Research Catalog
Microdramas : crucibles for theater and time
- Title
- Microdramas : crucibles for theater and time / John H. Muse.
- Author
- Muse, John H.
- Publication
- Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2017]
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| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Performing Arts Research Collections to submit a request in person. | Text | Use in library | MWET 18-1189 | Performing Arts Research Collections - Theatre |
Details
- Description
- ix, 231 pages : illustrations; 23 cm
- Summary
- "In Microdramas, John H. Muse argues that plays shorter than twenty minutes deserve sustained attention, and that brevity should be considered a distinct mode of theatrical practice. Focusing on artists for whom brevity became both a structural principle and a tool to investigate theater itself (August Strindberg, Maurice Maeterlinck, F. T. Marinetti, Samuel Beckett, Suzan-Lori Parks, and Caryl Churchill), the book explores four episodes in the history of very short theater, all characterized by the self-conscious embrace of brevity. The story moves from the birth of the modernist microdrama in French little theaters in the 1880s, to the explicit worship of speed in Italian Futurist synthetic theater, to Samuel Beckett's often-misunderstood short plays, and finally to a range of contemporary playwrights whose long compilations of shorts offer a new take on momentary theater. Subjecting short plays to extended scrutiny upends assumptions about brief or minimal art, and about theatrical experience. The book shows that short performances often demand greater attention from audiences than plays that unfold more predictably. Microdramas put pressure on preconceptions about which aspects of theater might be fundamentaland about what might qualify as an event. In the process, they suggest answers to crucial questions about time, spectatorship, and significance"--
- Series Statement
- Theater: theory/text/performance
- Uniform Title
- Theater--theory/text/performance.
- Subject
- Genre/Form
- Criticism, interpretation, etc.
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 207-221) and index.
- Contents
- Introduction: Time pieces -- The dimensions of the moment: Short spaces and the birth of the modernist microdrama -- The future in the instant: Futurist synthesis in theory and practice -- The shape of time in Beckett's late theater -- Long shorts: Contemporary micro-marathons.
- Call Number
- MWET 18-1189
- ISBN
- 9780472073634
- 047207363X
- 9780472053636
- 0472053639
- LCCN
- 2017023312
- OCLC
- 985865793
- Author
- Muse, John H., author.
- Title
- Microdramas : crucibles for theater and time / John H. Muse.
- Publisher
- Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2017]
- Type of Content
- text
- Type of Medium
- unmediated
- Type of Carrier
- volume
- Series
- Theater: theory/text/performanceTheater--theory/text/performance.
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 207-221) and index.
- Research Call Number
- MWET 18-1189