Tragicomedy and Contemporary Culture - (Edinburgh Studies in Culture and Society) by John Orr (Hardcover)

About the Book

A perceptive study of the relationship between contemporary play writing and the society that gives rise to it

Book Synopsis

This study examines the historical relationship between tragicomedy in the modernist theatre and the performative culture of Western consumer societies. While discussing a wide range of playwrights, it focusses specifically on the work of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Sam Shepard. Their plays, it is argued, illuminate the forms of pleasure, fear, performance and corruption which dominate our daily lives. Tragicomedy is seen as unique becuae of the existential playfulness and confusion of its protagonists, and because of its muted vision of apocalypse in the nuclear age.