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Societal Reflections in Postmodern Drama: The Two -Character Play

Societal Reflections in Postmodern Drama: The Two -Character Play

Priti Bairathi
612 795 (23% off)
ISBN 13
Barcode icon
9788131609712
Year
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2018
Societal Reflections in Postmodern Drama brings out the intimate connection between changing social contexts and the experiments in art. It looks closely at the transition period from modernism to postmodernism, from the late fifties to the early eighties of the twentieth century. The present study covering more than a quarter century, works with the political and international shifts of the post Second World War years, to be followed later by the Vietnam War (1955–75). These are the years of hope and innovation and the opening out of a society, despite the dark shadow of violence and war. These are the years of exploration and expansion, despite the underlying existential angst and an awareness of mortality. The illustrative material is mainly from the works of Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, David Mamet and Marsha Norman. Each of the above mentioned writers worked with different dramatic strategies and through them deconstructed the dramatic form, looking closely at the creation of dramatic tension, the thread of action and the use of space in these plays which reflected psychological, ecological and gender issues. The specific focus is on person-to-person communication/non-communication in the two-character plays , where there is an additional demand on the writer/director to stretch the possibilities of concentrated dramatic space to the maximum in order to work simultaneously with context, language and action as well as to establish an immediate contact with the audience. Drama is a more spontaneous art form for any age than any other as it can work with multiple forms ranging from satire, parody, comedy to tragedy. It is quick to connect with ideologies, struggles, anguish and despair as the play between life and death goes on. It works with a sense of immediacy as it consciously or unconsciously interrogates post-Aristotelian dramatic theories from Artaud, Brecht, Beckett, Chaikin and many others to the improvisations of popular culture. The present work is concerned with the making of a play-text that can be visualized as well as enacted , bring the dramatic and the lyrical together, lead to philosophical deliberations without any of the freedoms of fiction as the dramatic form is a conjunction of the diachronic and the synchronic, the first through ideas, issues and themes and the second through space and dramatic action as language expands itself to include body language. In its engagement with the many constituents of the dramatic form and its response to social change, it is of relevance to both the lay reader and the researcher.