1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910797550403321

Autore

Paterson Eddie

Titolo

The contemporary American monologue : performance and politics / / Eddie Paterson

Pubbl/distr/stampa

London, England : , : Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, , 2020

London, England : , : Bloomsbury Publishing, , 2020

ISBN

1-4725-8503-8

1-4725-8504-6

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (233 p.)

Collana

Methuen Drama engage.

Classificazione

PER011000PER011020

Disciplina

808.5/109730905

Soggetti

Oratory - United States - History - 21st century

American drama - 21st century - History and criticism

Monologues

Theatre studies

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (pages 197-208) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Monologue in Western Drama -- Monologue in American Performance -- Confessional monologue and the legacy of Spalding Gray -- Post-punk monologue and the Performances of Laurie Anderson -- Rights monologue and the Work of Anna Deavere Smith -- Radical monologue and the Performance of Karen Finley -- Future Monologue.

Sommario/riassunto

"Talk-show confessions, online rants, stand-up routines, inspirational speeches, banal reflections and calls to arms: we live in an age of solo voices demanding to be heard. In The Contemporary American Monologue Eddie Paterson looks at the pioneering work of US artists Spalding Gray, Laurie Anderson, Anna Deavere Smith and Karen Finley, and the development of solo performance in the US as a method of cultural and political critique. Ironic confession, post-punk poetry, investigations of race and violence, and subversive polemic, this book reveals the link between the rise of radical monologue in the late 20th century and history of speechmaking, politics, civil rights, individual freedom and the American Dream in the United States. It shows how US artists are speaking back to the cultural, political and economic forces that shape the world. Eddie Patterson traces the importance of the



monologue in Shakespeare, Brecht, Beckett, Chekov, Pinter, O'Neill and Williams, before offering a comprehensive analysis of several of the most influential and innovative American practitioners of monologue performance. The volume also contains an interview with artist Karen Finley, on the trajectory of her recent works. The Contemporary American Monologue constitutes the first book-length account of US monologists that links the tradition of oratory and speechmaking in the colony to the appearance of solo performance as a distinctly American phenomenon"--