ENG 321 & THR 321: Global Issues in Contemporary Drama

The Myth of Identity in Modern Drama is the first book-length study on existential authenticity and its relation to ontological embodiment treated via analyses of characters of modern drama. Furthermore, it offers new methods of exploring characters and characterization and new ways of thinking about identity.

In this innovative study, Nicholas Grene traces the changing forms of the home on the stage through nine of the greatest of modern plays and playwrights. Grene analyses the full significance of these versions of domestic spaces to offer fresh insights into the portrayal of the naturalistic environment in modern drama.

The Professions in Contemporary Drama presents a series of nine papers discussing the educational professions, the medical profession, priests, archaeologists and artists. The book is of relevance to theatre academics and students at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

In Modern Drama and the Rhetoric of Theater, W.B. Worthen examines how the dynamic interplay between dramatic text and stage production shapes the audience's experience in the modern theater. Dividing the "rhetoric" of theatrical performance into three modes--realistic, poetic, and political--Worthen traces the course of British and American drama from the 1880s through the 1980s, showing how textual conventions and performance practices direct the interpretive performance of the theater audience.

Acting Gay is a series of close readings of the central works of gay male drama written by American and English playwrights. The plays discussed reflect transformations of gay men in 20th-century British and American societies.

The Vital Lie is the first book to examine the reality-illusion conflict in modern drama from Ibsen to present-day playwrights. The book questions why vital lies, lies necessary for life itself, are such an obsessive concern for playwrights of the last hundred years. Using the work of fifteen playwrights, Abbott seeks to discover if modern playwrights treat illusions as helpful or necessary to life, or as signals of sicknesses from which human beings need to be cured.