Wow! eBook
The A to Z of American Theater: Modernism 97th Edition
Author(s): James Fisher (Author), Felicia Hardison Londre
- Publisher: Scarecrow Press
- Publication Date: September 2, 2009
- Edition: 97th
- Language: English
- Print length: 616 pages
- ISBN-10: 0810868849
- ISBN-13: 9780810868847
Book Description
The 50-year period from 1880 to 1929 is the richest era for theater in American history, certainly in the great number of plays produced and artists who contributed significantly, but also in the centrality of theater in the lives of Americans. As the impact of European modernism began to gradually seep into American theater during the 1880s and quite importantly in the 1890s, more traditional forms of theater gave way to futurism, symbolism, surrealism, and expressionism. American playwrights like Eugene O’Neill, George Kelly, Elmer Rice, Philip Barry, and George S. Kaufman ushered in the Golden Age of American drama. The A to Z of American Theater: Modernism focuses on legitimate drama, both as influenced by European modernism and as impacted by the popular entertainment that also enlivened the era. This is accomplished through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced entries on plays; music; playwrights; great performers like Maude Adams, Otis Skinner, Julia Marlowe, and E. H. Sothern; producers like David Belasco, Daniel Frohman, and Florenz Ziegfeld; critics; architects; designers; and costumes.
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Felicia Hardison Londré is Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Theatre at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, USA. She was elected to The College of Fellows of the American Theatre in 1999 and served a term (2012-14) as Dean. Her fifteen books include the George Freedly Memorial Award-winning The Enchanted Years of the Stage: Kansas City at the Crossroads of American Theatre, 1890-1930; she is the author of Modern American Drama: Playwriting in the 1940s: Voices, Documents, New Interpretations and editor of The Great European Stage Directors Volume 7: Barrault, Mnouchkine, Stein (both Methuen Drama, 2018).
