History of Amercian Drama

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The History of American Drama Drama: The Caboose of LiteratureDrama is known as “the caboose of literature” (Robert Sherwood), because, like the caboose on a train, it lies at the rear of all forms of literature. Drama explores issues and styles only after they have been introduced by the other arts. There was great theatrical activity in the US in the 19th century, a time when there were no movies, TV, or radio. Every town of any size had its theater or “opera house” in which touring companies of actors performed. However, no significant drama was performed in this century, with audiences preferring farce, melodrama, and vaudeville to serious efforts. For the most part, this was “caboose” behavior. The theater tends to dramatize accepted attitudes and values, only after they have been thoroughly explored by other mediums. Theater is a social art, one we attend as part of large group, and we seem to respond to something new as a group more slowly than we do as individuals. When you laugh or cry in a theater, your response is noticed, especially by those who are not so moved. You are in a sense giving your approval to those attitudes and values presented in the play. The Influence of Europe: Psychology and Taboo SubjectsEuropean drama, which was to influence modern American drama profoundly, matured in the last third of the 19th century with the achievements of three playwrights: Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, and Anton Chekhov. Ibsen, who was profoundly influenced by psychologists Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, tackled subjects such as guilt, sexuality, and mental illness—subjects that had never before been so realistically and disturbingly portrayed onstage (like in A Doll’s House and Enemy of the People). Strindberg brought to his characterizations a unprecedented level of psychological complexity (like in The Father and The Dance of Death). And Chekhov
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