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Performing Opposition

Modern Theater and the Scandalized Audience

Performing Opposition cover

Performing Opposition

Modern Theater and the Scandalized Audience

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Description

Modern theater history is punctuated by instances of scandalized audience members disrupting and in some cases suspending the first production of a new play. Such incidents are usually dismissed as riots, as self-evident displays of philistinism. Neil Blackadder's intriguing new study reveals them in fact to be multifaceted conflicts, showing the ways in which these protesters-acting against plays by such notables as Jarry, Synge, and Brecht-creatively devised and enacted resistance through verbal rejoinders, physical gestures, and organized group demonstrations.

Performing Opposition draws on reviews, memoirs, interviews, and court records to present engaging and insightful accounts of these clashes—clashes that Blackadder proposes as a unique and distinct category of event in a time when unprecedentedly restrained norms of auditorium behavior coincided with a regeneration of writing for the stage. Offering the first detailed examination of affronted theatergoers' counter-performances, the volume represents an intriguing illumination of a largely overlooked aspect of performed drama and its history.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Preface
Introduction: Modern Theater Scandals and the Evolution of the Theatrical Event
"Are We in a Brothel Here, or a Theater?": Resisting Naturalism - Hauptmann's Before Sunrise
"Down with Lugné Chamber Pot!": Resisting Naturalism - Jarry's Ubu Roi
"This Is Not Irish Life!": Defending National Identy - Synge's The Playboy of the Western World
"A Slander on the Citizen Army!": Vindicating Fallen Heroes - O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars
"Pfui!": Disdaining Experimentation - Brecht during the Weimar Republic: In the Jungle, Baal, Lehrstück, Mahagonny, and A Man's a Man
Afterword
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Product details

Published 30 Nov 2003
Format Hardback
Edition 1st
Pages 248
ISBN 9780275980566
Imprint Praeger
Dimensions 280 x 215 mm
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing

About the contributors

Author

Neil Blackadder

NEIL BLACKADDER is Associate Professor of Theatre…

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