MARC Record from Library of Congress

LEADER: 02951cam a2200313 i 4500
001 2014043068
003 DLC
005 20150415083139.0
008 141104s2015 enka b 001 0 eng
010 $a 2014043068
020 $a9781107076686 (hardback)
040 $aDLC$beng$cDLC$erda
042 $apcc
050 00 $aPS3545.I5365$bZ8335 2015
082 00 $a812/.54$223
084 $aDRA001000$2bisacsh
100 1 $aSaddik, Annette J.,$d1966-$eauthor.
245 10 $aTennessee Williams and the theatre of excess :$bthe strange, the crazed, the queer /$cAnnette J. Saddik.
264 1 $aCambridge ;$aNew York :$bCambridge University Press,$c2015.
300 $axi, 180 pages :$billustrations ;$c24 cm
336 $atext$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$2rdamedia
338 $avolume$2rdacarrier
520 $a"The plays of Tennessee Williams' post-1961 period have often been misunderstood and dismissed. In light of Williams' centennial in 2011, which was marked internationally by productions and world premieres of his late plays, Annette J. Saddik's new reading of these works illuminates them in the context of what she terms a "theatre of excess," which seeks liberation through exaggeration, chaos, ambiguity, and laughter. Saddik explains why these plays are now gaining increasing acclaim, and analyzes recent productions that successfully captured elements central to Williams' late aesthetic, particularly a delicate balance of laughter and horror with a self-consciously ironic acting style. Grounding the plays through the work of Bakhtin, Artaud, and Kristeva, as well as through the carnivalesque, the grotesque, and psychoanalytic, feminist, and queer theory, Saddik demonstrates how Williams engaged the freedom of exaggeration and excess in celebration of what he called "the strange, the crazed, the queer.""--$cProvided by publisher.
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references (pages 164-172) and index.
505 8 $aMachine generated contents note: Introduction: 'sicker than necessary': Tennessee Williams' theatre of excess; 1. 'Drowned in Rabelaisian laughter': Germans as grotesque comic figures in Williams' plays of the 1960s and '70s; 2. 'Benevolent anarchy': Williams' late plays and the theater of cruelty; 3. 'Writing calls for discipline!': Chaos, creativity, and madness in Clothes for a Summer Hotel; 4. 'Act naturally': embracing the monstrous woman in The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore, The Mutilated, and The Pronoun 'I'; 5. 'There's something not natural here': grotesque ambiguities in Kingdom of Earth, A Cavalier for Milady and A House Not Meant to Stand; 6. 'All drama is about being extreme': 'in-yer-face' sex, war, and violence; Conclusion: 'the only thing to do is laugh'.
600 10 $aWilliams, Tennessee,$d1911-1983$xCriticism and interpretation.
650 7 $aDRAMA / American.$2bisacsh
856 42 $3Cover image$uhttp://assets.cambridge.org/97811070/76686/cover/9781107076686.jpg