Writing and the Modern Stage
Theater beyond Drama

This book presents a new argument that reimagines modern theater's critical power and places innovative writing at the heart of the experimental stage.

Julia Jarcho (Author)

9781107584815, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 7 May 2020

285 pages, 1 b/w illus.
23 x 15.3 x 1.6 cm, 0.46 kg

'This book is a testament to the importance of scholarly work that not only considers theatre as one of many manifestations in the large bubbling pot of cultural production but also attends to the intricacies of medial specificity.' Eleanor Skimin, Theatre Survey

It is time to change the way we talk about writing in theater. This book offers a new argument that reimagines modern theater's critical power and places innovative writing at the heart of the experimental stage. While performance studies, German Theaterwissenschaft, and even text-based drama studies have commonly envisioned theatrical performance as something that must operate beyond the limits of the textual imagination, this book shows how a series of writers have actively shaped new conceptions of theater's radical potential. Engaging with a range of theorists, including Theodor Adorno, Jarcho reveals a modern tradition of 'negative theatrics,' whose artists undermine the here and now of performance in order to challenge the value and the power of the existing world. This vision emerges through surprising new readings of modernist classics - by Henry James, Gertrude Stein, and Samuel Beckett - as well as contemporary American works by Suzan-Lori Parks, Elevator Repair Service, and Mac Wellman.

Part I. Modernism's Negative Theatrics: 1. Introduction: negative theatrics
2. 'Something stranger yet': theatrical distractions in Henry James and Gertrude Stein
3. 'Gesture towards the universe': theater as utopia in Waiting for Godot
Part II. Beyond the Present: Playwrights at the Turn of the Millennium: 4. Introduction: staging writing today
5. The promise of 'playwriting': Suzan-Lori Parks
6. 'Small, fierce creatures': Mac Wellman's auratic theater.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers [DSK], Literary studies: plays & playwrights [DSG], Theatre management [ANS], Theatre: technical & background skills [ANH], Theatre direction & production [ANF], Acting techniques [ANC], Theatre: individual actors & directors [ANB], Theatre studies [AN]