing to what an affluent audience might find relatable. From pub theatres to the National, Michael Meeuwis reveals how what gets put on in London interacts with the daily life of the neighbourhoods in which they are set. This study addresses global theatregoers, as well as students and scholars across theatre and performance studies-particularly those interested in UK culture after Brexit, urban geography, class, and theatrical economics.

The Art of Experience provides an interdisciplinary analysis of selected plays from Ireland's premier female playwright, Marina Carr. Dagmara Gizlo explores the transformative impact of a theatrical experience in which interdisciplinary boundaries must be crossed. This book demonstrates that theatre is therapeutic and therapy is theatrical. The role of emotions, cognitions, and empathy in the theatrical experience is investigated throughout. Dagmara Gizlo utilises the methodological tools stemming from modern empirically grounded psychology (such as cognitive-behavioural therapy or CBT) to the study of theatre's transformative potential. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of theatre, performance, and literature, and will be a fascinating read for those at the intersection of cognitive studies and the humanities.

Playwright and television writer Kermit Frazier began life as a precocious Negro boy growing up in southeast Washington, D.C., during the Civil Rights era of the 1950s and 1960s. As a student at an all-Black elementary school, Kermit was selected for a newly formed honors track at a predominantly white secondary school. Traveling a complex path, Kermit tore down segregation barriers, balanced on an academic pedestal, and battled an internal war of denial against his same-sex attractions. This memoir is not a story about a young man rising from "the hood" but rather a young Black man struggling with stereotypes, identity, and mild dyslexia while straddling two middle-class worlds, Black and white, and striving not to be everyone's "other.

* This book offers an exciting examination of the theatrical functions of medieval English stage directions as records of earlier performance. * Would be recommended reading in for any undergraduate or master's level students studying the medieval period in Performance studies, English Literature or in History (in particular in the UK and the US). * The closest competitors focus on after 1560 so this project is a first in its time period coverage.

* This book offers an exciting examination of the theatrical functions of medieval English stage directions as records of earlier performance. * Would be recommended reading in for any undergraduate or master's level students studying the medieval period in Performance studies, English Literature or in History (in particular in the UK and the US). * The closest competitors focus on after 1560 so this project is a first in its time period coverage.

This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It contains classical literature works from over two thousand years. Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of international literature classics available in printed format again - worldwide.

When the theatres reopened in 1660, tragedy, the greatest of the Renaissance genres, had vanished. Focusing on the directions taken by tragicomedy and the court masque, this book accounts for the shift in the generic system. After the Restoration a network of Royalist playwrights attempted to redefine their society. Defending the traditional power structure in the new circumstances, they fabricated pious, backward-looking and repetitious myths of monarchy. Carolean tragicomedy reflects the persistent attempt to hold together an uneasily integrated culture, and shows us something of the early Restoration's division and intolerance of ambiguity. In Regicide and Restoration Nancy Klein Maguire accords the long-neglected plays of the 1660s the status of major historical documents.

It is a fact that today's British stages resound with powerfully innovative voices and that, very often, these voices have been those of young women playwrights. This collection of essays gives visibility and pride of place to these fascinating voices by exploring the vitality, inventiveness and particularly strong relevance of these poetics. These women playwrights sometimes invent radically new forms and sometimes experiment with conventional ones in fresh and unexpected ways, as for example when they re-energize naturalism and provide it with new missions. The plays that are addressed are all concerned with the necessity to grasp the complexity of the contemporary world and to further investigate what it means to be human. Intimate or epic, and sometimes both at once, visionary or closer to everyday life, these plays approach the contemporary world through a multitude of prisms - historical, scientific, political and poetic - and open different and visionary perspectives.

Engaging with current debates over the nature of subjectivity in early modern England, this fascinating and original study examines sixteenth and seventeenth century conceptions of memory and forgetting, and their importance to the drama and culture of the time. Garrett A. Sullivan, Jr. discusses memory and forgetting as categories in terms of which a variety of behaviours - from seeking salvation to pursuing vengeance to succumbing to desire - are conceptualized. Drawing upon a range of literary and non-literary discourses, represented by treatises on the passions, sermons, anti-theatrical tracts, epic poems and more, Shakespeare, Marlowe and Webster stage 'self-recollection' and, more commonly, 'self-forgetting', the latter of which provides a powerful model for dramatic subjectivity. Focusing on works such as Macbeth, Hamlet, Dr. Faustus and The Duchess of Malfi, Sullivan reveals memory and forgetting to be dynamic cultural forces central to early modern understandings of embodiment, selfhood and social practice.

Hawaii Nei brings together three plays by one of Hawaii's finest playwrights. A compassionate portrait of early nineteenth- century Hawaii, ""The Conversion of Kaahumanu"" charts the lives of five women during the traumatic, transforming events that followed Western contact. Set in post-World War II Hawaii, ""Emmalehua"" tells the story of a young Hawaiian woman struggling to preserve a cherished cultural heritage in a world eager to forget the past and embrace the new American dream. Through history, humor, and a whodunnit plot, the past and present collide in ""Ola Na Iwi,"" which explores the issues surrounding the treatment of indigenous human remains.

Euripides' Heracles is an extraordinary play of great complexity, exploring the co-existence of both positive and negative aspects of the eponymous hero. Euripides treats Heracles' ambivalence by showing his uncertain position after the completion of his labours and turns him into a tragic hero by dramatizing his development from the invincible hero of the labours to the courageous bearer of suffering. This book offers a comprehensive reading of Heracles examining it in the contexts of Euripidean dramaturgy, Greek drama and fifth-century Athenian society. It shows that the play, which raises profound questions on divinity and human values, deserves to have a prominent place in every discussion about Euripides and about Greek tragedy. Tracing some of Euripides' most spectacular writing in terms of emotional and intellectual effect, and discussing questions of narrative, rhetoric, stagecraft and audience reception, this work is required reading for all students and scholars of Euripides.

Monograph on Martin Crimp, one of Europe's most celebrated playwrights Covers Crimp's most recent work Takes an internationalist approach Is the first book to address Crimp's work of the past decade

Ayn Rand was an American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and for developing a philosophical system known as Objectivism.In the 1930s, Rand was asked to adapt her first novel, We the Living, for the theatre. We the Living is a story of life in post-revolutionary Russia and Rand's first statement against communism. It was not a commercial success when it was published, but has gone on to sell over 3 million copies. The first substantial fiction of Rand to appear in over twenty years, this important volume contains two never-before published versions of the play - the first and last versions (the latter entitled The Unconquered). With a preface that places the work in its historical and political context, an essay on the history of the theatrical adaptation by Jeff Britting, the curator of the Ayn Rand Archives, and two alternative endings, this book is a must-have for anyone interested in Rand's philosophy.

Niru is a young Bengali woman married to an English colonial bureaucrat - Tom. Tom loves Niru, exoticising her as a frivolous plaything to be admired and kept; but Niru has a long-kept secret, and just as she thinks she is almost free of it, it threatens to bring her life crashing down around her. Tanika Gupta re-imagines Ibsen's classic play of gender politics through the lens of British colonialism, offering a bold, female perspective exploring themes of ownership and race. This edition is published for the first time in Methuen Drama's Plays For Young People series, aimed specifically at students aged 16-18 to perform and study.

This volume provides an accessible and engaging guide to the study of American dramatic literature. Designed to support students in reading, discussing, and writing about commonly assigned American plays, this text offers timely resources to think critically and originally about key moments on the American stage. Combining comprehensive coverage of the core plays from the post-Revolutionary era to the present, each chapter includes: historical and cultural context of each of the plays and their distinctive literary features clear introductions to the ongoing critical debates they have provoked collaborative prompts for classroom or online discussion annotated bibliographies for further research With its accessible prose style and clear structure, this introduction spotlights specific plays while encouraging students to contemplate timely questions of American identity across its selected span of US theatrical history.

This volume provides an accessible and engaging guide to the study of American dramatic literature. Designed to support students in reading, discussing, and writing about commonly assigned American plays, this text offers timely resources to think critically and originally about key moments on the American stage. Combining comprehensive coverage of the core plays from the post-Revolutionary era to the present, each chapter includes: historical and cultural context of each of the plays and their distinctive literary features clear introductions to the ongoing critical debates they have provoked collaborative prompts for classroom or online discussion annotated bibliographies for further research With its accessible prose style and clear structure, this introduction spotlights specific plays while encouraging students to contemplate timely questions of American identity across its selected span of US theatrical history.