四川师范大学外国语学院美国文学英文课件 unit13.pptVIP

Unit 13: American Drama O’Neill, Miller, and Williams Play, Drama, Theatre What is a play Literary genre in which a story is presented by actors imitating characters before an audience What is drama Drama: “dran”– to do or to act; text / script; dramatic literature Theatre: “theatron” – seeing place; performance space; the art of staging a play Elements of Drama Plot Character Theme Language Music Spectacle Act: single, two, three, four, or five acts Scene: acts may be divided into scenes The paradigm of traditional plot: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, denouement Romeo and Juliet: from page to stage American Drama Began in the 18th century The first American comedy to be staged was The Contrast written by Royall Tyler (1757-1826), and first played in New York City in 1787 The most significant theatrical development from the Civil War to 1900 was the move in the direction of realism from domestic melodrama American Drama in the 20th Century made its tentative attempt to place realistic plays on the American stage During the 1920s the extravagant spending and general license of the boom period encouraged the use of Broadway theatre as upper class entertainment the most famous of the little theatres was the Washing Square players formed in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1914 and the Provincetown Players which was formed in Cape Cod, Massachusetts in 1915 Broadway: Cats Broadway: The Phantom of Opera Provincetown Players : 1915-1929 Washington Square Players: 1914- George Bernard Shaw: Mrs. Warren’s Profession Ibsen: Ghosts Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) Irish American among the first to include speeches in American vernacular and involve characters on the fringes of society, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations, but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. 1936, Nobel Prize for Literature Pulitzer Prize for Drama, 1957 Influenced by such playwrights as Henrik Ibsen, Anton Chekov, August Strinberg Major works: