Beat drama : playwrights and performances of the 'Howl' generation / edited by Deborah R. Geis.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Geis, Deborah R., editor.

Series:

Methuen drama engage.

Methuen Drama Engage

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Beats (Persons).

Beats (Persons) in literature.

American drama--20th century.

American drama.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (377 p.)

Place of Publication:

London, [England] : Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2016.

Summary:

Readers and acolytes of the vital early 1950s-mid 1960s writers known as the Beat Generation tend to be familiar with the prose and poetry by the seminal authors of this period: Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane Di Prima, and many others. Yet all of these authors, as well as other less well-known Beat figures, also wrote plays-and these, together with their countercultural approaches to what could or should happen in the theatre-shaped the dramatic experiments of the playwrights who came after them, from Sam Shepard to Maria Irene Fornes, to the many vanguard performance artists of the seventies. This volume, the first of its kind, gathers essays about the exciting work in drama and performance by and about the Beat Generation, ranging from the well-known Beat figures such as Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs, to the "Afro-Beats" - LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Bob Kaufman, and others. It offers original studies of the women Beats - Di Prima, Bunny Lang - as well as groups like the Living Theater who in this era first challenged the literal and physical boundaries of the performance space itself.

Contents:

Cover page ; Halftitle page ; Series page ; Title page ; Copyright page ; Contents; Acknowledgements; Notes on Contributors; Introduction; Works cited; Part One The 'Canonical' Beats; 1 Mediation and Immediacy: The I and You of Jack Kerouac's Theatre of Voice Tim Hunt; Works cited; 2 Howl and the Performance of Communion John Whalen-Bridge; Works cited; 3 Gregory Corso's Dada-Surrealist-Absurd Beat Plays Ronna C. Johnson; Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1954; New York 1953: The Cold War Fifties; Postscript: That Little Black Door on the Left [a play]; Conclusion; Works cited

4 Unfair Arguments with Existence: Lawrence Ferlinghetti's One- Acts and the Modes of Beat Drama Deborah R. GeisWorks cited; 5 William S. Burroughs and the Shooting of Joan Vollmer Burroughs as Performance William Nesbitt; Works cited; 6 The Stoop: Anne Waldman's Early Drama Lisa Chinn; Works cited; Part Two The 'Afro-Beats'; 7 Amiri Baraka's Revolutionary Theatre: Black Power Politics, Avant-Garde Poetics Jimmy Fazzino; Works cited; 8 Sounding Across the City: Ted Joans's Bird Lives! As Jazz Performance Amor Kohli; Works cited

9 Radical Ritual Performance in the Early Prophetic Poetry of Bob Kaufman Thomas PynnIntroduction; Breaking the frame of American hegemonic consciousness; Bob Kaufman: American Beat Prophet; Conclusion: Beat religious consciousness, Beat spiritual legacy; Works cited; 10 Adrienne Kennedy: A Kindred Spirit to the Beats Nita N. Kumar; Works cited; Part Three Poets Theatre and the Beats; 11 Bunny Lang and the Cambridge Poets' Theatre in the 1950s Heidi R. Bean; Works cited; 12 Diane di Prima as Playwright: The Early Years 1959-1964 Nancy M. Grace; Works cited

13 Homely Persons, Rude Speeches: Camp Personalities, Cold War Sensibilities and Dystopian Impulses in Frank O'Hara's Loves Labor, an Eclogue Jason LagapaWorks cited; 14 Outlaw Tongues: The Stimuli for Michael McClure's The Beard Kurt Hemmer; Works cited; 15 Poetry Takes Centre Stage: John Wieners' Still Life at the New York Poets Theatre Erik Mortenson; Between Black Mountain and Beat; A theatre for poets; Still Life; Conclusion: critics respond; Works cited; Part Four Early Off-Off Broadway Theatre; 16 Evenings of Bohemian Cruelty: The Living Theatre in the 1950s Tim Good; Works cited

17 Eas[ing] the Possible Past the Expected: A Restaging of Hettie Jones Tatum PetrichIntroduction; Early work; Jones and Baraka; Conclusion; Works cited; 18 Cowboy in the Rock Garden: Beat Influences in Sam Shepard's Early Plays Deborah R. Geis; Works cited; 19 Rochelle Owens: Off Beat, Off-Off Broadway Amy Friedman; The phenomenon of Futz; What is 'Beat' about Owens's work?; The end of 'the woman artist' already; Works cited; 20 Rosalyn Drexler: Savvy, Savage, Sassy Polymath Dorothy Chansky; Works cited; Part Five Film and Beat Performance

21 Kerouac's The Subterraneans: When Film Adaptation Becomes Cultural Betrayal Sara Villa

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references at the end of each chapters and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (ebrary, viewed April 25, 2016).

ISBN:

9781472567895

1472567897

9781472567901

1472567900