The Routledge Drama Anthology is an original compilation of works from key movements in the history of the modern theatre, from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. This expanded new edition now features twenty new plays and essays.
The anthology spans:
Naturalism and Symbolism
The Historical Avant-Garde
Political Theatres
Late Modernism
Contemporary Theatre and Performance
Each of the book's five sections comprises a selection of plays and performance texts that define the period, reproduced in full and accompanied by key theoretical writings from performers, playwrights and critics that inform and contextualize their reading. Substantial introductions from experts in the field also provide these sections with an overview of the works and their significance.
This textbook provides an unprecedented collection of comprehensive resource materials that will facilitate in-depth critical analysis. It enables a dialogue between playwrights and performance practitioners on one hand, and on the other, critics and theorists such as Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Walter Benjamin, André Breton, Martin Esslin, Michael Kirby, Hans Thies Lehmann, Jacques Rancière and Theodor Adorno.
List of illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction - Maggie B. Gale Part 1: Naturalism and Symbolism: Early Modernist Practice Introduction - Dan Rebellato Play and Performance Texts 1. Therese Raquin (Emile Zola) 2. Miss Julie (August Strindberg) 3. Three Sisters (Anton Chekhov) 4. When We Dead Awaken (Henrik Ibsen) 5. Interior (Maurice Maeterlinck) Critical Texts 6. Naturalism in the Theatre (Emile Zola) 7. Preface to Miss Julie (August Strindberg) 8. A New Art of the Stage (Arthur Symons) 9. The Modern Drama (Maurice Maeterlinck) 10. Tragedy in Everyday Life (Maurice Maeterlinck) 11. On the Complete Pointlessness of Accurate Staging (Pierre Quillard) Part 2: The Historical Avant-Garde: Performance and Innovation Introduction - Maggie B. Gale Play and Performance Texts 1. King Ubu (Alfred Jarry) 2. The Breasts of Tiresias (Guillaume Apollinaire) 3. The Spurt of Blood (Antonin Artaud) 4. Murderer the Women's Hope (Oskar Kokoschka) 5. Genius and Culture and Bachelor Apartment (Umberto Boccioni) 6. Feet (Filippo Tommaso Marinetti) 7. Genius in a Jiffy or a Dadalogy (Raoul Hausmann) 8. R.U.R. (Karel Capek) 9. Six Characters in Search of an Author (Luigi Pirandello) 10. Dr Faustus Lights the Lights (Gertrude Stein) Critical Texts 11. The Meaning of the Music Hall (Filippo Tommaso Marinetti) 12. Theatre of Cruelty: First Manifesto (Antonin Artaud) 13. The First Surrealist Manifesto and The Second Surrealist Manifesto (Andre Breton) 13. Futurist Scenography (Enrico Prampolini) 15. Theater, Circus, Variety (Laszlo Moholy-Nagy) Part 3: Political Theatres Introduction - John F. Deeney and Maggie B. Gale Play and Performance Texts 1. How the Vote Was Won (Cicely Hamilton and Christopher St John) 2. Hoppla, We're Alive! (Ernst Toller) 3. The Exception and the Rule (Bertolt Brecht) 4. Meerut and How to Produce Meerut (The Worker's Theatre Movement) 5. Love on the Dole (Ronald Gow and Walter Greenwood) 6. Blues for Mister Charlie (James Baldwin) Critical Texts 7. Suffrage Theatre: Community Activism and Political Commitment (Susan Carlson) 8. Rehabilitating Realism (Sheila Stowell) 9. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Walter Benjamin) 10. The Street Scene (Bertolt Brecht) 11. Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction (Bertolt Brecht) 12. On Political Theatre (Michael Kirby) 13. The Politics Beyond Politics (Howard Barker) Part 4: Late Modernism Introduction - Carl Lavery Play and Performance Texts 1. The Bald Soprano (Eugène Ionesco) 2. Endgame (Samuel Beckett) 3. The Balcony (Jean Genet) 4. The Dumb Waiter (Harold Pinter) Critical Texts 5. 'The Absurdity of the Absurd' (Martin Esslin) 6 'The London Controversy' (Eugène Ionesco) 7. 'Trying to Understand Endgame' (Theodore Adorno) 8. 'The Theatre of Jean Genet: A Sociological Study' (Lucien Goldman) Part 5: Contemporary Theatre and Performance Introduction - John F. Deeney & Maggie B. Gale Play and Performance Texts 1. Quartet (Heiner Müller) 2. Confess to Everything/Speak Bitterness (Tim Etchells/Forced Entertainment ) 3. Belle Reprieve (Split Britches) 4. The Story of M (SuAndi) 5. Supernintendo Ranchero (Guillermo Gòmez Peña) 6. Far Away (Caryl Churchill) 7. Product (Mark Ravenhill) Critical Texts 8. 'The Death of the Author' (Roland Barthes) 9. 'Dramaturgy' and 'Montage' (Eugenio Barba) 10. 'The Precession of the Simulacra' (Jean Baudrillard) 11. 'The Emancipated Spectator '(Jacques Rancière) 12. 'Epilogue' (Hans Thies Lehmann) 13. 'Away from the Surveillance Cameras of the Art World: Strategies for Collaboration and Community Activism' (Guillermo Gòmez Peña) 14. Me, My iBook and Writing in America (Mark Ravenhill)
