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Chapter 19 American Drama

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Title: Chapter 19 American Drama


1
Chapter 19 American Drama

2
Part One Introduction
  • 1.??????(????)
  • ???? (Pulitzer Prizes) ????????,??????????????
    ?,????????????,???????????????????????????,?1917?
    ?????????
  •     ????????????????,???14?????7????,????????????
    ?????????????????????????????????????????????????
    ?????????????????????????????1????,???2??????????
    ??????,????????????????????1?????????
  •     ????????????????16????????????????,????,??????
    ?4??????????????????,5?????
  •   

3
?????? (Joseph Pulitzer),1847?4?10???????
???????????17???????,????,??????????????????????,?
?????,1867??????? ?????????????????????,??????
????????????????1903?,?????,??????????????????????
,???????????????????1911?10?29?????????????,1912??
??????????,1917??????????
4
  • 2. Background knowledge
  • American playwrights have made enormous
    contributions to world drama during the last
    century, and their works are widely read and
    performed. At the turn of the 20th century
    American drama pointed the way from a separation
    from the 19th century theatricality. It made its
    tentative attempt to place realistic plays on the
    American stage. There are other dramatists of the
    period, but European work strongly influenced
    their writing. None of the artists of this time
    even approached greatness.
  • The real development of American drama could not
  • be accomplished through poetic plays or
    adaptation. During the 1920s the extravagant
    spending and general license of the boom period
    encouraged the use of the Broadway theater as
    upper class

5
  • entertainment. But the Little Theater Movement
    began around the beginning of World War I as a
    revolt against the formulaic conventions of the
    commercial theater. Small groups of amateurs
    throughout the country were enthusiastic to
    present native plays, the shorter and simpler the
    better. During the postwar years, there were over
    a thousand little theaters across the country. It
    is said that the most evident impact of the
    Depression in American literature was made not on
    the printed page but in the little theaters.
  • Eugene ONeil was the founder of modern
    American drama.

6
Part Two Major Playwrights
  • 1.1920s
  • Eugene ONeill Elmer Rice Susan Glaspell
  • 2.1930s
  • Clifford Odets
  • 3.1940s
  • Tennessee Williams Arthur Miller
  • 4.1960s and 1970s
  • Edward Albee Sam Shepard David Buffalo

7
  • ? Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (1888-1953)
  • A. His Life
  • He was an American playwright, and Nobel
    laureate
  • in Literature. His plays are among the first
    to
  • introduce into American drama the techniques
    of
  • realism, associated with Russian playwright
    Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen,
    and Swedish playwright August Strindberg. His
    plays were among the first to include speeches in
    American vernacular and involve characters on the
    fringes of society, engaging in depraved
    behavior, where they struggle to maintain their
    hopes and aspirations, but ultimately slide into
    disillusionment and despair. O'Neill wrote only
    one well-known comedy (Ah, Wilderness!).Nearly
    all of his other plays involve some degree of
    tragedy and personal pessimism.

8
  • O'Neill was born in a Broadway hotel room in
    Times Square. The site is now a Starbucks (1500
    Broadway, Northeast corner of 43rd Broadway) a
    commemorative plaque is posted on the outside
    wall with the inscription "Eugene O'Neill,
    October 16, 1888 November 27, 1953 America's
    greatest playwright was born on this site then
    called Barrett Hotel, Presented by Circle in the
    Square."
  • He was the son of actor James O'Neill and Ella
    Quinlan. Because of his father's profession,
    O'Neill was sent to a Catholic boarding school
    where he found his only solace in books.

9
  • O'Neill spent his summers in New London,
    Connecticut. After being suspended from Princeton
    University, he spent several years at sea, during
    which he suffered from depression and alcoholism.
    O'Neill's parents and elder brother Jamie (who
    drank himself to death at the age of 45) died
    within three years of one another, and O'Neill
    turned to writing as a form of escape. Despite
    his depression he had a deep love for the sea,
    and it became a prominent theme in most of his
    plays, several of which are set onboard ships
    like the ones that he worked on.

10
  • After suffering from multiple health problems
    (including depression and alcoholism) over many
    years, O'Neill died in Room 401 of the Sheraton
    Hotel on Bay State Road in Boston, on November
    27, 1953, at the age of 65.
  • O'Neill Grave of
    Eugene

11
  • B. His main Works
  • Bread and Butter, 1914
  • The Personal Equation, 1915
  • Now I Ask You, 1916
  • Beyond the Horizon, 1918 - Pulitzer Prize, 1920
  • Anna Christie, 1920 - Pulitzer Prize, 1922
  • The Hairy Ape, 1922
  • The Iceman Cometh, written 1939, published 1940,
    first performed 1946
  • Long Day's Journey Into Night, written 1941,
    first performed 1956 - Pulitzer Prize 1957
  • A Wife for a Life, 1913

12
  • C.???--??????????
  • 1939?,???????????????????(1946),????????????,
    ????,????,??????????????????????????,????????,????
    ,???????????30?????????????????????,??????????????
    ????1946???,??????1934????????????????????????????
    ,??????,???????

13
  • C.???--??????????
  • ?????????????????????????????????????????,????
    ??????,????????????,?????????????????????????,???
    ?????????????,??????,?????????????????????,???????
    ?,?????????????,?????????????????,????????????????
    ??????????????????????????

14
  • C.???--??????????
  • ????????????????,??????????????????????????????
    ????????,????????,??????????,???????????????,???
    ?????????????????????????,????????????

15
  • C.???--??????????
  • ??(1922)???????????????????????????????????????
    ,???????????????,????????????????,???????????,????
    ??????????????,??????????????????????????????,????
    ??????????????????????,????????????

16
  • ? Elmer Rice(1892-1967)
  • A. His Life
  • Elmer Rice was born in New York City. Due to
    the Poverty of family ,Rice had accepted no
    formal education and he was a high school dropout
    who developed an interest in the legal profession
    and graduated from New York Law School at age
    20.In 1913 ,the same year that he was admitted to
    the bar,Rice decided to try his hand at writing
    plays. After the success of his first play, On
    Trial(1914), he turned his interests to the
    theatre .

17
  • B. His Major Works
  • On Trial(1914) ??
  • The Adding Machine (1923) ???
  • Street Scene(1929) ??
  • Counsellor at Law(1931) ????
  • We, People(1933) ??,??
  • Between Two Worlds(1934) ??????
  • Dream Girl(1945) ????
  • The Living Theatre(1959) ????(Collections of
    Novels and Essays)

18
  • C. His Masterpiece -- The Adding Machine (1923)
  • The Adding Machine tells the protagonist Mr.
    Zero has worked in a store for twenty-five years,
    doing the same job-adding figures-and is
    expecting a raise when his boss comes one day to
    tell him that he has to leave because the store
    has bought adding machines. In a sudden fit of
    anger he kills his boss with a bill file. He is
    tried and condemned to death. A failure and a
    waste product of mechanization, he remain a
    zero in modern life.

19
  • ? Susan Glaspell (1882-1948)
  • A. His Life and Influence
  • She was a well-known feminist author of time.
    Inspired and influenced by Kate Chopin, she
    become a strong and opinionated feminist.
    Glaspell was a founding member of Heterodoxy, a
    radial group of women activists prominent in the
    feminist movement of New York in the years
    1910-1920.

20
  • Glaspell grew up in Iowa, and attended Drake
    University. In1915 she founded with her husband
    the first influential noncommercial theater
    troupe in America- the Provincetown Players in
    Massachusetts and staged the earlier works of
    experimentalist drama by such authors like .
    Probably because of this, she has been regarded
    by some people as mother of American drama.
    She was both a playwright and a novelist.

21
  • B. His Works
  • The Verge(1921) ??a pioneering feminist
    drama
  • Alison House(1930) ?????? the Pulitzer
    Prize-winning work
  • Her major novels
  • Fidelity(1915) ??
  • The Morning Is Near Us(1930) ????
  • (She wrote ten novels in total)

22
  • ? Clifford Odets(1906-1963)
  • A. His Life
  • Odets was born in Philadelphiaof
  • immigrant parents, Lou Odets and
  • Esther Geisinger, and raisedin the
  • Bronx, New York. He dropped out
  • of high school to pursue acting. He
  • helped found the Group Theatre, a
  • highly influential theatre company in
  • the U.S. that utilized a new acting
  • technique, closely associated with the
    thinking of the Russian master Constantin
    Stanislavski.
  • After briefly trying acting, Odets decided to
    become the Group Theatre's first original
    playwright. At the urging of Group co-founder
    Harold Clurman, he wrote Awake and Sing! in 1935.
    Although his first play, it is often considered
    his masterpiece. It follows the story of a large
    Jewish family in New York.

23
  • His first wife was Academy-Award winning actress
    Luise Rainer his second wife was actress Bette
    Grayson, and he also had a relationship with
    actress Frances Farmer. Grayson's death at 32
    left Odets to care for their two children, Nora
    born in 1945, and Walt Whitman, now a clinical
    psychologist, author and painter, born in 1947.
    Clifford Odets died of colon cancer at the age of
    57 in 1963 and was interred in the Forest Lawn
    Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

24
  • B.His Works
  • (1935) Waiting for Lefty????
  • (1935) Awake and Sing! ????
  • (1935) Till the Day I Die ????
  • (1935) Paradise Lost ?????
  • (1936) I Cant Sleep ?????
  • (1937) Golden Boy ????
  • (1938) Rocket to the Moon ????
  • (1940) Night Music ??
  • (1949) The Big Knife ??
  • (1950) The Country Girl ????
  • (1954) The Flowering Peach ?????

25
  • C.His Masterpiece-- Waiting for Lefty
  • 1.Plot (P300, 2nd para.)
  • 2.Acting (P300, third para.)
  • D.His Themes
  • Quite a few Odets plays concer the loneliness of
    modern life and the money-success theme in
    American society.

26
  • ? Tennessee Williams(1911-1983)
  • A.His Life
  • Williams was born in Columbus, Mississippi,
  • in the home of his maternal grandfather, the
  • local Episcopal priest. He was of Welsh
    descent.
  • By the time Thomas was three, the family had
  • moved to Clarksdale, Mississippi. At five, he
    was diagnosed with diphtheria. It caused his legs
    to be paralyzed for nearly two years but his
    mother encouraged him to make up stories and
    read. She gave him a typewriter when he was 11.
  • His father, Cornelius Williams, was a traveling
    salesman who became increasingly abusive as his
    children grew older. The father often favored
    Tennessee's brother Dakin.Tennessee's mother
    Edwina Dakin Williams had aspirations as a
    genteel southern lady and was smothering. She may
    have had a mood disorder.

27
  • In 1918, when Williams was seven, the family
    moved again, this time to University City,
    Missouri, where he later attended University City
    High School. In 1927, at age 16, Williams won
    third prize (five dollars) for an essay published
    in Smart Set entitled, "Can a Good Wife Be a Good
    Sport?" A year later, he published "The Vengeance
    of Nitocris" in Weird Tales.
  • In the early 1930s Williams attended the
    University of Missouri, where he joined Alpha Tau
    Omega fraternity. His fraternity brothers dubbed
    him "Tennessee" for his rich southern drawl. In
    the late 1930s, Williams transferred to
    Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri for
    a year, and finally earned a degree from the
    University of Iowa in 1938. By then, Williams had
    written Cairo, Shanghai, Bombay!

28
  • B.His Works
  • American Blues ????
  • The Glass Menagerie ?????
  • A Streetcar Named Desire ?????
  • Summer And Smoke ????
  • The Rose Tattoo ????
  • Cat On a Hot Tin Roof ????????
  • Suddenly Last Summer ????
  • Sweet Bird of Youth ????
  • Period of Adjustment ???
  • Night of the Iguana ????
  • The Milk Train Does Not Stop Here ????
  • Red Devil Battery Sign ????
  • Vieux Carre ???

29
  • C. His Masterpiece -- The Glass Menagerie
  • 1. Plot (P302 - P305)
  • 2. Themes
  • The Difficulty of Accepting Reality
  • Each member of the Wingfield family is unable
    to overcome this difficulty, and each, as a
    result, withdraws into a private world of
    illusion where he or she finds the comfort and
    meaning that the real world does not seem to
    offer.
  • The Impossibility of True Escape
  • The play takes an ambiguous attitude toward
    the moral implications and even the effectiveness
    of Tom's escape. As an able-bodied young man, he
    is locked into his life not by exterior factors
    but by

30
  • emotional onesby his loyalty to and possibly
    even love for Laura and Amanda. Like a jailbreak,
    Tom's escape leads him not to freedom but to the
    life of a fugitive.  
  • The Unrelenting Power of Memory
  • The narrator, Tom, is not the only character
    haunted by his memories. Amanda too lives in
    constant pursuit of her bygone youth, and old
    records from her childhood are almost as
    important to Laura as her glass animals. For
    these characters, memory is a crippling force
    that prevents them from finding happiness in the
    present or the offerings of the future.

31
  • 3. Symbol
  • Laura's Glass Menagerie
  • As the title of the play informs us, the
    glass menagerie or collection of animals, is the
    play's central symbol. Laura's collection of
    glass animal figurines represents a number of
    facets of her personality. Like the figurines,
    Laura is delicate, fanciful, and somehow
    old-fashioned. Glass is transparent, but, when
    light is shined upon it correctly, it refracts an
    entire rainbow of colors. Similarly, Laura,
    though quiet and bland around strangers, is a
    source of strange, multifaceted delight to those
    who choose to look at her in the right light. The
    menagerie also represents the imaginative world
    to which Laura devotes herselfa world that is
    colorful and enticing but based on fragile
    illusions.

32
  • D. His Themes
  • Williams deals with themes such as violence, sex,
    and homosexuality.

33
  • ? Arthur Miller (1915 -2005)
  • A. His Life
  • Arthur Miller was the son of Polish-Jewish
  • immigrants, Isidore and Augusta Miller.His
  • father, an illiterate but wealthy
    businessman.
  • The family lived on East 110th Street in
  • Manhattan and owned a summer house in
  • Far Rockaway, Queens. In the Wall Street
    Crash of 1929, the family lost almost everything
    and moved to Gravesend, Brooklyn. As a teenager,
    Miller delivered bread every morning before
    school to help the family make ends meet.After
    graduating in 1932 from Abraham Lincoln High
    School, he worked at several menial jobs to pay
    for his college tuition.

34
  • At the University of Michigan, Miller first
    majored in journalism and worked as a reporter
    and night editor for the student paper, the
    Michigan Daily.
  • In 1938, Miller received a BA in English. After
    graduation, he joined the Federal Theater
    Project, a New Deal agency established to provide
    jobs in the theater.
  • On August 5, 1940, he married his college
    sweetheart, Mary Slattery, the Catholic daughter
    of an insurance salesman. The couple had two
    children, Jane and Robert. Robert, a writer and
    film director, produced the 1996 movie version of
    The Crucible.
  • Miller's younger sister is the actress Joan
    Copeland.

35
  • B. His Works
  • The Man Who Had All the Luck jixing ??????
  • All My Sons ????
  • Death of a Salesman?????
  • The Crucible ????
  • A View from the Bridge ????
  • Collected Plays ????
  • After the Fall ????
  • Incident at Vichy ????
  • The Price ??(1968)
  • The Creation of the World and Other Business ???
  • The Archbishops Ceiling ???????(1977)
  • The Last Yankee ??????(1991)
  • Broken Glass ???(1994)

36
  • C. His Masterpiece -- Death of a Salesman
  • 1. Plot (P306-P311)
  • 2. Themes
  • The American Dream 
  • Willy believes wholeheartedly in what he
    considers the promise of the American Dreamthat
    a well liked and personally attractive man in
    business will indubitably and deservedly acquire
    the material comforts offered by modern American
    life. Oddly, his fixation with the superficial
    qualities of attractiveness and likeability is at
    odds with a more gritty, more rewarding
    understanding of the American Dream that
    identifies hard work without complaint as the key
    to success. Willy's interpretation of likeability
    is superficialhe childishly dislikes Bernard
    because he considers Bernard a nerd. Willy's
    blind faith in his stunted version of the
    American Dream leads to his rapid psychological
    decline when he is unable to accept the disparity
    between the

37
  • Dream and his own life.
  • Abandonment
  • Willy's life charts a course from one
    abandonment to the next, leaving him in greater
    despair each time.
  • Betrayal
  • Willy's primary obsession throughout the play
    is what he considers to be Biff's betrayal of his
    ambitions for him. Willy believes that he has
    every right to expect Biff to fulfill the promise
    inherent in him. When Biff walks out on Willy's
    ambitions for him, Willy takes this rejection as
    a personal affront. Willy, after all, is a
    salesman, and Biff's ego-crushing rebuff
    ultimately reflects Willy's inability to sell him
    on the American Dreamthe product in which Willy
    himself believes most faithfully. Willy assumes
    that Biff's betrayal stems from Biff's discovery
    of Willy's affair with The Womana betrayal of
    Linda's love. Whereas Willy feels that Biff has
    betrayed him, Biff feels that Willy, a phony
    little fake, has betrayed him with his unending
    stream of ego-stroking lies.

38
  • D. His Themes
  • A tipical theme of Arthur Millers plays concers
    the dilemma of modern man in relation to his
    family and work.

39
?Edward Albee(1928-)
Born 12 March 1928 ) in Washington
D.C. Occupation Dramatist Writing
period1958 present Notable work(s) Who's
Afraid of Virginia The Zoo Story The American
Dream The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? Notable
award(s) Pulitzer Prize for Drama
(1967,1975,1994) Tony Award (2002)National
Medal of Arts (1996) Special Tony Award (2005)
40
His works are considered well-crafted, often
unsympathetic examinations of the modern
condition.His early works reflect a mastery and
Americanization of the Theatre of the Absurd that
found its peak in works by European playwrights
such as Jean Genet, Samuel Beckett, and Eugène
Ionesco. Younger American playwrights, such as
Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel, credit Albee's
daring mix of theatricalism and biting dialogue
with helping to reinvent the post-war American
theatre in the early 1960s. Albee continued to
experiment in new works, such as The Goat or,
Who Is Sylvia? (2002 )
41
Theatre of the Absurd
  • ?The Theatre of the Absurd is a designation for
    particular plays written by a number of primarily
    European playwrights in the late 1940s, 1950s,
    and 1960s, as well as to the style of theatre
    which has evolved from their work.
  • ? It refers to some plays the theme of which
    centers on the meaninglessness of the life with
    its pain and suffering that seems funny, even
    ridiculous.

42
His Works
  • The Zoo Story(first play 1958 ),ltlt??????gtgt
  • The Death of Bessie Smith (1960 one-act play)
    ltlt???????gtgt
  • The Sandbox (1961 one-act play) ltlt??gtgt
  • The American Dream(1961 one-act play)ltlt ???gtgt
  • Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? ( 1962, first
    full- length)
  • ltlt.??????????gtgt. The Balled
    of the Sad Café (1963) ltlt ???????gtgt
  • A Delicate Balance(1966 winning a Pulitzer
    Prize)ltlt?????gtgt
  • Box and Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (
    1968)
  • ltlt?????gtgt
  • All Over (1971) ltlt??gtgt
  • Seascape (1975,winning another Pulitzer Prize
    )ltlt??gtgt
  • The Lady from Dubuque (1978)ltlt ????????gtgt
  • The Man Who Had 3 Arms (1983 )ltlt ???gtgt
  • Three Tall Women (1994 winning the third
    Pulitzer Prize for drama )
  • ltlt???????gtgt

43
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
  • The play seem to have dwelled on one problem only
    , that is, the absurdity of human life built very
    much on a frail illusion and spiritual emptiness.
  • Just as sexual impotence in Eliot and Hemingway
    denotes spiritual poverty, so here in Albee
    childlessness is only a representation of a much
    grave problem with which these people are beset.
  • The mental suffering of all the people in the
    play is graphically illustrated here in this
    Ill-tell-you-all kind of speech,.
  • The play is an impressive work. The three acts,
    Fun and Games(?????), Walpurgisnacht(????????),
    The Exorcism (????) represent the typical
    structural pattern of Albees plays normal
    opening, gradual building up towards emotional
    crack-up, and quick drop-off.

44
The Virginia Woolf in the title is significant
in a couple of ways
  • First, Martha is well read and has a kind of
    respect for language. Had she been younger, she
    would have identified herself with Virginia Woolf
    who had an incredible amount of verbal wit.
  • Then ,Virginia Woolf is used as a homophone for
    wolf and the title is in fact a humorous way of
    repeating a line from a ballad. Who is afraid of
    the big, bad wolf? and the wolf that has scared
    the four people in the play is the hopelessness
    that stretches before them.

45
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46
?Sam Shepard(1943-)
  • Samuel Shepard Rogers III (born 5 November 1943)
    in Fort Sheridan, Illinois .
  • He is an American playwright, and actor,
    director of stage and screen. He is author of
    several books of short stories, essays, and
    memoirs, and received the Pulitzer Prize for
    Drama in 1979 for his play, Buried Child.

47
?He trends to explore the world of the
subconscious and the repressed. ?He feels
fascinated with subjects like incent and
violence.?One major subject fir hi is failed
family relationships, relationships that can be
terrible and impossible.

48
His plays
  • Buried Child.(Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 )
    ??????
  • Fool for Love (1986)??
  • A Lie of the Mind ?????
  • Paris ??
  • Texas ????
  • Motel Chronicles????
  • Geography of a Horse Dreamer ltlt????????gtgt
  • States of Shocks ltlt??gtgt

49
Buried Child
  • 1?The introduction of the play
  • 2?There is a hint that the buried child is born
    out of an incestuous joining between Vinces
    father and his grandmother. It represents a past
    that bears heavily on the present.
  • 3?The play seems to be saying that family
    generates pains. Its members look like a global
    race of strangers.

50
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51
?David Mamet(1947-)
  • David Alan Mamet is an American author, essayist,
    playwright, screenwriter and film director. His
    works are known for their clever, terse,
    sometimes vulgar dialogue and arcane stylized
    phrasing, as well as for his exploration of
    masculinity. He received Tony Award nominations
    for Glengarry Glen Ross (1984) and Speed-the-Plow
    (1988). As a screenwriter, he received Oscar
    nominations for The Verdict (1982) and Wag the
    Dog (1997).

52
Mamets major thematic concern relates to his
pessimistic view of the dilemma with which
contemporary America is faced in the areas of
social, economics, and human relationships.
53
His Plays
  • House of Games (1987) ltlt????gtgt
  • Sexual Perversity in Chicagoltlt???????gtgt
  • American Buffalo ltlt????gtgt
  • Glengarry Glen Ross (1984)ltlt????gtgt
  • The Wods ltlt ??gtgt
  • The Shawl ltlt??gtgt
  • Speed the Plow ltlt????gtgt

54
American Buffalo
  • One of his most ambitious works.
  • It is a two-act play.
  • It is once a critique of American business ethics
    and portrayal of failed human relationships.

55
Style
  • Apropos to Mamet's writing style, the play is
    very terse and vulgar. Teach uses the word "cunt"
    numerous times and all three of them use the word
    "fuck" quite loosely. There are not many
    monologues and the parentheticals are very
    straightforward, without any line readings

56
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57
The major feature of recent American drama
  • The multiracial and multiethnic plays on the
    stage.
  • 1?African American playwright (Ausust Wilson)
  • 2?The native American Indians (The native
    American Ensemble ltlt ?????gtgt)
  • 3?The Asian Americans ( Laurence Yep, David Henry
    Hwang)

?
58
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