American Drama

Thornton Wilder (1897-1975) is one of the most acclaimed American dramatists in the twentieth century. His plays are characterized by in-depth analysis of the American reality at that time. This research is an attempt to cast light on Thornton Wilder’s philosophy which affirms that one can lead a very happy life if the meaning of life is well-understood. In Our Town (1938) Wilder embodies such a philosophical conception in the framework of a family institution in the Great Depression of the 1930s. The play emphasizes the fact that there are many ways in which happiness can be achieved. Such a philosophy springs from the fact that Wilder found the American community breaking into pieces, believing that the main task of the artist resides in the attempt to diagnose the social problems and to inseminate the spirit of optimism, hope, and patience.

Thesis:
Edward Albee claims in the subtitle of his drama, The Goat or Who is Sylvia?, that the play falls within the category of tragedy. In this abstract of my final thesis, I review this claim, by applying Aristotle's famous definition of Tragedy in Poetics to The Goat and comparing The Goat to other drama. Through this review I can gain a deeper understanding of whether Albee's claim holds up in Aristotle's definition, that is still widely recognized today. Another possibility may be that Albee's intention was to trick the recipient, or be ironic and critical of society by claiming such an absolute statement.

The objective of the present article is to demonstrate acute psychoanalytical dispositions in Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude. A two tier strategy of delving is involved to delineate that apart from the dramas, it was also the dramatist who was subconsciously self-psychoanalyzing in an attempt to link his conscious and subconscious mind. The first tier includes the characterization, the plot structure, themes and motifs of the drama. The second tier consists of the authors personal background, his idiosyncratic psyche, and his motivation that went through in compiling the dramas. A concurrent juxtaposing is made within the article to prove the impact of psychoanalysis on the dramatist and his dramas.

Male against female, tradition against the new age, and East against West are the main notions questioned by David Hwang’s rather unique approach in M. Butterfly. M may either refer to Madame (as the term usually associated with the opera, mostly by those who have already read the play), or to the traditional abbreviation for Monsieur. Regardless of the interpretation, Hwang has managed to set the tone of the play just based on the title: traditional gender notions are challenged - basic categorization interpretation, the ideal of ‘other’ beauty, gender identity, sexual orientation, traditional notions of gender and one’s sense of self. Hwang based this play on Puccini’s play Madame Butterfly and wrote it during the time of sexual revolution in the U.S. where he had lived at the time; this is reflected in a series of gender transformations within the very play, leaving the reader and Rene confused whether Song is a man or a woman.

In the article, the author examines the dramatic nature of the memory play in the context of literary gerontology. Discussing the theoretical frameworks of P. Szondi, P. Schroeder, J. Malkin and others, the author analyzes the functioning of past in present in the dramatic work. While reminiscences can perform a variety of functions on stage, the memories in Tina Howe’s play “Pride's Crossing” perform a therapeutic function that enables the harmonious representation of process of aging. The author claims that the peculiarity of the structure of “Pride's Crossing” is the organic interweaving of compositional models - chronological and achronological. The author of the article argues that the poetical dimensions of the dramatic work are the puns and the metaphor of croquet, the leisurely continuum of which symbolizes the ups and downs of the players throughout their lives.
Keywords: memory play, montage composition, aging, croquet, chronological model, achronological model.

This article analyzes how affective narration and dramatic construction in Superior Donuts (2008) by Tracy Letts and Good People (2011) by David Lindsay Abaire prevent characters' capabilities from understanding or criticizing neoliberal discourse in general. Neoliberalism's presence is difficult to track in many similar daily-life domains, but drama is more advantageous to explore its subversive effects by unfolding it through power relations and personal clashes among characters. Creating an ontological approach, the affective narration in these plays opens the path for an overall nihilist resolution while propagating a character-based understanding in dramatic structures. As a result of the prevalent affective tone, a nostalgic yearning has emerged as a response to the problems experienced. Aiming to forget problems of the present, these characters idealize a mostly fictionalized and distorted past in order to find temporary solace through this wishful habit. The danger of a nostalgic approach is that it prevents characters as well as audiences from generating a critical method to understand the problems of today and tomorrow. Nostalgic vein in Superior Donuts and Good People is a reflection of social and cultural politics within the USA which believes in the project of "Making America Great Again" without a real scrutiny of neoliberal mistakes and their consequences.

In 1924, Eugene O’Neill premiered Desire Under the Elms, a folk tragedy that marked the high point of the first phase of his dramatical production and conferred international status on the proclaimed founding father of modern American drama. Challenging the despotic centrality of the biographical and clinical argument in the interpretation of the play, this dissertation considers its intertextual relations with classical tragedy, on the one hand, and with sacred narratives, on the other. Not just an exhaustive survey of parallels, citations and resonances, this work aims to examine how classical and biblical archetypes operate within O’Neill’s text, and how they effect its dramatic expressiveness and meaning. If Euripides’ Hippolytus seems to lie at the root of Desire Under the Elms – serving as a fulcrum and a model –, the biblical symbolism operates rhizomatically, being eccentric, plural and dynamic. Understanding theatre as an “art à deux temps” [art in two steps] (Henri Gouhier) that demands the actual staging of the text, our reflexion is supplemented by a look at how posterity has treated Desire Under the Elms in the context of Portuguese theatre. We analyse the staging of the play by João Lourenço (1990) and, particularly, by Nuno Cardoso (2011).

This essay traces the figure of Saint Sebastian as it is employed in two plays, Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly, Last Summer and Michel Marc Bouchard’s Lilies, as well as in their film adaptations (directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz and John Greyson, respectively). Saint Sebastian, an example of the stereotype Richard Dyer calls a “sad young man,” is here analyzed as conduit for both identity formation and homoerotic anxiety. The Saint is positioned as a figure through which issues surrounding storytelling, production of memory, personal history and historical revision are embodied. By making these issues the central dramatic conflicts, the two plays do not only engage with the figure of Saint Sebastian in order to codify its central melancholy gay characters, but also explore the way the Saint’s queer potentiality is reproduced through the work of memory, revision and revival.

O Simon δεν είναι κάποιος ρομαντικός του χώρου. Δεν ανήκει στην κατηγορία των συγγραφέων εκείνων που περιμένουν την έμπνευση για να γράψουν. Γι' αυτόν η συγγραφή θεατρικών έργων είναι επάγγελμα. Mόλις ολοκληρώσει το ένα έργο αρχίζει αμέσως το άλλο, δουλεύοντας πέντε (ενίοτε και εφτά) μέρες την εβδομάδα, από τις εννέα μέχρι τις πέντε, όπως κάθε εργαζόμενος· και όπως είχε πει κάποτε ο γνωστός κριτικός Walter Kerr, κάπως έτσι ο Simon με τον καιρό "όχι μόνο [θα γίνει] πλούσιος αλλά και σεβαστός", άποψη που ο χρόνος επαλήθευσε κατά το ήμισυ· έγινε πλούσιος όχι όμως σεβαστός. Mπορεί μετά το βραβείο Pulitzer (1991) να άρχισε να εκδηλώνεται κάποιο κριτικό ενδιαφέρον, όμως μακράν απέχει από το να είναι ανάλογο με τον βαθμό επιτυχίας των έργων του. Kαι μπορούμε να καταλάβουμε το γιατί.

Drawing upon Broadway musicals ranging from Irene (1919) to Gypsy (1959), American Cinderellas on the Broadway Musical Stage considers how Broadway musicals from the 1920s through the 1950s adapted and transformed Perrault's fairy tale icon in order to address changing social and professional roles for American women. Drawing heavily upon historical research in American culture and gender studies, Cantu analyzes female lyricists and librettists who were significant in translating Perrault's heroine to the contexts and concerns of the American "working girl." In exploring how these and other writers (of both sexes) adapted the Cinderella myth to a twentieth-century urban landscape, this book challenges traditional assumptions about the American musical's relationship to both feminism and modernism -- placing the Cinderella story into the Broadway musical canon.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: Glass Slippers and Glass Ceilings in the Twenty-First Century, or Cinderella Returns to Broadway
1. "Who Are These American Cinderellas?:" Working Girls, Chorus Girls, and American Dreams for Women in the 1920s
2. Merman Was a Lady: The 1930s Cinderella-Broad and Burlesquing the Genteel Tradition
3. "Make Up Your Mind:" Boss Ladies and Enchantresses in the 1940s Broadway Musical
4. "Twentieth-Century Fairy Tales:" Princesses, Prostitutes, and the Feminine Mystique in the Broadway Musicals of the 1950s
5. Coda: Rewriting the Broadway Cinderella Story

EDITORIAL REVIEWS
"What Maya Cantu has achieved is to link mid-twentieth-century Broadway and Hollywood's fascination with Cinderella imagery and plots to modern feminism, and to the shifting conditions of American women. This book opens a rich vein of musical theatre study not unearthed before. She has written a real gem: fresh, comprehensive, engaging - often even revelatory." – Stuart Hecht, PhD, Associate Professor, Theatre, Boston College, USA and author of "Transposing Broadway: Jews, Assimilation, and the American Musical"

"'American Cinderellas on the Broadway Musical Stage' convincingly argues for the Cinderella motif as crucial to American musical theatre. Instead of pre-modern waifs and princesses, however, Maya Cantu finds her Cinderellas among the working girls, gold diggers, broads, boss ladies, and prostitutes of modern American culture, reminding us of the centrality of spunky girls in the musical. An insightful and illuminating read." - Pamela Robertson Wojcik, Professor, Department of Film, TV, and Theatre, University of Notre Dame, USA

"This book is not only a smart, fascinating, and entertaining celebration of Broadway's love of the working girl's rags-to-riches dream, but also an engaging, thoughtful and perceptive exploration of our cultural values and the theatre artists who shaped them. A joy!" – Jack Sharrar, PhD, American Conservatory Theater, author of "Avery Hopwood: His Life and Plays"

Uvodni rad ("Proslov") koji klasifikaciju prema odnosu prema američkom snu provodi u djelo, prvi dio antologije je tako izbor autora stare subverzivne drame (Eugene O'Neill: Dugo putovanje u noć, Arthur Miller: Smrt trgovačkog putnika, Tennessee Williams: Tramvaj zvan žudnja, William Inge: Piknik, Lanford Wilson Hot'l Baltimore, August Wilson: Sat Klavira, M. Norman: Laku noć, majko Antologija američke drame I i II (izbor, proslov i biografske bilješke o autorima), AGM, Zagreb, 1993. str. 480.(I) i 435. (II)

In this eBook two complete one-act plays based on Greek drama are available for teachers and students in high school and college. Ghost Story, a one-act play, has been shown around the world for the last fifteen years including a fully produced performance with original music at the East Providence Community Theatre in 2005 in Providence Rhode Island, along with performances in the UK and the Philippines. A second one-act play is about the Greek God Prometheus who comes back as a heavy metal rock star -- a play which high school students should like.
Contemporary monologues for both men and women make up the second part of this eBook. Author Rick Doble received about a hundred emails from teens and professional actors concerning his monologues, including an actor who performed one at the Actors Studio in NYC.
One reviewer wrote: "Dramatic monologues that have contemporary spunk." Two of these monologues were included in the anthology "Millennium Monologs: 95 Contemporary Characterizations for Young Actors," Meriwether Publishing, Colorado Springs, 2002. Meriwether Publishing claims it is "America's foremost publisher of theatre arts books."
While most of my work here at academia.edu is about photography, art and the science & history of time, I also have an interest in literature. I have a B.A. in English, Honors in Creative Writing, from UNC-Chapel Hill, NC and a M.A. in Communications also from UNC-Chapel Hill, NC. My thesis was a creative writing movie script.

This article examines the complexities in the lives of African-Americans. It discusses the psycho-social challenges they faced in the twentieth century and their relentless efforts  to attain, secure and define  a sense of dignity to lead their  lives. It also discusses the vulnerability  of their existence and the sad dilemma in which the blacks were caught. The play has been deliberately selected for investigation as Lorrane Hansberry  depicts, very skillfully, not only the gaps and  inconsistencies of the two generations, but also the clashes in their aspirations  and values. These struggles and clashes are epitomized in Walter and Mama Lena in the play and are discussed, from various perspectives, in the present article. Offering background to both the writer and the play, the article explores how Hansberry  juxtaposes  these ideas; that is, Mama  finding the freedom to be sufficient for her happiness; where as,  her children perceiving money as the new path to provide  sense of happiness. The rebellion of Beneatha  against  the African-American  value system and her rejection of the ideals of the family as well as the aspirations of younger generation for self- fulfillment, the sufferings of older generations, the pain of racial discrimination  and the struggles for gaining the rights and dignity also form the very important topics of discussion in the paper.

Keywords: Generation gap, clashes of cultures Afro-Americans’ struggle, racial pride, 
                Lorraine Hansberry's play .

This research is about Kate's role in play She Stoops to Conquer, which was written by Oliver Goldsmith in 1773 in England. It is a comedy play which consists of some ethical themes. In this play, women's role and rights are focused on, in the eighteenth century in a patriarchal society and also it talks about the relation between women and their reflection in English Literature.The purpose of this research is to analyze Kate's role, whether she has a good role or not and how does she play her part. Kate generally has a good role in this play, considering all the abnormalities, eventually she could resolve, helping others, and achieves her own ambitions. Thenthe role women played in the eighteenth century will be explored. An Analytical Approach has been used to analyse the play.

Knjiga po prvi puta primjenjuje konstitutivno načelo odnosa Američke drame prema Američkom snu, temeljnom mitu pokretaču američkog društva. Time se dobiva nova klasifikacija Američke drame jer je primjena načela pokazala da unutar realističke američke drame postoje dva jasno izražena pravca afirmativnu koja pokazuje uspješne likove unutar američkog društva i subverzivnu koju opisuje ova knjiga. Subverzivna američka drama prikazuje gubitnike (losere) koji ne uspijevaju u "savršenom svijetu" i koji se neprestano osjećaju kao stranci čime negira funkcioniranje Američkog sna. Analizirajući pedesetak reprezentativnih drama autorica nudi dalju podjelu subverzivne drame na staru i novu subverzivnu dramu. Stara (O'Neill, Miller, Williams, Hellman, Inge) piše iz vjere u Američki san i zato gubitništvo smatra grijehom, traži i nalazi razloge i opravdanja za nj, a gubitnike na kraju kažnjava ne bi li ih iskupila. Nova pak (Albee, Rabe, Mamet, Shepard) više ne misli da je biti gubitnik grijeh nego vlastiti izbor, odnosno njihovi gubitnici unatoč predispozicijama za uspjeh ne uspijevaju jer su jednostavno nesposobni prilagodbi i okolini.

Bloomsbury's 2016/7 Catalogue of new books covering the following areas:
Drama and Performance Studies
Theatre Studies
Performance and Technique
Performance Studies
Theatre Makers
Modern Drama - Play Anthologies
Modern Drama - Plays for Young People
Modern Drama - Student Guides
Modern Drama - Modern Plays
Shakespeare and Early Modern Drama

Literary Studies
Literary Theory
Contemporary Literature
Modernism
Comparative Literature
North American Literature
German Literature
Religion and Literature
Environmental Literature
Genre Fiction
Children's Literature
Literary Biography
Writing
Major Reference Works

The essay presents irony as an intricate language game, violating the Gricean coorperative principle, its maxim of quality in particular. The ironic speech acts in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf follow three different mechanisms for establishing dissonance between intended communicative content and apprehended content: simple negation, the reversal of illocutionary force, and the use of presupposition to imply its own negation.

This is a compilation of absurd plays and detailed analysis of gender issues in Absurd Drama: Masses are Asses by Pedro Pietri, One Shoe Off by Tina Howe, The Confirmation by Kier Peters, Muzeeka by John Guare, Slam the Door Softly by Clare Boothe Luce, Rhoda in Potatoland by Richard Foreman, Softly, and Consider the Nearness by Rosalyn Drexle

Prejudice and hatred towards Muslims in Europe and America are not reactions to the 9/11 attacks in New York alone. Nevertheless, these anti-Muslim sentiments date back to the post-WW II era, when waves of Muslims came to Europe as refugees seeking a better life away from civil wars and unrest in their homelands. This paper is to detect and discuss the driving forces of Muslimophobia in Richard Bean's England People Very Nice and Yousef El Guindi's Back of the Throat. The paper must first tackle the term Islamophobia, its history and misconceptions, to build a more solid distinction between the broad term of Islamophobia and the more precise term of Muslimophobia. The discussion moves subsequently to the perceptions of threat and ethnocentrism as the forces that intensify anti-Muslim sentiments. Henceforward, the paper pursues a comparative analysis of the dramas at hand by tracing the employment of threat and ethnocentrism in shaping Muslimophobic characters in both dramas. The outcome of this comparative study reveals that the ideology of each author plays a vital role in the underlying perceptions of threat and ethnocentrism.

Early American Drama (end of eighteenth – mid-nineteenth century) is an interesting cultural phenomenon; still up to now researchers have paid far too little attention to it. This has been primarily due to the fact that the artistic value of these works was generally quite low, and therefore critics have felt they are not worthy of serious academic investigation. The first American playwrights patterned their works after the European models, remaining essentially only imitators of the recognized masters. Saturated with excessive melodramatization and exaggerated patriotism, their plays have long been considered immature artistic products. So it is quite natural that in the numerous thesauruses on the genesis of the American literature U.S. drama has been chiefly associated with Eugene O'Neil, Arthur Miller, Sherwood Anderson, Tennessee Williams, and the names of their predecessors – Thomas Godfrey, Royal Tyler, William Dunlap, James Nelson Barker etc. – are not even mentioned, although at one time they were quite famous. However, since the 1960-s this situation has been slowly changing. Various anthologies of literary texts that reflected the progress of the literary historical process in different periods of the formation of the American national cultural tradition have started to appear. Among them were collections of early American plays accompanied by editorial comments. In time, there were academic researches of R. K. Bank, H. Rankin, which covered the initial stage of dramatic art establishment in the New World. J. Barish, K. Halttunen, L. Levine, B. McConachie, who explored the role and place of the theater in the cultural space of the American society of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, greatly contributed to the rethinking of the socio-cultural and aesthetic significance of the first American plays. Due to the researches of the above-mentioned scholars drama of the American Enlightenment and Romanticism authors is being perceived as the fertile ground on which the strong tradition of the national theater has grown. In the context of the Ukrainian literary studies' interest in the reception of the works and personality of the Great Bard in foreign cultures (as evidenced by researches of N. Zhluktenko (Zhuktenko 2010), T. Mykhed (Mykhed 2003), T. Khytrova-Branz (Khytrova-Branz 2009), D. Lazarenko (Lazarenko 2009), Yu. Cherniak (Cherniak 2010) and others), it seems expedient to identify and study Shakespeare's echoes in the works of the American artists. The early reception of Shakespeare's legacy on the American continent is directly related to the theater practices and falls on the end of the seventeenth – the first half of the eighteenth century. Popularity of Shakespeare's plays in the American colonies, in circumstances where the dependence on the metropolis was not regarded as a negative factor in culture creation, predetermined the epigonous nature of early American drama. Thomas Godfrey (1736-1763), who is better known as a mathematician than as a writer, can be considered one of the founding fathers of the national theatrical tradition. His only work – the tragedy ―The Prince of Parthia‖ – became the first American play, which was staged by a professional theater company in the time when the American stage was dominated Shakespeare's word. Remarkably, among the number of works that were mostly staged by amateur groups, the play by T. Godfrey was distinguished by the fact that it met the requirements of the theater repertoire of that time. One can assume that ―learning from Shakespeare‖ inspired the creative pursuits by T. Godfrey.

Memory is a recurrent motif in the plays of Tennessee Williams. Williams uses memory in almost all of his plays. Hence, the aim of this research is to make an analysis of memory in The Glass Menagerie, which is an exemplary study of this motif. All characters are introduced through memory. They feel themselves haunted with the shackles of memory, which casts a shadow on their present situation. In using memory as a means to escape from reality, Williams generates the impression that his human archetypes live under unfavourable conditions whether they are social, political, or economic.

This paper is a feminist approach to Susan Glaspell's Trifles. It handles the marital discordance which results in misanthropy. Mrs. Wright in this play is a woman who falls victim to the suppression and marginalization of her husband, Mr. Wright. The hard-hearted husband destroys her human feelings out of neglect, a matter that ends in killing her husband. The subject is presented from a purely feminine perspective in that Mrs. Wright's character is fully revealed through the female characters' reactions. In fact, Trifles creates the impression that Glaspell is in full advocacy of women's right to reach self-fulfillment away from any form of social dictations. Matrimonial relationships must be compatible in order to enjoy a rather entertaining and continuous repose of mind.

Long Day's Journey into Night is an autobiographical drama with strong Freudian overtone. The story revolves around four characters; Father James Tyrone, Mother Mary and the two sons Jamie and Edmund. The members of the family are under the firm grip of their subconscious mind. The Psychoanalytical formulations of Freud in the drama are made apparent in the article. The Oedipus complex, the repercussion of a repressive psyche within each character is highlighted. The dramatist finds himself in the character of Edmund, who is suffering from Tuberculosis and is admitted in a sanatorium. The intransigence in the family leads to constant blameworthiness, anger, depression and repression. An attempt is made to analyze the psychic state of the characters. The author has made an effort to integrate his subconscious and the conscious self. He has tried to relive his past through this play as an act of self-psychoanalyzing. ABSTRACT

This paper works to examine the elements that have emerged in Modern American Drama, with particular reference to Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, against the background of a historical study of American Theatre through ages. The history of the theatres in America is studied, and the discussion extends to delineate particular movements and changes in the trajectory. Ranging from the period of colonization to the World Wars to the Great Depression period to the modern times, an analysis of the evolution of the American theatre is made.The paper focuses on a reading of the American theatrein noticeable depth in order to understand the changes that have happened gradually and the reasons behind these changes. Two of America's famous playwrights and some of their works are explained in order to understand the progress of American Drama and how actually these two playwrights contributed a whole new insight into comprehending drama in a new perspective. Williams and Miller have contributed to the growth of American theatre, and it is probably through them that more of autobiographical stances and incidents emerge in American fiction-drama.A reader, precisely an American reader, could easily relate to situations which the two playwrights have created in their works; and this is because the reader too has witnessed the same situations in reality. Further, the paper also examines various techniques used in the theatre and the changes that have come about with external influences such as colonialism, religion, wars and economy.

The ground-breaking film invention that occurred in the 19th century proved to be happily accepted and soon showed as the favorite media among the mass audience, movie lovers and movie directors. The theory of film, but also the phenomenon of adaptation (very popular even nowadays) flew almost concurrently with the movie discovery developed almost completing each other. These discoveries made movie makers and movie directors interested in a relentless hunt for famous pieces of literature with one main aim - to “transfer” them into new and now the most famous media – film.

The Octoroon (premièred in New York in 1859) by the Irish, and later naturalized American playwright Dion Boucicault, is in principle a harmless melodrama—save for a potentially explosive element, an interracial couple. Its staging directly before the outbreak of the US Civil War contributed to stirring up the debate over the abolition of slavery (together with the then comparably popular dramatizations of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, particularly the one by George L.
Aiken) and conversely, this element also called for various textual adjustments. The interracial motif had to be suppressed for American audiences, while the London audience demanded a happy ending—and thus a reunion of the white young man and the one-eight former slave. The paper investigates the aesthetic, political and personal reasons why he originally resisted to change the play into a melodrama with a happy ending.