Mirrors of Our Playing: Paradigms and Presences in Modern DramaUniversity of Michigan Press, 1999 - 309 páginas Focusing on both scripts and performance, Mirrors of Our Playing takes a fresh look at modern English-speaking drama, from its Anglo-Irish beginnings to its contemporary cross-fertilizations and international dispersals. It shows how most important English-speaking theater has been shaped in accord with several major paradigms, while it examines four major presences in that theater: Lord Byron, Samuel Beckett, Wole Soyinka, and Peter Brook. Whitaker starts with the premise that a play in performance is a manifold mirror of the playing that constitutes our lives, shaped through the interaction of received paradigms and living presences. Each major paradigm--Brecht's dialectical theater, Synge's satirical tragicomic romance, Shaw's or Stoppard's serious farce, the Chekhovian community of heartbreak, or Beckett's or Pinter's world of hellish confinement--offers us one way of looking at and participating in the human situation. But each instance of theater must flesh out and modify one or more paradigms in terms of the specific presences of playwright, director, actors, and audiences, as well as presences from the past. The book stands on the borderlands between text-oriented and performance-oriented criticism and will have wide appeal to scholars, students, and theater aficianados. Thomas Whitaker is an emeritus Professor of English, Yale University. He has written several books, including Fields of Play in Modern Drama, the book to which Mirrors of Our Playing is the sequel. |
Contenido
Children of Paradise Shooting a Dream | 1 |
Synge and Tradition | 21 |
Sartre Beckett Genet and Pinter | 109 |
The Presence of Byron | 139 |
Wham Bam Thank You Sam | 181 |
Soyinkas Roads to the Abyss | 206 |
Brook and the Purpose of Playing | 224 |
Angels in America | 267 |
281 | |
297 | |
Otras ediciones - Ver todas
Mirrors of Our Playing: Paradigms and Presences in Modern Drama Thomas R. Whitaker Vista de fragmentos - 1999 |
Términos y frases comunes
abyss action of performance actors actors and witnesses Angels in America audience awareness Bacchae Beckett become Brecht Brechtian Byron called characters Chekhov Chekhovian Christy comedy comic complex consciousness dance Dancing at Lughnasa David Storey dead death dialectic dialogue drama dream Earnest Endgame Euripides explore farce farcical finally Fugard grotesque Gurdjieff Heartbreak House hell histrionic human Ibsen identity imagination invisible invites ironic irony King Lear King's Horseman Kushner later lives Mahabharata Manfred Marat/Sade masks meaning mental theater mirror modern move onstage paradoxical participate passionate Pegeen performed action Peter Brook Pinter play play's Playboy playwright poetic predicament presence production ritual role role-playing romantic Sartre satirical says scene secret seems self-conscious Septimus shared Shaw Shaw's social Soyinka spirit stage Stoppard story style suggest Synge Synge's theatrical tion Tony Kushner tragedy transcendence transformation truth understanding Waiting for Godot Williams Wole Soyinka Yeats Yeats's Yoruba