Against Theatre: Creative Destructions on the Modernist Stage

by A. Ackerman (Editor), M. Puchner (Editor)

Overview

Against Theatre shows that the most prominent writers of modern drama shared a radical rejection of the theatre as they knew it. Together with designers, composers and film makers, they plotted to destroy all existing theatres. But from their destruction emerged the most astonishing innovations of modernist theatre.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781403944917
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	04/19/2006
Series:	Performance Interventions
Edition description:	2006
Pages:	259
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.03(d)

About the Author

ARNOLD ARONSON Associate Professor of English at the University of Toronto, Canada HERBERT BLAU Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor of the Humanities at the University of Washington, USA ELIN DIAMOND Professor of English at Rutgers University, USA ELINOR FUCHS Professor of Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism at the Yale School of Drama, USA CHARLIE KEIL Associate Professor in the History Department and the Cinema Studies Programme at the University of Toronto, Canada HERBERT LINDENBERGER Avalon Foundation Professor Humanities Emeritus at Stanford University, USA PATRICK MCGUINNESS Fellow and Tutor in French at St. Anne's College, Oxford, UK MARTIN PERLOFF Sadie D. Patek Professor of Emerita of Humanities at Stanford University, USA DAVID SAVRAN Professor of Theatre at CUNY Graduate Centre, USA JULIA STONE PETERS Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, USA REBECCA L. WALKOWITZ Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA KIRK WILLIAMS Assistant Professor of German and Theatre Studies at Yale University, USA

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Note on the Contributors Introduction: Modernism and Anti-Theatricality; A.Ackerman & M.Puchner PART I: FRAMES Avant-Garde Scenography and the Frames of the Theatre; A.Aronson Clown Shows: Antitheatrical Theatricalism in Four Twentieth Century Plays; E.Fuchs Anti-Theatricality in Twentieth-Century Opera; H.Lindenberger 'All the Frame's a Stage': (Anti-)Theatricality and Cinematic Modernism; C.Keil PART II: MATERIALS Anti-Theatricality and the Limits of Naturalism; K.Williams Deploying/Destroying the Primitivist Body in Hurston and Brecht; E.Diamond John Cage's Living Theatre; M.Perloff Mallarmé, Maeterlinck and the Symbolist Via Negativa of Theatre; P.McGuinness PART III: VALUES Narrative Theatricality: Joseph Conrad's Drama of the Page; R.L.Walkowitz The Curse of Legitimacy; D.Savran Performing Obscene Modernism: Theatrical Censorship and the Making of Modern Drama; J.S.Peters Seeming, Seeming: the Illusion of Enough; H.Blau Index

Editorial Reviews

'This is an invaluable collection of essays for those working in the area of modern and contemporary theatre.' - Professor Anthony Kubiak, University of Wisconsin, USA

'...an excellent text for a variety of courses, from those focused on modernism or modern drama to courses on theatre, art, and performance history' - Professor Tamsen Wolf, Princeton University, USA

'...an invaluable collection of essays on modernist European and American theatre by the top scholars in our field.' - Shawn-Marie Garrett, Assistant Professor of Theatre, Barnard College, Columbia University, USA

'...an excellent text for a variety of courses, from those focused on modernism or modern drama to courses on theatre, art, and performance history' - Professor Tamsen Wolf, Princeton University, USA

'...an invaluable collection of essays on modernist European and American theatre by the top scholars in our field.' - Shawn-Marie Garrett, Assistant Professor of Theatre, Barnard College, Columbia University, USA

'In Against Theatre, Ackerman and Puchner gather a distinguished group of scholars, who bring a sharp sense of modernist antitheatricality and its subversion to bear on the many genres, technologies, and literary instigations of modern performance. It's a book full of surprises and makes a welcome addition both to the literature and teaching of modernism and its orphaned stage.' - W.B. Worthen, J.L. Styan Collegiate Professor of Drama,

University of Michigan, USA

'...an overwhelmingly worthwhile project. The indeterminacy of anti-theatricality as a term, combined with an interdisciplinary focus, leads to a productive and engaging plurality in Against Theatre.' - Amy Simpson, Platform

'The finely sifted understanding of theatricality and its many nuanced opponents that emerges in this collection is a welcome, timely, and smart contribution to the debate.' - Theatre Survey

From the Publisher