The Theatrical Gamut: Notes for a Post-Beckettian Stage

Front Cover
Enoch Brater
University of Michigan Press, 1995 - Literary Criticism - 304 pages
This collection of original essays in honor of American drama critic Ruby Cohn captures the rich mixture of discourses on the act of theater. The variety of approaches- from formalist to feminist- pays tribute to the centrality of Beckett in any evaluation of just what constitutes the "modern" in modern, contemporary, postmodern, and experimental drama.
The essays devote attention to playwrights like Sam Shepard, Caryl Churchill and David Hare, Jane Bowles, Arthur Miller, and Suzan-Lori Parks, and urge us as well to reconsider Shakespeare, Strindberg, and such visionary theater practitioners as Antonin Artaud and Joseph Chaikin. They also investigate the dynamics of actor, character, and audience, and offer insights into contemporary German theater, Noh drama, and Balinese theatrical practices. Whatever their subject, these suggestive and original pieces always bring us back to Beckett in fresh and surprising ways.
The contributors are H. Porter Abbott, Linda Ben-Zvi, Herbert Blau, John Russell Brown, Sue-Ellen Case, William Coco, Elin Diamond, Bernard Dort, James Eigo, Martin Esslin, Carla Locatelli, John Orr, Janelle Reinelt, Antonia Rodriguez-Gago, Yasunari Takahashi, and Hersh Zeifman.
"Any enthusiastic student of drama--whether professor or undergraduate, theater historian or theater critic, member of acting company or member of an audience--will find The Theatrical Gamut both enlightening and provocative."--Jill Levenson, University of Toronto
Enoch Brater is Professor of English and Theater, University of Michigan.

From inside the book

Contents

From Exercise to Experiment
21
Becketts German Context
41
Becketts Ultimate Unwording
67
The Arcane Craft of Becketts
91
Arthur Miller
107
Maternal Space
121
Paranoia and Celebrity in American Dramatic
141
Monologues
159
The Signifying Theater
189
Is the English Epic Over?
209
Berlin 1993
223
A Ground for Theater
255
Afterword
299
Copyright

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About the author (1995)

Enoch Brater is Professor of English and Theater, University of Michigan.

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