American Playwriting and the Anti-Political Prejudice Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Perspectives

by Pressley, Nelson

• ISBN13: 9781137437051
• ISBN10: 1137437057
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2014-11-06
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Twenty years after Tony Kushner's influential Angels in America seemed to declare a revitalized potency for the popular political play, there is a "No Politics" prejudice undermining US theatre production and writing. The prejudice contributes to a crisis of political representation that can be seen in close readings of recent works by America's foremost dramatists, including David Mamet, Sam Shepard, Arthur Miller, and Wendy Wasserstein. This book explores the largely unrecognized cultural patterns that discourage political playwriting on the contemporary American stage.

Author Biography

Nelson Pressley is a journalist and theatre critic for the Washington Post. He received his PhD from the University of Maryland, USA.

Table of Contents

Introduction. No Politics, Please, We're American
1. "Politics"
2. The Case of Kushner
3. Reception and the Anti-Political Prejudice in America
4. State of the Nation: UK and US
5. American Shenanigans
6. Wendy Wasserstein's Washington
7. Erasing the Playwright Conclusion