David Kornhaber – författare

George Bernard Shaw's public career began in arts journalism-as an art critic, a music critic, and, most famously, a drama critic-and he continued writing on cultural and artistic matters throughout his life. His total output of essays and reviews numbers in the hundreds, dwarfing even his prolific playwriting career. This volume of Shaw's Major Cultural Essays introduces readers to the wealth and diversity of Shaw's cultural writings from across the breadth of his professional life, beginning around 1890 and ending in 1950. Topics covered include the theatre, of course, but also music, opera, poetry, the novel, the visual arts, philosophy, censorship, and education. Major figures discussed at length in these works include Ibsen, Wagner, Nietzsche, Shakespeare, Wilde, Mozart, Beethoven, Keats, Rodin, Zola, Ruskin, Dickens, Tolstoy, and Poe, among many others. Coursing with Shavian flair and vigor, these essays showcase the author's broad aesthetic sensibilities, trace the intersection of culture and politics in Shaw's worldview, and provide a fascinating window into the vibrant cultural moment of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Nietzsche's love affair with the theater was among the most profound and prolonged intellectual engagements of his life, but his transformational role in the history of the modern stage has yet to be explored. In this pathbreaking account, David Kornhaber vividly shows how Nietzsche reimagined the theatrical event as a site of philosophical invention that is at once ancestor, antagonist, and handmaiden to the discipline of philosophy itself. August Strindberg, George Bernard Shaw, and Eugene O'Neill— seminal figures in the modern drama's evolution and avowed Nietzscheans all—came away from their encounters with Nietzsche's writings with an impassioned belief in the philosophical potential of the live theatrical event, coupled with a reestimation of the dramatist's power to shape that event in collaboration with the actor. In these playwrights' reactions to and adaptations of Nietzsche's radical rethinking of the stage lay the beginnings of a new direction in modern theater and dramatic literature.

Tom Stoppard's work as a playwright and screenwriter has always been notable for mixing ideas with entertainment. From the early success of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead to masterpieces like Arcadia, from radio plays about modern art to the Oscar-winning screenplay for Shakespeare in Love, Stoppard has challenged and delighted audiences with the intellectual and cultural richness of his writing. Tom Stoppard in Context provides multiple perspectives on both the life and works of one of the most important modern playwrights. This collection covers biographical and historical topics, as well as the broad array of intellectual, aesthetic, and political concerns with which Stoppard has engaged. More than thirty essays on subjects ranging from science to screenwriting help illuminate Stoppard's rich body of work.

Tom Stoppard's work as a playwright and screenwriter has always been notable for mixing ideas with entertainment. From the early success of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead to masterpieces like Arcadia, from radio plays about modern art to the Oscar-winning screenplay for Shakespeare in Love, Stoppard has challenged and delighted audiences with the intellectual and cultural richness of his writing. Tom Stoppard in Context provides multiple perspectives on both the life and works of one of the most important modern playwrights. This collection covers biographical and historical topics, as well as the broad array of intellectual, aesthetic, and political concerns with which Stoppard has engaged. More than thirty essays on subjects ranging from science to screenwriting help illuminate Stoppard's rich body of work.

The first panoramic survey of its kind, The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Theatre is a wide-ranging guide to modernism's myriad theatrical manifestations and permutations. Covering such diverse movements as naturalism, symbolism, expressionism, surrealism, dadaism, futurism, and absurdism and ranging over many genres, including comedy, tragedy, the play of ideas, agitprop, and epic theatre, the book provides a comprehensive examination of how theatre was shaped by modernism - and in turn shaped it - as it was practised around the globe. Arranged into two halves focusing respectively on theatrical forms and major themes, the volume features chapters examining how modernist playwrights, scenographers, actors, and directors engaged with such key social, political, and cultural issues of the day as philosophy, science, religion, sexuality, gender, race, intermediality, and interculturalism. An authoritative resource for students and researchers alike, this Companion attests to the pertinence of theatre and modernism both historically and in the contemporary world.

The first panoramic survey of its kind, The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Theatre is a wide-ranging guide to modernism's myriad theatrical manifestations and permutations. Covering such diverse movements as naturalism, symbolism, expressionism, surrealism, dadaism, futurism, and absurdism and ranging over many genres, including comedy, tragedy, the play of ideas, agitprop, and epic theatre, the book provides a comprehensive examination of how theatre was shaped by modernism - and in turn shaped it - as it was practised around the globe. Arranged into two halves focusing respectively on theatrical forms and major themes, the volume features chapters examining how modernist playwrights, scenographers, actors, and directors engaged with such key social, political, and cultural issues of the day as philosophy, science, religion, sexuality, gender, race, intermediality, and interculturalism. An authoritative resource for students and researchers alike, this Companion attests to the pertinence of theatre and modernism both historically and in the contemporary world.