Download or read book Samuel Beckett s Theatre in America written by N. Bianchini and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the 30-year collaboration between playwright Samuel Beckett and director Alan Schneider, Bianchini reconstructs their shared American productions between 1956 and 1984. By examining how Beckett was introduced to American audiences, this book leads into a wider historical discussion of American theatre in the mid-to-late 20th century.
Download or read book Theatre on Trial written by Anna McMullan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theatre on Trial is the first full-length analysis of Samuel Beckett's later drama in the context of contemporary theatre. Audrey McMullan employs a close, textual examination of the later plays as a springboard for exploring ideas around authority, voyeurism, gender and the ideology of stage and TV space. Her application of deconstruction and psychoanalytic feminism to Beckett's work will break new and exciting ground.
Download or read book Edward Albee and Absurdism written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-01-05 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Edward Albee and Absurdism—the inaugural volume in the new book series, New Perspectives in Edward Albee Studies—Michael Y. Bennett has assembled an outstanding team of Edward Albee scholars to address Albee’s affiliation with Martin Esslin’s label, “Theatre of the Absurd,” examining whether or not this label is appropriate. From scholarly essays and lengthy review-essays to an important interview with the noted playwright and director, Emily Mann, the aim of this collection is to, at last, directly (and indirectly) confront Esslin’s label in regards to Albee’s plays in order to create a scholarly atmosphere that allows future Albee scholars to move on to new and, frankly, more relevant lines of inquiry. Contributors are: Michael Y. Bennett, Linda Ben-Zvi, David A. Crespy, Colin Enriquez, Lincoln Konkle, David Marcia, Dena Marks, Brenda Murphy, Tony Jason Stafford, and Kevin J Wetmore Jr.
Download or read book By Women Possessed written by Arthur Gelb and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016-11-01 with total page 922 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrated for their books on Eugene O’Neill and enjoying access to a trove of previously sealed archival material, the Gelbs deliver their final volume on the stormy life and brilliant oeuvre of this Nobel Prize–winning American playwright. This is a tour through both a magical moment in American theater and the troubled life of a genius. Not a peep show or a celebrity gossip fest, this book is a brilliant investigation of the emotional knots that ensnared one of our most important playwrights. Handsome, charming when he wanted to be: O’Neill was the flame women were drawn to—all, that is, except his mother, who never let him forget he was unwanted. By Women Possessed follows O’Neill through his great successes, the failures he was able to shrug off, and the long eclipse, a twelve-year period in which, despite the Nobel, nothing he wrote was produced. But ahead lay his greatest achievements: The Iceman Cometh and Long Day’s Journey into Night. Both were ahead of their time and both received lukewarm receptions. It wasn’t until after his death that his widow, the keeper of the flame, began a fierce and successful campaign to restore his reputation. The result is that today, just over 125 years after his birth, O’Neill is a towering presence in the theater, his work—always in performance here and abroad—still electrifying audiences. Perhaps of equal importance, he is the acknowledged father of modern American theater, the man who paved the way for the likes of Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and a host of others. But, as Williams has said, at a cost: “O’Neill gave birth to the American theater and died for it.”
Download or read book On Beckett written by S. E. Gontarski and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2012-12-15 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “On Beckett: Essays and Criticism” is the first collection of writings about the Nobel Prize–winning author that covers the entire spectrum of his work, and also affords a rare glimpse of the private Beckett. More has been written about Samuel Beckett than about any other writer of this century – countless books and articles dealing with him are in print, and the progression continues geometrically. “On Beckett” brings together some of the most perceptive writings from the vast amount of scrutiny that has been lavished on the man; in addition to widely read essays there are contributions from more obscure sources, viewpoints not frequently seen. Together they allow the reader to enter the world of a writer whose work has left an impact on the consciousness of our time perhaps unmatched by that of any other recent creative imagination.
Download or read book The Theatre of the Absurd written by Martin Esslin and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-04-02 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1953, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot premiered at a tiny avant-garde theatre in Paris; within five years, it had been translated into more than twenty languages and seen by more than a million spectators. Its startling popularity marked the emergence of a new type of theatre whose proponents—Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Pinter, and others—shattered dramatic conventions and paid scant attention to psychological realism, while highlighting their characters’ inability to understand one another. In 1961, Martin Esslin gave a name to the phenomenon in his groundbreaking study of these playwrights who dramatized the absurdity at the core of the human condition. Over four decades after its initial publication, Esslin’s landmark book has lost none of its freshness. The questions these dramatists raise about the struggle for meaning in a purposeless world are still as incisive and necessary today as they were when Beckett’s tramps first waited beneath a dying tree on a lonely country road for a mysterious benefactor who would never show. Authoritative, engaging, and eminently readable, The Theatre of the Absurd is nothing short of a classic: vital reading for anyone with an interest in the theatre.
Download or read book Samuel Beckett s Waiting for Godot written by Mark Taylor-Batty and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-06-13 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An impressively complete survey of the play in its cultural, theatrical, historical and political contexts." - David Bradby, co-editor of Contemporary Theatre Review Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot is not only an indisputably important and influential dramatic text -it is also one of the most significant western cultural landmarks of the twentieth century. Originally written in French, the play first amazed and appalled Parisian theatre-goers and critics before receiving a harshly dismissive initial critical response in Britain in 1955. Its influence since then on the international stage has been significant, impacting on generations of actors, directors and audiences.
Download or read book Theatre of the Unimpressed written by Jordan Tannahill and published by Coach House Books. This book was released on 2015-05-11 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How dull plays are killing theatre and what we can do about it. Had I become disenchanted with the form I had once fallen so madly in love with as a pubescent, pimple-faced suburban homo with braces? Maybe theatre was like an all-consuming high school infatuation that now, ten years later, I saw as the closeted balding guy with a beer gut he’d become. There were of course those rare moments of transcendencethat kept me coming back. But why did they come so few and far between? A lot of plays are dull. And one dull play, it seems, can turn us off theatre for good. Playwright and theatre director Jordan Tannahill takes in the spectrum of English-language drama – from the flashiest of Broadway spectacles to productions mounted in scrappy storefront theatres – to consider where lifeless plays come from and why they persist. Having travelled the globe talking to theatre artists, critics, passionate patrons and the theatrically disillusioned, Tannahill addresses what he considers the culture of ‘risk aversion’ paralyzing the form. Theatre of the Unimpressed is Tannahill’s wry and revelatory personal reckoning with the discipline he’s dedicated his life to, and a roadmap for a vital twenty-first-century theatre – one that apprehends the value of ‘liveness’ in our mediated age and the necessity for artistic risk and its attendant failures. In considering dramaturgy, programming and alternative models for producing, Tannahill aims to turn theatre from an obligation to a destination. ‘[Tannahill is] the poster child of a new generation of (theatre? film? dance?) artists for whom "interdisciplinary" is not a buzzword, but a way of life.’ —J. Kelly Nestruck, Globe and Mail ‘Jordan is one of the most talented and exciting playwrights in the country, and he will be a force to be reckoned with for years to come.’ —Nicolas Billon, Governor General's Award–winning playwright (Fault Lines)
Download or read book A Theatre of Affect written by Charlotta Palmstierna Einarsson and published by Ibidem Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining phenomenological analysis and affect theory, this book takes stock of the various ways in which the body in Samuel Beckett's drama participates in the affective ecology of performance. If the post-human innovation up until the present has worked to decentre the 'human', by rendering notions of thinking, experience, and affect impersonal and by developing new models of expression and communication, then this innovation seems to be already underway in Beckett's theatre of affect where the assault against language is made possible through the thematising of the body as a mode of encountering presence. The corporeal turn in Beckett's drama therefore has far-reaching implications for the production of meaning in his work.
Download or read book Samuel Beckett and Cinema written by Anthony Paraskeva and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-02-23 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1936, Samuel Beckett wrote a letter to the Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein expressing a desire to work in the lost tradition of silent film. The production of Beckett's Film in 1964, on the cusp of his work as a director for stage and screen, coincides with a widespread revival of silent film in the period of cinema's modernist second wave. Drawing on recently published letters, archival material and production notebooks, Samuel Beckett and Cinema is the first book to examine comprehensively the full extent of Beckett's engagement with cinema and its influence on his work for stage and screen. The book situates Beckett within the context of first and second wave modernist filmmaking, including the work of figures such as Vertov, Keaton, Lang, Epstein, Flaherty, Dreyer, Godard, Bresson, Resnais, Duras, Rogosin and Hitchcock. By examining the parallels between Beckett's methods, as a writer-director, and particular techniques, such as the embodied presence of the camera, the use of asynchronous sound, and the cross-pollination of theatricality and cinema, as well as the connections between his collaborators and the nouvelle vague, the book reveals how Beckett's aesthetic is fundamentally altered by his work for the screen, and his formative encounters with modernist film culture.
Download or read book Samuel Beckett s Legacies in American Fiction written by James Baxter and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Samuel Beckett’s Legacies in American Fiction provides an overdue investigation into Beckett’s rich influences over American writing. Through in-depth readings of postmodern authors such as Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Paul Auster and Lydia Davis, this book situates Beckett’s post-war writing of exhaustion and generation in relation to the emergence of an explosive American avant-garde. In turn, this study provides a valuable insight into the practical realities of Beckett’s dissemination in America, following the author’s long-standing relationship with the countercultural magazine Evergreen Review and its dramatic role in redrawing the possibilities of American culture in the 1960s. While Beckett would be largely removed from his American context, this book follows his vigorous, albeit sometimes awkward, reception alongside the authors and institutions central to shaping his legacies in 20th and 21st century America.
Download or read book The New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Beckett written by Dirk Van Hulle and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-19 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New Cambridge Companion to Samuel Beckett offers an accessible introduction to issues animating the field of Beckett studies today.
Download or read book Beckett s Political Imagination written by Emilie Morin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-07 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beckett's Political Imagination uncovers Beckett's lifelong engagement with political thought and political history, showing how this concern informed his work as fiction author, dramatist, critic and translator. This radically new account will appeal to students, researchers and Beckett lovers alike.
Download or read book Samuel Beckett s Theatre in America written by N. Bianchini and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the 30-year collaboration between playwright Samuel Beckett and director Alan Schneider, Bianchini reconstructs their shared American productions between 1956 and 1984. By examining how Beckett was introduced to American audiences, this book leads into a wider historical discussion of American theatre in the mid-to-late 20th century.
Download or read book Endgame written by Samuel Beckett and published by . This book was released on 1958 with total page 91 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four characters play a game of life, concluding with the exit of one character and the immobility of the remaining three, in a study of man's relationship to his fellows
Download or read book Samuel Beckett s Theatre in America written by N. Bianchini and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-01-14 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the 30-year collaboration between playwright Samuel Beckett and director Alan Schneider, Bianchini reconstructs their shared American productions between 1956 and 1984. By examining how Beckett was introduced to American audiences, this book leads into a wider historical discussion of American theatre in the mid-to-late 20th century.
Download or read book Samuel Beckett is Closed written by Michael Coffey and published by OR Books. This book was released on 2018 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful, genre-defying meditation, with Beckett at its origin, that touches on mysteries as varied as literary celebrity, baseball, and why we feel the need to be cruel to one another Following the schema of Samuel Beckett's unpublished "Long Observation of the Ray," of which only six manuscript pages exist, poet and critic Michael Coffey interleaves multiple narratives according to an arithmetic sequence laid out by Beckett in his notes. This rhythm of themes and genres--involving personal memoir, literary criticism, Beckett studies, contemporary political reportage and accounts of state-sponsored torture in appropriated texts, plus an Arabian Tale and even a baseballplay-by-play--produce a work at once sculptural, theatrical, mathematical and above all lyrical, a new form of narrative answering to a freshened rule set. In executing Beckett's most radical undertaking--one scholar referred to "Long Observation of the Ray" as a "monument to extinction"--Coffey gives readers access to an open field in which ruminations on writing mix with an engagement with Beckett scholarship as well as the unsettling chaos in today's world. Although Beckett, like any writer, had his share of abandoned works, he was in the habit of "unabandoning" on occasion. Coffey's effort here salvages a Beckett project from a half-century ago and brings it to the surface, with the contemporary markings of its hauling.
