Home on the Stage: Domestic Spaces in Modern Drama
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 10/2/2014
EAN 9781107078093, ISBN10: 1107078091
Hardcover, 250 pages, 23.1 x 15 x 2.3 cm
Language: English
As a serious drama set in an ordinary middle-class home, Ibsen's A Doll's House established a new politics of the interior that was to have a lasting impact upon twentieth-century drama. 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. From Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard through to Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, domestic spaces and personal crises have been employed to express wider social conditions and themes of class, gender and family. In the later twentieth century and beyond, the most radically experimental dramatists created their own challenging theatrical interiors, including Beckett in Endgame, Pinter in The Homecoming and Parks in Topdog/Underdog. 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.
Introduction
Ibsen and after
1. A Doll's House
the drama of the interior
2. The Cherry Orchard
all Russia
3. Heartbreak House
waiting for the Zeppelin
4. Long Day's Journey into Night
the Tyrones at home in America
5. A Streetcar Named Desire
see-through representation
6. Endgame
in the refuge
7. The Homecoming
men's room
8. Arcadia
seeing double
9. Topdog/Underdog
welcome to the family
Conclusion
home base.