Here is the story, told firsthand through electric, deeply engaged writing, of America's living theater, high and low, mainstream and experimental. Drawing on history, criticism, memoir, fiction, poetry, and parody, editor Laurence Senelick presents writers with the special knack "to distill both the immediate experience and the recollected impression, to draw the reader into the charmed circle and conjure up what has already vanished." Through the words of playwrights and critics, actors and directors, and others behind ...
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Here is the story, told firsthand through electric, deeply engaged writing, of America's living theater, high and low, mainstream and experimental. Drawing on history, criticism, memoir, fiction, poetry, and parody, editor Laurence Senelick presents writers with the special knack "to distill both the immediate experience and the recollected impression, to draw the reader into the charmed circle and conjure up what has already vanished." Through the words of playwrights and critics, actors and directors, and others behind the footlights, the entertainments and high artistic strivings of successive eras come vividly, sometimes tumultuously, to life. Observers from Washington Irving and Fanny Trollope to Walt Whitman and Mark Twain evoke the world of the nineteenth-century playhouse in all its raucous vitality. Henry James confesses his early enthusiasm for playgoing; Willa Cather reviews provincial productions of Uncle Tom's Cabin and Antony and Cleopatra. The increasing diversity and ambition of the American theater is reflected in Hutchins Hapgood's account of New York's Yiddish theaters at the turn of the century, Carl Van Vechten's review of the Sicilian actress Mimi Aguglia, Alain Locke's comments on the emerging African-American theater in the 1920s, and Ezra Pound's response to James Joyce's play Exiles and theatrical modernism. Enthusiasts for the New Stagecraft, such as Lee Simonson and Djuna Barnes, are matched by champions of pop culture such as Gilbert Seldes and Fred Allen. S. J. Perelman lampoons Clifford Odets; Edmund Wilson acclaims Minsky's Burlesque; Harold Clurman explains Stanislavski's Method; Gore Vidal dissects the compromises of commercial playwriting. A host of playwrights--among them Thornton Wilder, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Lorraine Hansberry, Edward Albee, Wendy Wasserstein, David Mamet, and Tony Kushner--are joined by such renowned critics as Stark Young, George Jean Nathan, Brooks Atkinson, and Eric Bentley. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
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Seller's Description:
Fine in slipcase fine jacket. Size: 5x1x8; NOT an ex library book. Book with dark red cloth binding. Clean pages, ribbon marker. Slipcase has no splits. Brochure laid in.
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Seller's Description:
Very good in very good dust jacket. Tight binding; clean, unmarked pages; fine dust jacket. Stated First Printing. Thin cloth strip sewn into top edge. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 850 p. Contains: Illustrations, black & white. Library of America, 203. Audience: General/trade.
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Seller's Description:
Very Good. Very Good condition. Slipcase Very Good. Library of America series. (Editor: Laurence Senelick. United States, Theatre, History, American Drama, Criticism, Anthology)
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Seller's Description:
Fair. All pages and cover are intact. May show remainder marks. Ships from an indie bookstore in NYC. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 850 p. Contains: Illustrations, black & white. Library of America, 203.
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Seller's Description:
Fine. 1598530690. Library of America # 203; 8vo 8"-9" tall; 850 pages; 2010 Library Of America # 203. Subscriber's version. Slipcased HC still in publisher's shrink-wrap. 1st printing. Prior owner was a subscriber of LOA from the very first book published and received all editions immediately upon publication. This copy essentially new, still sealed. Fine.
