Signs of life
Subtitle: six comedies of menace
By: Joan M. Schenkar ; edited and with an introduction by Vivian Patraka.
Contributors: Patraka, Vivian.
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press; University Press of New England
Published: 1998
Place of publication: [Middletown, Conn.]; Hanover, NH
Language: eng
Number of pages: 285
Description: Joan Schenkar, widely regarded as America's most original female contemporary playwright, is the author of numerous experimental plays which she refers to as comedies of menace. These plays explore issues of feminism and gender politics, history and memory, sexuality and violence, bringing to life such figures as Gertrude Stein and Marlene Dietrich, Hitler and Eva Braun, P. T. Barnum and Henry and Alice James, Claude Levi-Strauss and Roland Barthes.

Schenkar's charged language and evocative stage directions invite the reader to become both performer and audience. Written to be read like novels as well as staged, the plays provide a unique theatrical experience.
Table of contents: title: Cabin fever; title: Signs of life; title: Fulfilling Koch's postulate; title: The last of Hitler; title: The universal wolf; title: Burning desires.