Lurana Donnels O'Malley – författare

The first in-depth study of Catherine the Great's plays and opera libretti, this book provides analysis and critical interpretation of the dramatic works by this eighteenth-century Russian Empress. These works are shown to be remarkable for their diversity, frank satire, topical subject matter, and stylistic innovations. O'Malley reveals comparisons to and influences from European traditions, including Shakespeare and Molière, and sets Catherine in the larger field of Russian literature in the period, further illuminating her relationship to the aesthetic debates of the period. The study investigates how Catherine expressed her social ideas throughout her drama and exploited the stage's power to promote political ideals and ideology. O'Malley sets close textual analysis within an historical framework, analyzing the major plays according to content, style, themes, characters, and relation to Catherine's life and political aims.

This book examines how early twentieth-century Black theatre artists depicted national mythologies of the United States.White-authored pageants and plays written for the 1932 Bicentennial celebration of George Washington’s birthday relegated Black Americans to the periphery through racist stereotyping. Black activists Mary Church Terrell and W. E. B. Du Bois seized the opportunity to place Black people at center stage and to revise contemporary views of Washington and of Black achievement. Terrell’s Historical Pageant-Play Based on the Life of Phyllis Wheatley and Du Bois’s George Washington and Black Folk dramatize how the achievements of Black men and women fit into the US origin story. Terrell’s script is a biography of the life of the enslaved African poet Phillis Wheatley; Du Bois’s pageant is a transgressive revision of the Washington myth.The book’s chapters contextualize these plays within the larger Bicentennial event. O’Malley also includes her edited version of Terrell’s script, published here for the first time.This interdisciplinary book will be a valuable resource for college and university courses in American theatre and performance studies, Black Studies, and Women’s Studies.