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Adrienne Kennedy
African American playwright known for "Funnyhouse of a Negro" (1964).
Alan Schneider
American director who based productions on absurdist plays of Beckett, Albee, and Pinter.
Al-Kasaba Theatre
Palestinian theatre based in West Bank with frequent performances in London.
Amiri Baraka
African American playwright associated with Beat poets, known for works like "Dutchman."
Angry Young Playwrights
1950s British dramatists focusing on class structure post-war, including John Osborne and Edward Bond.
Anna Deavere Smith
African American performance artist known for portraying real people through interviews and racial representation.
Anne Bogart
Female director known for development of Viewpoints, a movement-based approach that blends different acting techniques.
Founded the Saratoga International Theatre Institute with Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki
Antonin Artaud
French playwright known for Theatre of Cruelty, emphasizing rigour and cosmic cruelty in performance.
Arena Stage
Theatre with audience surrounding the stage, creating intimacy and unique entrances/exits.
Ariane Mnouchkine
French director known for blending eastern and western traditions in Theatre du Soleil.
Arthur Miller
American playwright focusing on individual responsibility in society, famous for "Death of A Salesman."
Athol Fugard
South African (white) playwright who attacked apartheid, (in South Africa) a policy or system of segregation or discrimination on grounds of race.
August Wilson
Playwright exploring African American experience in the 20th century, known for plays like "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom."
Augusto Boal
Brazilian playwright and theorist known for developing Theatre of the Oppressed and Forum Theatre.
Beijing Opera
Traditional Chinese opera form that became repopularized after Mao's death.
Black Arts Movement
Emphasized black arts for black audiences and social change, led by figures like Amiri Baraka.
Bob Fosse
American actor and choreographer known for book musicals and unified productions.
Book Musicals
A production combining story, music, lyrics, and dance so that the production combines tone, mood, and intention in a unified whole.
Caryl Churchill
English playwright known for formal doubling of characters, cross gender casting, anachronism etc. to address issues of social identities (gender, race, etc.)
Associated with English Stage Company and Joint Stock Company
Charles Ludlam
Founder of Ridiculous Theatrical Company, known for camp and breaking audience expectations.
Chicano Theatre
Addresses issues faced by Hispanic Americans, popularized by El Teatro Campesino.
Concept Musicals
Musical theatre emphasizing style, theme, and metaphors over traditional plot lines.
Dario Fo
Italian comic political playwright, Nobel Prize winner, known for works like "Accidental Death of an Anarchist."
Documentary drama
Drama that developed in 1960s Germany in based on historical documents, modified for documentary effect.
Peter Weiss and Emily Mann often participated in this type of drama.
Ed Bullins
Playwright that experimented with Black Ritual and published the journal Black Theatre
Edward Albee
Absurdist playwright who founded a theatre to encourage the production of new plays.
Absurdist plays: The American Dream, The Zoo Story
Edward Bond
Playwright associated with Angry young playwrights
Plays: Look Back in Anger and Saved
Lorraine Hansberry
Female African American playwright known for A Raisin in the Sun
Mabou Mines
Founded by Lee Breuer (1937-2021); Known for productions of Beckett and Strong visual style: use cartoons and pop culture as inspiration
Ellen Stewart
Founder of Café La Mama
Environmental Theatre
Coined by Richard Schender putting emphasis on using entire theatre as performance space. Play with, and destroy, space between performer and audience
Eugene Ionesco
Romanian Absurdist playwright
Existentialism
Existence is inherently meaningless; human beings are responsible for their own meanin
Free Southern Theatre
Founded in 1963, based in New Orleans, toured rural Louisiana
George C. Wolfe
Became director of Public Theatre in 1993 and directed Angels in America, among other plays
Happenings
Short-lived movement, influential, staged but not controlled, fragmented performance, audience participation. Kantor’s popular Cuttlefish was best known of thses
Harold Pinter
Multimedia Theatre
Emphasizes multiple artists from different fields, incorporates various art forms, focuses on multimedia work.
Poor Theatre
Concept by Grotowski, strips down inessential elements, extensive actor training, non-verbal performance emphasis.
Julie Taymor
director, designer who Uses puppets and masks in many of her productions: The Tempest, Gozzi’s The Green Bird, etc
Josef Svoboda
Czech designer who trained as artist and carpenter and Experimented with new materials and techniques: projections mixed with live performers (laterna magika), platforms, plastics
Joseph Papp
Founded Public Theatre in 1967 and started NY Shakespeare Festival in 1954. Also successful producer: Hair, A Chorus Line, David Rabe’s plays
Less successful at Lincoln Center
Kathikali
Indian dance drama presented in torch light featuring clashes of good and evil.
Lanterna Magika
Design technique by Josef Svoboda, uses projections, multimedia, dynamic settings to reflect text changes.
Living Theatre
Founded by Malina and Beck, avant-garde dramas, influenced by Artaud, emphasized immediacy and communality.
Neil Simon
American playwright, screenwriter, television writer, and librettist who focused on the everyday lives and domestic problems of ordinary middle-class people, which examine his characters’ marital and other dilemmas and, for comic effect, play up the incongruity of their situations.
Chicano Theatre
Overtly political, influenced by commedia, focuses on Latino causes, audience participation expected.
Off-Off-Broadway
Center for experimentation, new talent introduction, environmental theatre, response to Broadway commercialism.
Karen Finley
Known for the controversial performance "We Keep Our Victims Ready" that sparked NEA issues.
Performance Art
Contemporary art form addressing political and social issues through live presentations. Breaks down performance barriers, influenced by avant-garde forms, focuses on ritual elements, interdisciplinary work.
Open Theatre
Founded by 1963 by Joseph Chikin after leaving the Living Theatre Group. Experimented with improvisation, restructuring of text, environmental staging, and acting based on externals
Paula Vogel
Known for dramas that focus on dysfunctional families, domestic violence, and gender issues
Performance Group
Founded by Richard Schechner in 1968, known for environmental stagings which reworked relationship between audience and performers
Richard Foreman
Founded Ontological-Hysteric Theatre in 1968 . Work is often metatheatrical and reflexive .
Peter Brook
Renowned director of Shakespeare and contemporary plays, influenced by Artaud and Grotowski.
Peter Hall
E
clectic who worked on Pinter and Beckett early in his career. Later career built on tours of Shakespeare and other plays
Peter Handke
German dramatists who created surreal plays that focus on difficulties of communication: Offending the Audience, Kaspar, Ride Across Lake Constance
Peter Stein
Western European director (German) who worked with postmodern politicized work including Brecht’s The Mother and Ibsen’s Peer Gynt
Peter Weiss
Documentary drama playwright
Plays: The Investigation (1965)
Poor Theatre
Term coined by Jerzy Grotowski to describe his idea of theatre stripped to it’s barest essentials. Grotowski demand that lavish sets, light, and costumes associated with theatre reflect only base materialistic values and must be eliminated.
Postmodernist Style
Challenges objective truth and traditional art definitions, emphasizing a distrust of narratives and rationality.
Realism in Postwar American Drama
Selective or symbolic representation of reality in plays by Miller and Williams.
Regional Theatre
Post-WWII movement broadening the professional theatre base in the US with venues like Alley Theatre and Guthrie Theatre.
Roger Blin
French Absurdist director known for stagings of Beckett
Sam Shepherd
Uses images of American West, pop culture, gangster mythology; storytelling figures prominently (hints of Pinter)
Began off-off Broadway with experimental work
Icarus’ Mother, The Rock Garden, La Turista
Later, The Tooth of Crime (a rock musical)
Samuel Beckett
Leading Absurdist playwright known for works like "Waiting for Godot" and "Endgame."
Stephen Sondheim
Influential composer and lyricist known for complex music and satirical subject matter in musicals.
Split Britches
satirizes canonical literature (Belle Reprieve)
Theatre de Complicité
An alternative company that integrates that recieved global recognition for work that is integrating text, music, image, and action to create surprising, disruptive theatre. Founded in 1983 by Simon McBurnie (b.1957)
Theatre of Cruelty
Antonin Arturd’s visionary concept of theatre based on magic and ritual which liberated deep, violent, erotic impulses. Arturd wanted to reveal the cruelty he saw as existing beneath all human actions
Theatre of the Absurd
Coined by Martin Esslin to describe plays that suggested that the world is essentially meaningless and used a form that gave audience direct apprehension of the theme of meaninglessness
In these plays, human endeavor, language, culture, etc. is presented as meaningless; Plotless or circular structure, incomprehensible dialogue
Applied to a wide variety of playwrights: Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Durrenmatt, Adamov, Pinter, Albee, etc.
Theatre of the Oppressed
Methodology developed by Augusto Boal to address social and political issues through interactive performances.
Wooster Group
Alternative theatre company known for deconstructions of classical texts and innovative use of collage and video.
Invisible Theatre
Performances in public spaces where actors interact with unaware audiences, aiming to provoke thought and discussion about social issues by blurring the line between reality and performance.
Legislative Theatre
Engaging communities in theatrical exercises to identify problems and propose legislative solutions, promoting dialogue and civic engagement.
Wendy Wasserstein
Significant Off-Broadway dramatist known for "The Heidi Chronicles" (1988).
Wole Soyinka
Influential African playwright writing in English, Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 1986.
Guerilla Theater
Political theatre unit founded by Wole Soyinka at the University of Ife.
Zoot Suit
Political musical about the Zoot Suit riots in LA in 1943, focusing on Chicano identity in the US.
Episodic Structure
Theatrical format with disconnected scenes, influenced by Brecht, used in "Zoot Suit" to blend history and mythology.