Expressionism and Modernism in the American Theatre
Expressionism and Modernism in the American Theatre

Author: Julia A. Walker

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2005-06-30

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 1139446274

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Although often dismissed as a minor offshoot of the better-known German movement, expressionism on the American stage represents a critical phase in the development of American dramatic modernism. Situating expressionism within the context of early twentieth-century American culture, Walker demonstrates how playwrights who wrote in this mode were responding both to new communications technologies and to the perceived threat they posed to the embodied act of meaning. At a time when mute bodies gesticulated on the silver screen, ghostly voices emanated from tin horns, and inked words stamped out the personality of the hand that composed them, expressionist playwrights began to represent these new cultural experiences by disarticulating the theatrical languages of bodies, voices and words. In doing so, they not only innovated a new dramatic form, but redefined playwriting from a theatrical craft to a literary art form, heralding the birth of American dramatic modernism.

The A to Z of American Theater
The A to Z of American Theater

Author: James Fisher

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 618

ISBN-13: 0810868849

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"The period of 1880 to 1929 is the richest theater era in American history, certainly in the number of plays produced and significant artists, as well as in the centrality of theater in the lives of Americans. As the impact of European modernism gradually seeped into American theater during the 1880s and 1890s, more traditional forms of theater gave way to futurism, symbolism, surrealism, and expressionism. Such playwrights as Eugene O'Neill, George Kelly, Elmer Rice, Philip Barry, and George S. Kaufman ushered in the golden age of American drama." "The A to Z of American Theater: Modernism focuses on legitimate drama, both as influenced by modernism in Europe and by the popular entertainment that also enlivened the era. This is accomplished through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced entries on plays, music, playwrights, performers, producers, critics, architects, designers, and costumes." --Book Jacket.

Performance and Modernity
Performance and Modernity

Author: Julia A. Walker

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2022-01-06

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 1108833063

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This book argues that ideas first take shape in the human body, appearing on stage in new styles of performance.

The Oxford Handbook of American Drama
The Oxford Handbook of American Drama

Author: Jeffrey H. Richards

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014-02

Total Pages: 593

ISBN-13: 0199731497

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This volume explores the history of American drama from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. It describes origins of early republican drama and its evolution during the pre-war and post-war periods. It traces the emergence of different types of American drama including protest plays, reform drama, political drama, experimental drama, urban plays, feminist drama and realist plays. This volume also analyzes the works of some of the most notable American playwrights including Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller and those written by women dramatists.

Sheldon Cheney's Theatre Arts Magazine
Sheldon Cheney's Theatre Arts Magazine

Author: DeAnna M. Toten Beard

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 0810872668

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In the early decades of the 20th century, Sheldon Cheney was the American theatre's zealous missionary for modernism. In 1916, Cheney founded Theatre Arts Magazine in Detroit with the intent to foster and support a 'renaissance' in America. Through this publication, Cheney gave voice to scores of 'little theatres'_groups around the country with artistic aspirations and local commitment that would become the models for the American regional theatre movement later in the century. In the first five years of Theatre Arts Magazine are the keys to understanding the progressive movement for a modern American theatre: the tension between commercial and non-commercial theatre, the yearning for more than realistic scenery, and the call for an 'authentic' American voice in playwriting. Publishing articles, photographs, and drawings by modernist stage designers, Cheney helped popularize the New Stagecraft and elevated the identity of the American scenic designer from a craftsperson to an artist. As progressives around the country read Theatre Arts Magazine, Cheney's assessment of the sins of American commercial theatre and the plan for its salvation eventually became the convictions of a generation. Sheldon Cheney's Theatre Arts Magazine: Promoting a Modern American Theatre, 1916-1921 enriches understanding of a critical period in American history and illuminates major issues of 20th century theatre and drama. Author DeAnna Toten Beard gives a brief history of the magazine, biographical information about Cheney, and an explanation of his philosophy of modernist theatre. Each chapter of the book considers a different topic relevant to Cheney's magazine, and selected articles are enhanced by full notations. This collection will help readers understand the dynamic nature of the discourse on modernism in America in the World War I era and, by extension, may even encourage fresh considerations about our contemporary stage.

Modernist and Avant-Garde Performance
Modernist and Avant-Garde Performance

Author: Claire Warden

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2015-02-08

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0748681566

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The first detailed, student-focused introduction to modernist avant-garde performanceThis textbook introduces the reader to modernist avant-garde theatre. It clearly explains the key terms as well as the major movements, including Expressionism, Dadaism, Futurism, Workers theatres, Constructivism and the Living Newspaper, and Mass Performance, using a case study approach. It introduces the important innovations of the modernist avant-garde, reassesses theatrical techniques, and provides examples of plays and performances from across Europe and America. There are also chapters on The Modernist Body and on Interdisciplinary Performance. The book approaches the modernist avant-garde both as an area of academic study and as potential raw material for contemporary performance. Key Features:nbsp;The first introductory guide to the modernist theatrical avant-garde nbsp;Includes case studies, practical exercises at the end of each chapter, an annotated bibliography and a glossary of performance termsnbsp;Includes links to performance-based explorations of theatrical techniquesnbsp;Provides a springboard for further independent study, both theoretical and practicalClaire Warden is Senior Lecturer in Drama at the University of Lincoln. Her research focuses primarily on constructing new, fluid narratives for modernist performance. She is the author of British Avant-Garde Theatre (Palgrave MacMillan 2012), and multiple journal articles and book chapters on modernism, interdisciplinarity, theatre, art and cultural studies.

Drama, Theatre, and Identity in the American New Republic
Drama, Theatre, and Identity in the American New Republic

Author: Jeffrey H. Richards

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2005-10-27

Total Pages: 406

ISBN-13: 1139448048

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Drama, Theatre, and Identity in the American New Republic investigates the way in which theatre both reflects and shapes the question of identity in post-revolutionary American culture. In this 2005 book Richards examines a variety of phenomena connected to the stage, including closet Revolutionary political plays, British drama on American boards, American-authored stage plays, and poetry and fiction by early Republican writers. American theatre is viewed by Richards as a transatlantic hybrid in which British theatrical traditions in writing and acting provide material and templates by which Americans see and express themselves and their relationship to others. Through intensive analyses of plays both inside and outside of the early American 'canon', this book confronts matters of political, ethnic and cultural identity by moving from play text to theatrical context and from historical event to audience demography.

Historical Dictionary of American Theater
Historical Dictionary of American Theater

Author: James Fisher

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2017-11-22

Total Pages: 810

ISBN-13: 1538107864

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This book covers the history of theater as well as the literature of America from 1880-1930. The years covered by this volume features the rise of the popular stage in America from the years following the end of the Civil War to the Golden Age of Broadway, with an emphasis on its practitioners, including such diverse figures as William Gillette, Mrs. Fiske, George M. Cohan, Maude Adams, David Belasco, George Abbott, Clyde Fitch, Eugene O’Neill, Texas Guinan, Robert Edmond Jones, Jeanne Eagels, Susan Glaspell, The Adlers and the Barrymores, Tallulah Bankhead, Philip Barry, Maxwell Anderson, Mae West, Elmer Rice, Laurette Taylor, Eva Le Gallienne, and a score of others. Entries abound on plays of all kinds, from melodrama to the newly-embraced realistic style, ethnic works (Irish, Yiddish, etc.), and such diverse forms as vaudeville, circus, minstrel shows, temperance plays, etc. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of American Theater: Modernism covers the history of modernist American Theatre through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 2,000 cross-referenced entries on actors and actresses, directors, playwrights, producers, genres, notable plays and theatres. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the American Theater in its greatest era.