Past Performance
Subtitle: American Theatre and the Historical Imagination
Edition: 1 edition
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Published: August 30, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 287
ISBN-13: 9780838756492
Subjects: American history; Theatre, drama; Literary Criticism; Literature - Classics / Criticism; USA; American - General; Drama; 20th century; American drama; History; History and criticism; History in literature; Literature and history; United States
Description: "In this age of overweening global capital and omnipresent electronic media, many critics have diagnosed Western culture as suffering from a kind of historical obliviousness, a mass inability to situate our lived experience within the temporal flow of past, present, and future that is history. Within this historically bankrupt culture, representations of history in whatever medium - cinema, television, print - most often become mere fashion, the quotation of past styles devoid of historical gravitas. Against this, Past Performance: American Theatre and the Historical Imagination argues that many contemporary American theatre and performance artists are not only developing innovative strategies for staging history, but helping us reimagine our relationship with the past."--Jacket.