Text & Presentation, 2013 gathers some of the best work presented at the 2013 Comparative Drama Conference in Baltimore. Subjects ranging from Ancient Greece to 21st century America are covered with a variety of approaches and formats. Celebrated playwright Edward Albee’s presentation is the lead piece, followed by 12 research papers, one review essay, and seven book reviews. This volume represents the latest research in the fields of comparative drama, performance, and dramatic textual analysis.

Graley Herren is a professor of English at Xavier University in Cincinnati and an executive board member for the Comparative Drama Conference. He has published widely on modern literature, with an emphasis upon the drama of Samuel Beckett and the fiction of Don DeLillo.

Edited by Graley Herren
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 244
Bibliographic Info: 3 photos, notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2014
pISBN: 978-0-7864-7893-4
eISBN: 978-1-4766-1549-3
Imprint: McFarland
Series: The Comparative Drama Conference Series

Table of Contents


Acknowledgments v

Preface 1

A Conversation with Edward Albee (David Crespy and Lincoln Konkle) 7

Creon’s Accomplices: Cultural Trauma and Collective Guilt in

Three Modern Antigones (Katya Soll) 19

Optical Illusions of Speech: Signification in Medieval English

Marian Drama (Corey Wronski-Mayersak) 36

Staging History, Fantasizing Reality: José Sanchis Sinisterra’s

The Eldorado Puppet Show Through Miguel de Cervantes’s

The Marvelous Puppet Show (Andreea Iulia Sprinceana) 54

Post-Colonial Strindberg: Yael Farber’s South African Mies Julie (William Hutchings) 69

Beholding the Denkspiel: Genre, Bodies, and Interpretive Practices in Georg Kaiser’s From Morning to Midnight (Caroline Weist) 79

Co-Opting the ­Tom-Tom: Mediating the Primitive in Eugene ­O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones (Sarah Eilefson) 98

Signed on the Dotted Line: George Kelly’s The ­Show-Off and the Fall and Rise of the ­Can-Do Hero (Michael Schwartz) 110

“Cassandra, Meet Leadbelly”: Tennessee Williams Battles to Become Orpheus (Jeffrey B. Loomis) 123

All That Jazz: Musical Idiom, Critical Reception, and African American Narrative in Opera (Patrick King) 140

Noose Allure: Little Suicides and Singularity in Beckett’s Godot (Doug Phillips) 158

Sarah Ruhl’s Sex Ed for Grownups (Amy Muse) 173

Visualizing Postmemory on Documentary Stages: Postmemorial

Dramaturgies in Annulla: An Autobiography and I Am My Own Wife (David Bisaha) 184

The Theatre That Is and the Theatre That Might Be: Readings from the Theatre & Series: A Review Essay (Ian Andrew MacDonald) 201

Review of Literature: Selected Books

Verna A. Foster, ed. Dramatic Revisions of Myths, Fairy Tales

and Legends: Essays on Recent Plays (Frances Babbage) 207

Kathryn Bosher, ed. Theater Outside Athens: Drama in Greek Sicily and South Italy (Amy R. Cohen) 210

Margaret Leask. Lena Ashwell: Actress, Patriot, Pioneer (Ellen Dolgin) 214

Les Essif. American “Unculture” in French Drama: Homo Americanus and the Post–1960 French Resistance (Kevin Elstob) 217

Christy Stanlake. Native American Drama: A Critical Perspective (Meredith K. James) 221

Suk-Young Kim. Illusive Utopia: Theatre, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea (Ah-Jeong Kim) 223

Soyica Diggs Colbert. The African American Theatrical Body: Reception, Performance and the Stage (Nathaniel G. Nesmith) 226

Index 231

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