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Linked Plays Modern American Dram

Research Project

Project/Area Number 07610481
Research Category

Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)

Allocation TypeSingle-year Grants
Section一般
Research Field 英語・英米文学
Research InstitutionRIKKYO UNIVERSITY

Principal Investigator

DORSEY J. T.  RIKKYO UNIV.DEPT.of Literature, PROF., 文学部, 教授 (30130529)

Project Period (FY) 1995 – 1996
Project Status Completed (Fiscal Year 1996)
Budget Amount *help
¥1,800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,800,000)
Fiscal Year 1996: ¥600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000)
Fiscal Year 1995: ¥1,200,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,200,000)
Keywordsdrama / American drama / cycle / family / Kushner / O'Neill / Wilson / Shepard / 三部作 / 戦後アメリカの劇作家 / 連作劇 / 歴史劇 / 南北戦争 / ユ-ジーン・オニール / ランフォード・ウィルソン / サム・シェパ-ド / オ-ガスト・ウィルソン
Research Abstract

These past two years I have worked on a number of contemporary American playwrights who have created a cycle or sequence of plays, principally SamShepard, Lanford Wilson, August Wilson, Robert Schenkkan, and Tony Kushner.
I found that Eugene O'Neill seems to have influenced and inspired this whole generation of American dramatists to strive after an epic scope by linking a series of plays together. Just as O'Neill proposed to follow two hundred years of American history by tracing the history of an Irish-American family, contemporary American playwrights such as Robert Schenkkan, Lanford Wilson, and August Wilson have proposed similar projects. Most American playwrights focus on the American family ; indeed, this has been recognized as the central theme of much of American drama.
But most often, including the case of O'Neill, this has chiefly been a psychological portrait, focusing on individual characters, especially on those representing the artist as a young man.
The linked plays examined in this study represent a movement in contemporary American theater to expand and extend its imaginative terrain through a deliberate choice of open, episodic structures that allow interaction, influence, development, and variation in works that embrace both the familiar psychological exploration of individuals within that perennial American theme, the family, and the larger, more extensive questions posed by the most traditional of theatrical themes, the family as a metaphor of the state. I believe that this tendency to create linked plays in contemporary American theater is substantial from the 1960s on and that it will continue as one source of renewal in American drama.

Report

(3 results)
  • 1996 Annual Research Report   Final Research Report Summary
  • 1995 Annual Research Report

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Published: 1995-04-01   Modified: 2021-04-07  

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