American Century Script Analysis

Albee, Shepard, Mamet

... Tragedy of America that it is non-tragic. Compare hero in "Crime & Punishment" and "American Tragedy" -- Raskolnikov kills because of the idea, not pursued happiness (rather the opposite). American Dream cannot be a basis for tragedy (Death of a Salesman). No wonder that "money" issue leads to social connotations, not metaphysical.

[ Post-America, my nonfiction ]

A-Century in Ethiopia? O'Neill [ Desire under the Elms ] in Amharic? teatr.us

THEMES : FAMILY

Rewrite? Public domain.

Why not to take it straight from the Greeks?

...

Script *

Drama:

"Americans adore me and will go on adoring me until I say something nice about them." -- George Bernard Shaw

POMO
Williams
Beckett

Join Dramatic Literature Forum Class Notes by Kate D'Amico, Script Analysis Fall 1999 (AA -- Anatoly Antohin)

This page is about to be personal and opinionated... Theatre U.S.A., 1665 to 1957 by Barnard Hewitt; McGraw-Hill, 1959 : "The first play produced in territory which was to become the United States was a comedia, written by a Spanish captain, and presented in 1598 on the bank of the Rio Grande near what is now El Paso. Between 1640 and 1652, at least two of Corneille's tragedies were produced in Quebec"...

Miller from ISU & Salesman Review from playwrites.net

Summary

There are several pages on the 20th century drama, which could be collected under the title "American Century" (themes, values, ideas).

Questions

Am Drama, two parts?

Notes

How did we get from Am. Existential to Beckett and Postmodern? On Nietzsche by Georges Bataille

The Possessed 2003 Erotism: Death and Sensuality

Am. Drama bibliography *

Arthur Miller @ Amazon *

Modern American Drama, 1945-2000 by C. W. E. Bigsby; Cambridge University Press, 2000:

[ - Chapter One: The Absent Voice: American Drama and the Critic - Chapter Two: Eugene O'Neill's Endgame - Chapter Three: Tennessee Williams: the Theatricalising Self - Chapter Four: Arthur Miller: the Moral Imperative - Chapter Five: Edward Albee: Journey to Apocalypse - Chapter Six: A Broadway Interlude - Chapter Seven: Sam Shepard: Imagining - Chapter Eight: David Mamet: All True Stories - Chapter Nine: The Performing Self - Chapter Ten: Rede.Ning the Centre: Politics, Race, Gender - Chapter Eleven: Beyond Broadway ]

Playwrights and Acting: Acting Methodologies for Brecht, Ionesco, Pinter, and Shepard by James H. McTeague; Greenwood Press, 1994 :

- One New Forms--New Actors - Two Bertolt Brecht - Three Eugene Ionesco - Four Harold Pinter - Five Sam Shepard

Eugene O'Neill's Century: Centennial Views on America's Foremost Tragic Dramatist by Richard F. Moorton Jr.; Greenwood Press, 1991

The Critical Response to Tennessee Williams by George W. Crandell; Greenwood Press, 1996

...

NEW:

...

AmCentury and The Postmodern

2004: THR215 Dramlit 2005 * 2006 Playscript

3 + 3 = (O'Neill - Williams - Miller) + (Albee - Shepard - Mamet) and Kushner and others

2007 Dramlit -- script.vtheatre.net/215/4 ...

History Space = Time.
A-CENTURY & After Beckett
Film Century: National, International, Global and Universal.
1960's: Marshall McLuhan (Modernist with a good sense of Future) -- First to bring "Global Village" (McDonald's [hamburger joint] as Global --is that what he was talking about?) TV in Turkey. In ENGLISH.
Nietzche: redefine our definition of MAN. We have to get over what we think of as Time, Knowledge.
Heidigger "Being and Time" // Kierkkegard "defining time is a product of being"//"existence is foundation for essence" -- I come with no essence. Human being is my new creation.
From zero I create myself. Time is created through being and becoming as a result of being human, we have time. If existentialists are right and I'm coming from the void (AA creation of AA) according to Beckett -- nothing will come from nothing.
We HAD conventions... but the moment we separate ourselves...
Beckett: no society, no humans
ABSURDISM -- We divorced ourselves from langugage. There comes a time when I can't rely on my feelings, emotions, language. ("I'm Russian -- English is not MY [first] language.") [For example:] "Diana Language": if she removes herself, she still has to re-invent herself.
Beckett (Irish, but writes in French), Ionesco, etc. Why do they write in a different language? To make it simple. 3 Sisters: 3 rooms, 3 simultaneous conversations.
I'm (AA) living Beckett: I come home. First thing I see: TV on, talking. To nobody. Guess what? Nobody talks to me, either. [Welcome to America] I look in mirror - call myself a jerk. I don't answer.
Play about Communication. Personal expression. Freedoms.
Old There, New Questions: Individuality / Mass
Beckett: where's the balance?
Full freedom / Totalitarian
After the end of the play -- then what happens?
The End -- of the State of Time --is ETERNITY.
The EXIT. Sartre to Beckett. That's why at the end of modernity, there is a NEW PERIOD: POST-MODERNISM -- POMO -- to, where? Where do we go from here?
Post-Post-Modernism?
Depressing? Then why DO anything? There is nothing to lose. The moment you stop doing something that won't make any difference: (according to Kierkegaard) YOU BECOME A HUMAN BEING.
Performance Art: Andy Warhol filmed someone sleeping for 8 hours and called it: "Sleeping."
Over our disintegration? No, it's just Beginning. Of what?
In 10 years, we'll all have our own web pages -- because we are individuals and deserve our OWN SPACE in cyberspace. [Will this address in cyberspace be our] LAST HOME? WHERE is my home? ("I'm more at home on my webpage, than in my own house.") When the server lost my files -- [oy vey] I almost cried. Now, the page doesn't actually EXIST -- signals are thrown on screen, then disappear! Where does [the signal] go?
[There is] NO NEW THEATRE, just good cooks. Stickers, nose rings, etc., [define, or declare, our] INDIVIDUALITY. High Modernity aims for new FORMS == inventing new meanings.
"Beautiful crisis is our best opportunity for anything new."
Depression? Is there a Future? What hope is there for the children? Throughout history, [there has been a] great struggle for [to] exist.
ART: evidence of the POWER OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT. [important clue]
Wagner's opera in 19th century: greatest theatrical expression. Where's the new opera? (not yet) [Except for Mozart] No matter how hard you try, there comes a point where experience is needed for reflection.
REDEFINITION: "Generation X" is indefinable, hence, the "X" Musicology: 50's classic rock 'n roll, 60's explosion hard rock, 70's disco, 80's, 90's ...
*Changes in value system (NOT interpretations)
Modern Art: what IS art? Brick. (then) 2 bricks. (then) Brick on top of naked woman. (etc.) Is Modern Art the only art left?
Hegel's Theory: Qualitative, Quantitive change (Dialectics)
Beckett -- beyond this point, we are new creatures (homo sapien sapien)
Deleuze: rhyzomatic principle: verticle man [upright?]
No more 2-dimensional. In outer space there is no up, down, side to side.
Internet: non-linear; new phenomenon Right & Wrong? Politician's mores. Can't base knowledge on old information -- we have to RETHINK OURSELVES.
We have to change the apparatus to look outside to inside (who are we?) Ionesco went to Paris, used tourist dictionary, gave it actors, [who] improvised lines -- "non-sensical"...[tasty imagery] WE DON'T COMMUNICATE! We talk "at" each other with opinions! Let's go compare and arrive at a NEW conclusion.
Popular opinion decides what is great art. [hence, pop-art]
According to Nietzche: that is the point that is the end; where the Individual is removed.
Definition: An American
Nihilism: rejection of all religious and moral principles.
Pop war: man is nothing -- Time is everything (Marxism & Socialism)
[A personal addendum to originality and individuality: stop wearing labels. Clothing and shoe manufacturers, etc., used to woo us, by paying for their advertising themselves, into buying their fine products, for a reasonable price. Now they have brainwashed us with cheap Madison Avenue mind tricks into wearing their products with the seduction that by doing so we will proclaim our "uniqueness," and the only result is that we all end up plastered in products covered in their labels (SoBe, Nike, Adiddas, Camel, the little aligator, "No Fear" what the hell is THAT all about, anyway?, etc., )providing them with FREE advertising -- AND we must pay 200% more than the value of the item, just for the priviledge of wearing their labels. Stop it.]
NEXT: "The Homecoming" and Pinter's "applied realism" (American & British Drama) Only for THR413 Playscript Analysis
[ Realism Page : "American psychological realism" allows for the use of the kind of "plastic" theatre (Williams' introduction to The Glass Menagerie, i.e. the motivations of the characters, their behaviors, etc., could be understood psychologically, but the theatrical frame (and the dramaturgy) could accomodate non-realistic devices. ]

Kusher's "Angels in America"
I didn't know what page this play and playwright do belong -- Pomo, AmDrama...
I thought about making a new page "Agit-Prop" (famous during the Russian Revolution Theatre of Agitation and Propaganda). The reason -- too political. "Reagan-era"? I guess I missed something. I understand that Kushner loves Brecht, but was writing his "epic theatre" text during the last decades of modernity, where the real politic still was alive (WW I and WW II are the indication of it). Kushner comes at the time of post-Cold War and with little understanding what this Cold War was about. Too bad for a writer who wants to be political.
So, this is how my notes on Kushner ended on American Age Page. I think that the play in itself what is wrong with America.

more NOTES:

Shepard LANGUAGE, VISUALIZATION AND THE INNER LIBRARY. 1997 (p. 857-)

I. GENRES

Genre: The American Gothic. 832 Family; husband-wife, children, sons. Pinter's non-defined past! (Shepard's favorite).

Narrative and Dramatic Structure: how the two are connected?

GENRE: the main type (kind) of literary form (tragedy of comedy). The specifics -- laws of stylistic(?) organization.

Open-ended structure & Mystery

[ Bakhtin: theories of genres ]

PS

There are more notes taken by my students, which are not posted... [ (American) Don Juan 2003 production and conceptual notes ]

Homework

Mine... [ pages to be updated when I teach DramLit and/or Playscript Analysis again -- Fall 2003 + 2005 ]

Realism and the American Dramatic Tradition by William W. Demastes; University of Alabama Press, 1996 : - Preface: American Dramatic Realisms, Viable Frames of Thought - One: Introduction: The Struggle for The Real--Interpretive Conflict, Dramatic Method, and the Paradox of Realism - Notes - Two: The Legacy of James A. Herne: American Realities and Realisms - Notes - Three: Whose Realism? Rachel Crothers's Power Struggle in the American Theatre - Notes - Four: The Provincetown Players' Experiments with Realism - Notes - Five: Servant of Three Masters: Realism, Idealism, and "Hokum" in American High Comedy - Notes - Six: Remembering the Disremembered: Feminist Realists of the Harlem Renaissance - Notes - Seven: Eugene O'Neill and Reality in America - Notes - Eight: "Odets, Where is Thy Sting?" Reassessing the "Playwright of the Proletariat" - Notes - Nine: Thornton Wilder, the Real, and Theatrical Realism - Notes - Ten: Into the Foxhole: Feminism, Realism, and Lillian Hellman - Notes - Eleven: Tennessee Williams's "Personal Lyricism": Toward an Androgynous Form - Notes - Twelve: Arthur Miller: Revisioning Realism - Thirteen: Margins in the Mainstream: Contemporary Women Playwrights - Notes - Fourteen: The Limits of African-American Political Realism: Baraka's Dutchman and Wilson's Ma Rainey's Black Bottom - Notes - Fifteen: Anti-Theatricality and American Ideology: Mamet's Performative Realism - Notes - Sixteen: The Hurlyburly Lies of the Causalist Mind: Chaos and the Realism of Rabe and Shepard

Next: pomo

Derrida (2002)

DramLit 2004: Pirandello > Brecht, and only then American Drama -- O'Neill, Williams, Miller.

"American Century" -- WWII: anticipation and aftermatch. How to present the Big Three?

script.vtheatre.net/doc/oneill:

Greek Mythology in Eugene O'Neill's "Desire Under the Elms" -- The Greek myth Hippolytus provides the basic framework for Eugene O'Neill's "Desire Under the Elms". This paper compares and contrasts the plot, characterization and theme of the play and the myth. "Phaedra" -- tragedy.

"O'Neill's play is set in rural New England during the 1850's. The main characters are Ephraim Cabot, his son Eben Cabot, and his two brothers Simeon and Peter. The Cabots work a farm and Simeon and Peter grow wary of laboring through the stone-plodded fields of New England. Eben, the youngest of the three has vowed to himself that he will one day take back the land that once belonged to his mother, who is dead. Eben believes that his father intently overworked his mother, creating her death so he could have say so over who will be heir to the farm. When Ephraim goes out of town for a spell, Eben offers Simeon and Peter three hundred dollars a piece to leave town. The elder brothers decide to take the money and run to California to work in the gold mines. Half of Eben's equation is solved, but Ephraim returns home married for the third time to a lady named Abbie."

"3 brothers" myth

Neo-Oedipus

Land

... script.vtheatre.net/themes

Eugene (Gladstone) O'Neill (October 16, 1888 - November 27, 1953) American playwright best known for explorations into the darker aspects of the human condition. Frequently, his plays show people on the outer edges of society or begin in a situation of ennui and despair and move dramatically downwards to a grim finish.

In 1929 he moved to the Loire Valley in France where he lived in the Chateau du Plessis in St. Antoine-du-Rocher, Indre et Loire.

Best known plays include: Desire Under the Elms (1924), Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), and The Iceman Cometh (1946). He received the Pulitzer Prize in 1920 for Beyond the Horizon and received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936, making him the first US dramatist to do so. His autobiographical, and to an extent, darkest play, Long Day's Journey into Night was published posthumously in 1956.

"Between Chekhov and Beckett" (Mamet, Shepard, Cushner)

Tennessee Williams (http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/ms-writers/dir/williams_tennessee/)
Edward Albee (http://www.educeth.ch/english/readinglist/albeee/index.html)
Sam Shepard (http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/theatre_dance/Shepard/shepard.html)

POMO WilliamsBeckett