Playtext
3 total works
Disaster capitalism is an increasingly popular critical paradigm for contextualizing and understanding life in the twenty-first century. This book includes three full-length plays by award-winning dramatist Rick Mitchell: Shadow Anthropology, a dark comedy about the US occupation of Afghanistan; Through the Roof, a Faustian trip through the social history of natural disaster in New Orleans; and Celestial Flesh, a sacrilegious romp through the 1980s sanctuary movement. Placing the plays in historical and thematic context, the author introduces the collection with an essay examining catastrophe, capitalism, and what he calls “Apocalypse Theater for the Twenty-First Century.”
Additionally, Brecht in L.A., winner of the 2002 SWTA National New Play Contest (US), is already a critically acclaimed play, which suggests that the work has the potential to be widely (and successfully) produced. And such productions will enhance the marketability of the book. A play influenced by Brecht is, in itself, not unique, since many leading, contemporary dramatists--such as Caryl Churchill, Edward Bond, Tony Kushner, Heiner Muller, and Howard Barker--have been affected by Brechtian dramaturgy. But a Brechtian-influenced play with Brecht as the lead character is unique. The play represents the only dramatic work in English which features Brecht himself as the title character.
Brecht in L.A., centering on Brecht while adapting/critiquing Brechtian dramatic form, also provides a unique opportunity for the instructor who is teaching Brechtian theatre since--with just one text (which will includes endnotes and appendices)--the instructor can cover epic theatre, the "Brecht debate," Brecht's biography, and contradictions between Brecht's theatrical practices and his everyday life.
The book's wide-ranging audience will include theatre artists; playgoers; students of drama, theatre, English, and performance studies; scholars; and readers interested in Brecht, Hollywood, and/or biography. Brecht in L.A. will also be an important addition to the considerable collections of books about Brecht which are carried by countless libraries.
This play, which contains biographical information relating to Herman Melville, is fundamentally an exploration of the ways in which these two things take place. The play admits the truth of Walter Benjamin's view of history as 'time filled by the presence of the now'. Parallels between past and present (e.g., racism, domestic abuse, and the plight of the visionary American artist) are clearly implied, but the play also utilizes new technologies, in particular video, in order to represent the kind of dialectical history and representation promoted by Benjamin. During Melville's lifetime, and in his own creative imagination, the archaic was undergoing its transformation into modernity. Thus Melville is an especially apt subject for an exploration of modernity and representation that utilizes both the modern - i.e., video, montage - and elements of the archaic - i.e., the performing body, allusions to whaling, 'discovery' in the South Seas. The Composition of Herman Melville utilizes performance strategies in an effort to embody the complex textuality of a writer who haunts the landscape of America, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. This book is believed to represent the only work of historical fiction - albeit in dramatic form - that focuses primarily on Herman Melville, considered by many to be America's greatest writer.