Microdramas : crucibles for theater and time / John H. Muse.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Muse, John H., author.

Series:

Theater--theory/text/performance

Theater: theory/text/performance

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

One-act plays--History and criticism.

One-act plays.

One-act plays--Technique.

Theater--Production and direction.

Theater.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

ix, 231 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2017]

Summary:

"In Microdramas, John H. Muse argues that plays shorter than twenty minutes deserve sustained attention, and that brevity should be considered a distinct mode of theatrical practice. Focusing on artists for whom brevity became both a structural principle and a tool to investigate theater itself (August Strindberg, Maurice Maeterlinck, F. T. Marinetti, Samuel Beckett, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Caryl Churchill), the book explores four episodes in the history of very short theater, all characterized by the self-conscious embrace of brevity. The story moves from the birth of the modernist microdrama in French little theaters in the 1880s, to the explicit worship of speed in Italian Futurist synthetic theater, to Samuel Beckett's often-misunderstood short plays, and finally to a range of contemporary playwrights whose long compilations of shorts offer a new take on momentary theater. Subjecting short plays to extended scrutiny upends assumptions about brief or minimal art, and about theatrical experience. The book shows that short performances often demand greater attention from audiences than plays that unfold more predictably. Microdramas put pressure on preconceptions about which aspects of theater might be fundamentaland about what might qualify as an event. In the process, they suggest answers to crucial questions about time, spectatorship, and significance"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

1 Introduction: Time Pieces 1

2 The Dimensions of the Moment: Short Spaces and the Birth of the Modernist Microdrama 21

3 The Future in the Instant: Futurist Synthesis in Theory and Practice 53

4 The Shape of Time in Beckett's Late Theater 91

5 Long Shorts: Contemporary Micro-marathons 134.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780472073634

047207363X

9780472053636

0472053639

OCLC:

985865793