In this course, we will read representative works by four playwrights
responsible for a movement throughout the western world that radically
altered the history of drama and were major players in the rise of what
we have come to call modern drama. Influenced by major advances in
science that increased our knowledge of human behavior and given impetus
by political revolutions throughout Europe and Asia that saw the
emergence of a vibrant and increasingly confident middle class, modern
drama was characterized by a widespread reaction against the subject
matters, forms, and methods of staging that had dominated the theater of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This rebellion was primarily
against exotic heroes and heroines largely drawn from the ruling class,
against the rigorous unities of neoclassical tragedy, declamatory acting
styles, and spectacular sets---in short against any theatrical
conventions that were regarded as being too far from the truth of
ordinary existence.
We will devote one class to each play, read in the following
chronological order. Participants should come to the first class having
read A Doll’s House.
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Jackson R. Bryer is a Professor Emeritus of English at the University of
Maryland, where he taught undergraduate and graduate courses in
American drama for four decades. Among the books he has authored,
edited, or co-edited are “The Theatre We Worked For”: The Letters of Eugene O’Neill to Kenneth Macgowan (1982); Selected Letters of Eugene O’Neill (1988); Jason Robards Remembered: Essays and Recollections (2002); and The Provincetown Players and The Playwright’ Theatre, 1915-1922 by Edna Kenton (2004).
