Barbara Ozieblo & Maria Dolores Narbona-Carrión, eds. Codifying the National Self: Spectators, Actors and the American Dramatic Text . Brussels: P.I.E. Peter Lang, 2006. pp. 299.
The theater has always been the site of visionary hopes for a reformed national future and a space for propagating ideas, both cultural and political, and such a conceptualization of the histrionic art is all the more valuable in the post 9/11 era.. The essays in this volume address the concept of "Americanness" and the perceptions of the "alien" - as ethnic, class or gendered minorities - as dealt with in the work of American playwrights from Anna Cora Mowatt, through Rachel Crothers or Susan Glaspell, and on to Sam Shepard, David Mamet, Nilo Cruz or Wallace Shawn. The authors of the essays come from a multi-national university background that includes the United States, the United Arab Emirates and various countries of the European Community. In recognition of the multiple components of the theater, the essays for the volume were selected in order to exemplify different aspects and theories of theater studies: the playwright, the play, the audience and the actor are all examined as part of the theatrical experience that serves to formulate American national identity.
Contents:
Barbara Ozieblo, Introduction; David Savran . "Making Middlebrow Theater in America"; Susan Harris Smith . "Reading Drama: Plays in American Periodicals 1890-1918"; Wendy Ripley . "Anna Cora Mowatt: Player and Playwright"; María Dolores Narbona-Carrión . "The Woman Artist as Portrayed by Rachel Crothers and Heather McDonald"; Sharon Friedman . "Feminist Revisions of Classic Texts on the American Stage"; Savas Patsalidis . "Charles Mee's Intertextual and Intercultural Inscriptions: The Suppliants Vs Big Love "; Miriam López-Rodríguez . "Sophie Treadwell, Jung, and the Mandala: Acting a Gendered Identity"; William S.Haney II . "Artistic Expression, Intimacy and the Primal Holon in Sam Shepard"; Claus-Peter Neumann . "The/teleological Narrative and the Narratee's Rebellion in Tony Kushner's Angels in America "; Marc Maufort . "Captured Images": Performing the First Nations' 'Other'"; Noelia Hernando-Real . "E Pluribus, Plurum: From A Unifying National Identity to Plural Identities in Susan Glaspell's Inheritors "; Thierry Dubost . "Politics in Paratextual and Textual Elements in Fences "; Esther Alvarez-Lopez . "Food, Cultural Identity, and the Body: New Recipes for Latinas' Emerging Selves"; Natalie I. Alvarez . "Authenticity and the 'Divinely Amateur': the Romantic in Richard Maxwell"; Jerry Dickey . "Mamet's Actors: A Life in the Theatre and Other Writings on the Art of Acting"; Jon D. Rossini . "The Contemporary Ethics of Violence: Cruz, Solis and Homeland Security"; Bonnie Marranca . "The Solace of Chocolate Squares. Table of Contents: Thinking about Wallace Shawn."