Stage Fright

In this superb examination of theatricality and its detractors, Martin Puchner takes a close look at the theories of Stephane Mallarme, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, William Butler Yeats, Bertolt Brecht, and Samuel Beckett... In order to circumvent theatricality, Puchner observes, these authors shared common strategies: the superimposition of stage directions, choral figures, narratives, and commentators on the action, and characters who observe their own actions-all designed to disrupt mimesis, illusion, and theatrical virtuosity... [An] important study. -- David Krasner Theatre Journal A breathtaking tour de force through different languages, genres, and millennia from Plato to the Wooster Group, Stage Fright opens up a theoretical path for the reintegration of theater studies into the German studies discourse... Puchner argues persuasively that theater plays a constitutive role in modernism and proposes theatricality as the divisive aesthetical moment in the opposition between modernism and the avant-garde... Puchner's book is original and exciting even in its asides and footnotes... an intellectual treat and a must-read for any scholar dealing with twentieth-century literature and culture. -- Veronika Fuechtner Germanic Review After this study, a lot of polemic energy spent in debate between pro-theatricalists and anti-theatricalists, between adherents of modernism and those of the avant-garde, can be spared. The fault lines between solipsistic and elitist modernism on the one side, and a collaborative and political avant-garde on the other, must be drawn anew. As Puchner brilliantly demonstrates, the radical difference must be thought, first and foremost, along the parameters of anti-theatrical modernism versus the theatrical avant-garde... By doing justice to the minute details of... the dramas and theories of Mallarme, Joyce, Stein, Yeats, Brecht and Beckett, Puchner makes a compelling case for the central thesis of the book. Moreover, Puchner... provides a new vocabulary to analyze modernism's 'hate affair' with the theater. -- Klaus Mladek Modernism/modernity Puchner's vigorous discussion... provides a new way to rethink drama's relationship both with the actual theatre and with its closeted literary counterparts... [and] offers a provocative remapping of the twentieth century's theatrical (and anti-theatrical) energies. -- Stanton B. Garner, Jr. Modern Drama A provocative reassessment of modernism and the post-Wagnerian theater. Stage Fright is well written, clearly argued, and nicely organized, with a diction that is authoritative without being stuffy... Those interested in the history of the theater will find in Puchner's emphasis on the value and devaluing of theatricality a means of re-reading a century. Scholars of modernism may find this value and its articulation in Stage Fright equally useful for approaching other texts and genres. -- Geoffrey Baker Comparative Literature 2004 Puchner's positioning of the Epic Theater in a larger, exhaustively and well-theorized context of modernist attempts to reconfigure the actor and create legible gestures by diegetic means certainly makes his book a major contribution to Brecht scholarship. -- Markus Wessendorf Brecht Yearbook This book-with its thoughtful examination of difficult questions-is exceptionally smart and will usefully recalibrate discussions of modernism and modernist theatre. Theatre Research International A capital addition to the history of theater as well as an innovative theoretical approach rooted in literary history. -- Anne V. Cirella-Urrutia The Comparatist

Martin Puchner is a professor of English and comparative literature at Harvard University and author of The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy.

Contents: The Invention of Theatricality Richard Wagner The Modernist Closet DramaStephane Mallarme James Joyce Gertrude Stein The Diegetic TheaterWilliam Butler Yeats Bertolt Brecht Samuel Beckett