Drama: Books & eBooks

This condensed anthology reproduces close to a dozen plays from Xiaomei Chen's well-received original collection, The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama, along with her critical introduction to the historical, cultural, and aesthetic evolution of twentieth-century Chinese spoken drama.

(Applause Books). "Though New York remains the de facto capital of American theater, much of the most daring and interesting work today is done by regional theaters. This is doubly true of plays by African American authors, who, despite a few notable exceptions (August Wilson, George C. Wolfe), suffer under a commercial apartheid that keeps black plays off Broadway. Of necessity, African American theater artists have to create their own venues from the ground up. This wide-ranging anthology edited by the founder of the New Federal Theater celebrates the work of that company's black-owned, black-run peers by presenting work by 11 dramatists. Among the most interesting are Jeff Stetson's moving The Meeting , which imagines a meeting between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., and Shauneille Perry's fascinating updating of In Dahomey , the 1903 musical hit that was the first 'all-Black show' on Broadway." - Jack Helbig, Booklist

Less expensive than rival anthologies, The Norton Anthology of Drama is also the best value-a book that students will keep long after the class is over.

For the vast generation of actors in their teens and twenties, as well as for teachers, directors, and producers, Under Thirty is an unparalleled source of diverse and challenging roles, created by some of today’s finest writers. The twenty plays presented here in full or in part include insightful looks at the pressure-cooker caste system of American high schools as well as heartbreaking, edgy portrayals of twentysomethings adrift in the city. There are snappy romantic duets, large-cast ensembles, and everything in between, populated by richly dimensional, mold-breaking characters: misfit cheerleaders, nurturing drifters, rich petty thieves—even a rogue SAT tutor. The contributing playwrights span the range of contemporary talent, including award-winning dramatists such as Sam Shepard, Donald Margulies, Warren Leight, and Kenneth Lonergan, hilarious humorists such as David Ives and Douglas Carter Beane, and an impressive array of cutting-edge newer voices.

This critical anthology of avant-garde drama offers comprehensive coverage of that distinctively twentieth-century tradition. It includes the full texts of sixteen important plays, each preceded by a historical-critical introduction and followed by an essay, often written by the playwright, that elaborates on the dramatic and aesthetic issues raised by the play. Cardullo and Knopf, in making plays and documents of the avant-garde available in one collection for the first time, underscore the place and importance of the movement. In a provocative general introduction to the book, Bert Cardullo traces the history of the avant-garde tradition and argues for a revisionist history of modern drama that would acknowledge the innovative contributions of the avant-garde. The anthology, which presents examples of French and Russian Symbolism, Italian Futurism, German Expressionism, and Dada-Surrealism, as well as work by such seminal figures as Jarry, Strindberg, Artaud, and Kandinsky, illuminates the astonishing daring of these writers from many Western countries and diverse theatrical movements.