Table of Contents

List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; Preface; 1. The symbolic in drama; 2. Theoretical beginnings: Wagner and Nietzsche; 3. Symbolic theatre: Appia and lighting design Tristan und Isolde (1899 and 1923); 4. Symbolic theatre: Craig and stage design: The Moscow Hamlet (1912); 5. Symbolist drama: Ibsen to Maeterlinck and Lugné-Poe Hedda Gabler (1890), Pelléas et Mélisande (1893); 6. Symbolist drama after Maeterlinck Salomé (1896), The Life of Man (1907); 7. Jarry, precursor of surrealism in France Ubo roi (1896); 8. Dada and surrealism in France: Tzara to Cocteau The Wedding on the Eiffel Tower (1921); 9. Symbolist drama in English: Yeats and Japanese Noh drama At the Hawk's Well (1916); 10. Symbolist drama in English: Eliot and religious drama Murder in the Cathedral (1935); 11. Pirandello and the teatro grottesco: Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921); 12. Symbolist drama in Spain: García Lorca The House of Bernarda Alba (1936); 13. Stylization in France: Copeau and after Noah (1931), The Trojan War Will Not Take Place (1935); 14. Theatre of cruelty: Artaud and Peter Brook The Marat/Sade (1965); 15. The existentialist play: Sartre and Camus The Flies (1943), Caligula (1945); 16. Theatre of the absurd: Beckett and Pinter Waiting for Godot (1952); 17. Theatre of the absurd: Ionesco and others The Bald Prima Donna (1950); 18. Ritual theatre and Jean Genet The Balcony (1957), The Blacks (1959); 19. After Artaud: avant-garde theatre in Poland and America Frankenstein (1965); 20. Happenings and other improvisation in America Dionysus in 69 (1968); 21. Recent fringe theatre in Britain Christie in Love (1969), AC/DC (1969); 22. Symbolist theatre: retrospectively; Table of events in the theatre; Bibliography; Index.

Promotional Information

This book was first published in 1981. The theories of Wagner and Nietzsche provide the basic principles for this volume.