To Have or Have Not: Essays on Commerce and Capital in Modernist Theatre

by James Fisher (Editor)

Overview

In a rapidly changing world, the ways in which economic forces affect both personal and global change can be difficult to track, particularly in the arts. This collection of twenty new essays explores both obscure and famous plays dealing with economic issues.

Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, the text moves from Marx's theories to Wall Street speculation, nineteenth century immigration issues, the excesses of the Gilded Age and the 1920s, the Great Depression, World War II and millennial economic challenges.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780786447176
Publisher:	McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers
Publication date:	10/12/2011
Pages:	314
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

James Fisher is professor of theatre and head of the theatre department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is the author of several books on theatre.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Introduction
JAMES FISHER     
Friedrich Engels, Lewis Henry Morgan, Capitalism, and Theatre-Making in Nineteenth-Century America
ROSEMARIE K. BANK     
“Money Is Our God Here”: The Comedy of Capital in Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Money and Philip Barry’s Holiday
JAMES FISHER     
Amateur Economies: Widowhood and Marriage for Amateur Performers
EILEEN CURLEY     
Gold Rush: McTeague, Frank Norris, and Neal Bell
ROBERT F. GROSS     
Money in Chekhov’s Plays
LAURENCE SENELICK     
Jacob Gordin and Jewish Socialism in America
VALLERI J. HOHMAN     
The Music Master and the Money Makers
FELICIA HARDISON LONDRÉ     
Performing “Amerikee”: Rural Caricature and the George Washingtons of Percy MacKaye and Jacques Copeau
MARK EVANS BRYAN     
I Am Your Worker/I Am Your Slave: Dehumanization, Capitalist Fantasy, and Communist Anxiety in Karel Tapek’s R.U.R.
PAUL MENARD     
Home Away from Home: Greed in Marco Millions
THIERRY DUBOST     
Babbitting Broadway: Satire, the Gospel of Success, and Americanization of Expressionism
JAMES M. CHERRY     
A New Approach to Revolution: Artef and Hirsch Leckert in the Third Period
JOSHUA POLSTER     
“Television’s Comin’ In, Sure as Death”: The Strange Consumer Paradise of Clifford Odets’ Paradise Lost
CHRISTOPHER J. HERR     
Back-Alleys to Basements: Narratives of Class and (Il)legal Abortion on the American Stage
CHRISTINE WOODWORTH     
Peter Weiss’s The Investigation: The Marxist View of the Holocaust
GENE A. PLUNKA     
Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls: Postmodern Complicity and the Economics of Thatcherism
DANIEL KEITH JERNIGAN     
Excessive Greed, Excessive Visions: Brenton and Hare’s Brassneck and Pravda
JOHN E. O’CONNOR     
The Absence of Wealth in Recent British Plays about Business
AMELIA HOWE KRITZER     
Between Want and Wealth: The Failure of Upward Mobility in José Rivera’s Early Plays
J. CHRIS WESTGATE     
Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train and Under America: How Mainstream Reviews Represent the Guilty and Obscure the Economics of the U.S. Prison Industry
JACOB JUNTUNEN     

About the Contributors     
Index