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Influenced by Ibsen and Strindberg, American drama had its origins in small theatre companies and groups of semi-professional players in the early 1900s, whose commitment was to inspire such writers as Eugene O'Neill, Susan Glaspell, Imamu Amiri Baraka, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. Born into this century, American drama has acted both as a reflection and as a commentary on the dominance, power and sometimes corruption of the American democratic dream. Today, American theatre still challenges its audiences with a powerful voice unknown to television and commercial film, bringing to the fore issues of gender, colour and political oppression. This collection of specially written essays offers a comprehensive introduction to the subject for students wishing to familiarise themselves with this exciting field, and those already involved with the current debate in the area will welcome the broad approach adopted by this volume.
On a wharf in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where Greenwich Village bohemians gathered in the summer of 1916, Susan Glaspell was inspired by a sensational murder trial to write Trifles, a play about two women who hide a Midwestern farm wife's motive for murdering her abusive husband. Following successful productions of the play, Glaspell became the "mother of American drama." Her short story version of Trifles, "A Jury of Her Peers," reached an unprecedented one million readers in 1917. The play and the story have since been taught in classrooms across America and Trifles is regularly revived on stages around the world. This collection of fresh essays celebrates the centennial of Trifles and "A Jury of Her Peers," with departures from established Glaspell scholarship. Interviews with theater people are included along with two original works inspired by Glaspell's iconic writings.
One of the founding members of the Provincetown Players, Susan Glaspell contributed to American literature in ways that exceed the work she did for this significant theatre group. Interwoven in her many plays, novels and short stories is astute commentary on the human condition. This volume provides an in-depth examination of Glaspell's writing and how her language conveys her insights into the universal dilemma of society versus self. Glaspell's ideas transcended the plot and character. Her work gave prominent attention to such issues as gender, politics, power and artistic daring. Through an exploration of eight plays written between the years of 1916 and 1943--Trifles, Springs Eternal, Th...
The first major study of this unique voice in contemporary drama. Suzan-Lori Parks confirmed herself as one of the most exciting and successful playwrights of her generation when winning the 2002 Pulitzer Prize, making her the only African American woman to win the award.
In the early 1900s, three small-town midwestern playwrights helped shepherd American theatre into the modern era. Together, they created the renowned Provincetown Players collective, which not only launched many careers but also had the power to affect US social, cultural, and political beliefs. The philosophical and political orientations of Floyd Dell, George Cram Cook, and Susan Glaspell generated a theatre practice marked by experimentalism, collaboration, leftist cultural critique, rebellion, liberation, and community engagement. In Three Midwestern Playwrights, Marcia Noe situates the origin of the Provincetown aesthetic in Davenport, Iowa, a Mississippi River town. All three playwrights recognized that radical politics sometimes begat radical chic, and several of their plays satirize the faddish elements of the progressive political, social, and cultural movements they were active in. Three Midwestern Playwrights brings the players to life and deftly illustrates how Dell, Cook, and Glaspell joined early 20th-century midwestern radicalism with East Coast avant-garde drama, resulting in a fresh and energetic contribution to American theatre.
Thirteen short plays by women that were originally produced by the Provincetown Players.
Theatre History Studies is a peer-reviewed journal of theatre history and scholarship published annually since 1981 by the Mid-American Theatre Conference (MATC), a regional body devoted to theatre scholarship and practice. The conference encompasses the states of Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. The purpose of the conference is to unite persons and organizations within the region with an interest in theatre and to promote the growth and development of all forms of theatre.
This volume brings forward a descriptive approach to the translation and reception of African American women’s literature in Spain. Drawing from a multidisciplinary theoretical and methodological framework, it traces the translation history of literature produced by African American women, seeking to uncover changing strategies in translation policies as well as shifts in interests in the target context, and it examines the topicality of this cohort of authors as frames of reference for Spanish critics and reviewers. Likewise, the reception of the source literature in the Spanish context is described by reconstructing the values that underlie judgements in different reception sources. Finally, this book addresses the specific problem of the translation of Black English into Spanish. More precisely, it pays attention to the ideological and the ethical implications of translation choices and the effect of the latter on the reception of literary texts.
A comprehensive history of the Provincetown Players and their influence on modern American theatre The Provincetown Players created a revolution in American theatre, making room for truly modern approaches to playwriting, stage production, and performance unlike anything that characterized the commercial theatre of the early twentieth century. In Staging America: The Artistic Legacy of the Provincetown Players, Jeffery Kennedy gives readers the unabridged story in a meticulously researched and comprehensive narrative that sheds new light on the history of the Provincetown Players. This study draws on many new sources that have only become available in the last three decades; this new materia...
Founding member of the Provincetown Players, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, best-selling novelist and short story writer Susan Glaspell (1876-1948) was a great contributor to American literature. An exploration of eleven plays written between the years 1915 and 1943, this critical study focuses on one of Glaspell's central themes, the interplay between place and identity. This study examines the means Glaspell employs to engage her characters in proxemical and verbal dialectics with the forces of place that turn them into victims of location. Of particular interest are her characters' attempts to escape the influence of territoriality and shape identities of their own.