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The theatre as mirror of our peculiar politics - this is the theme of Robert Brustein's engaging new collection of writings. No theatre critic in America is more informed by ideas than Mr. Brustein, and no critic does a better job of relating theatre to the larger culture. Here, in essays, reviews, and profiles, some of them appearing for the first time, Mr. Brustein uses the prism of the American theatre to explore the motivating impulses behind galloping political correctness.
In every election year, we hear much about the all-powerful “bases” of each major party. Who are these activists? What drives them? And why are they all equally dangerous to our lives, liberties, and pursuits of happiness? In Dumbocracy, journalist Marty Beckerman spends four years with foot soldiers of the Left and Right—pro-choice and anti-choice, pro-gay rights and anti-gay rights, pro-war and anti-war—and delivers a searing, hilarious indictment of the True Believer mentality. Whether it’s banning free speech to protect people’s feelings or banning adult entertainment to enforce morality, extremists have no use for our civil liberties. The ends justify the means for each side—such as brainwashing children and criminalizing dissent—because culture warriors have no other reason for living than victory. However, Beckerman is unafraid to expose their tactics—and their never-ending hypocrisies—with comical, over-the-top glee worthy of South Park or The Daily Show. No extremist will escape unscathed, but moderate readers of all stripes will fall in love with Beckerman’s iconoclasm. In the tradition of P.J. O’Rourke’s Parliament of Whores and Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men, Beckerman’s grand political satire will have readers laughing on the floor and ripping the hair from their scalps.
Wide-ranging, discerning essays and reviews in which Mr. Brustein finds that the theatre has been quietly reinventing the nature of its art.
2020 Barnard Hewitt Award, honorable mention Washington D.C.’s Arena Stage was the first professional regional theatre in the nation’s capital to welcome a racially integrated audience; the first to perform behind the Iron Curtain; and the first to win the Tony Award for best regional theatre. This behind-the-scenes look at one of the leading theatres in the United States shows how key financial and artistic decisions were made, using a range of archival materials such as letters and photographs as well as interviews with artists and administrators. Close-ups of major productions from The Great White Hope to Oklahoma! illustrate how Arena Stage navigated cultural trends. More than a chronicle, America in the Round is a critical history that reveals how far the theatre could go with its budget and racially liberal politics, and how Arena both disputed and duplicated systems of power. With an innovative “in the round” approach, the narrative simulates sitting in different parts of the arena space to see the theatre through different lenses—economics, racial dynamics, and American identity.
First published in 1964 by Little, Brown. First Elephant paperback with a new preface by the author.
Anton Chekhov The Major Plays Ivanov * The Sea Gull * Uncle Vanya * The Three Sisters * The Cherry Orchard “Let the things that happen onstage be just as complex and yet just as simple as they are in life,” Chekhov once declared. “For instance, people are having a meal, just having a meal, but at the same time, their happiness is being created, or their lives are being smashed up.” So it is that his plays express life through subtle construction, everyday dialogue, and an electrically charged atmosphere in which even the most casual words and actions assume great importance in his characters’ lives. This principle sets his plays apart from the rest, steering them clear of melodrama, and draws the audience into the lives of Chekhov’s colorful characters. Because of his adherence to realism, the playwright has been called an “incomparable artist of life.”* “What makes his work great is that it can be felt and understood not only by any Russian but by anybody in the world.”—*Leo Tolstoy With a Foreword by Robert Brustein and an Afterword by Rosamund Bartlett
Edward Shils's The Torment of Secrecy is one of the few minor classics to emerge from the cold war years of anticommunism and McCarthyism in the United States. Mr. Shils's "torment" is not only that of the individual caught up in loyalty and security procedures; it is also the torment of the accuser and judge. This essay in sociological analysis and political philosophy considers the cold war preoccupation with espionage, sabotage, and subversion at home, assessing the magnitude of such threats and contrasting it to the agitation—by lawmakers, investigators, and administrators—so wildly directed against the "enemy." Mr. Shils's examination of a recurring American characteristic is as timely as ever. "Brief...lucid... brilliant."—American Political Science Review. "A fine, sophisticated analysis of American social metabolism."—New Republic. "An excitingly lucid and intelligent work on a subject of staggering importance...the social preconditions of political democracy."—Social Forces.
"I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself." - Oscar Wilde Thanks to the likes of Wilde, the world is now overrun by asses. The Pope of Fools has been unleashed to preside over the Dumbocalypse. No one needs to burn any books these days since no one reads any books. That would require intelligence and effort. Who needs such things in this time of the internet, the domain of cyber idiocy, of the global moronocracy? Every day on social media is a feast of fools, a bonfire of the inanities. We're never far from the sadding crowd. Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first give a Facebook account. The Pope of Dopes is elected at the Dinner of Dunces. The internet ought to appoint its Troll King of the Day, its Cyber Idiot, its Clown Prince, its World Wide Pleb. Plato thought it insane to entrust power to the mob. He compared them to a bunch of drunks on a party ship, a pleasure cruiser for dummies, sailing to its inevitable doom.
In a new edition of this now-classic work, Robert Brustein argues that the roots of the modern theatre may be found in the soil of rebellion cultivated by eight outstanding playwrights: Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Shaw, Brecht, Pirandello, O'Neill, and Genet. Focusing on each of them in turn, Mr. Brustein considers the nature of their revolt, the methods employed in their plays, their influences on the modern drama, and the playwrights themselves. "One of the standard and decisive books on the modern theater.... It shows us the men behind the works,... what they wanted to write about and the private hell within each of them which led to the enduring works we continue to treasure."—New York Times Book Review. "The best single collection of essays I know of on modern drama... remarkably fine and sensitive pieces of criticism. "—Alvin,Kernan, Yale Review.
Robert Brustein examines crucial issues relating to theatre in the post-9/11 years, analysing specific plays, various performers, and theatrical production throughout the world. This work explores the connections between theatre and society theatre and politics, and theatre and religion.