| Description |
viii, 245 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Series |
Contributions to the study of science fiction and fantasy ; no. 54
|
| Contents |
Introduction / Patrick D. Murphy -- 1. When Formula Seizes Form: Oscar Wilde's Comedies / Susan Taylor Jacobs -- 2. A Task Most Difficult: Staging Yeats's Mystical Dramas at the Abbey / Frederick S. Lapisardi -- 3. The Perilous Edge: Strindberg, Madness, and Other Worlds / Peter Malekin -- 4. Wassily Kandinsky's Stage Composition Yellow Sound: The Fantastic and the Symbolic Mode of Communication / Kent W. Hooper -- 5. Ionesco and L'insolite / Elizabeth C. Hesson and Ian M. Hesson -- 6. Ambiguity and the Supernatural in Cocteau's La machine infernale / Ralph Yarrow -- 7. Beckett and the Horrific / Lance Olsen -- 8. Multiplicities of Illusion in Tom Stoppard's Plays / Peter N. Chetta -- 9. Leivick's The Golem and the Golem Legend / Carl Schaffer -- 10. Dream on Monkey Mountain: Fantasy as Self-Perception / Robert J. Willis -- 11. Spalding Gray's Swimming to Cambodia: A Performance Gesture / Jessica Prinz --12. The Shock of the Actual: Disrupting the Theatrical Illusion / Theodore Shank -- 13. Playing at the End of the World: Postmodern Theater / Veronica Hollinger -- 14. "Infinity in a Cigar Box": The Problem of Science Fiction on the Stage / Joseph Krupnik |
| Summary |
Explores the most recent critical thinking on the relationship between the literary mode of the fantastic and the literary genre of drama with respect to modern theatre. While a few monographs treat a particular dimension of the fantastic in drama, the Gothic or the fairy tale for instance, no other volume provides a critically sophisticated introduction to the diversity of fantastic drama written and performed in this century. The essays here lay to rest the illusion that realism is the only genuine form of theatrical expression and the notion that cinema special effects have rendered science fiction and the stage incompatible. Competing with the realism of the first half of the twentieth century and the new realism of the second half have been a range of successful theatrical repertoire, including the absurd, the horrific, the supernatural, the mythic, the dream-vision quest, the postmodern, the hyper-realistic, and the science fictional. |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [221]-236) and index |
| Subject |
Fantasy drama, European -- History and criticism.
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Fantasy drama, American -- History and criticism.
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European drama -- 20th century -- History and criticism.
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American drama -- 20th century -- History and criticism.
|
| Author |
Murphy, Patrick D., 1951-
|
| LC no. |
92010678 |
| ISBN |
0313272700 (alk. paper) |
|
9780313272707 (alk. paper) |
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