"Mouths on Fire with Songs"

Negotiating Multi-Ethnic Identities on the Contemporary North American Stage
Erscheinungsjahr 2013
ISBN: 978-90-420-3696-3
Verlag: Brill | Rodopi

Buch, Englisch, Band 163, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 807 g

Reihe: Cross/Cultures

This book, the first cross-cultural study of post-1970s anglophone Canadian and American multi-ethnic drama, invites assessment of the thematic and aesthetic contributions of this theater in today’s globalized culture. A growing number of playwrights of African, South and East Asian, and First Nations heritage have engaged with manifold socio-political and aesthetic issues in experimental works combining formal features of more classical European dramatic traditions with such elements of ethnic culture as ancestral music and dance, to interrogate the very concepts of theatricality and canonicity. Their “mouths on fire” (August Wilson), these playwrights contest stereotyped notions of authenticity. In¬spired by songs of anger, passion, experience, survival, and regeneration, the plays analyzed bespeak a burning desire to break the silence, to heal and empower. Foregrounding questions of hybridity, diaspora, cultural memory, and nation, this comparative study includes discussion of some twenty-five case studies of plays by such authors as M.J. Kang, August Wilson, Suzan–Lori Parks, Djanet Sears, Chay Yew, Padma Viswanathan, Rana Bose, Diane Glancy, and Drew Hayden Taylor. Through its cross-cultural and cross-national prism, “Mouths on Fire with Songs” shows that multi-ethnic drama is one of the most diverse and dynamic sites of cultural production in North America today.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wagter, Caroline De

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur Amerikanische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Kunstethnologie, Musikethnologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Gattungen
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literatursoziologie, Gender Studies
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Theaterwissenschaft Theatergeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Staging Hybridity on the North American Scene
Shattering the North American Dream: Testimonies and Experiences
Cultural Memory in North American Drama
Performing Imagined Communities
Conclusion: Millennial Vistas
Works Cited
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Caroline De Wagter holds a doctorate in Modern Languages and Literatures from the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium) and an MA in Drama from Stanford University. She has published articles in critical collections and professional journals, and is the co-editor of Old Margins, New Centers: The European Literary Heritage in an Age of Globalization (2011) and Signatures of the Past: Cultural Memory in Con¬temporary Anglophone North American Drama (2008).