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Theories of the Avant-Garde Theatre: A Casebook from Kleist to Camus
Author(s): Bert Cardullo
- Publisher: Scarecrow Press
- Publication Date: 2 Nov. 2012
- Language: English
- Print length: 284 pages
- ISBN-10: 0810887045
- ISBN-13: 9780810887046
Book Description
In addition to producing lasting works of drama, some of avant-garde theatre’s most creative practitioners―directors, playwrights, performers, and designers―also offered profound insights into their art. Their writings, spanning most of the twentieth century and reaching back into the nineteenth, have been gathered together in this uniquely wide-ranging selection. In Theories of the Avant-Garde Theatre: A Casebook from Kleist to Camus, commentary by such seminal figures as Antonin Artaud, André Breton, Alfred Jarry, Luigi Pirandello, August Strindberg, and others are featured here. Their writings illuminate a desire to wrench dramatic art out of all of its old habits and create a new, distinctive, and freestanding theatrical vocabulary. This collection provides direct access to the thinking behind some of the most stimulating performance and playwriting the modernists had to offer, as well as guidelines to the contemporary theatre’s current, most adventurous developments. Setting theory beside practice, this collection brings alive a number of vital and continuing concerns, and provides enlightening perspectives on the theatrical history of the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Theories of the Avant-Garde Theatre is not only an essential and versatile handbook for students at all levels but also offers a feast of ideas for anyone interested or engaged in theatre. Representing the twentieth century’s radical shift in the aesthetics of theatre and drama, these essays provide a valuable contribution to the literature of the avant-garde and should be of great interest to scholars and theatre lovers alike.
Editorial Reviews
Review
This volume will be most useful in the hands of theater scholars interested in theater history in general or the avant-garde movement in particular. ― American Reference Books Annual
About the Author
Bert Cardullo is professor of media and communication at the Izmir University of Economics in Turkey. He is the author, editor, or translator of a number of books on drama and film, among them An Idea of the Drama: Six Modern Playwrights in One Movement and World Directors in Dialogue: Conversations on Cinema.
