Title: Urban drama : the metropolis in contemporary North American plays /
Authors: Westgate, J. Chris.
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan,
Year: 2011
Subjects: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / Urban.; DRAMA / American.; PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / History & Criticism.; PERFORMING ARTS / Theater / Playwriting.; American drama History and criticism; City and town life in literature; Space and time in literature.; Theater United States History; American drama; City and town life in literature.; DRAMA American.; Literary studies: plays & playwrights USA.; Performing Arts.; Space and time in literature.; Theater; Theatre studies USA.; Urban communities USA.
Abstract: "Identifying an apprehension about the nature and constitution of urbanism in North American plays, Urban Drama examines how cities like New York City and Los Angeles became focal points for identity politics and social justice at the end of the twentieth century. In plays as different as Tony Kushner's Angels in America, Anna Deavere Smith's Twilight Los Angeles, 1992, and David Henry Hwang's FOB, these concerns became spatialized against the urban environment, suggesting a shift of consciousness toward what critical geography has argued: The social is always spatial. Urban Drama interrogates how this shift informs playwriting in the 1980s and 1990s and inspires new modes of dramatic representation"--
Contents: Machine generated contents note: -- Introduction: A Rhetoric of Sociospatial Drama * PART I: ELEMENTS OF URBANISM * "Against the Law in this City": Public Space in New York City * -- "City, Bad Place": Architecture & Disorientation in New York City * PART II: ITERATIONS OF URBANISM * "Livin in a Paradise": Suburbanism in Los Angeles * -- "Does it Explode?": Ghettoization & Rioting in New York City & Los Angeles * -- "Part of the City": Enclaves & Exiles in Los Angeles.