Epic theater, which is formed by Bertolt Brecht in the early 20th century and peaks in the following decades, challenges the persistent drama convention initiated first by Aristotle. Bertolt Brecht, who is propelled by Marxist convictions and dialectical conception of history while shaping his epic theatre, aims to expose social degradation,…

This article is both a personal response to Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" and an examination of the concept within literature of making the strange familiar and making the familiar strange. It discusses the educative force and potential of Beckett's strangers in a strange world by examining my own personal experiences…

This study makes an attempt to analyze the manifold aspects of Shaw's "Androcles and the Lion" on a postmodernist standpoint, meanwhile, demonstrates the dominion of modernism, which is portrayed through the vehicle of comedy with a bitter ironic language through the play. Regardless of the historical period in which the play occurs, the…

The Theatre of the Grotesque, a dramatic movement in Italy from 1916 until 1930, grew directly out of Pirandello's concept of "umorismo," the painful laugh accompanying the tragic sense of bewilderment at the incongruities and cruelties of life. Growing first of all from a reaction against positivism and its theatrical counterpart,…

Four twentieth century playwrights--Pirandello, Giraudoux, O'Neill, and Albee--differed in their solutions to the human dilemma and in their philosophic apprehensions of human dilemma, but all four showed interest in the basic concerns of all humanity: body and soul, appearance and reality, the real and the ideal. Albee, the only one of the four…

Discussion of Brecht's aesthetic principles, particularly "Verfremdung" (the device of renewal and estrangement), including the opinions of the Berliner Ensemble concerning to what degree they have retained Brecht's principles in productions of his plays. (DD)

An examination of Albert Camus' definition of the actor in "The Myth on Sisyphus" helps to illuminate the character and role of The Player in Tom Stoppard's play and, hence, to bring light to an understanding of the philosophy of the play itself. The actor, for Camus, reveals our mortality in the face of the absurdity of our mortality,…

Scenes from the agreeable "entre-deux-guerres" sojourns of French dramatist Jean Giraudoux in America. (Text is in French.) (DB)

Explains how an alienated effect was achieved within a performance by combining Albee's American Dream" with pertinent selections of Beat poetry. (SW)