This document announces a series of lectures on important playwrights to be held at the Bard Graduate Center in New York City, including Samuel Beckett on September 12th, Edward Albee on October 9th, Clare Booth Luce on November 2nd, and Henrik Ibsen on December 4th. It provides brief biographies of each playwright, noting Beckett is famous for "Waiting for Godot", Albee wrote "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", Luce authored the hit play "The Women", and Ibsen is considered the father of realism and his play "A Doll's House" was groundbreaking for its portrayal of marriage norms. The series focuses on
English Language has been blessed with a number of playwrights ,poets and others.Here is a presentation on different English dramatists and playwrights.A detailed description on Shakespeare,Marlowe,Harold Pinter,Bernard Shaw along with their major plays are given.
Contents
Modernism
Realism
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen’s Approach to Feminism
(Project #1)
“The Master Builder”
Epistemology, techniques, themes, characters
“The Master Builder”: A Kaleidoscopic Play
Autobiographical Elements in “The Master Builder”
Socialist Realism
George Bernard Shaw
“Heartbreak House”: as A Socialist Realist Play
Bibliography
English Language has been blessed with a number of playwrights ,poets and others.Here is a presentation on different English dramatists and playwrights.A detailed description on Shakespeare,Marlowe,Harold Pinter,Bernard Shaw along with their major plays are given.
Contents
Modernism
Realism
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen’s Approach to Feminism
(Project #1)
“The Master Builder”
Epistemology, techniques, themes, characters
“The Master Builder”: A Kaleidoscopic Play
Autobiographical Elements in “The Master Builder”
Socialist Realism
George Bernard Shaw
“Heartbreak House”: as A Socialist Realist Play
Bibliography
Overview of the History of Gay Theatre in America It s.docxkarlhennesey
Overview of the History of Gay Theatre in America
It seems almost inconceivable today, with the abundance of openly gay playwrights and gay-themed plays, that less than 50 years ago a drama critic for The New York Times felt the need to call for “social and theatrical convention” to be “widened so that homosexual life may be as freely dramatized as heterosexual life, may be as frankly treated in our drama as in contemporary fiction.”
EARLY GAY PLAYWRIGHTS: Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward, Tennessee Williams, William Inge, and Edward Albee, Lanford Wilson, Robert Patrick. Doric Wilson.
Pansy Craze: By the end of the 1920s much of the public image of gay people was still limited to the various drag balls in Greenwich Village and in Harlem, but the early 1930s saw a new development within a highly commercial context, bringing the gay subculture of the enclaves of Greenwich Village and Harlem onto the mainstream stages of midtown Manhattan in a veritable Pansy Craze from 1930 until the repeal of prohibition in 1933.
Hay’s Code: After the repeal of prohibition, this tolerance waned. Any sympathetic portrayal of gay characters (termed sexual perverts) was prohibited by the Motion Picture Production Code (or Hays Code) from being included in Hollywood films. Performer Ray Bourbon was arrested many times for his act, considered tame by today's standards.
It seems almost inconceivable today, with the abundance of openly gay playwrights and gay-themed plays, that less than 50 years ago a drama critic for The New York Times felt the need to call for “social and theatrical convention” to be “widened so that homosexual life may be as freely dramatized as heterosexual life, may be as frankly treated in our drama as in contemporary fiction.”
EARLY GAY PLAYWRIGHTS: Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward, Tennessee Williams, William Inge, and Edward Albee, Lanford Wilson, Robert Patrick. Doric Wilson.
At the height of the Pansy Craze in the late 1920s, Mae West penned The Drag, a “social problem” play that argued for sympathetic treatment of homosexuals. However, after out-of-town tryout runs, the play received a scandalous reception. Never making it to the Great White Way, The Drag was censored, and West was arrested. Draconian measures from City Hall, including the passage of New York City’s 1927 “padlock bill,” prohibited homosexual subject matter on the Broadway stage. A few years later, the Hays Code of 1934 banned images of homosexuality on the Hollywood screen. Consequently, censorship of gay themes in theater and film was the norm in the U.S. from the 1930s through the 1960s.
Expanding on the concept of the coffeehouse as a forum for beatnik poetry readings, Joe Cino opened his small Cornelia Street café in 1958 with the intention of creating a space where theater artists could develop their individual voices and form a community. The Caffe Cino’s locale rendered it out-of-the-way enough to feel like a private sanctuary and accessible enough for urban audiences ...
Overview of the History of Gay Theatre in America It s.docx
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PLAYWRIGHTS SERIES
BARD GRADUATE CENTER LECTURE HALL
38 WEST 68TH ST
NEW YORK CITY
Samuel Beckett | Thursday, September 12 6:00 pm
Samuel Beckett (1906 — 1989) was an Irish avant-garde nov-
elist, playwright, theater director and poet who lived in Paris
for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French.
His work offers a bleak tragicomic outlook on human nature
often coupled with black comedy and gallows humor.
Beckett is most famous for his play, "Waiting for Godot". In a
much quoted article the critic Vivian Mercier wrote that
Beckett has "achieved a theoretical impossibility—a play in
which nothing happens, that yet keeps audience glued to their
seats. What's more, since the second act is a subtly different
reprise of the first he has written a play in which nothing
happens, twice."
Edward Albee | Tuesday, October 9 7:30 pm
Edward Franklin Albee III (b. 1928) is an American play-
wright known for works such as "The Zoo Story", "The
Sandbox", "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?". His rewrite
of the book for the unsuccessful musical "Breakfast at
Tiffany's" and adaptation of Truman Capote's 1966 book
of the same name are considered well-crafted but often
unsympathetic examinations of the modern condition.
The Pulitzer Prize committee for the best play recom-
mended "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", in 1963 but
the Pulitzer Board, which has sole discretion in awarding
the prize, rejected the recommendation and no award
was given that year.
"What could be worse than getting to the end of your
life and realizing you hadn't lived it?” —— Edward Albee
Clare Booth Luce | Wednesday, November 2 6:00 pm
Clare Booth Luce (1903 – 1987) was the first American woman
appointed to a major ambassadorial post abroad. A versatile
author, she is best known for her 1936 hit play The Women,
which had an all-female cast. Her writings extended from
drama and screen scenarios to fiction, journalism, and war re-
portage. She was the wife of Henry Luce, publisher of Time, Life
and Fortune.
Politically, Luce was a Republican who became steadily more
conservative in later life. In her youth however, she flirted
briefly with the Democratic liberalism of Franklin D. Roosevelt,
as a protege of Bernard Baruch. During her two terms as a
Congresswoman from Connecticut in the early 1940s, her mod-
erate views, especially toward blacks, immigrants, and women
denied professional careers, contrasted with those of most of
men in her party. Although she was a strong supporter of the
Anglo-American alliance in World War II, she remained outspo-
kenly critical of the British presence in India. A charismatic and
forceful public speaker, especially after her conversion to
Roman Catholicism in 1946, she campaigned for every Republi-
can presidential candidate from Wendell Willkie to Ronald
Reagan.
Henrik Ibsen Thursday, December 4 6:30 pm
Henrik Ibsen (1828 — 1906) was a major 19th-century Norwe-
gian playwright, theater director, and poet. He is often referred
to as the father of realism and is one of the founders of modern-
ism in theater. He is the most frequently performed dramatist in
the world after Shakespeare, and "A Doll's House" became the
world's most performed play by the early 20th century. "A Doll's
House" is significant for its critical attitude toward 19th-century
marriage norms. It aroused great controversy at the time, as it
concludes with the protagonist, Nora, leaving her husband and
children because she wants to discover herself.
In 2006, the centennial of Ibsen's death, "A Doll's House" held
the distinction of being the world's most performed play.
Ibsen's work examined the reality is that lay behind many
façades, revealing much that was disquieting to many contempo-
raries. It utilized a critical eye and free inquiry into the condi-
tions of life and issues of morality.
A series of lectures and panel discussions on important
playwrites of the 20th century