Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons^™

Little (White) Women: Locating Whiteness In (De)Constructions Of The American Female From Alcott To Split Britches, Courtney Mohler

Courtney Mohler

In 1988, the feminist/lesbian performance group Split Britches performed a deconstruction of Louisa May Alcott’s canonical Little Women. Their play, Little Women, the Tragedy (LWTT) highlighted the division within the feminist movement at the time over pornography, and called into question the norms of morality and feminine virtue reflected in and by Alcott’s classic ‘American girls’ novel.’ The play, however, illustrates a problematic construction of feminist/lesbian identity as outside of racial discourse. This paper argues that feminist performances which aim to deconstruct gender and sexuality should also be examined in terms of racialization; the common omission of whiteness as a …

Memory And Remembering: Sacred History And The York Plays, Clifford Davidson

Clifford Davidson

A Monumental Mistake: Newly Discovered Letters To Handel Editor Samuel Arnold, Jeremy Barlow, Todd Gilman

Todd Gilman

On Losing One's Voice: Two Performances From Romeo Castellucci, Daniel Sack

Daniel Sack

’Tis Pity She’S A Realist: A Conversational Case Study In Realism And Early Modern Theater Today, Kim Solga, Roberta Barker, Cary Mazer

Kim Solga

No abstract provided.

“Peer Reviewed: Elizabeth Inchbald’S Shakespeare Criticism", Karen Gevirtz

Karen Bloom Gevirtz

No abstract provided.

The Brilliance Of The Servant Without Qualities, Daniel Sack

Daniel Sack

Intended For The Stage?: Samson Agonistes In Performance, Timothy Burbery

Timothy J. Burbery

The year 2000 marked the centenary of an important but overlooked milestone in Milton studies, namely the first staging of Samson Agonistes, by William Poel, in 1900. While many scholars may be aware of isolated productions of the tragedy, the extent and variety of its stage history is perhaps less well-known. The work was successful as a dramatic reading throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, yet it had never been attempted on the boards until Poel’s landmark production. That event ushered in a range of performances throughout the twentieth century, and nearly every decade saw several dramatizations. At least fifteen …

New Canadian Realisms: New Essays On Canadian Theatre Vol. 2, Kim Solga, Roberta Barker

Kim Solga

New Essays in Canadian Theatre Volume 2: New Canadian Realisms gathers writing by celebrated scholars and artists from both Canada and the US in order to explore what this much-debated genre might be doing for political performance in Canada today. Topics range from Hollywood’s influence on the look and feel of the contemporary Canadian “real,” to the power and the pitfalls of a “realism of redress” in intercultural Canadian theatre, to the apparently oxymoronic notion of “devised” realism, to the complexities of Indigenous realism(s). Together, this book’s authors suggest that Canada’s theatrical realisms are, like so much else among us, …

New Canadian Realisms: Eight Plays, Kim Solga, Roberta Barker

Kim Solga

New Canadian Realisms: Eight Plays collects works of contemporary theatre, each of which may be defined as “realist” through both a crucial link to the past and a zest for re-tooling old definitions. Grounded by Gwen Pharis Ringwood’s pioneering Still Stands the House, the anthology also features trey anthony’s ’da Kink in my hair, Tara Beagan’s Miss Julie: Sheh’mah, Madeleine Blais-Dahlem’s sTain, Hillar Liitoja’s The Last Supper, selections from the Impromptu Splendor series by National Theatre of the World, Theatre Replacement’s BioBoxes, and Zuppa Theatre’s Penny Dreadful, as well as a series of text-specific introductions and a resource page for …

Fragmented Liveness / Mediated Moments, Kristen Lovell

Kristen R Lovell

No abstract provided.

David Garrick's Masque Of King Arthur With Thomas Arne's Score (1770)., Todd Gilman

Todd Gilman

"A Comely Presentation And The Habit To Admiration Reverend": Ecclesiastical Apparel On The Early Modern English Stage, Robert Lublin

Robert Lublin

“Whosoever Loves Not Picture, Is Injurious To Truth": Costumes And The Stuart Masque, Robert Lublin

Robert Lublin

No abstract provided.

“An Vnder Black Dubblett Signifying A Spanish Hart”: Costumes And Politics In Middleton’S A Game At Chess, Robert Lublin

Robert Lublin

Spell #7 And Ntozake Shange’S Project Of Anti-Drama, Robert Lublin

Robert Lublin

No abstract provided.

Oskar Blumenthal And The Lessing Theater In Berlin, 1888-1904, William Grange

William Grange

OSKAR BLUMENTHAL (1852-1917) was Berlin’s most feared theatre critic in the early years of the new German Reich. He had the audacity of referring to Goethe as “an egghead” who had no understanding of what made plays effective for audiences, and in other critiques he ridiculed Kleist, Hebbel, and other “important” playwrights—prompting an adversary publicly to call him a “one-man lynch mob.” In the 1880s Blumenthal himself began writing plays, and he was so successful that many self-appointed cultural guardians accused him of damaging the German theatre beyond repair. His became the most frequently performed plays on any German stage …

Deliver Us From Evil: Essays On Symbolic Engagement In Early Drama, Clifford Davidson

Clifford Davidson

The focus of this book is on the reality of evil for medieval and Renaissance dramatists and their audiences. What propels the work beyond similar critiques is the author's insistence that evil is not an outmoded feature of past societies, but an active ingredient of contemporary life. Davidson fast forwards from distant times once described as "calamitous" to a century of far more violence and atrocity - our own twentieth and its overflow. While drawing on Kant to illuminate the kinds of evil portrayed in early drama through Marlowe and Shakespeare, Davidson refers to contemporary events that scream for an …

Feminist History, Theory, And Practice In The Shakespeare Classroom, Robert Lublin

Robert Lublin

No abstract provided.

History, Religion, And Violence: Cultural Contexts For Medieval And Renaissance Drama, Variorum Series, Clifford Davidson

Clifford Davidson

Reprinted essays, except for “Marlowe, the Papacy, and Doctor Faustus.”

Gesture In Medieval Drama And Art, Clifford Davidson

Clifford Davidson

Includes essay “Gesture in Medieval English Drama.”

Differing Dramatic Dynamics In The Stage And Screen Versions Of Glengarry Glen Ross, Robert Lublin

Robert Lublin

No abstract provided.

Unpublished Letters From Charles And Ellen Kean’S Final American Tour, Robert Lublin

Robert Lublin

No abstract provided.

Cadences Of Cruelty: Artaud’S Discursive Performance, Robert Lublin

Robert Lublin

No abstract provided.

Ersatz Comedy In The Third Reich, William Grange

William Grange

JOSEPH GOEBBELS and ALFRED ROSENBERG identified Jewish playwrights, especially those who wrote comedy, as “agents of the threatening anti-Western invasion. . . . With the help of nigger Americanism, Jews from the East brought hither by the Mongolian sources of Bolshevism” had polluted an ethnically pure German theatre. Goebbels attacked plays by Franz Arnold (1878-1960), Rudolf Bernauer (1880-1953) Julius Berstl (1893-1975) Bruno Frank (1887-1945), Carl Zuckmayer (1898-1977) and others of deploying “hyper-modern, bolshevistic, mollusk-like and neurasthenic aesthetics” on German audiences. Purging the German theatre of comic plays by Jews and other creators of “abusive and undesirable literature,” Goebbels, Rosenberg, and …

Edward Bond’S ‘Irresponsibly Optimistic’ Preface To Saved, Robert Lublin

Robert Lublin

No abstract provided.

The Blondest Of The Blondes: National Socialist Paradigms For A New German Theatre, William Grange

William Grange

The National Socialists encountered little resistance in their campaign to demolish the German theatre and to reassemble it along revolutionary lines when they took over the reigns of political control in 1933. They had since 1925 promised to reform German cultural institutions upon assuming power, and high on their list of priorities was the wholesale extirpation of “bastardized mestizoism” in culture with the aid of a state bureaucracy. Their guide in that effort was a cultural theory resembling many other Nazi doctrines, because it was formulated to give the National Socialist German Workers' Party a patina of intellectual legitimacy. Adolf …

Medieval Drama On The Continent Of Europe, Clifford Davidson, John Stroupe

Clifford Davidson

Rpt. of Comparative Drama, 27, No. 1 (Spring 1993)

Drama And The Classical Heritage: Comparative And Critical Essays, Clifford Davidson, John Stroupe, Rand Johnson

Clifford Davidson

Articles reprinted from Comparative Drama.

The Iconography Of Hell, Edam Monograph Series 17, Clifford Davidson, Thomas Seiler

Clifford Davidson

Contributions include essay, “The Fate of the Damned” (pp. 41-56.)