Synopses & Reviews
The Provincetown Players was a major cultural institution in Greenwich Village from 1916 to 1922, when American Modernism was conceived and developed. This study considers the group's vital role, and its wider significance in twentieth century American culture. Describing the varied and often contentious response to modernity among the Players, Brenda Murphy reveals the central contribution of the group of poets around Alfred Kreymborg's Others magazine, including William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Mina Loy and Djuna Barnes, and such modernist artists as Marguerite and William Zorach, Charles Demuth and Bror Nordfeldt, to the Players' developing modernist aesthetics.
Review
An engaging study of the intersections and divergences of ideas about modernism as they were developed and played out on the stages, in the plays and in the group dynamics of the Provincetown Players.-- Choice
Synopsis
The Provincetown Players, a consciously literary and experimental theatre group that flourished in Greenwich Village from 1916-1922, is known for discovering and nurturing such playwrights as Eugene O'Neill, Susan Glaspell, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. This book places the Provincetown Players in the context of American culture in the period around World War I, particularly the developing culture of modernism, by detailing the art and thought of the Players, who included some of the most significant modernist poets and artists of their time and place.
About the Author
Brenda Murphy is Professor of English at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of O'Neill: Long Day's Journey into Night (2001), Congressional Theatre: Dramatizing McCarthyism on Stage, Film and Television (1999), Miller: Death of a Salesman (1995), Tennessee WIlliams and Elia Kazan: A Collaboration in the Theatre (1992), and American Realism and American Drama, 1880-1940 (1987), all published by Cambridge University Press. She has edited Understanding Death of a Salesman (with Susan Abbotson, 1999), The Cambridge Companion to American Women Playwrights (1999), and A Realist in the American Theatre: Selected Drama Criticism of William Dean Howells (1992). She is the author of many articles and reviews on drama and American literature, which have appeared in such journals as Modern Drama, Theatre Journal and American Literature, and she has contributed chapters to many titles in the Cambridge Companions series.
Table of Contents
Preface; 1. The founding: myth and history; 2. The first plays; 3. Others and the other players; 4. Glaspell and O'Neill; 5. The legacy.