This collection investigates dramatic and performative renderings of 'America' as an exilic place particularly focusing on issues of language, space and identity. It looks at ways in which immigrants and outsiders are embodied in American theatre practice and explores ways in which 'America' is staged and dramatized by immigrants and foreigners.

In its rigorously researched analysis of Anglo-Jewish women writing the Holocaust, this book highlights the necessity of their inclusion in the evolving canon of modern British literature. Addressing the question of why the Holocaust is still being written, this study brings together Kindertransport writers, those of the Second Generation and those writers who have no personal or communal connection to the Holocaust but who have felt compelled to testify to the painful adaptations or betrayals of refugees by the nation which rescued so many.
In her significant critical interpretations of memoirs, plays, poetry and novels, Lassner shows how these writers complicate theories of trauma and memory by using fantasy and the Gothic as a response to silence as well as to the historical and narrative relationship between endangered European Jews and Britain's cultural and political responses to them.

"The broad scope of this work should provide accessible and welcome assistance to both the seasoned O'Neill scholar and the newly initiated. . . . For academic libraries, community college level and up, and public libraries. Choice

The comparison made between Prometheus and Faust occurs so frequently in modern scholarship as to seem commonplace. However, while each figure has been investigated separately, no recent full-length study has brought the two characters together and examined the association. The present volume explores the Prometheus myth from its preliterary origins through treatments in Greek by Hesiod, Aeschylus, Plato, and Lucian, as well as in Latin literature and Roman theatricals. The investigation continues into hitherto unexplored connections with the Greek figure and the magus and occult scientist types of late antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Renaissance. The Prometheus and Faust traditions met in literature and art soon after the emergence of the historical Faustus. The traditions continued to exist independently through the 16th and 17th centuries, until Goethe began to write a play about each character. Ultimately Goethe abandoned Prometheus; however, Faust absorbed much of the Promethean persona.

Theatres world-wide embrace Chekhov's handful of plays with a fervour second only to Shakespeare's. Whatever their native language or culture, audiences often see themselves in his Russian characters, making Chekhov seem an author who easily transcends his own culture and time. Nonetheless, students, actors, and audiences alike are often initially puzzled by Chekhov's dramatic texts. Are they comic or tragic, ironic or sincere, starkly familiar or willfully elusive? How can his often seemingly irrelevant dialogue create dynamic performances? In his stories and plays alike, Chekhov challenges his readers to diagnose his characters' desires, opinions, heartaches and joys in the same way that doctors diagnose illness by attending closely to apparently trivial details. In the plays where narrative voice is absent and characters speak for themselves reading under a microscope becomes all the more necessary. The expert attention that Carnicke pays to the performative dimensions of Chekhov's plays makes her book unique among the published guides to Chekhov's works.

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.

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. Perfect for students of English Literature, Theatre Studies and American Studies at college and university, The Theatre of Tennessee Williams provides a lucid and stimulating analysis of Willams' dramatic work by one of America's leading scholars. With the centennial of his birth celebrated amid a flurry of conferences devoted to his work in 2011, and his plays a central part of any literature and drama curriculum and uibiquitous in theatre repertoires, he remains a giant of twentieth century literature and drama. In Brenda Murphy's major study of his work she examines his life and career and provides an analysis of more than a score of his key plays, including in-depth studies of major works such as A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and others. She traces the artist figure who features in many of Williams' plays to broaden the discussion beyond the normal reference points. As with other volumes in Methuen Drama's Critical Companions series, this book features too essays by Bruce McConachie, John S. Bak, Felicia Hardison Londre and Annette Saddik, offering perspectives on different aspects of Williams' work that will assist students in their own critical thinking.

DUKE. If music be the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken and so die. That strain again! It had a dying fall; O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour! Enough, no more; 'Tis not so sweet now as it was before. O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou! That, notwithstanding thy capacity Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there, Of what validity and pitch soe'er, But falls into abatement and low price Even in a minute. So full of shapes is fancy, That it alone is high fantastical.

This work offers a timely alternative to theater criticism's neglect of the intensely spatial character of theatrical performance by showing that early modern audiences were highly aware of the spatial aspects of the stage. Jacobean dramatists used stage space to explore the spatial transformations of early modern society--social mobility, wandering populations, rural enclosure, sea travel, localized empirical thought.

From his earliest success in 1945 with the poignant "The Glass Menagerie," until his final curtain call with the 1979 production of "The Two-Character Play," Tennessee Williams never stopped experimenting with theatrical techniques and striving to explain his richly provocative ideas. This new critical study of Williams traces the shape of the playwright's life and career, both full of wanderings, failures, love, anguish, and unparalleled triumphs. Incorporating much of the new information that is emerging in the recent publication of letters, biographies, and previously unpublished plays, this Student Companion distills a vast body of scholarship to give a fresh and accessible presentation of the key elements of Williams' complicated works. In-depth analysis of 7 of Williams' plays explore the literary styles, themes, and influences Williams drew from poetry, movies, mythology, religion, and personal experiences. This book allows the general reader and theatre enthusiast a glimpse at the shape of his life, his mind, and his work. Readers will come to appreciate why plays such as "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1947) and "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1955) have come to be considered American classics.

Following the successful series format, this volume introduces readers to Tennessee Williams with a richly detailed biography, followed by a Literary Heritage chapter. A full chapter is devoted to examining each of his major plays. In addition to analysis of character, plot, themes, and style, each play is also given an alternate reading from formal, feminist, psychological, gay, or theological criticism. The concluding bibliography cites all of Williams' dramatic output, as well as his poetry and prose. It also gives many sources for biographical information, criticism of individual works, and original reviews from the first staging of his plays. Students and their teachers should find this volume interesting and easy to follow.

Theatre of Real People offers fresh perspectives on the current fascination with putting people on stage who present aspects of their own lives and who are not usually trained actors. After providing a history of this mode of performance, and theoretical frameworks for its analysis, the book focuses on work developed by seminal practitioners at Berlin's Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) production house. It invites the reader to explore the HAU's innovative approach to Theatre of Real People, authenticity and cultural diversity during the period of Matthias Lilienthal's leadership (2003-12). Garde and Mumford also elucidate how Theatre of Real People can create and destabilise a sense of the authentic, and suggest how Authenticity-Effects can present new ways of perceiving diverse and unfamiliar people. Through a detailed analysis of key HAU productions such as Lilienthal's brainchild X-Apartments, Mobile Academy's Blackmarket, and Rimini Protokoll's 100% City, the book explores both the artistic agenda of an important European theatre institution, and a crucial aspect of contemporary theatre's social engagement.

Writing Under Tyranny: English Literature and the Henrician Reformation spans the boundaries between literary studies and history. It looks at the impact of tyrannical government on the work of poets, playwrights, and prose writers of the early English Renaissance. It shows the profound effects that political oppression had on the literary production of the years from 1528 to 1547, and how English writers in turn strove to mitigate, redirect, and finally resist that oppression. The result was the destruction of a number of forms that had dominated the literary production of late-medieval England, but also the creation of new forms that were to dominate the writing of the following centuries. Paradoxically, the tyranny of Henry VIII gave birth to many modes of writing now seen to be characteristic of the English literary Renaissance.

On Beckett: Essays and Criticism' is the first collection of writings about the Nobel Prize-winning author that covers the entire spectrum of his work, and also affords a rare glimpse of the private Beckett. More has been written about Samuel Beckett than about any other writer of this century - countless books and articles dealing with him are in print, and the progression continues geometrically. 'On Beckett' brings together some of the most perceptive writings from the vast amount of scrutiny that has been lavished on the man; in addition to widely-read essays there are contributions from more obscure sources, viewpoints not frequently seen. Together they allow the reader to enter the world of a writer whose work has left an impact on the consciousness of our time perhaps unmatched by that of any other recent creative imagination.

The most complete record of a contemporary American dramatist available, David Mamet: A Resource and Production Sourcebook is the result of ten years' research by a widely published drama and theatre scholar and a university bibliographic specialist. Presenting a complete overview of all reviews and scholarshp on Mamet, the authors challenge assumptions about the playwright, such as the charge that he is an antifeminist writer. This comprehensive sourcebook is an essential purchase for Mamet scholars and students of American drama alike. David Mamet: A Resource and Production Sourcebook reflects the revolution underway in the study of drama, in which not only previous scholarship but performance reviews are a necessary part of research. It gives a complete listing and overview of over 250 scholarly articles and chapters of books on Mamet's plays. It also presents the complete production history of each play, including review excerpts. The authors have produced an invaluable guide to research into this key contemporary dramatist.

Comedy and the Rise of Rome invites the reader to consider Roman comedy in the light of history and Roman history in the light of comedy. Plautus and Terence base their dramas on the New Comedy of fourth- and third-century BC Greece. Yet many of the themes with which they engage are peculiarly alive in the Rome of the Hannibalic war, and the conquest of Macedon. This study takes issues as diverse as the legal status of the prisoner of war, the ethics of ambush, fatherhood and command, and the clash of maritime and agrarian economies, and examines responses to them both on the comic stage and in the world at large. This is a substantially new departure in ways of thinking about Roman comedy and one that opens it up to a far wider public than has previously been the case.

Consisting of six studies that present hermeneutical analyses of Wagnerian dramas, this book discusses Wagner's mature single dramas from Hollander to Parsifal with reference to the concept of Romantic irony and the basic theoretical orientation of post-structuralism. Wagner is best known as a composer of mythological works, but these music-dramas contain basic problems that essentially contradict what is regarded as their mythological or legendary nature. They all self-referentially play out certain critical processes. Focusing on the very issue of interpretation, this work asks how Wagner's dramas use their legendary or mythological raw material in a specifically 19th-century Romantic way to create meaning. It is argued that by means of Romantic irony, internal self-reflection or self-consciousness, each work deconstructs its own mythological or legendary nature. Musicologists with an interest in Wagner's works, and literary scholars who are interested in interdisciplinary applications of literary-critical theory, will appreciate this unique application of literary, theoretical, and critical concepts to the understanding of his music-dramas. This work will also appeal to scholars of German literature and of German cultural history. It discusses Wagner's single dramas from Hollander to Parsifal.

While the past decade proved to be some of the most tumultuous times in modern US history, the Black community has been resilient, opening up dialogues and sustaining advocacy. Nowhere has this been more apparent than at the Obie Award-winning The Fire This Time Festival in New York City. Since being founded in 2009, this theater festival has become the destination for emerging and early career playwrights from the African diaspora. Inequality in education and healthcare, skewed and negative images of Black people in mainstream media, racism in policing, widespread gentrification and its effects on multi-generational Black neighbourhoods, and the growth of Black love; these conversations have been happening in the US, and The Fire This Time Festival has borne witness. 25 Plays from The Fire This Time Festival: A Decade of Recognition, Resistance, Resilience, Rebirth, and Black Theater reflects this fantastic legacy, containing 25 ten-minute plays originally produced by the eponymous festival. Together, these pieces bookend the Black experience in the US from 2009 to the present day: from the hope for further progress and equity under the Obama administration, to the existential threat faced by Black people under the Trump presidency. Edited and curated by Kelley Nicole Girod, the anthology divides the plays into seven thematic sections concerning multi-faceted aspects of the Black experience, featuring work by seminal writers such as Katori Hall, Antoinette Nwandu, Dominique Morisseau, C.A. Johnson, and Marcus Gardley. Both timely and timeless, 25 Plays from The Fire This Time Festival presents an exciting, eclectic mix of 21st century theater that is perfect for study, performance, and reflection.

In Troy, there lies the scene. From isles of Greece The princes orgillous, their high blood chaf'd, Have to the port of Athens sent their ships Fraught with the ministers and instruments Of cruel war. Sixty and nine that wore Their crownets regal from th' Athenian bay Put forth toward Phrygia; and their vow is made To ransack Troy, within whose strong immures The ravish'd Helen, Menelaus' queen, With wanton Paris sleeps-and that's the quarrel. To Tenedos they come, And the deep-drawing barks do there disgorge Their war-like fraughtage. Now on Dardan plains The fresh and yet unbruised Greeks do pitch Their brave pavilions: Priam's six-gated city, Dardan, and Tymbria, Helias, Chetas, Troien, And Antenorides, with massy staples And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts, Sperr up the sons of Troy.

The Theatre of War surveys more than two hundred plays about the First World War written, published and/or performed in Britain and Ireland between 1909 and 1998. Collectively, these plays constitute an important aspect of British and Irish literary, social and cultural history. They are discussed from five major perspectives: subject matter, technique, attitude, reception and evaluation. The resulting complex image is a significant contribution to the understanding of the First World War as a watershed in international history.

Friel is widely recognised as Irelands leading playwright but through the ability of plays like "Translations" and "Dancing at Lughnasa" to translate into other cultures he has also made a major impact on world theatre. This study draws on the Friel Archive in the National Library of Ireland to deepen our understanding of how his plays were developed.

SATURNINUS. Noble patricians, patrons of my right, Defend the justice of my cause with arms; And, countrymen, my loving followers, Plead my successive title with your swords. I am his first born son that was the last That ware the imperial diadem of Rome; Then let my father's honours live in me, Nor wrong mine age with this indignity. BASSIANUS. Romans, friends, followers, favourers of my right, If ever Bassianus, Caesar's son, Were gracious in the eyes of royal Rome, Keep then this passage to the Capitol; And suffer not dishonour to approach The imperial seat, to virtue consecrate, To justice, continence, and nobility; But let desert in pure election shine; And, Romans, fight for freedom in your choice.

This ground-breaking study analyses Beckett's television plays in relation to the history and theory of television. It argues that they are in dialogue with innovative television traditions connected to Modernism in television, film, radio, theatre, literature and the visual arts. Using original research from BBC archives and manuscript sources, the book provides new perspectives on the relationships between Beckett's television dramas and the wider television culture of Britain and Europe. It also compares and contrasts the plays for television with Beckett's Film and broadcasts of his theatre work including the recent Beckett on Film season. Chapters deal with the production process of the plays, the broadcasting contexts in which they were screened, institutions and authorship, the plays' relationships with comparable programmes and films and reaction to Beckett's screen work by audiences and critics. This book is a major contribution to Beckett scholarship and to studies of television drama. It will be essential reading in literature and drama studies, television historiography and for devotees of Beckett's work. -- .

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.

Philip Massinger's tragedy The Roman Actor, was first performed in 1626, as King James I's reign came to an end and his son Charles I acceded to the throne. Three years later, when the play was published, relations between the king and many in parliament and the country had worsened. The Roman Actor - until recently neglected in the theatre but regarded by many critics, and Massinger himself, as his finest play - explores the balance between private and public moralities, effectively condemns tyranny, and defends plays, anatomising both the theatre of power and the power of theatre. This new Revels Plays volume provides a modernised text, with a thorough introduction that sets out Massinger's intervention in the political tensions of his own time and examines his clear-eyed portrayal of the pleasures and perils of performance. It also includes a detailed commentary on the play designed to be of value to students, specialist readers and performers, and an appendix discussing the play's textual history. The edition focuses on the play's theatrical life in its own time and ours and, in addition to a detailed stage history, includes an interview with Sir Antony Sher, who played the role of the tyrannical Roman emperor, Domitian, in the Royal Shakespeare Company's acclaimed production in 2002. -- .

In an innovative and wide-ranging collection of essays, The Performing Century looks at modes of performance and forms of theatre in Nineteenth-century Britain and Ireland. From the vogue for fairy plays to the acting styles of melodrama, from the work of a single impresario to the nature of a genre, from ship-launches in Belfast to royal weddings in England, from the representation of economics to the work of a parliamentary committee in regulating theatres, the authors bring new perspectives on familiar material and radically redefine what theatre and performance in the Nineteenth century might be.