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Black Broadway by
The African-American actors and actresses whose names have shone brightly on Broadway marquees earned their place in history not only through hard work, perseverance, and talent, but also because of the legacy left by those who came before them. Like the doors of many professions, those of the theater world were shut to minorities for decades. While the Civil War may have freed the slaves, it was not until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s that the playing field began to level. In this remarkable book, theater producer and historian Stewart F. Lane uses words and pictures to capture this tumultuous century and to highlight the rocky road that black actors have travelled to reach recognition on the Great White Way. After the Civil War, the popularity of the minstrel shows grew by leaps and bounds throughout the country. African Americans were portrayed by whites, who would entertain audiences in black face. While the depiction of blacks was highly demeaning, it opened the door to African-American performers, and by the late 1800s, a number of them were playing to full houses. By the 1920s, the Jazz Age was in full swing, allowing black musicians and composers to reach wider audiences. And in the thirties, musicals such as George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess and Eubie Blake's Swing It opened the door a little wider. As the years passed, black performers continued to gain ground. In the 1940s, Broadway productions of Cabin in the Sky, Carmen Jones, and St. Louis Woman enabled African Americans to demonstrate a fuller range of talents, and Paul Robeson reached national prominence in his awarding-winning portrayal of Othello. By the 1950s and '60s, more black actors--including Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, and Sidney Poitier--had found their voices on stage, and black playwrights and directors had begun to make their marks. Black Broadway provides an entertaining, poignant history of a Broadway of which few are aware. By focusing a spotlight on both performers long forgotten and on those whom we still hold dear, this unique book offers a story well worth telling.
Call Number: PN2270.A35 L36 2015
The Collected Drama of H. L. Mencken by
Throughout his career as a literary critic, H. L. Mencken was intent on elevating the bold, the daring, and the innovative over the hackneyed, the trite, and the superficial, and his drama criticism exhibits this tendency to the fullest. Though known primarily as a newspaperman and commentator, Mencken also wrote several one-act plays, as well as a full-length work. In The Collected Drama of H. L. Mencken: Plays and Criticism, S. T. Joshi has assembled for the first time Mencken's dramatic works, comprising six one-act plays and the lengthy three-act play Heliogabalus. These plays, which have never been reprinted since their original appearances in newspapers or in Mencken's early volume A Book of Burlesques (1916), exhibit Mencken's penchant for satire and ridicule. Several of the plays, such as In the Vestry Room and The Wedding: A Stage Direction, display Mencken's oft-expressed cynicism about the institution of marriage. Another related play is Asepsis, a satire on exaggerated concerns about sexual health in young married couples. Other plays take aim at the cultural deficiencies of the common people, such as Death: A Philosophical Discussion, which relays the hackneyed reactions of a group of mourners over the death of a friend. Mencken's most significant play by far is Heliogabalus, a play he co-wrote with his frequent collaborator, George Jean Nathan, in which Mencken expresses his scorn of the Christian religion. The second half of this book features a selection of Mencken's early writings (1905-17) on drama, most of which have never been reprinted. Various essays on Shakespeare, Shaw, Synge, Strindberg, Ibsen, and others exhibit Mencken's keenness as a literary critic and his understanding of the aesthetic possibilities of the drama. With an introduction by the editor who provides an overview of Mencken's work as a dramatist and drama critic, this collection will be of interest to amateur and even professional drama companies, theatre historians, and of course, anyone interested in the writings of Mencken.
Call Number: PS3525.E43 A6 2012
The Late Plays of Tennessee Williams by
Praised as one of the finest American playwrights of the 20th century, Tennessee Williams left a legacy of theater classics, including The Glass Menagerie, Sweet Bird of Youth, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and A Streetcar Named Desire. Though a winner of two Pulitzer prizes for drama, Williams fell out of favor in the early 1960s and after The Night of the Iguana, his subsequent works suffered both critical and commercial failure. Even worse, several of his plays failed to get produced in his lifetime. William Prosser directed six productions of Williams's plays, five of which the playwright saw, criticized, and quite often praised. In The Late Plays of Tennessee Williams, Prosser reassesses the playwright's later works. Determined to liberate them from the literary purgatory to which they had been condemned by the critics, Prosser examines the works Williams produced from the early 1960s until the playwright's death in 1983. In several thoughtful essays, Prosser discusses such works as The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, Slapstick Tragedy, Kingdom of Earth, The Red Devil Battery Sign, and Clothes For a Summer Hotel, a portrait of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. Besides offering reevaluations of these works, each chapter may be seen as research and analysis for potential productions. Throughout the book, Prosser contends that Williams' talent was not destroyed, but rather went on in different directions to produce extraordinary, if misunderstood, works.
Call Number: PS3545.I5365 Z8237 2009
Masterpieces of 20th-Century American Drama by
American playwrights have made enormous contributions to world drama during the last century, and their works are widely read and performed. This reference conveniently introduces 10 of the most important modern American plays read by students. An introductory essay concisely overviews modern American drama, and each of the chapters that follow examines a particular play. Among the plays discussed are Thornton Wilder's Our Town, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, and August Wilson's The Piano Lesson. Each chapter includes a biography, a plot summary, an analysis of the play's themes, characters, and dramatic art, and a review of its historical background and reception. Chapters list works for further reading, and the volume closes with a selected, general bibliography.
Call Number: PS350 .A23 2005
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American Feminist Playwrights by
Series Editor: Jordan Miller, University of Rhode Island.Each volume provides: dramatists, production dates of significant plays, and intellectual, cultural and historical events of the period; original, accessible analyses of plays, playwrights, and literary & theatrical movements; convenient reference features -- notes and references, an annotated bibliography, and an index; and illustrations bringing theaters, playwrights and productions to life.
Publication Date: 1996
American Theater in the Culture of the Cold War by
In this groundbreaking study, Bruce McConachie uses the primary metaphor of containment--what happens when we categorize a play, a television show, or anything we view as having an inside, an outside, and a boundary between the two--as the dominant metaphor of cold war theatergoing. Drawing on the cognitive psychology and linguistics of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, he provides unusual access to the ways in which spectators in the cold war years projected themselves into stage figures that gave them pleasure. McConachie reconstructs these cognitive processes by relying on scripts, set designs, reviews, memoirs, and other evidence. After establishing his theoretical framework, he focuses on three archtypal figures of containment significant in Cold War culture, Empty Boys, Family Circles, and Fragmented Heroes. McConachie uses a range of plays, musicals, and modern dances from the dominant culture of the Cold War to discuss these figures, including The Seven Year Itch, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; The King and I,A Raisin in the Sun, Night Journey, and The Crucible. In an epilogue, he discusses the legacy of Cold War theater from 1962 to 1992. Original and provocative, American Theater in the Culture of the Cold War illuminates the mind of the spectator in the context of Cold War culture; it uses cognitive studies and media theory to move away from semiotics and psychoanalysis, forging a new way of interpreting theater history.
Publication Date: 2005
Arthur Miller by ISBN: 9781587656972
August Wilson by
Just prior to his death in 2005, August Wilson, arguably the most important American playwright of the last quarter-century, completed an ambitious cycle of ten plays, each set in a different decade of the twentieth century. Known as the Twentieth-Century Cycle or the Pittsburgh Cycle, the plays, which portrayed the struggles of African-Americans, won two Pulitzer Prizes for Drama, a Tony Award for Best Play, and seven New York Drama Critics Circle Awards. August Wilson: Completing the Twentieth-Century Cycle is the first volume devoted to the last five plays of the cycle individually--Jitney,Seven Guitars, King Hedley II, Gem of the Ocean, and Radio Golf--and in the context of Wilson's entire body of work. Editor Alan Nadel's May All Your Fences Have Gates: Essays on the Drama of August Wilson, a work Henry Louis Gates called definitive, focused on the first five plays of Wilson's cycle. This new collection examines from myriad perspectives the way Wilson's final works give shape and focus to his complete dramatic opus. It contains an outstanding and diverse array of discussions from leading Wilson scholars and literary critics. Together, the essays in Nadel's two volumes give Wilson's work the breadth of analysis and understanding that this major figure of American drama merits. Contributors Herman Beavers Yvonne Chambers Soyica Diggs Colbert Harry J. Elam, Jr. Nathan Grant David LaCroix Barbara Lewis Alan Nadel Donald E. Pease Sandra Shannon Vivian Gist Spencer Anthony Stewart Steven C. Tracy Dana Williams Kimmika L. H. Williams-Witherspoon
Publication Date: 2010
Mimetic Disillusion by ISBN: 0817381856
Realism and the American Dramatic Tradition by
Any review of 20th-century American theatre invariably leads to the term realism. Yet despite the strong tradition of theatrical realism on the American stage, the term is frequently misidentified, and the practices to which it refers are often attacked as monolithically tyrannical, restricting the potential of the American national theatre. This book reconsiders realism on the American stage by addressing the great variety and richness of the plays that form the American theatre canon. By reconsidering the form and revisiting many of the plays that contributed to the realist tradition, the authors provide the opportunity to apprise strengths often overlooked by previous critics. The volume traces the development of American dramatic realism from James A. Herne, the "American Ibsen," to currently active contemporaries such as Sam Shepard, David Mamet, and Marsha Norman. This frank assessment, in sixteen original essays, reopens a critical dialog too long closed. Essays include: American Dramatic Realisms, Viable Frames of Thought The Struggle for the Real--Interpretive Con§ict, Dramatic Method, and the Paradox of Realism The Legacy of James A. Herne: American Realities and Realisms Whose Realism? Rachel Crothers's Power Struggle in the American Theatre The Provincetown Players' Experiments with Realism Servant of Three Masters: Realism, Idealism, and "Hokum" in American High Comedy
Publication Date: 1996
Southern Women PlaywrightsISBN: 9780817313463
