Rethinking the theatre of the absurd : ecology, the environment and the greening of the modern stage / edited by Carl Lavery and Clare Finburgh.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Lavery, Carl, 1969-

Finburgh-Delijani, Clare.

Series:

Methuen drama engage

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Drama--Ecology--History and criticism.

Drama.

Theater of the absurd--History and criticism.

Theater of the absurd.

Ecology in literature.

Ecocriticism.

Ecology.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

x, 312 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015.

Summary:

The Theatre of the Absurd has often been described as a theatre created in the shadow of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Strangely, however, there has been no attempt to unpack what such an ecologically disturbed theatre might consist of in terms of its representational logic or dramaturgical structures. Similarly - and this absence is perhaps even more marked - no one has thought to situate the Theatre of the Absurd within the context of the new environmentalist paradigm that started to emerge in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Rethinking the Theatre of the Absurd: Ecology the Environment and the Greening of the Modern Stage is an innovative collection of essays, written by leading scholars in the fields of theatre, performance and eco-criticism, which seeks to address these issues by reconfiguring absurdist theatre through the optics of ecology and environment. As well as offering strikingly new interpretations of the work canonical playwrights such as Beckett, Genet, lonesco, Adamov, Albee, Gombrowicz, Kantor, Pinter, Shepard and Churchill, the book playfully reconfigures the structure of Martin Esslin's classic text The Theatre of the Absurd, which is commonly recognized as one of the most important scholarly publications of the twentieth century. By reading the Theatre of the Absurd as an emergent form of ecological theatre that expresses deep environmental anxiety, this Companion radically reinterprets the meaning of absurdism for twenty-first-century audiences. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Caryl Churchill's 'Dark Ecology' / Elaine Aston Aston, Elaine 59

2 The Garden in the Machine: Edward Albee, Sam Shepard and the American Absurd / Stephen Bottoms Bottoms, Stephen 77

3 Mutant Bodies: The Absurd in Eastern European Experience / Ralph Yarrow Yarrow, Ralph 105

4 Recycling Beckett / Joe Kelleher Kelleher, Joe 127

5 Rare Butterflies, Persecution and Pinball Machines: Environment, Subjectivity and Society in the Theatre of Arthur / Adamov Franc Chamberlain Chamberlain, Adamov Franc 147

6 Ionesco's Green Lesson: Toxic Environments, Ecologies of Air / Carl Lavery Lavery, Carl 165

7 Nettles in the Rose Garden: Ecocentrism in Jean Genet's Theatre / Clare Finburgh Finburgh, Clare 191

8 The Secluded Voice: The Impossible Call Home in Early Pinter / Mark Taylor-Batty Taylor-Batty, Mark, Carl Lavery Lavery, Carl 219.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781472506672

1472506677

OCLC:

886489353