Synopses & Reviews
Modern theater is a field marked by competing, and often contradictory, impulses and developments. A critique of certain types of theatre is a productive force within modernism and a force that led to the most successful reforms of modern theatre and drama. This exciting collection of essays in Palgrave's
Performance Interventions series rethinks the historical formations and functions of antitheatricality within modern drama, opera, literature, film, and art.
Review
"...an excellent text for a variety of courses, from those focused on modernism or modern drama to courses on theatre, art, and performance history"--Professor Tamsen Wolf, Princeton University, USA
"...an invaluable collection of essays on modernist European and American theatre by the top scholars in our field."--Shawn-Marie Garrett, Assistant Professor of Theatre, Barnard College, Columbia University, USA
"In Against Theatre, Ackerman and Puchner gather a distinguished group of scholars, who bring a sharp sense of modernist antitheatricality and its subversion to bear on the many genres, technologies, and literary instigations of modern performance. It's a book full of surprises and makes a welcome addition both to the literature and teaching of modernism and its orphaned stage."--W.B. Worthen, J.L. Styan Collegiate Professor of Drama, University of Michigan, USA
"...an overwhelmingly worthwhile project. The indeterminacy of "anti-theatricality" as a term, combined with an interdisciplinary focus, leads to a productive and engaging plurality in Against Theatre."--Amy Simpson, Platform
Synopsis
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Note on the Contributors Introduction: Modernism and Anti-Theatricality; A.Ackerman & M.Puchner PART I: FRAMES Avant-Garde Scenography and the Frames of the Theatre; A.Aronson Clown Shows: Antitheatrical Theatricalism in Four Twentieth Century Plays; E.Fuchs Anti-Theatricality in Twentieth-Century Opera; H.Lindenberger 'All the Frame's a Stage': (Anti-)Theatricality and Cinematic Modernism; C.Keil PART II: MATERIALS Anti-Theatricality and the Limits of Naturalism; K.Williams Deploying/Destroying the Primitivist Body in Hurston and Brecht; E.Diamond John Cage's Living Theatre; M.Perloff Mallarm , Maeterlinck and the Symbolist Via Negativa of Theatre; P.McGuinness PART III: VALUES Narrative Theatricality: Joseph Conrad's Drama of the Page; R.L.Walkowitz The Curse of Legitimacy; D.Savran Performing Obscene Modernism: Theatrical Censorship and the Making of Modern Drama; J.S.Peters Seeming, Seeming: the Illusion of Enough; H.Blau Index
Synopsis
Against Theatre shows that the most prominent writers of modern drama shared a radical rejection of the theatre as they knew it. Together with designers, composers and film makers, they plotted to destroy all existing theatres. But from their destruction emerged the most astonishing innovations of modernist theatre.
About the Author
ALAN ACKERMAN is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Toronto, Canada, author of
The Portable Theatre: American Literature and the Nineteenth-Century Stage, and editor of the journal
Modern Drama.
MARTIN PUCHNER is the H. Gordon Garbedian Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, USA, and the author of Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-Theatricality, and Drama (2002) and Poetry of the Revolution: Marx, Manifestos, and the Avant-Gardes (2006). His edited books and introductions include Six Plays by Henrik Ibsen (2003), Lionel Abel's Tragedy and Metatheatre (2003), and The Communist Manifesto and Other Writings (2005). He is co-editor of the forthcoming Norton Anthology of Drama and the editor of Theatre Survey.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations * Acknowledgements * Note on the Contributors * Introduction: Modernism and Anti-Theatricality--
A.Ackerman &
M.Puchner * PART I: FRAMES * Avant-Garde Scenography and the Frames of the Theatre--
A.Aronson * Clown Shows: Antitheatrical Theatricalism in Four Twentieth Century Plays--
E.Fuchs * Anti-Theatricality in Twentieth-Century Opera--
H.Lindenberger * 'All the Frame's a Stage': (Anti-)Theatricality and Cinematic Modernism--
C.Keil * PART II: MATERIALS * Anti-Theatricality and the Limits of Naturalism--
K.Williams * Deploying/Destroying the Primitivist Body in Hurston and Brecht--
E.Diamond * John Cage's Living Theatre--
M.Perloff * Mallarmé, Maeterlinck and the Symbolist
Via Negativa of Theatre--
P.McGuinness * PART III: VALUES * Narrative Theatricality: Joseph Conrad's Drama of the Page--
R.L.Walkowitz * The Curse of Legitimacy--
D.Savran * Performing Obscene Modernism: Theatrical Censorship and the Making of Modern Drama--
J.S.Peters * Seeming, Seeming: the Illusion of Enough--
H.Blau * Index