Sincerity Forever
Sincerity Forever

Author: Mac Wellman

Publisher: Broadway Play Publishing In

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780881452747

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Two profane aliens have landed in the Southern town of Hillsbottom. Is God watching? Does he care? Is God a He? Mac Wellman addresses these and other questions in this Obie Award-winning play that skewers the social malignancy of ignorance. In 2003, The Village Voice gave a Lifetime Achievement Award to Mac Wellman: "... [he] has long situated himself on the frontier of new forms. He's not only an experimental dramatist of the first rank, but also an eloquent champion of the avant-garde ... Like Beckett's characters, the figures in his work inhabit both a purely theatrical world and a space that will not let you forget the social realities compounding the existential mystery." "In SINCERITY FOREVER, Mac Wellman's savage comedy about everyday lunacies in America, two adolescent girls in a dirt-poor Southern town calmly accept the order of the universe. God must have a plan, says one, or why else would He keep both of them 'ignorant forever in absolute sincerity.' Like everyone else in Hillsbottom, the two are wearing Ku Klux Klan costumes. They are blissful in their brainlessness, confessing they cannot tell good art from bad art and do not know why junk bonds are junky. The conversation dwells on important matters like boyfriends rather than on child abuse or the plutonium-poisoned water that is killing their community. Mr Wellman's view of contemporary society is dire but not doleful. In his headlong search for social and political commentary, he never neglects his comical instincts, starting with the fact that the play is dedicated to Jesse Helms ... The framework of the play is fantasy. A 'mystic furball' has infected Hillsbottom. What, you may ask, are furballs? They are foul-mouthed aliens that look like partly plucked chickens. The two who have landed (or have emerged from Hell) are played in full comic plumage ... Because of the play's graphic language and its approach to piety, some theatergoers may find SINCERITY FOREVER offensive, a fact that should please the playwright. Mr Wellman does not play anything safe as he does his danse macabre far out on the cutting edge." -Mel Gussow, The New York Times

Grove New American Theater
Grove New American Theater

Author: Michael Feingold

Publisher: Grove Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 414

ISBN-13: 9780802132789

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In recent seasons, theater has witnessed one of the fiercest examination yet of its art, as playwrights and performance artists continue to re-form image and language. In this collection, editor Michael Feingold has gathered the works of six contemporary and frequently controversial authors, all of whom have won acclaim for their originality and accomplishment.

The Playwright's Voice
The Playwright's Voice

Author: David Savran

Publisher: Theatre Communications Group

Published: 1999-04-01

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1559367113

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This new volume of interviews with contemporary playwrights attests to the fact the dramatic art is alive and well in America and celebrates the art and talent of fifteen of the theatre's most important artists. In extensive interviews, they discuss their work, influences and their craft and how the art form relates to our cultural heritage, as well as the state of theatre-its-meaning and purposes as we approach the 21st Century. David Savran lays out their remarkable achievements and provides telling insights to their work in his substantial introductions to each interview. Interviews with: Edward Albee Jon Robin Baitz Philip Kan Gotanda Holly Hughes Tony Kushner Terrence McNally Suzan-Lori Parks José Rivera Ntozake Shange Nicky Silver Anna Deavere Smith Paula Vogel Wendy Wasserstein Mac Wellman and George C. Wolfe.

New Playwriting Strategies
New Playwriting Strategies

Author: Paul C. Castagno

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-12-19

Total Pages: 199

ISBN-13: 1135866465

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New Playwriting Strategies offers a fresh and dynamic approach to playwriting that will be welcomed by teachers and aspiring playwrights alike.

Words from Within
Words from Within

Author: Jay F. Downs

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2012-07-26

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 9781475930191

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WORDS FROM WITHIN is a collection of poetry -- simple verse and some prose -- written over a period of forty-eight years. It is separated into six different themes -- Words of Love, Joy, Despair, Wisdom, Faith, and Prose -- although some could be interchanged easily and most are strongly Christian-oriented in their subject matter -- to both challenge and inspire. The most gracious comments one could receive about the early poems came from Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni, the Poet Laureate of Arkansas, who wrote, Your poetry has gentleness and strength -- it is most sincere and heart-felt, and a young lady who said, You seem to be able to say what men since Adam have been trying to say in a manner in which changing the poem would destroy it. Different personal moods and thoughts are expressed as they evolved throughout the years, so a wide range of feelings is touched upon here. Hopefully one will touch you.

Creating the Self in the Contemporary American Theatre
Creating the Self in the Contemporary American Theatre

Author: Robert J. Andreach

Publisher: SIU Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 9780809321780

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"Exploring the theatre from the 1960s to the present, Robert J. Andreach shows the various ways in which the contemporary American theatre creates a personal, theatrical, and national self." "Andreach argues that the contemporary American theatre creates multiple selves that reflect and give voice to the many communities within our multicultural society. These selves are fragmented and enclaved, however, which makes necessary a counter movement that seeks, through interaction among the various parts, to heal the divisions within, between, and among them." --Book Jacket.

Writing and the Modern Stage
Writing and the Modern Stage

Author: Julia Jarcho

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2017-04-18

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1108165842

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It is time to change the way we talk about writing in theater. This book offers a new argument that reimagines modern theater's critical power and places innovative writing at the heart of the experimental stage. While performance studies, German Theaterwissenschaft, and even text-based drama studies have commonly envisioned theatrical performance as something that must operate beyond the limits of the textual imagination, this book shows how a series of writers have actively shaped new conceptions of theater's radical potential. Engaging with a range of theorists, including Theodor Adorno, Jarcho reveals a modern tradition of 'negative theatrics,' whose artists undermine the here and now of performance in order to challenge the value and the power of the existing world. This vision emerges through surprising new readings of modernist classics - by Henry James, Gertrude Stein, and Samuel Beckett - as well as contemporary American works by Suzan-Lori Parks, Elevator Repair Service, and Mac Wellman.

Ottemiller's Index to Plays in Collections
Ottemiller's Index to Plays in Collections

Author: Denise L. Montgomery

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2011-08-11

Total Pages: 834

ISBN-13: 081087721X

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Representing the largest expansion between editions, this updated volume of Ottemiller's Index to Plays in Collections is the standard location tool for full-length plays published in collections and anthologies in England and the United States throughout the 20th century and beyond. This new volume lists more than 3,500 new plays and 2,000 new authors, as well as birth and/or death information for hundreds of authors.