Brian Kulick (USA Columbia University)

Staging the End of the World

Theatre in a Time of Climate Crisis

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

This book is a brief history of the end of the world as seen through the eyes of theatre. Since its inception, theatre has staged the fall of empires, floods, doomsdays, shipwrecks, earthquakes, plagues, environmental degradations, warfare, nuclear annihilation, and the catastrophic effects of climate change. Using a wide range of plays alongside contemporary thinkers, this study helps guide and galvanize the reader in grappling with the climate crisis. Kulick divides this litany of theatrical cataclysms into four distinct historical phases: the Ancients, including Euripides and Bhasa, the legendary Sanskrit dramatist; the Age of Belief, with the anonymous authors of the medieval mystery cycles, Shakespeare, and Pushkin; the Moderns, with Ibsen, Chekhov, Brecht, Beckett, and Bond; and, finally, the way the world might end now, encompassing Caryl Churchill, Tony Kushner, and Anne Washburn. In tandem with the insights gleaned from these playwrights, the book draws upon the work of contemporary scientists, ecologists, and ethicists to further tease out the philosophical implications of such plays and their relevance to our own troubled times. In the end, Kulick shows how each of these ages and their respective authors have something essential to say, not only about humanity's potential end, but, more importantly, about the possibility for our collective continuance.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Seitenzahl: 280
• Erscheinungstermin: 26. Januar 2023
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 234mm x 156mm x 17mm
• Gewicht: 438g
• ISBN-13: 9781350309951
• ISBN-10: 1350309958
• Artikelnr.: 67049559

Autorenporträt

Brian Kulick is the Chair of Columbia University's School of the Arts Theatre Program, USA, where he also teaches directing with Anne Bogart. In addition to staging the works of Shakespeare, Brecht, and Tony Kushner, he has been the Artistic Director of Classic Stage Company and an Artistic Associate for The Public Theatre. He is the author of Staging Shakespeare (Methuen Drama, 2021), How Greek Tragedy Works (2020), The Elements of Theatrical Expression (2019) and The Secret Life of Theatre (2019).

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgements Introduction: On Transforming Our Social Imaginary PART
ONE: THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS IN ANCIENT TIMES 1. Lessons Amongst the
Ruins; Or, What Survives and Why: How the Cultural Detritus of the Ancients
Can Become a Kind of First Philosophy 2. Slouching Toward Kurukshetra: A
Brief Look at the Mahabharatas of Bhasa, Bharati, and Brook 3. Diasporas
Old and New: What Euripides' Children of Herakles Can Tell Us About the
Coming Climate Wars and Resulting Refugee Crisis PART TWO: THIS IS THE WAY
THE WORLD ENDS IN THE AGE OF FAITH 4. Noahs, Arks, and Floods: Why Medieval
Mystery Plays Still Have Something to Say About Our Modern Day "End of
Days" 5. Shipwrecks, Recursion, and the Necessity of Deep Ecology:
Surviving Shakespeare's The Tempest and the Breaking of Our Anthropocene
Ways 6. On Earthquakes and Metaphors: Bouilly's Disaster of Lisbon and the
Fukushima Variation PART THREE: THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS IN MODERN
TIMES 7. Plague's Threat to Our Immune and Belief Systems: A Look at
Pushkin's A Feast in the Time of Plague 8. A Canary in the Bourgeois Coal
Mine, Part One: Pollution and Direct Critique in Ibsen's An Enemy of the
People 9. A Canary in the Bourgeois Coal Mine, Part Two: Denial and
Indirect Critique in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard PART FOUR: THIS IS THE
WAY THE WORLD ENDS NOW 10. Ethics During Dark Times: Brecht's He Who Says
Yes and He Who Says No 11. On the Other Side of the Apocalypse: The Broken
Worlds of Beckett and Bond 12. Nostalgia for the Future: The Fraught
Tomorrows of Rivera, Churchill, Washburn, and Kushner Coda: And in the End
Notes Index