Robert Brustein - Böcker

A provocative look at Shakespeare in his age by one of our most influential theater figuresThis book is a masterful and engaging exploration of both Shakespeare's works and his age. Concentrating on six recurring prejudices in Shakespeare’s plays—such as misogyny, elitism, distrust of effeminacy, and racism—Robert Brustein examines how Shakespeare and his contemporaries treated them. More than simply a thematic study, the book reveals a playwright constantly exploiting and exploring his own personal stances. These prejudices, Brustein finds, are not unchanging; over time they vary in intensity and treatment. Shakespeare is an artist who invariably reflects the predilections of his age and yet almost always manages to transcend them.Brustein considers the whole of Shakespeare's plays, from the early histories to the later romances, though he gives special attention to Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and The Tempest. Drawing comparisons to plays by Marlowe, Middleton, and Marston, Brustein investigates how Shakespeare’s contemporaries were preoccupied with similar themes and how these different artists treated the current prejudices in their own ways. Rather than confining Shakespeare to his age, this book has the wonderful quality of illuminating both what he shared with his time and what is unique about his approach.

A major figure in the world of theater as critic, playwright, scholar, teacher, director, actor, and producer, Robert Brustein offers a unique perspective on the American stage and its artists. In this wise, witty, and wide-ranging collection of recent writings, Brustein examines crucial issues relating to theater in the post-9/11 years, analyzing specific plays, emerging and established performers, and theatrical production throughout the world. Brustein relates our theater to our society in a manner that reminds us why the performing arts matter.Millennial Stages records Brustein’s thinking on the important issues “roiling the national soul” at the start of the twenty-first century. His opening section explores the connections between theater and society, theater and politics, and theater and religion, and it is followed by reviews of such landmark productions as The Producers and Spamalot, Long Day’s Journey into Night and King Lear. In his final section, Brustein reflects on people and places of importance in the world of theater today, including Marlon Brando and Arthur Miller and Australia and South Africa.

The founder and director of the Yale Repertory theatre, as well as Harvard's American Repertory theatre, and a drama critic for more than thirty years, Robert Brustein is a living legend in theatrical circles. Letters to a Young Actor not only inspires the multitudes of struggling dramatists out pounding the pavement, but also reinvigorates the very state of the art of acting itself.

Using his extraordinary grasp of the theatre, Robert Brustein, Dean of the Yale Drama School and prize-winning critic, examines campus turmoil, radicalism versus liberalism, the fate of the free university, and the new revolutionary life style. Brustein sees American society as profoundly decadent, and those radicals from whom creative and rational alternatives should come as being increasingly dominated by sentimentality and false emotionalism. His observations are often controversial, always timely and interesting.

In a new edition of this now-classic work, Robert Brustein argues that the roots of the modern theatre may be found in the soil of rebellion cultivated by eight outstanding playwrights: Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Shaw, Brecht, Pirandello, O'Neill, and Genet. Focusing on each of them in turn, Mr. Brustein considers the nature of their revolt, the methods employed in their plays, their influences on the modern drama, and the playwrights themselves. "One of the standard and decisive books on the modern theater.... It shows us the men behind the works,… what they wanted to write about and the private hell within each of them which led to the enduring works we continue to treasure."—New York Times Book Review. "The best single collection of essays I know of on modern drama... remarkably fine and sensitive pieces of criticism. "—Alvin,Kernan, Yale Review.

By far Strindberg's most aggressive work, The Father is a feverish nightmare of the struggle he saw between defiant masculinity and the treacherous weakness of woman. Plays for Performance Series.

Winter Passages is Robert Brustein's nineteenth book of criticism. It includes his considerations of culture and politics over the past four years of American life, demonstrating how the imperfections of the government and economy have plunged the country into an artistic winter in which there is a troubling lack of support for, and understanding of, America's arts and artists.In a section on "Cultural Passages," Brustein includes chapters on compromised theatre institutions, auteur productions, the American musical, generational idiosyncrasies, and China's growing theatre culture, which contrasts with American culture. The second section, "Dramatic Passages," addresses twenty-seven great playwrights from Aeschylus to August Wilson and demonstrates how they have influenced our sense of history and human character.In "Laudatory Passages," Brustein discusses great American artists, living and dead, who continue to influence our sense of self as a nation and as individuals. Brustein concludes that we will be judged, like all cultures, by the quality of our arts and artists, and by our willingness to allow their insights to influence our behavior.

Winter Passages is Robert Brustein's nineteenth book of criticism. It includes his considerations of culture and politics over the past four years of American life, demonstrating how the imperfections of the government and economy have plunged the country into an artistic winter in which there is a troubling lack of support for, and understanding of, America's arts and artists.In a section on "Cultural Passages," Brustein includes chapters on compromised theatre institutions, auteur productions, the American musical, generational idiosyncrasies, and China's growing theatre culture, which contrasts with American culture. The second section, "Dramatic Passages," addresses twenty-seven great playwrights from Aeschylus to August Wilson and demonstrates how they have influenced our sense of history and human character.In "Laudatory Passages," Brustein discusses great American artists, living and dead, who continue to influence our sense of self as a nation and as individuals. Brustein concludes that we will be judged, like all cultures, by the quality of our arts and artists, and by our willingness to allow their insights to influence our behavior.

According to Robert Brustein, the theater should be taken seriously as one of the fine arts, but it should also be considered a means to reflect on our world, times, and culture from a different perspective. However, this presents a great challenge—the masses must come to appreciate the theater as a means of leisure, but also one of learning. If Word Plays tickles your funny bone as well as touches your mind, then Brustein will have achieved his goal.Word Plays, a collection of Brustein’s articles, satires, and skits, is his attempt to both entertain and educate about the current political and cultural environment in America. Openly positioning himself as a left-leaning political observer, Brustein’s material is wide-ranging and witty. His provocative views on contemporary politics and his ease with a broad range of subjects, from Shakespeare to The Sopranos, makes this an enjoyable, engaging, and reflective volume.The book is divided into three sections. The first is a set of short essays, many of which link political themes to the dramatic arts and others that are purely political commentary. The second includes a series of "dramatic commentaries"—short skits— lampooning contemporary politics and modern American life. The final section consists of "elegies and eulogies" honoring recently deceased icons of the American theater.