Synopses & Reviews
Contemporary American Drama explores the roots of contemporary drama in the United States and its development from the 1960s to the present day. Examining the work of influential playwrights such as Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Sam Shepard, David Mamet, Adrienne Kennedy, August Wilson, and Tony Kushner, it presents contemporary drama as primarily a drama of postmodernism. Key avant-garde theatre groups and 'happenings', as well as the work of controversial performance artists such as Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, Tim Miller, and Eve Ensler are also discussed in cultural context. The book is organized into six chapters: the background of contemporary American theatre through the cross-cultural impact of postwar British, European, and Latin American experimental innovations; the questioning of traditional representations of American identity on stage; the rejection of dramatic realism and the emergence of experimental theatre groups; the development of African-American theatre; postmodern experiments with language and form; and solo performance texts.
Contemporary American Drama serves as an introductory guide for students of literature and drama. It is organized thematically in order to offer a comprehensive historical, social, political, and aesthetic view of the development of contemporary theatre as an experimental theatre of multiplicity, inclusion and diversity.
Key features:
*Identifies the post-World War II innovations across Europe, Britain, and Latin America that influenced the development of contemporary American theatre.
*Discusses a representative range of playwrights, performers, and theatre groups and examines the key dramatic styles of the period.
*Defines critical terms such as modernism, postmodernism, and absurdism that are crucial to understanding developments in American drama.
*Introduces students to the main arguments surrounding realistic and anti-realistic dramatic representation and their political implications for social identity.
*Contextualises contemporary American drama in terms of the political, sexual, and racial revolutions of the period.
Synopsis
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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.
Key Features
- Examines the influence of international figures such as Aristotle, Brecht, Artaud and Boal who are central to theatre as a discipline
- Explores realistic and anti-realistic styles of American drama and their political and social implications, along with key critical terms and movements
- Places the complexity of contemporary American drama within its political, sexual and ethnic contexts
- Includes rare images from La MaMa Archive/Ellen Stewart Private Collection
- Discusses in detail Stairs to the Roof and Camino Real by Tennessee Williams, Death of a Salesman and The Crucible by Arthur Miller, Dutchman and The Slave by Amira Baraka, Funnyhouse of a Negro by Adrienne Kennedy, The Tooth of Crime and True West by Sam Shepherd and American Buffalo by David Mamet as well as a range of other texts and performers.
Synopsis
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.
About the Author
Annette Saddik is Professor of English at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY