M. Robinson, The American Play 1787-2000

Marc Robinson

The American Play 1787-2000

Yale University Press, 2009, 416 p.

• ISBN: 9780300116496

Lire l'introduction (pdf).

In this brilliant study, Marc Robinson explores more than two hundred years of plays, styles, and stagings of American theater. Mapping the changing cultural landscape from the late eighteenth century to the start of the twenty-first, he explores how theater has—and has not—changed and offers close readings of plays by O'Neill, Stein, Wilder, Miller, and Albee, as well as by important but perhaps lesser known dramatists such as Wallace Stevens, Jean Toomer, Djuna Barnes, and many others. Robinson reads each work in an ambitiously interdisciplinary context, linking advances in theater to developments in American literature, dance, and visual art.

The author is particularly attentive to the continuities in American drama, and expertly teases out recurring themes, such as the significance of visuality. He avoids neatly categorizing nineteenth- and twentieth-century plays and depicts a theater more restive and mercurial than has been recognized before. Robinson proves both a fascinating and thought-provoking critic and a spirited guide to the history of American drama.

Marc Robinson is professor of theater studies, English, and American studies at Yale University and adjunct professor of dramaturgy and dramatic criticism at the Yale School of Drama. He is the author of The Other American Drama and a frequent contributor to theater journals. He lives in Guilford, CT.

Sommaire:

Introduction 1
1. Envisioning the Nineteenth Century 25
2. Staging the Civil War 65
3. Realism against Itself 106
4. The Borders of Modernism 157
5. Between the Acts 214
6. Changing Decorum 257
7. Returning to Neutral 310 

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American Play is a searching and elegant study of American theater by one of its foremost critics."—Martin Puchner, Columbia University

"Rarely has such a good writer on drama undertaken such a project, and even more rarely executed it with such panache."—Don B. Wilmeth, Editor, Cambridge Guide to American Theatre
 "The American Play—as the starkness and boldness of its title implies—is decisively remaking the canon of American drama. What makes this book a rare and exhilarating experience is the subtlety, imagination, erudition, and analytical power of Marc Robinson's critical voice."—Ross Posnock, Columbia University

"Both a rich, revealing archaeology and an inspired and startling remapping of the American dramatic landscape, this brilliant, synoptic work will influence the shape of American drama and cultural studies for generations to come."—Una Chaudhuri, author of Staging Place: The Geography of Modern Drama