The Making Of Modern Drama

This critical exploration of modern drama begins with Büchner and Ibsen and then discusses the major playwrights who have shaped modern theater. A new introduction by the author assesses developments of recent years.

Focuses on the work of eight modern playwrights to reveal the way drama contributes to man's consciousness of the human condition.

This critical exploration of modern drama begins with Büchner and Ibsen and then discusses the major playwrights who have shaped modern theater. A new introduction by the author assesses developments of recent years.

Focuses on the work of eight modern playwrights to reveal the way drama contributes to man's consciousness of the human condition

The result of twenty-five years of research on three continents, Brecht and Company is a revolutionary portrait of one of the world's greatest theater artists -- and the people upon whom he built his reputation. A noted Brecht scholar, John Fuegi traces the evolution of Brecht's parasitic relationships and aggressive ambition through close analysis of diaries, letters, and drafts of the literary works, revealing a man who was personally dazzling, a genius at assembling and directing the plays created in his workshop, but ultimately lacking in literary stamina, for which he depended on his lovers. A landmark study about the life and times of one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century theater, Brecht and Co. will forever change our understanding of Brecht and his oeuvre. "[An] enormous, fascinating biography." -- The New Yorker "One of the most important critical studies of the century." -- New York Magazine

Covering the period 1879 to 1959, and taking in everything from Ibsen to Beckett, this book is volume one of a two-part comprehensive examination of the plays, dramatists, and movements that comprise modern world drama. Contains detailed analysis of plays and playwrights, connecting themes and offering original interpretations Includes coverage of non-English works and traditions to create a global view of modern drama Considers the influence of modernism in art, music, literature, architecture, society, and politics on the formation of modern dramatic literature Takes an interpretative and analytical approach to modern dramatic texts rather than focusing on production history Includes coverage of the ways in which staging practices, design concepts, and acting styles informed the construction of the dramas

It is said that British Drama was shockingly lifted out of the doldrums by the 'revolutionary' appearance of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger at the Royal Court in May 1956. But had the theatre been as ephemeral and effeminate as the Angry Young Men claimed? Was the era of Terence Rattigan and 'Binkie' Beaumont as repressed and closeted as it seems? In this bold and fascinating challenge to the received wisdom of the last forty years of theatrical history, Dan Rebellato uncovers a different story altogether. It is one where Britain's declining Empire and increasing panic over the 'problem' of homosexuality played a crucial role in the construction of an enduring myth of the theatre. By going back to primary sources and rigorously questioning all assumptions, Rebellato has rewritten the history of the Making of Modern British Drama.

Tragedy Walks the Streets challenges the conventional understanding that the evolution of European drama effectively came to a halt during France's Revolutionary era. In this interdisciplinary history on the emergence of modern drama in European culture, Matthew S. Buckley contends that the political theatricality of the Revolution tested and forced the evolution of dramatic forms, supplanting the theater itself as the primary stage of formal development. Drawing on a wide range of texts and images, he demonstrates how the social and political enlistment of dramatic theatricality inflected rising social and political tensions in pre-Revolutionary France, shaped French Revolutionary political culture, conditioned British political and cultural responses to the Revolution, and served as the impetus for Büchner’s radical formal innovations of the 1830s. Setting aside traditional boundaries of literary scholarship, Buckley pursues instead a history of dramatic form that encompasses the full range of dramatic activity in the changing cultural life of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, including art, architecture, journalism, political performance, and social behavior. Surveying this expanded field of inquiry, Buckley weaves together a coherent formal genealogy of the drama during this period and offers a new, more continuous generic history of modern drama in its first and most turbulent phase of development.