The War Against Naturalism in the Contemporary American Theatre

The War Against Naturalism in the Contemporary American Theatre

Author: Robert J. Andreach

Publisher:

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13:

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The book applies playwright John Guare's statement that, "the war against naturalism," is the history of the American theatre in the Twentieth-Century to selected plays by important contemporary American playwrights. Crucial to the argument is the recognition that a war presupposes two sides with neither side defeating the other, for if naturalistic theatre were to win, all theatre would be linear with characters circumscribed by their heredity and environment. If non-naturalistic theatre were to win, all theatre would be a hodgepodge of incoherent images. After isolating elements of a naturalistic play in its philosophical and mode of production sense, the book examines plays that wage war in language and character. The plays are all of the past few decades: some by Foreman and Wellman are disorienting; some by Albee, Groff, and Maxwell are controversial; others by Eno and Corthron are by playwrights on the verge of major careers; still others by Overmyer and Jenkin are drawing aspiring playwrights to them as models of new, exciting writing for the theatre. All of them, whether colliding genres and styles or destabilizing meaning as in plays by Gibson and Long or reclaiming a mystery as in plays by Ludlam, Greenberg, and Donagy, challenge naturalism's boundaries. The book not only provides an approach to the contemporary American drama-theatre, but also brings together playwrights not perceived as having any connections other than the fact that they are creating plays today. The text is appropriate for undergraduate students through professors and practitioners.


Book Synopsis The War Against Naturalism in the Contemporary American Theatre by : Robert J. Andreach

Download or read book The War Against Naturalism in the Contemporary American Theatre written by Robert J. Andreach and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book applies playwright John Guare's statement that, "the war against naturalism," is the history of the American theatre in the Twentieth-Century to selected plays by important contemporary American playwrights. Crucial to the argument is the recognition that a war presupposes two sides with neither side defeating the other, for if naturalistic theatre were to win, all theatre would be linear with characters circumscribed by their heredity and environment. If non-naturalistic theatre were to win, all theatre would be a hodgepodge of incoherent images. After isolating elements of a naturalistic play in its philosophical and mode of production sense, the book examines plays that wage war in language and character. The plays are all of the past few decades: some by Foreman and Wellman are disorienting; some by Albee, Groff, and Maxwell are controversial; others by Eno and Corthron are by playwrights on the verge of major careers; still others by Overmyer and Jenkin are drawing aspiring playwrights to them as models of new, exciting writing for the theatre. All of them, whether colliding genres and styles or destabilizing meaning as in plays by Gibson and Long or reclaiming a mystery as in plays by Ludlam, Greenberg, and Donagy, challenge naturalism's boundaries. The book not only provides an approach to the contemporary American drama-theatre, but also brings together playwrights not perceived as having any connections other than the fact that they are creating plays today. The text is appropriate for undergraduate students through professors and practitioners.

Dramatic Structure in the Contemporary American Theatre

Dramatic Structure in the Contemporary American Theatre

Author: Robert Andreach

Publisher: SCB Distributors

Published: 2017-11-21

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 1938288343

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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.


Book Synopsis Dramatic Structure in the Contemporary American Theatre by : Robert Andreach

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.

Historical Dictionary of Contemporary American Theater

Historical Dictionary of Contemporary American Theater

Author: James Fisher

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2011-06-01

Total Pages: 1003

ISBN-13: 0810879506

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From legends like Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller to successful present-day playwrights like Neil LaBute, Tony Kushner, and David Mamet, some of the most important names in the history of theater are from the past 80 years. Contemporary American theater has produced some of the most memorable, beloved, and important plays in history, including Death of a Salesman, A Streetcar Named Desire, Barefoot in the Park, Our Town, The Crucible, A Raisin in the Sun, and The Odd Couple. Historical Dictionary of Contemporary American Theater presents the plays and personages, movements and institutions, and cultural developments of the American stage from 1930 to 2010, a period of vast and almost continuous change. It covers the ever-changing history of the American theater with emphasis on major movements, persons, plays, and events. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, an extensive bibliography, and over 1,500 cross-referenced dictionary entries. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the history of American theater.


Book Synopsis Historical Dictionary of Contemporary American Theater by : James Fisher

Download or read book Historical Dictionary of Contemporary American Theater written by James Fisher and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 1003 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From legends like Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller to successful present-day playwrights like Neil LaBute, Tony Kushner, and David Mamet, some of the most important names in the history of theater are from the past 80 years. Contemporary American theater has produced some of the most memorable, beloved, and important plays in history, including Death of a Salesman, A Streetcar Named Desire, Barefoot in the Park, Our Town, The Crucible, A Raisin in the Sun, and The Odd Couple. Historical Dictionary of Contemporary American Theater presents the plays and personages, movements and institutions, and cultural developments of the American stage from 1930 to 2010, a period of vast and almost continuous change. It covers the ever-changing history of the American theater with emphasis on major movements, persons, plays, and events. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, an extensive bibliography, and over 1,500 cross-referenced dictionary entries. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the history of American theater.

Tragedy in the Contemporary American Theatre

Tragedy in the Contemporary American Theatre

Author: Robert J. Andreach

Publisher: University Press of America

Published: 2014-07-16

Total Pages: 209

ISBN-13: 0761864016

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This book refutes the claim that tragedy is no longer a vital and relevant part of contemporary American theatre. Tragedy in the Contemporary American Theatre examines plays by multiple contemporary playwrights and compares them alongside the works of America’s major twentieth-century tragedians: Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams. The book argues that tragedy is not only present in contemporary American theatre, but issues from an expectation fundamental to American culture: the pressure on characters to create themselves. Tragedy in the Contemporary American Theatre concludes that tragedy is vital and relevant, though not always in the Aristotelian model, the standard for traditional evaluation.


Book Synopsis Tragedy in the Contemporary American Theatre by : Robert J. Andreach

Download or read book Tragedy in the Contemporary American Theatre written by Robert J. Andreach and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2014-07-16 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book refutes the claim that tragedy is no longer a vital and relevant part of contemporary American theatre. Tragedy in the Contemporary American Theatre examines plays by multiple contemporary playwrights and compares them alongside the works of America’s major twentieth-century tragedians: Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams. The book argues that tragedy is not only present in contemporary American theatre, but issues from an expectation fundamental to American culture: the pressure on characters to create themselves. Tragedy in the Contemporary American Theatre concludes that tragedy is vital and relevant, though not always in the Aristotelian model, the standard for traditional evaluation.

The Aesthetics of Clarity and Confusion

The Aesthetics of Clarity and Confusion

Author: Geoffrey A. Baker

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-12-22

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 3319421719

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What should literature with political aims look like? This book traces two rival responses to this question, one prizing clarity and the other confusion, which have dominated political aesthetics since the late nineteenth century. Revisiting recurrences of the avant-garde experimentalism versus critical realism debates from the twentieth century, Geoffrey A. Baker highlights the often violent reductions at work in earlier debates. Instead of prizing one approach over the other, as many participants in those debates have done, Baker focuses on the manner in which the debate itself between these approaches continues to prove productive and enabling for politically engaged writers. This book thus offers a way beyond the simplistic polarity of realism vs. anti-realism in a study that is focused on influential strands of thought in England, France, and Germany and that covers well-known authors such as Zola, Nietzsche, Arnold, Mann, Brecht, Sartre, Adorno, Lukács, Beauvoir, Morrison, and Coetzee.


Book Synopsis The Aesthetics of Clarity and Confusion by : Geoffrey A. Baker

Download or read book The Aesthetics of Clarity and Confusion written by Geoffrey A. Baker and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-12-22 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What should literature with political aims look like? This book traces two rival responses to this question, one prizing clarity and the other confusion, which have dominated political aesthetics since the late nineteenth century. Revisiting recurrences of the avant-garde experimentalism versus critical realism debates from the twentieth century, Geoffrey A. Baker highlights the often violent reductions at work in earlier debates. Instead of prizing one approach over the other, as many participants in those debates have done, Baker focuses on the manner in which the debate itself between these approaches continues to prove productive and enabling for politically engaged writers. This book thus offers a way beyond the simplistic polarity of realism vs. anti-realism in a study that is focused on influential strands of thought in England, France, and Germany and that covers well-known authors such as Zola, Nietzsche, Arnold, Mann, Brecht, Sartre, Adorno, Lukács, Beauvoir, Morrison, and Coetzee.

The Oxford Handbook of American Drama

The Oxford Handbook of American Drama

Author: Jeffrey H. Richards

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014-02

Total Pages: 593

ISBN-13: 0199731497

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This volume explores the history of American drama from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. It describes origins of early republican drama and its evolution during the pre-war and post-war periods. It traces the emergence of different types of American drama including protest plays, reform drama, political drama, experimental drama, urban plays, feminist drama and realist plays. This volume also analyzes the works of some of the most notable American playwrights including Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller and those written by women dramatists.


Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of American Drama by : Jeffrey H. Richards

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of American Drama written by Jeffrey H. Richards and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-02 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the history of American drama from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. It describes origins of early republican drama and its evolution during the pre-war and post-war periods. It traces the emergence of different types of American drama including protest plays, reform drama, political drama, experimental drama, urban plays, feminist drama and realist plays. This volume also analyzes the works of some of the most notable American playwrights including Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller and those written by women dramatists.

Beyond Naturalism

Beyond Naturalism

Author: William W. Demastes

Publisher: Praeger

Published: 1988-11-15

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13:

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Demastes draws a distinction between the genus realism and its central species, naturalism. He studies, from an historical perspective, the growth of realism into the foremost aesthetic form in 20th century theater, and focuses on American playwrights who have used realism to challenge outdated and essentially naturalist thought, thereby infusing realism with fresh and contemporary perspectives of the world around them. Demastes analyzes the unique contributions of David Rabe, David Mamet, Sam Shepard, Charles Fuller, Beth Henley, and Marsha Norman, and assesses their overall critical reception. ISBN 0-313-26320-5: $35.95.


Book Synopsis Beyond Naturalism by : William W. Demastes

Download or read book Beyond Naturalism written by William W. Demastes and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1988-11-15 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Demastes draws a distinction between the genus realism and its central species, naturalism. He studies, from an historical perspective, the growth of realism into the foremost aesthetic form in 20th century theater, and focuses on American playwrights who have used realism to challenge outdated and essentially naturalist thought, thereby infusing realism with fresh and contemporary perspectives of the world around them. Demastes analyzes the unique contributions of David Rabe, David Mamet, Sam Shepard, Charles Fuller, Beth Henley, and Marsha Norman, and assesses their overall critical reception. ISBN 0-313-26320-5: $35.95.

Approaches to the Contemporary American Theatre

Approaches to the Contemporary American Theatre

Author: Robert J. Andreach

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 9781680531787

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"This is a series of essays on contemporary theatre in the United States"--


Book Synopsis Approaches to the Contemporary American Theatre by : Robert J. Andreach

Download or read book Approaches to the Contemporary American Theatre written by Robert J. Andreach and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is a series of essays on contemporary theatre in the United States"--

Len Jenkin's Theatre

Len Jenkin's Theatre

Author: Robert J. Andreach

Publisher: University Press of America

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 153

ISBN-13: 0761853235

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Early in his career, Len Jenkin identified two qualities that theatre should have: wonder and heart. Imagination creates wonder by transforming nature to suggest more than nature. Love engages the heart on the quest to experience the wonder, for though Jenkin is an experimental playwright, his plays are not abstruse symbols. They are tales that take salesmen and actresses, historical figures and fictional characters, through a Stein landscape and a Kafka story, pop culture, and recreated scenes from the Bible and The Canterbury Tales, The Aeneid, and Headlong Hall to an amusement park ride and a penal colony, a flophouse and a garden. Bodacious verbal and visual images build in power until they soar as pilgrims tell tales to pass the night while waiting to cross the river; Hawthorne, Sophie, and Melville on the beach hear the ever-encroaching kraken; and Margo Veil essays the roles that all questing mortals play in life.


Book Synopsis Len Jenkin's Theatre by : Robert J. Andreach

Download or read book Len Jenkin's Theatre written by Robert J. Andreach and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2011 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early in his career, Len Jenkin identified two qualities that theatre should have: wonder and heart. Imagination creates wonder by transforming nature to suggest more than nature. Love engages the heart on the quest to experience the wonder, for though Jenkin is an experimental playwright, his plays are not abstruse symbols. They are tales that take salesmen and actresses, historical figures and fictional characters, through a Stein landscape and a Kafka story, pop culture, and recreated scenes from the Bible and The Canterbury Tales, The Aeneid, and Headlong Hall to an amusement park ride and a penal colony, a flophouse and a garden. Bodacious verbal and visual images build in power until they soar as pilgrims tell tales to pass the night while waiting to cross the river; Hawthorne, Sophie, and Melville on the beach hear the ever-encroaching kraken; and Margo Veil essays the roles that all questing mortals play in life.

John Guare’s Theatre

John Guare’s Theatre

Author: Robert J. Andreach

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2009-01-14

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 144380391X

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From the 1960s to the present day, John Guare’s plays have ranged from one-act to cyclic, realistic to surrealistic, naturalistic to experimental, and tragic to comic dramas. This study’s approach to the cornucopia the playwright himself provided when in an interview he gave a fundamental aesthetic principle of his craft. Like a person—and Guare’s plays develop the personal as well as the artistic self—a play must be grounded in reality; only then can it soar. The ground is traditional theatre with characters, no matter how larger than life they can be, and plot, no matter how illogical it can be. The soaring is in interrupting the action with monological narratives and musical interludes, bringing characters back from the dead, and having the action take hairpin turns into a mixture of genres and styles, modes and tones. In verbal and visual images, the flight invokes works by authors as varied as Aeschylus and Whitman, Dante and Feydeau, Verdi and Romberg. Soaring from ground to new ground, the theatre creates the transmission of the American heritage in Lake Hollywood, an idealism corrupted by a fraudulent American Dream in Lydie Breeze, and the recovery of the past in A Few Stout Individuals. As Guare said about his plays: they “interconnect.”


Book Synopsis John Guare’s Theatre by : Robert J. Andreach

Download or read book John Guare’s Theatre written by Robert J. Andreach and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-01-14 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the 1960s to the present day, John Guare’s plays have ranged from one-act to cyclic, realistic to surrealistic, naturalistic to experimental, and tragic to comic dramas. This study’s approach to the cornucopia the playwright himself provided when in an interview he gave a fundamental aesthetic principle of his craft. Like a person—and Guare’s plays develop the personal as well as the artistic self—a play must be grounded in reality; only then can it soar. The ground is traditional theatre with characters, no matter how larger than life they can be, and plot, no matter how illogical it can be. The soaring is in interrupting the action with monological narratives and musical interludes, bringing characters back from the dead, and having the action take hairpin turns into a mixture of genres and styles, modes and tones. In verbal and visual images, the flight invokes works by authors as varied as Aeschylus and Whitman, Dante and Feydeau, Verdi and Romberg. Soaring from ground to new ground, the theatre creates the transmission of the American heritage in Lake Hollywood, an idealism corrupted by a fraudulent American Dream in Lydie Breeze, and the recovery of the past in A Few Stout Individuals. As Guare said about his plays: they “interconnect.”