Hunting Cockroaches And Other Plays

Janusz Glowacki's highly theatrical and often hilarious works concern the immigrant experience of the Eastern European in America, the struggles of the individual in a repressive state, and the manipulations of political and social power. The girls' reform school of Cinders, the Lower East Side tenement of Hunting Cockroaches, and the Norwegian court littered with bodies in Fortinbras Gets Drunk serve as backdrops for Glowacki's tragicomic explorations of the play within the play of contemporary existence.

A surreal comedy set in Manhattan's Lower East Side focusing on a Polish immigrant couple's difficulties in reconciling their past with their present.

Publisher Description

The Iron Curtain concealed from western eyes a vital group of national and regional writers. Marked by not only geographical proximity but also by the shared experience of communism and its collapse, the countries of Eastern Europe--Poland, Hungary, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, and the former states of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany--share literatures that reveal many common themes when examined together. Compiled by a leading scholar, the guide includes an overview of literary trends in historical context; a listing of some 700 authors by country; and an A-to-Z section of articles on the most influential writers.

This book considers the hundred years of re-writes of Anton Chekhov's work, presenting a wide geographical landscape of Chekhovian influences in drama. The volume examines the elusive quality of Chekhov's dramatic universe as an intricate mechanism, an engine in which his enigmatic characters exist as the dramatic and psychological ciphers we have been de-coding for a century, and continue to do so. Examining the practice and the theory of dramatic adaptation both as intermedial transformation (from page to stage) and as intramedial mutation, from page to page, the book presents adaptation as the emerging genre of drama, theatre, and film. This trend marks the performative and social practices of the new millennium, highlighting our epoch's need to engage with the history of dramatic forms and their evolution. The collection demonstrates that adaptation as the practice of transformation and as a re-thinking of habitual dramatic norms and genre definitions leads to the rejuvenation of existing dramatic and performative standards, pioneering the creation of new traditions and expectations. As the major mode of the storytelling imagination, adaptation can build upon and drive the audience's horizons of expectations in theatre aesthetics. Hence, this volume investigates the original and transformative knowledge that the story of Chekhov's drama in mutations offers to scholars of drama and performance, to students of modern literatures and cultures, and to theatre practitioners worldwide.

This collection investigates dramatic and performative renderings of 'America' as an exilic place particularly focusing on issues of language, space and identity. It looks at ways in which immigrants and outsiders are embodied in American theatre practice and explores ways in which 'America' is staged and dramatized by immigrants and foreigners.

Despite its international influence, Polish theatre remains a mystery to many Westerners. This volume attempts to fill in current gaps in English-language scholarship by offering a historical and critical analysis of two of the most influential works of Polish theatre: Jerzy Grotowski’s ‘Akropolis’ and Tadeusz Kantor’s ‘Dead Class’. By examining each director’s representation of Auschwitz, this study provides a new understanding of how translating national trauma through the prism of performance can alter and deflect the meaning and reception of theatrical works, both inside and outside of their cultural and historical contexts.