Twenty-First Century American Playwrights

Twenty-First Century American Playwrights PDF Author: Christopher Bigsby
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108419585
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Introduces nine exciting and talented playwrights who have emerged in twenty-first century America, exploring issues of race, gender and society.

Twenty-First Century American Playwrights

Twenty-First Century American Playwrights PDF Author: Christopher Bigsby
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108419585
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Introduces nine exciting and talented playwrights who have emerged in twenty-first century America, exploring issues of race, gender and society.

Staging America

Staging America PDF Author: Christopher Bigsby
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350127566
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 249

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Book Description
This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. Many of the American playwrights who dominated the 20th century are no longer with us: Edward Albee, Arthur Miller, Sam Shepard, Neil Simon, August Wilson and Wendy Wasserstein. A new generation, whose careers began in this century, has emerged, and done so when the theatre itself, along with the society with which it engages, was changing. Capturing the cultural shifts of 21st-century America, Staging America explores the lives and works of 8 award-winning playwrights – including Ayad Akhtar, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Young Jean Lee and Quiara Alllegría Hudes – whose backgrounds reflect the social, religious, sexual and national diversity of American society. Each chapter is devoted to a single playwright and provides an overview of their career, a description and critical evaluation of their work, as well as a sense of their reception. Drawing on primary sources, including the playwrights' own commentaries and notes, and contemporary reviews, Christopher Bigsby enters into a dialogue with plays which are as various as the individuals who generated them. An essential read for theatre scholars and students, Staging America is a sharp and landmark study of the contemporary American playwright.

American Dramatists in the 21st Century

American Dramatists in the 21st Century PDF Author: Christopher Bigsby
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350340499
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
In American Dramatists in the 21st Century: Opening Doors, Christopher Bigsby examines the careers of seven award-winning playwrights: David Adjmi, Julia Cho, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Will Eno, Martyna Majok, Dominique Morisseau and Anna Ziegler. In addition to covering all their plays, including several as yet unpublished, he notes their critical reception while drawing on their own commentary on their approach to writing and the business of developing a career. The writers studied come from a diverse range of racial, religious and immigrant backgrounds. Five of the seven are women. Together, they open doors on a changing theatre and a changing America, as ever concerned with identity, both personal and national. This is the third in a series of books which, together, have explored the work of twenty-four American playwrights who have emerged in the current century.

Staging America

Staging America PDF Author: Christopher Bigsby
Publisher: Methuen Drama
ISBN: 9781350200920
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. Many of the American playwrights who dominated the 20th century are no longer with us: Edward Albee, Arthur Miller, Sam Shepard, Neil Simon, August Wilson and Wendy Wasserstein. A new generation, whose careers began in this century, has emerged, and done so when the theatre itself, along with the society with which it engages, was changing. Capturing the cultural shifts of 21st-century America, Staging America explores the lives and works of 8 award-winning playwrights – including Ayad Akhtar, Stephen Adly Guirgis, Young Jean Lee and Quiara Alllegría Hudes – whose backgrounds reflect the social, religious, sexual and national diversity of American society. Each chapter is devoted to a single playwright and provides an overview of their career, a description and critical evaluation of their work, as well as a sense of their reception. Drawing on primary sources, including the playwrights' own commentaries and notes, and contemporary reviews, Christopher Bigsby enters into a dialogue with plays which are as various as the individuals who generated them. An essential read for theatre scholars and students, Staging America is a sharp and landmark study of the contemporary American playwright.

American Theatre in the Twenty-First Century

American Theatre in the Twenty-First Century PDF Author: Alexander Scally
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781953818348
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
Also featuring plays by Emma S. Rund, Dylan Kinnett, Barbara Bryan, Cameron Sheppard, Matt Brown, and Andre Thespies. With introduction by Shaun Vain (editor) In the first anthology of this series, Chicago and Baltimore playwrights share short plays written for the stage. Performance-ready new ideas, contained within insightful dialogue and monologues span, the pages of this anthology. Since America earned its title as "the melting pot" by most historians, Future Publishing House combines with playwrights and theatre artistry to create this unequivocally dynamic collection of work. As artists living with the freedom to create meaningful new work, the plays in this first volume inform the beginning of a millennia of performance art. Plays comment on universal themes: Emma Rund's characters in To Fix a Dinosaur deal with conditional forgiveness. The struggle of political power to overcome scientific knowledge comes through in John Joseph Enright's Starry Night. Women's liberation ideas are featured in Easy as Pie by Melania Coffey. Gentrification is discussed in poetic verse in Alexander Scally's Chalked. Jealousy, envy, and the future of humanity are addressed in Dylan Kinnett's Party Planet. A scene from a play by Cameron Sheppard is dramatic and biographic Some pieces in this anthology fall into symbolism, surrealism, and absurdism, such as Barbara Bryan's Leaving the Universe. Other plays are written as melodramas, such as Love, Lust, Lyrics & Stamps by Matt Brown and Andre Thespies. Cover design by Kiirstn Pagan.

Women's Voices on American Stages in the Early Twenty-First Century

Women's Voices on American Stages in the Early Twenty-First Century PDF Author: L. Durham
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 113728711X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Women are at the center of American theatre and have the potential to shape the cultural imagination of theatre-goers as a complex new era unfolds. Sarah Ruhl, one of the twenty-first century's most honored playwrights, is read in concert with her contemporaries whose writing also wrestles with the vexing issues facing Americans in the new century.

Modern American Drama: Playwriting 2000-2009

Modern American Drama: Playwriting 2000-2009 PDF Author: Julia Listengarten
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350024759
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
The Decades of Modern American Drama series provides a comprehensive survey and study of the theatre produced in each decade from the 1930s to 2009 in eight volumes. Each volume equips readers with a detailed understanding of the context from which work emerged: an introduction considers life in the decade with a focus on domestic life and conditions, social changes, culture, media, technology, industry and political events; while a chapter on the theatre of the decade offers a wide-ranging and thorough survey of theatres, companies, dramatists, new movements and developments in response to the economic and political conditions of the day. The work of the four most prominent playwrights from the decade receives in-depth analysis and re-evaluation by a team of experts, together with commentary on their subsequent work and legacy. A final section brings together original documents such as interviews with the playwrights and with directors, drafts of play scenes, and other previously unpublished material. The major playwrights and their plays to receive in-depth coverage in this volume include: * Theresa Rebeck: Omnium Gatherum (2003), Mauritius (2007), and The Understudy (2008); * Sarah Ruhl: Eurydice (2003), Clean House (2004), and In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play) (2009); * Lynn Nottage: Intimate Apparel (2003), Fabulation or Re-Education of Undine (2004), and Ruined (2008); * Charles Mee: Big Love (2000), Wintertime (2005), and Hotel Cassiopeia (2006).

American Playwriting and the Anti-Political Prejudice

American Playwriting and the Anti-Political Prejudice PDF Author: N. Pressley
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137415185
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Twenty years after Tony Kushner's influential Angels in America seemed to declare a revitalized potency for the popular political play, there is a "No Politics" prejudice undermining US production and writing. This book explores the largely unrecognized cultural patterns that discourage political playwriting on the contemporary American stage.

Arthur Miller for the Twenty-First Century

Arthur Miller for the Twenty-First Century PDF Author: Stephen Marino
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 9783030372958
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Arthur Miller for the Twenty-First Century: Contemporary Views of His Writings and Ideas brings together both established Miller experts and emerging commentators to investigate the sources of his ongoing resonance with audiences and his place in world theatre. The collection begins by exploring Miller in the context of 20th-century American drama. Chapters discuss Miller and Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, David Mamet, and Sam Shepard, as well as thematic relationships between Miller’s ideas and the explosion of significant women and African American dramatists since the 1970s. Other essays focus more directly on interpretations of Miller’s individual works, not only plays but also essays and fiction, including a discussion of Death of a Salesman in China. The volume concludes by considering Miller and current cultural issues: his work for human rights, his depiction of American ideals of masculinity, and his anticipation of contemporary posthumanism.

Modern American Drama: Playwriting in the 1990s

Modern American Drama: Playwriting in the 1990s PDF Author: Sharon Friedman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350153664
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
The Decades of Modern American Playwriting series provides a comprehensive survey and study of the theatre produced in each decade from the 1930s to 2009 in eight volumes. Each volume equips readers with a detailed understanding of the context from which work emerged: an introduction considers life in the decade with a focus on domestic life and conditions, social changes, culture, media, technology, industry and political events; while a chapter on the theatre of the decade offers a wide-ranging and thorough survey of theatres, companies, dramatists, new movements and developments in response to the economic and political conditions of the day. The work of the four most prominent playwrights from the decade receives in-depth analysis and re-evaluation by a team of experts, together with commentary on their subsequent work and legacy. A final section brings together original documents such as interviews with the playwrights and with directors, drafts of play scenes, and other previously unpublished material. The major playwrights and their plays to receive in-depth coverage in this volume include: * Tony Kushner: Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, Part One and Part Two (1991), Slavs! Thinking About the Longstanding Problems of Virtue and Happiness (1995) and A Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds (1997); * Paula Vogel: Baltimore Waltz (1992), The Mineola Twins (1996) and How I Learned to Drive (1997); * Suzan-Lori Parks: The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World (1990), The America Play (1994) and Venus (1996); * Terrence McNally: Lips Together, Teeth Apart (1991), Love! Valour! Compassion! (1997) and Corpus Christi (1998).