Download or read book American Political Plays after 9 11 written by Allan Havis and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2010-05-10 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Political Plays after 9/11 is a diverse collection of bold, urgent, and provocative plays that respond to the highly charged, post 9/11 political landscape. Sparked by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and subsequently fueled by a series of controversial events—the Iraq war, the passing and enforcement of the U.S.A. Patriot Act, and the revelation of torture and other scandals at the Abu Ghraib prison—American political theater is currently experiencing a surge in activity. The plays in this collection include The Guys by Anne Nelson, At the Vanishing Point by Naomi Iizuka, The Venus de Milo Is Armed by Kia Corthron, Back of the Throat by Yusseff El Guindi, Three Nights in Prague by Allan Havis, and Question 27, Question 28 by Chay Yew. The characters range from a New York City fire captain trying to respectfully memorialize eight of his lost comrades, to the citizens of a hog-killing Louisville neighborhood who poignantly exemplify the underside of the economic crisis, to an Arab American citizen being harshly (and possibly unfairly) interrogated by two officers as a “person of interest.” Though not all of the plays deal explicitly with the Al Qaeda attacks, they collectively reveal themes of sorrow and anxiety, moral indignation, alarmist self-preservation, and economic and social insecurity stemming from the United States’ fairly sudden shift from cold war superpower to vulnerable target. The lively introduction by Allan Havis includes a brief history of political theater in the United States, an extensive discussion about how theater communities responded to 9/11, and an informative analysis of the six plays in the book. A collection of dramatic material framed by this significant historical event, AmericanPolitical Plays after 9/11 will be indispensable for theater and cultural studies scholars and students.
Download or read book Political and Protest Theatre after 9 11 written by Jenny Spencer and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-12-22 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection documents and examines political and protest theatre produced between the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and Obama’s election in 2008 by British and American artists responding to their own governments’ actions and policies during this time. The plays take up topics such as the ongoing wars on terror, Blair’s support of U.S. policies, the flawed intelligence that led to the Iraq war, and illegal detentions and torture at Abu Ghraib. The authors argue that engaged artists faced a radically different sociopolitical context for their work after 9/11 compared to earlier social protest movements and new forms of theatre, and different emotional strategies were necessary to meet the challenges. The subtitle Patriotic Dissent suggests the double stance of many artists-- influenced by patriotic expressions of national solidarity, yet critical of the ways that patriotic language was put to use against others. The articles represent a broad range of theatre: Broadway musicals, documentary theatre, adaptations of classical theatre, new plays by British playwrights, street performances and installations, and musical concerts. The contributors’ case studies evaluate the effectiveness of important instances of political theatre and protest from this decade, arguing for the significance, relevance, and continuing necessity for evolving forms of political theatre today.
Download or read book American Political Plays in the Age of Terrorism written by Neil LaBute and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-04-04 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This powerful anthology brings together reflective and raw plays by American playwrights surrounding the psychic and political boundaries of the many faces and shadows of terrorism. Allan Havis's introduction addresses a variety of terrorism cases from the last 25 years, examines several theories of the root causes of modern terrors, and underscores how theatre forms a unique contour to social and philosophical thought on terrorism. With a foreword from Robert Brustein, the anthology features: Break of Noon by Neil LaBute 7/11 by Kia Corthron Omnium Gatherum by Theresa Rebeck and Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros Columbinus by PJ Paparelli and Stephen Karam Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them by Christopher Durang
Download or read book Reign of Terror written by Spencer Ackerman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-08-09 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2021 "An impressive combination of diligence and verve, deploying Ackerman’s deep stores of knowledge as a national security journalist to full effect. The result is a narrative of the last 20 years that is upsetting, discerning and brilliantly argued." —The New York Times "One of the most illuminating books to come out of the Trump era." —New York Magazine An examination of the profound impact that the War on Terror had in pushing American politics and society in an authoritarian direction For an entire generation, at home and abroad, the United States has waged an endless conflict known as the War on Terror. In addition to multiple ground wars, the era pioneered drone strikes and industrial-scale digital surveillance; weakened the rule of law through indefinite detentions; sanctioned torture; and manipulated the truth about it all. These conflicts have yielded neither peace nor victory, but they have transformed America. What began as the persecution of Muslims and immigrants has become a normalized feature of American politics and national security, expanding the possibilities for applying similar or worse measures against other targets at home, as the summer of 2020 showed. A politically divided and economically destabilized country turned the War on Terror into a cultural—and then a tribal—struggle. It began on the ideological frontiers of the Republican Party before expanding to conquer the GOP, often with the acquiescence of the Democratic Party. Today’s nativist resurgence walked through a door opened by the 9/11 era. And that door remains open. Reign of Terror shows how these developments created an opportunity for American authoritarianism and gave rise to Donald Trump. It shows that Barack Obama squandered an opportunity to dismantle the War on Terror after killing Osama bin Laden. By the end of his tenure, the war had metastasized into a bitter, broader cultural struggle in search of a demagogue like Trump to lead it. Reign of Terror is a pathbreaking and definitive union of journalism and intellectual history with the power to transform how America understands its national security policies and their catastrophic impact on civic life.
Download or read book Ayad Akhtar the American Nation and Its Others after 9 11 written by Lopamudra Basu and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2018-12-06 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book studies the creative works of Ayad Akhtar in the context of a post-9/11 American culture rife with the racialization of Muslims. It explores controversies emerging from the reception of Akhtar’s works and focuses on their aesthetic dimensions to study their role in advocating for racial and gender equity.
Download or read book Metamorphoses written by Mary Zimmerman and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 115 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This play is based on David R. Slavitt's translation of The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Monologues.
Download or read book American Political Plays written by Allan Havis and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These scripts touch on the issues of the 1990s, including the Gulf War, racial and sexual relations, crises unique to big cities, immigration and multiculturalism, art and censorship, revisionist history, academic freedom, and the transformation of the American presidency. The American play by Suzan-Lori Parks features an Abraham Lincoln impersonator trapped in an outrageous, Beckett-like world, while Naomi Wallace's In the heart of America centers on a Palestinian American from Atlanta who is caught up in the Persian Gulf conflict. Kokoro by Velina Hasu Houston chillingly depicts the stark predicament of a Japanese mother caught between two impossible worlds; Marisol by José Rivera reveals the dark fairytale life of a young Latin woman in a wartorn, apocalyptic New York. The Gift by Allan Havis confronts overwhelming moral ambiguity in the farcical realm of university politics, while Nixon's Nixon by Russell Lees offers an adroit treatment of the fascinating, tortured Nixon/Kissinger relationship. The collection closes with Mac Wellman's 7 Blowjobs, a wicked send-up of the compromise politics that determined the fate of the National Endowment for the Arts.
Download or read book American Multiculturalism After 9 11 written by Derek Rubin and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This provocative and rich volume charts the post-9/11 debates and practice of multiculturalism, pinpointing their political and cultural implications in the United States and Europe.
Download or read book Against All Enemies written by Richard A. Clarke and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-12-09 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Clarke has been one of America's foremost experts on counterterrorism measures for more than two decades. He has served under four presidents from both parties, beginning in Ronald Reagan's State Department becoming America's first Counter-terrorism Czar under Bill Clinton and remaining for the first two years of George W. Bush's administration. He has seen every piece of intelligence on Al-Qaeda from the beginning; he was in the Situation Room on September 11th and he knows exactly what has taken place under the United State's new Department of Homeland Security. Through gripping, thriller-like scenes, he tells the full story for the first time and explains what the Bush Administration are doing.
Download or read book Reflecting 9 11 written by Heather Pope and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2016-06-22 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In over fifteen years, the cultural and artistic response to 9/11 has been wide-ranging in form and function. As the turbulent post-9/11 years have unfolded – years that have been shaped and characterized by the War on Terror, the Patriot Act, the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, 7/7, Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay – these texts have been commemorative and heroic, have attempted to work through collective and individual traumas, and have struggled with trying to represent the “terrorist other.” Many of these earlier domestic, heroic and traumatic works have so often been read as limitations in narrative. This collection, however, challenges the language of limitation and provides re-readings of earlier work, but also traces the emergence of a new paradigm for discussing the artistic responses to 9/11 – one that frames these narratives as dialogic, self-conscious and self-reflexive interventions in the responses to the attacks, the initial representations of the attacks, and the ever-shifting social and geopolitical continuities of the 9/11 decade. These texts widen the conversation about the lasting impacts of 9/11, and incorporate strands of discussion on American exceptionalism and imperialism, torture, and otherness, whilst still remaining invested in the personal and collective traumas of the attacks. The authors included here ask crucial questions about the way 9/11 is being historicized: will it, for example, be read as a moment of rupture or epoch? Will it inevitably be attached to the War on Terror or the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? As they trace the emergent patterns of reflexivity, politicization and dissent, the contributions here are also implicitly invested in asking how far they extend.
Download or read book The Politics of Post 9 11 Music Sound Trauma and the Music Industry in the Time of Terror written by Brian Flota and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-24 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seeking to extend discussions of 9/11 music beyond the acts typically associated with the September 11th attacks”U2, Toby Keith, The Dixie Chicks, Bruce Springsteen”this collection interrogates the politics of a variety of post-9/11 music scenes. Contributors add an aural dimension to what has been a visual conceptualization of this important moment in US history by articulating the role that lesser-known contemporary musicians have played”or have refused to play”in constructing a politics of protest in direct response to the trauma inflicted that day. Encouraging new conceptualizations of what constitutes 'political music,' The Politics of Post-9/11 Music covers topics as diverse as the rise of Internet music distribution, Christian punk rock, rap music in the Obama era, and nostalgia for 1960s political activism.
Download or read book A Gambler s Instinct written by Milly S. Barranger and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2010-07-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As Barranger traces Crawford’s career as an independent producer, she tells the parallel story of American theater in the mid-twentieth century, making A Gambler’s Instinct both an enjoyable and informative biography of a remarkable woman and an important addition to the literature of the modern theater.
Download or read book Ghost Light written by Michael Mark Chemers and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since its release in 2010, Ghost Light: An Introductory Handbook for Dramaturgy has become the international standard for dramaturgy training and practice. As the field of dramaturgy continues to shift and change, this new edition prepares theatre students and practitioners to create powerful, relevant performances of all types.
Download or read book Swim Pretty written by Jennifer A. Kokai and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2017-06-28 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on cultural associations with bodies of water, the spectacle of pretty women, and the appeal of the concept of “family-friendly” productions, performative aquatic spectacles portray water as an exotic fantasy environment exploitable for the purpose of entertainment. In Swim Pretty, Jennifer A. Kokai reveals the influential role of aquatic spectacles in shaping cultural perceptions of aquatic ecosystems in the United States over the past century. Examining dramatic works in water and performances at four water parks, Kokai shows that the evolution of these works and performances helps us better understand our ever-changing relationship with the oceans and their inhabitants. Kokai sorts the regard for and harnessing of water in aquatic spectacles into three categories—natural, tamed, and domesticated—and discusses the ways in which these modes of water are engaged in the performances throug an aesthetics of descension. Ultimately, this study links the uncritical love of aquatic spectacles to a disregard for the rights of marine animals and lack of concern for the marine environment.
Download or read book Off Sites written by Bertie Ferdman and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2018-07-30 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Honorable Mention, ATHE's 2018 Outstanding Book Award Contextualizing the techniques and methods of the incredibly rich and vital genre of site-specific performance, author Bertie Ferdman traces the evolution of that term. Originally used for experimental staging practices and then later also for engaged situational events, site-specific is no longer sufficient for the genre’s many contemporary variations. Using the term off-site, Ferdman illustrates five distinct ways artists have challenged the disciplinary framework of site-specific theatre: blurring the traditional boundaries between the fictional and the real; changing how the audience and actor interact with each other and whether they are physically together or apart; fabricating sites from physically bound, conceptually constructed, or virtual spaces; staging live situations in real/nonreal and often mediated encounters; and challenging our preconceived notions of time and space. Tracing the genealogy of site-based work through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Ferdman outlines the theoretical groundwork for her study in the introduction. Individual chapters focus on distinct types of off-sites—the interdisciplinary discourse of disciplinary sites; the spaces of audience engagement with spectator sites; the dislocation of time for temporal sites; and the historiographical spaces of mapping for urban sites. Ferdman examines site-based work being done in the Americas by contemporary companies and artists experimenting with new forms and practices for site-driven theatre. Key productions discussed include Private Moment by David Levine, Geyser Land by Mary Ellen Strom and Ann Carlson, Jim Findlay’s Dream of the Red Chamber, and Lola Arias’ Mi Vida Después.
Download or read book Stage for Action written by Chrystyna Dail and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2016-11-09 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on underexplored and only recently available archives, author Chrystyna Dail examines the influence of Stage for Action, a theatre group founded in 1943, on social activist theatre in the 1940s, early 1950s, and beyond. The group embraced subjects not taken up by earlier activist theatre companies—advocating for the rights of Puerto Ricans, calling attention to the lack of child care for working mothers, and demanding the cessation of all nuclear warfare. Exploring the intersection between performance and politics and the direct impact of the arts on social activism, Dail argues Stage for Action is a theatrical reflection of progressivism and the pro-working-class theatrical aesthetic of the 1940s. The theatre group, which used performance to encourage direct action and personal responsibility for change, eventually would function as the theatrical voice of the United States Progressive Party in the failed presidential campaign of former vice president Henry A. Wallace. Calling into question the widely held belief that U.S. theatre in the early years of the Cold War was indifferent to activism, Stage for Action offers historians a new interpretation of social activist performance at midcentury.
Download or read book Adapturgy written by Jane Barnette and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Challenging the binary categories of "new play" and "production" dramaturgy, this book offers both a theoretical model for understanding adaptation for the stage and a practical guide for dramaturgs and others involved in the creation of theatrical adaptations"--
