Routledge Revivals
2 total works
First published in 1985, C.W.E Bigsby examines the career and work of playwright David Mamet. Bigsby shows that Mamet is a fierce social critic, indicting an America corrupted at its core by myths of frontier individualism and competitive capitalism. Mamet has created plays whose bleak social vision and ironic metaphysics are redeemed, if at all, by the power of imagination. No American playwright before him has displayed the same sensitivity to language, detecting lyricism in the brutal incoherencies of every day speech and investing with meaning a contemporary aphasia. Few have offered dramatic metaphors of such startling and disturbing originality. Bigsby’s study is the first book to provide a thorough account of David Mamet’s life and career, as well as close analyses of individual plays.
First published in 1990, this book presents a discussion with Arthur Miller, in conversation with Christopher Bigsby. Miller talks openly and extensively about his own life and experiences, events and environments which provide material for his plays: his New York childhood, the Depression, the McCarthy witch-hunts. He discusses in depth both the technique of his writing and the moral and political questions which his plays address, and argues passionately for the importance of maintaining respect for human values in a world where they are so frequently transgressed. Interwoven with these conversations are contributions from actors, directors, designers, reviewers, and writers who have encountered Miller over the years – whether in person or through his plays – which attest to the universal and enduring importance of his work.