Verbal Violence in Contemporary Drama: From Handke to Shepard

Description

In this book, Jeanette Malkin considers a broad spectrum of postwar plays in which characters are created, coerced, and destroyed by language. The playwrights examined are diverse and include Handke, Pinter, Bond, Albee, Mamet and Shepard, as well as Vaclav Havel and two of his plays: The Garden Party and The Memorandum. These playwrights portray language's manipulation of our political, social, and interpersonal worlds. Writing in a variety of idioms and styles, the playwrights all reveal the link between language and power.

"In Verbal Violence in Contemporary Drama, Jeanette R. Malkin considers plays by Pinter, Mamet, Albee and Shepard that use the manipulation of language and logical thinking to destroy institutions, character and interpersonal relationships." Backstage "...Malkin's significant contribution lies in her solid work of unifying under this conceptual banner an otherwise unwieldy amalgam of contemporary plays." Robert Baker-White, Essays in Theatre "No one should teach plays by Ionesco, Pinter, Havel, Kroetz, Bond, Mamet, Shepard, or Albee without reading Verbal Violence..." Servanne Woodward, Comparative Drama