Text & Presentation, 2009

Text & Presentation is an annual publication devoted to all aspects of theatre scholarship. It represents a selection of the best research presented at the international, interdisciplinary Comparative Drama Conference.
This edition includes papers from the 33rd annual conference held in Los Angeles, California. Topics covered include Bernard Shaw’s use of gardens and libraries in Widowers’ Houses, Northern Ireland emergency law in Brian Friel’s The Freedom of the City, cannibalism and surrogation in Hamletmachine, Sergei Eisenstein’s and Charlie Chaplin’s use of the “montage of attraction,” and adaptations of classic Greek tragedy in Mexico and Taiwan, among other topics.

Kiki Gounaridou teaches theatre history and theory in the Department of Theatre at Smith College. She has published articles, books, and reviews on theatre. An award-winning theatre director, she lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Edited by Kiki Gounaridou
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 214
Bibliographic Info: 2 photos, notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2010
pISBN: 978-0-7864-4706-0
eISBN: 978-0-7864-5666-6
Imprint: McFarland
Series: The Comparative Drama Conference Series

Acknowledgments      v

Preface      1

1. Where’s a Saint When You Need One? The Influence of Edmund Campion’s Ambrosia on Shakespeare’s Macbeth      5

(Mary Frances Williams)

2. The (Im)perfect Wagnerite: Bernard Shaw and Richard Wagner      22

(Christopher Innes)

3. Gardens and Libraries in Shaw’s Widowers’ Houses: “Life Here Is a Perfect Idyll”      32

(Tony J. Stafford)

4. Relative Facts: Emergency Law, Northern Ireland, and Brian Friel’s The Freedom of the City      45

(Peter Leman)

5. The Totalitarian Non-Tragedy of American Business in the French Plays of Michel Vinaver      61

(Les Essif )

6. Attacking the Canon through the Corpse: Cannibalism and Surrogation in Hamletmachine      81

(Sonya Freeman Loftis)

7. A Liberating Cruelty: Two Adaptations of Classical Tragedy for the Mexican Stage      94

(Francisco Barrenechea)

8. Troy, Troy … Taiwan: Transformation from Epic to Elegy      102

(Wen-ling Lin)

9. Peeling Empire: Y¨ Miri’s Performance of “Resident Korean” in Japan      116

( John D. Swain)

10. Ping Chong’s Postcolonial Historicism and Theatricalism: Pojagi in The East-West Quartet      129

(Yuko Kurahashi)

11. Great Souls, Big Wheels, and Other Words: Experiments with Truth and Representation in Verbatim Theatre      141

(Donald McManus)

12. “Sounds Indistinguishable from Sights”: Staging Subjectivity in Katie Mitchell’s Waves      154

(Sharon Friedman)

13. Down with Plot: Eisenstein, the Tramp, and the Subversiveness of “Montage of Attraction”      167

(Sascha Just)

14. Rita Felski’s Rethinking Tragedy: A Review Essay      176

(Helen Moritz)

Review of Literature: Selected Books

Bernard Freydberg, Philosophy and Comedy: Aristophanes, Logos, and Eros      183

(Michael J. Griffin)

Margaret Jane Kidnie, Shakespeare and the Problem of Adaptation      185

(Michael Shapiro)

Mary Trotter, Modern Irish Theatre; Shaun Richards, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Irish Drama; John P. Harrington, ed., Modern and Contemporary Irish Drama, 2nd edition      187

(Kelly Younger)

Emily Roxworthy, The Spectacle of Japanese American Trauma: Racial Performativity and World War II      191

(Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei)

Neilesh Bose, ed., Beyond Bollywood and Broadway: Plays from the South Asian Diaspora      194

(Kristen Rudisill)

Jon D. Rossini, Contemporary Latina/o Theater: Wrighting Ethnicity      196

(Yael Prizant)

Sharon Friedman, ed., Feminist Theatrical Revisions of Classic Works: Critical Essays      199

(Laura Snyder)


Index      203

“edited with care…preserves the conference experience by extending its scholarly dialogue to the wider reading community…many fine essays”—New England Theatre Journal.