Here are five important modern German dramas: Farmyard by Franz Xaver Kroetz; Offending the Audience by Peter Handke; Eve of Retirement by Thomas Bernhard; Big and Little by Both Strauss; and Clara S. by Elfriede Jellinek."

Included in this anthology are: --Farmyard by Franz Xaver Kroetz--Offending the Audience by Peter Handke--Eve of Retirement by Thomas Bernhard--Big and Little by Botho Strauss>

This volume includes the abridged New York stage version of Hocchuth's controversial The Deputy, which is about Pope Pius XII's failure to speak out against Nazi atrocities; In the Case of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kipphardt; and two plays by Mnller: Hamletmachine and Manser.>

It is against this background of the theater's high prestige as a forum for ideas, as the summit of the literary arts, as the place where all the arts coalesce in a Wagnerian 'Gesamtkunstwerk' or dialectically oppose and ironize each other in Brechtian epic 'alienation, ' of the drama as a method of thought, of concrete philosophizing, that the astounding wealth of critical and theoretical writings about drama and theater that the German-speaking world has produced over the last two hundred and fifty years must be seen and appreciated.>