New Beginnings in Twentieth-Century Theatre and Drama

Christiane Schlote, Peter Zenzinger (Eds.)

New Beginnings in Twentieth-Century Theatre and Drama. Essays in Honour of Armin Geraths

ISBN 978-3-88476-639-2, ISBN 3-88476-639-2, 494 S., kt., € 32,50 (2003)

(CDE-Studies, Bd. 10)

New Beginnings in Twentieth-Century Theatre and Drama experiments with forms and content. Stylistic departures from traditional models are presented in this collection of essays in four sections, which are reprenstative of Armin Geraths's interests and achievements. The first, entitled Anglo-American Stages, brings together case studies from the 1920s up to the present. Articles on expressionism and the response to the Vietnam war illustrate the innovative forces in American drama; British drama, which has taken the lead in developing new theatre aesthetics during the last three decades, is represented in articles on Brenton, Shaffer, Bond, Churchill, Kane, Ravenhill, Neilson, Welsh and Lochhead. The focus of the second section is on Musical Stages, where experiments in the opera, the rock opera, the ballad opera and, above all, the musical are analysed. The third section, entitled Multicultural Stages, moves beyond the category of Anglo-American theatre and drama and examines examples of ethnic drama, documentary theatre, and Kenyan and Cuban theatre. Finally, the fourth, overarching section, with the title Interdisciplinary Stages, contains essays which extend the range of genres dealt with in the previous contributions by adding the media of painting, dance, television and film.