The Contemporary American Dramatic Trilogy

Download or read book The Contemporary American Dramatic Trilogy written by Robert J. Andreach and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dramatic trilogy has been flourishing for some time now in new works and revivals of older works by American, British, and European playwrights. This book analyzes recent American works by Caucasian, African American, Asian American, and Hispanic American men and women. There are five chapters beginning with Opposing Families (trilogies of, e.g., Lanford Wilson, Foote, Machado, and McCraney are examined). Carson, Rabe, and McLaughlin are among those in the Classical Reimaginings chapter while Coen, Berc, and Wolfe constitute the Medieval Reimaginings chapter. Van Itallie, Havis, Rapp, and Hwang, among others, create New Forms. LaBute, Fierstein, and Nelson, among others, create New Selves. The concluding chapter is devoted to Ruhl's Passion Play, which spans 400 years of theatre-creating from Elizabethan England to Hitler's Germany to the Reagan era in America.

Download or read book Dramatic Structure in the Contemporary American Theatre written by Robert Andreach and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2017-11-21 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this follow-up to his 2012 The Contemporary American Dramatic Trilogy, Robert J. Andreach continues his unique study of dramatic structure as evidenced through the overarching themes of contemporary American trilogies. The themes of the first play in a trilogy, he shows, can be far different from those developed as the sequence continues, citing examples from playwrights as varied as David Rabe and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Quiara Alegráa Hudes. Looking at the ways structure in a tragedy can be substituted for the Aristotelian plot, Andreach makes clear that because creating or reinventing oneself can be such a primary motivating force in American culture, a character's failed attempt to change the structure or plot of his or her life may indeed be tragic. The dramatic trilogy has been flourishing for some time now in new works and revivals of older ones by American, British, and European playwrights, with examples such as the Hunger Games trilogy and the Fifty Shades trilogy moving more recently even into the popular sphere. Combining his skills as both a professional reviewer of theater and a literary critic, Robert Andreach is in a unique position to provide coherence to what most observers perceive as an unrelated welter of contemporary theatrical experiences.

Download or read book The Greek Trilogy of Luis Alfaro written by Luis Alfaro and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-09-03 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Greek Trilogy of Luis Alfaro gathers together for the first time the three 'Greek' plays of the MacArthur Genius Award-winning Chicanx playwright and performance artist. Based respectively on Sophocles' Electra and Oedipus, and Euripides' Medea, Alfaro's Electricidad, Oedipus El Rey, and Mojada transplant ancient themes and problems into the 21st century streets of Los Angeles and New York, in order to give voice to the concerns of the Chicanx and wider Latinx communities. From performances around the world including sold-out runs at New York's Public Theater, these texts are extremely important to those studying classical reception, Greek theatre and Chicanx writers. This unique anthology features definitive editions of all three plays alongside a comprehensive introduction which provides a critical overview of Luis Alfaro's work, accentuating not only the unique nature of these three 'urban' adaptations of ancient Greek tragedy but also the manner in which they address present-day Chicanx and Latinx socio-political realities across the United States. A brief introduction to each play and its overall themes precedes the text of the drama. The anthology concludes with exclusive supplementary material aimed at enhancing understanding of Alfaro's plays: a 'Performance History' timeline outlining the performance history of the plays; an alphabetical 'Glossary' explaining the most common terms in Spanish and Spanglish appearing in each play; and a 'Further Reading' list providing primary and secondary bibliography for each play. The anthology is completed by a new interview with Alfaro which addresses key topics such as Alfaro's engagement with ancient Greek drama and his work with Chicanx communities across the United States, thus providing a critical contextualisation of these critically-acclaimed plays.

Download or read book The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary American Playwrights written by Christopher Innes and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-12-19 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unrivalled in its coverage of recent work and writers, The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary American Playwrights surveys and analyses the breadth, vitality and development of theatrical work to emerge from America over the last fifty years. This authoritative guide leads you through the work of 25 major contemporary American playwrights, discussing more than 140 plays in detail. Written by a team of 25 eminent international scholars, each chapter provides: · a biographical introduction to the playwright's work; · a survey and concise analysis of the writer's most important plays; · a discussion of their style, dramaturgical concerns and critical reception; · a bibliography of published plays and a select list of critical works. Among the many Tony, Obie and Pulitzer prize-winning playwrights included are Sam Shepard, Tony Kushner, Suzan-Lori Parks, August Wilson, Paula Vogel and Neil LaBute. The abundance of work analysed enables fresh, illuminating conclusions to be drawn about the development of contemporary American playwriting.

Download or read book Contemporary American Drama written by Annette Saddik and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2007-09-13 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the development of contemporary theatre in the United States in its historical, political and theoretical dimensions. It focuses on representative plays and performance texts that experiment with form and content, discussing influential playwrights and performance artists such as Tennessee Williams, Adrienne Kennedy, Sam Shepard, Tony Kushner, Charles Ludlum, Anna Deavere Smith, Karen Finley and Will Power, alongside avant-garde theatre groups. Saddik traces the development of contemporary drama since 1945, and discusses the cross-cultural impact of postwar British and European innovations on American theatre from the 1950s to the present day in order to examine the performance of American identity. She argues that contemporary American theatre is primarily a postmodern drama of inclusion and diversity that destabilizes the notion of fixed identity and questions the nature of reality.

Download or read book Modern American Drama on Screen written by William Robert Bray and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-08 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on key texts, leading scholars explore how Hollywood has given an enduring life to the classics of Broadway theater.

Download or read book Rape, Rage and Feminism in Contemporary American Drama written by Davida Bloom and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-11-13 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first-ever study of rape in modern American drama examines portrayals of rape, raped women and rapists in 36 plays written between 1970 and 2007, the period during which the feminist movement made rape a matter of public discourse. These dramas reveal much about sexuality and masculine and feminine identity in the United States. The author traces the impact of second-wave feminism, antifeminist backlash, third-wave feminism and postfeminism on the dramatic depiction of rape. The prevalence of commonly accepted rape myths--that women who dress provocatively invite sexual assault, for example--is well documented, along with equally frequent examples which dispute these myths.