Writing and the Modern Stage

Theater beyond Drama

Julia Jarcho author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:18th Apr '17

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Writing and the Modern Stage cover

This book presents a new argument that reimagines modern theater's critical power and places innovative writing at the heart of the experimental stage.

With a focus on twentieth-century work, this book offers a new understanding of what text can do in theater. Written for scholars and students of modern drama, theater studies, modernist literature, and critical theory, it revises dominant views of Henry James, Gertrude Stein, Samuel Beckett, Theodor Adorno, and contemporary theater artists.It is time to change the way we talk about writing in theater. This book offers a new argument that reimagines modern theater's critical power and places innovative writing at the heart of the experimental stage. While performance studies, German Theaterwissenschaft, and even text-based drama studies have commonly envisioned theatrical performance as something that must operate beyond the limits of the textual imagination, this book shows how a series of writers have actively shaped new conceptions of theater's radical potential. Engaging with a range of theorists, including Theodor Adorno, Jarcho reveals a modern tradition of 'negative theatrics,' whose artists undermine the here and now of performance in order to challenge the value and the power of the existing world. This vision emerges through surprising new readings of modernist classics - by Henry James, Gertrude Stein, and Samuel Beckett - as well as contemporary American works by Suzan-Lori Parks, Elevator Repair Service, and Mac Wellman.

'In short, the achievement of Jarcho's book is that it is not only a complex and challenging piece of scholarship that probes into the underappreciated potential of theatrical writing, but also serves as an invaluable model for scholars looking to renegotiate the place of theater both beyond and beside drama in the contemporary academy.' Chris Corbo, ASAP/Journal
'A review this short cannot do justice to the intricacies of Jarcho's analysis here and throughout Writing and the Modern Stage. Backed by its author's extensive knowledge of drama, performance, and critical theory, Jarcho's book offers a powerful counter-argument to those who see writing as something that theatre overcomes in order to achieve an authentic presentness.' Stanton B. Garner, Jr, Modern Drama
'This book is a testament to the importance of scholarly work that not only considers theatre as one of many manifestations in the large bubbling pot of cultural production but also attends to the intricacies of medial specificity.' Eleanor Skimin, Theatre Survey

ISBN: 9781107132351

Dimensions: 235mm x 158mm x 19mm

Weight: 530g

282 pages