Theatre History

"The Living Theatre was formed in 1947 by Judith Malina and Julian Beck. Inspired by psychologist Wilhelm Reich's theories and Antonin Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty, it was created as an alternative to the commercial theater of the time."

"A uniquely American art form, the stage musical was born out of a combination of European-style operetta, nonmusical plays into which popular songs were interspersed, minstrel shows, and other stage performances that featured music, dancing, and comedy."

"One of the world's oldest theatrical forms, Noh is a classical style of Japanese drama that blends highly stylized acting and costumes, song, dance, and musical accompaniment."

discusses the philosophy and influence of the Theatre of Cruelty, and assesses it as a theatrical device designed to elicit strong emotions from the audience.

Greek theater was dominated by the works of five playwrights: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Menander.

presents critical discussion of Japanese Noh dramas composed from the fourteenth century through the sixteenth century

presents critical discussion of Roman theater from the mid-third century B.C. to the first century A.D.

The term "Cavalier" denotes a literary movement that flourished from 1625 to 1649, characterized by its practitioners' use of lighthearted wit, elegant mannerisms, amourous and sometimes erotic themes, and adherence to upper-class values.

Genre of Renaissance drama based on major events and figures in English history

Italian form of popular comedy characterized by improvisation and a collection of stock characters, flourishing 1550-1780

"specifically refers to works produced during the reign of Elizabeth I (1533-1603), but the term is also commonly applied to plays written during the rule of her two immediate successors, James I and Charles I, up to the time of Parliament's closing of the public theaters in 1642."

"The Caroline period in English literature is generally understood to encompass the years 1625 through 1649. The masque met its greatest success during the Caroline era. According to Glynne Wickham, masques are essentially lavish & costly amateur dramas based upon primitive religion, romance literature, & spectacle. Twentieth-century theater historians recognize masques as invaluable for having helped establish the wide use of proscenium staging, still widely employed today."

The English mystery cycles, also known as Corpus Christi plays or miracle cycles, dominated the English stage throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

the lives and writings of British women playwrights who produced work for the stage from 1660 to 1800

"The reign of Louis XIV in France from 1643 to 1715 marked a period that is often described as the "Golden Age" of French drama. Producing such dramatists as Jean Racine, Pierre and Thomas Corneille, and Molière, the theater of the period is noted for classicism, social commentary, and a growing audience outside the royal court."

Heroic drama, sometimes called heroic tragedy or heroic romance, is a genre of English drama that flourished in the years of the Restoration.

"At the end of the sixteenth century, as part of the general trend toward formal satire, a new form of comedy, known as "humors comedy," began to appear on the Elizabethan stage."

"The ascension of James I to the English throne in 1603 marked an era of social and philosophical transition that was reflected in the increasingly dark and ambiguous drama of the period."

Kabuki is the most well-known of Japan's many theatrical styles.

Literature influenced by relationships between wealthy patrons and their author-clients during the reign of Elizabeth I, 1558-1603

"The masque was a form of entertainment popular in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which was specifically designed for an aristocratic audience, and which was noted for the extravagance and splendor of its performances."

"Noh, which developed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and saw its high point in the 1400s, is a highly stylized, abstract, and philosophical Japanese dramatic form that emphasizes the spiritual aspects of human action and emotion."

"(Also called the War of the Theaters, the Poets' War, the Battle of the Stages, and the Stage Quarrel.) Public quarrel among four leading Elizabethan playwrights, presented in their dramatic works produced between 1599 and 1602."
Ben Jonson, John Marston, Thomas Dekker, & William Shakespeare

English and European dram of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that combined elements of tragedy and comedy to create a distinct new form.

The term Restoration Drama refers to the dramatic styles practiced by English playwrights in the years following the reestablishment of the monarchy in 1660.

A character type from the comedy of the Restoration period in England, corresponding with the supposed libertinism of well-known public figures.

"The revenge tragedy drama of English literature generally refers to a body of dramatic works written from the mid-1580s to the early 1640s, from the Elizabethan to the Caroline period. Typically, these works feature such themes and devices as a wronged revenge-seeker, ghosts, madness, delay, sinister intrigue, a play-within-the-play, torture, multiple murders, and the realistic depiction of bloody violence onstage."

A type of stage comedy popular during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in England, originating in reaction to the highly sexualized comedy of manners popular in the Restoration period.

focuses on the writings, influences and interests of the seven classically educated dramatists--Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Lodge, George Peele, Thomas Nashe, Robert Greene, and John Lyly--collectively known as the "University Wits," who were a major force in English theater in the 1580s and 1590s.

"Realism first had a great impact on novel writing and only later spread to drama, where, championed by such notable figures as Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, and August Strindberg, it revolutionized the construction of plays as well as acting and staging."

characterized by a reliance on supernatural elements and dramatic spectacles of suffering; generally confined to a brief period in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries

"The Newgate novel was a popular & controversial type of fiction featuring a criminal protagonist that appeared in Great Britain during the 1830s and 1840s. Despite the critical controversy surrounding these works, the Newgate theme was extremely popular with readers and with audiences who attended the frequent theatrical adaptations of the novels."

provides criticism on the contributions of women to nineteenth-century dramatic literature

Originating in France as the pièce bien faite, the well-made play is a style of dramatic writing characterized by a meticulous, methodical purposiveness of plotting.

provides critical commentary on the literary and cultural treatment of William Shakespeare and his body of work during the nineteenth century

presents criticism about Dublin's Abbey Theatre (or the Irish National Theatre Society), its major figures, and its productions

The Irish Renaissance lasted from approximately 1880 until 1930. The Abbey Theatre of Dublin, founded in 1903 by playwrights William Butler Yeats and Lady Augusta Gregory, opened its doors in 1904.

a critical overview of playwrights and works that focus on political themes, from the early 1900s to the 1980s

"The 'proletarian period' of American literature spans roughly one decade, from the founding of the New Masses literary journal in 1926 through the early World War II years of the late 1930s. The writers of proletarian fiction, poetry, drama & journalism generally embraced Marxian social theory, rejected 'bourgeois literature' -- which encompassed virtually all traditional & mainstream works--and sought to initiate radical social change through the power of the pen & the press."

"The term Angry Young Men applies to a group of young dramatists, novelists, & poets--including Kingsley Amis, Colin Wilson, John Osborne, John Wain, John Braine, Alan Sillitoe, & Philip Larkin, among others--who began writing in the post-WWII period in Britain."

presents criticism on the history & development of Australian literature from the early twentieth century onward

"The Dadaists believed that the carnage of World War I was evidence of the failure of western institutions, and consequently they rejected culturally sanctioned values and conventions in art. The result was uninhibited experimentation with forms of 'anti-art': poetry composed in invented languages, plays performed with inaudible dialogue, objects such as snow shovels & urinals exhibited as works of art, and numerous other displays of flamboyant nonsense designed as an affront to traditional aesthetics."

"Among the most frequently treated subjects in literature, death--present as a theme, symbol, or plot device--exists as one of the defining elements in the writing of modern poets, dramatists, and novelists."

presents criticism on major trends in theater of the United States, Russia, and Ireland in the early twentieth century

"The literature associated with fin de siècle was written roughly in the final decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth. As the phrase fin de siècle refers to both an end and a beginning, the literature of the time period is often rife with contradictions, swinging between a mood of decadence & despair as well as hope & modernism."

"An artistic movement involving literature, music, theater, & the visual arts, Futurism flourished in Italy & France from 1909 to the end of WWII."

"Popular music in America underwent a period of unprecedented artistic development in the years between World War I and World War II, an era know as the Golden Age of American Popular Song. Characteristic songs of the period are collectively termed "Tin Pan Alley." Often written for musical comedies, Tin Pan Alley songs now are perceived as independent works and are studied for the ways in which they define American culture."

"Italian Futurism was one of the most influential cultural movements of the early twentieth century. Organized & publicized by Italian poet & dramatist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, the movement encompassed virtually every aspect of literature and the fine arts."

"Latin American literature encompasses the national literatures of South & Central America, Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and parts of the West Indies."

"McCarthyism refers to events of the period approximately between 1950 & 1954, during which Joseph R. McCarthy led ruthless Senate investigations of alleged Communist Party members & sympathizers in the U.S. The theater of the time responded to McCarthy's campaign: plays such as Arthur Miller's The Crucible (1953) and A View from the Bridge (1955), Maxwell Anderson's Barefoot in Athens (1951), William Saroyan's The Slaughter of the Innocents (1957), Robert Ardrey's Sing Me No Lullaby (1954), and Jerome Lawrence & Robert E. Lee's Inherit the Wind (1955) directly or indirectly address the themes of the period. Broadway & Hollywood artists were particularly targeted by McCarthy and many were blacklisted & prevented from working."

"Modern Irish literature is generally considered to have begun after the Irish Literary Renaissance (which spanned the years from 1855 to 1940). Irish drama since WWII often is considered to be dominated by the Absurdist works of Samuel Beckett, whose Waiting for Godot (1954) is considered the best example, and Brian Friel, whose play Translations (1981) attempts to debunk the stereotype of the ignorant Irish perpetuated by writers of the Irish Renaissance."

"The modern period in Japanese literature dates from the Meiji Restoration of 1868 & encompasses the Meiji (1868-1912), Taisho (1912-1926), and Showa (1926-present) periods in Japanese political history. In drama, the stylized traditional forms of no, kabuki, and bunraku were maintained by classicists, although translations of Western theatrical productions and the development of shingeki, or 'new drama' have gained prominence since WWII"

"Modernism was the most influential literary movement in England & America during the first half of the twentieth century."

"Russian Symbolism was the dominant literary movement in Russia between 1900 and 1910."

"Theater of the Absurd" was established as a literary term by English critic Martin Esslin, whose 1960 essay and 1961 book of that title proposed that significant similarities could be observed in the works of a diverse group of dramatists writing in the 1950s and that these shared traits constituted a new and distinct type of theater.

presents critical discussion of the Theater of the Absurd, also known as anti-theatre

"Post-apartheid literature comprises works written by South African authors, both black & white, in the last decade of the twentieth century and beyond."