Clyde Fitch and the American Theatre (eBook)

An Olive in the Cocktail

Kevin Lane Dearinger (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2016
606 Seiten
Fairleigh Dickinson University Press (Verlag)
978-1-61147-948-5 (ISBN)

Infos

Clyde Fitch was a major figure in the American theatre, influential in his time and to the playwrights who followed. A collection of Fitch’s letters published in 1924 provided a sanitized record of his life, but no major biography has since appeared. Clyde Fitch and the American Theatre: An Olive in the Cocktail is the missing piece in the study of this important playwright and his contributions to gay history in a way that gives his plays the reconsideration and revival deserved.

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Clyde Fitch (1865-1909) was the most successful and prolific dramatist of his time, producing nearly sixty plays in a twenty-year career. He wrote witty comedies, chaotic farces, homespun dramas, star vehicles, historical works, stark melodramas, and adaptations of European successes, but he was best known for his society plays, mirroring themes found in the novels of Henry James and Edith Wharton. In fact, Fitch collaborated with Wharton on a stage adaptation of her House ofMirth. He was also a gay man, although that gentler adjective was not the term of his time. He was bullied in school and baited by critics throughout his career for what they supposed of his private life. He responded with impressive strength and integrity. He was, at least for a short time, Oscar Wilde's lover, and Wilde influenced his early plays, but Fitch's study of Ibsen and other European dramatists inspired him to pursue the course of naturalism. As he became more successful, he took greater control of the staging and design of his plays. He was a complete man of the theatre and among the first names enrolled in New York's theatrical hall of fame.

Autor

Kevin Lane Dearinger is a teacher, actor, and author of The Bard in the Bluegrass: Two Hundred Years of Shakespearean Performance in Lexington, Kentucky (2007), Marie Prescott: “A Star of Some Brilliance” (2009), and the play Regarding Mrs. Carter, the “American Bernhardt.”

Inhalt

Acknowledgments Prologue Act One: Inciting IncidentChapter One: “Not so delicate, my dear, as you think.”Chapter Two: “I think I’ll stick it out.” Chapter Three: “I am not trying to teach, but I want to suggest.” Chapter Four: “Like the little boy with the ice-cream” Chapter Five: “You must be happy just as you are, for you can’t be different.” Chapter Six: “Invent me a language of love.” Act Two: Rising ActionChapter Seven: “Isn’t it an opportunity!” Chapter Eight: “Certain temperaments of men” Chapter Nine: “I shut myself up in my room& went to work.” Chapter Ten: “Born differently” Chapter Eleven: “The right to call the heart in his bosom his own” Chapter Twelve: “To tell the Truth in the Theatre” Chapter Thirteen: “Bully!” Chapter Fourteen: “Sapho hangs about my neck!” Act Three: Plot Reversal and RecognitionChapter Fifteen: “I can do the biggest things in my power.” Chapter Sixteen: “Somehow I can’t stop working.” Chapter Seventeen: “Fool that I am, I write too much!” Chapter Eighteen: “Naturalness is absolutely essential.” Chapter Nineteen: “All the same I am ‘De-lighted’” Chapter Twenty: “To take my work, but not myself seriously” Chapter Twenty-One: “Realism is only simplicity and truth.” Chapter Twenty-Two: “Only by directing things myself” Chapter Twenty-Three: “Tired-er than ever!” Chapter Twenty-Four: “But, if I can only do it well.” Act Four: CatharsisChapter Twenty-Five: “My name on too many playbills.” Chapter Twenty-Six: “My work must speak for itself.” Chapter Twenty-Seven: “Happy to be as I am.” Chapter Twenty-Eight: “To die in harness” Denouement Epilogue Bibliography Production Record IndexAbout the Author

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 29.7.2016
• Zusatzinfo: 30 Illustrations including: - 30 Black & White Illustrations.
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Essays / Feuilleton
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Theater / Ballett
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Sprachwissenschaft
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
• Schlagworte: American Playwrights • Gender Studies • lgbt history • LGBT Studies • Literary Studies • Oscar Wilde • Sociology • Theatre Studies
• ISBN-10: 1-61147-948-7 / 1611479487
• ISBN-13: 978-1-61147-948-5 / 9781611479485