[DOC] Two Schools of Thought: Some Tales of Learning and Romance by Carolyn See; John Espey in Arts-Photography

Description

Grounded equally in discussions of theater history; literary genre; and theory; Martin Puchners Stage Fright: Modernism; Anti-Theatricality; and Drama explores the conflict between avant-garde theater and modernism. While the avant-garde celebrated all things theatrical; a dominant strain of modernism tended to define itself against the theater; valuing lyric poetry and the novel instead. Defenders of the theater dismiss modernisms aversion to the stage and its mimicking actors as one more form of the old "anti-theatrical" prejudice. But Puchner shows that modernisms ambivalence about the theater was shared even by playwrights and directors and thus was a productive force responsible for some of the greatest achievements in dramatic literature and theater.A reaction to the aggressive theatricality of Wagner and his followers; the modernist backlash against the theater led to the peculiar genre of the closet drama―a theatrical piece intended to be read rather than staged―whose long-overlooked significance Puchner traces from the theatrical texts of Mallarmeacute; and Stein to the dramatic "Circe" chapter of Joyces Ulysses. At times; then; the anti-theatrical impulse leads to a withdrawal from the theater. At other times; however; it returns to the stage; when Yeats blends lyric poetry with Japanese Nocirc;h dancers; when Brecht controls the stage with novelistic techniques; and when Beckett buries his actors in barrels and behind obsessive stage directions. The modernist theater thus owes much to the closet drama whose literary strategies it blends with a new mise en scegrave;ne. While offering an alternative history of modernist theater and literature; Puchner also provides a new account of the contradictory forces within modernism.