Routledge Modern and Contemporary Dramatists
About the Book Series
Routledge Modern and Contemporary Dramatists is a new series of innovative and exciting critical introductions to the work of internationally pioneering playwrights. The series includes well-established playwrights and offers primary materials on contemporary dramatists who are under-represented in secondary criticism. Each volume provides detailed cultural, historical and political material, examines selected plays in production, and theorises the playwright’s artistic agenda and working methods, as well as their contribution to the development of playwriting and theatre.
Noël Coward
1st Edition
By Russell Jackson
December 30, 2024
Noël Coward combines a fresh appraisal of major plays by one of the twentieth century’s most popular dramatists, with an account of critical and theatrical responses to his life and work. For almost the entirety of the twentieth century, Noël Coward was one of the UK’s most popular and celebrated ...
Dennis Kelly
1st Edition
By Aloysia Rousseau
August 01, 2024
Dennis Kelly explores Kelly’s unusual career path and sheds light on his eclectic approach to the arts, characterised by a refusal to write texts that people can fit within neat categories. This is the first monograph on Kelly’s work for stage and screen and brings to light his essential ...
Mike Bartlett
1st Edition
By William C. Boles
June 03, 2024
Hailed as one of the most talented playwrights to have emerged in the late 2000s, Mike Bartlett's diverse range of plays strike at the heart of the various crises predominant in the early twenty-first century. Offering the first extensive examination of the plays and television series written by ...
Martin McDonagh
1st Edition
By Catherine Rees
April 23, 2024
This comprehensive, accessible introduction to one of Britain’s leading contemporary playwrights and filmmakers outlines Martin McDonagh’s body of work, the key critical contexts for understanding and exploring his career, analysis of productions, and includes an exclusive interview with the ...
Harold Pinter
1st Edition
By Graham Saunders
June 05, 2023
Harold Pinter provides an up-to-date analysis and reappraisal concerning the work of one of the most studied and performed dramatists in the world. Drawing extensively from The Harold Pinter Archive at the British Library as well as reviews and other critical materials, this book offers new ...
Caryl Churchill
1st Edition
By Mary Luckhurst
December 12, 2014
One of Europe's greatest playwrights, Caryl Churchill has been internationally celebrated for four decades. She has exploded the narrow definitions of political theatre to write consistently hard-edged and innovative work. Always unpredictable in her stage experiments, her plays have stretched the ...
Maria Irene Fornes
1st Edition
By Scott T. Cummings
July 12, 2012
Maria Irene Fornes is the most influential female American dramatist of the 20th century. That is the argument of this important new study, the first to assess Fornes's complete body of work. Scott T. Cummings considers comic sketches, opera libretti and unpublished pieces, as well as her ...
Jean Genet
1st Edition
By David Bradby, Clare Finburgh
October 31, 2011
‘This volume is a gem. Written by two experts in modern French theater, whose stated objective is to render the complexity of Genet's work exhilarating rather than intimidating, the book bears witness to the continued political relevance and artistic power of one of the most controversial and ...
August Strindberg
1st Edition
By Eszter Szalczer
October 27, 2010
Dramatist, theatre practitioner, novelist, and painter, August Strindberg’s diverse dramatic output embodied the modernist sensibility. He was above all one of the most radical innovators of Western theatre. This book provides an insightful assessment of Strindberg’s vital contribution to the ...
Anton Chekhov
1st Edition
By Rose Whyman
August 11, 2010
Anton Chekhov offers a critical introduction to the plays and productions of this canonical playwright, examining the genius of Chekhov's writing, theatrical representation and dramatic philosophy. Emphasising Chekhov’s continued relevance and his mastery of the tragicomic, Rose Whyman provides an ...
J.B. Priestley
1st Edition
By Maggie B. Gale
March 10, 2008
J. B. Priestley is the first book to provide a detailed and up to date analysis of the enormous contribution made by this playwright, novelist, journalist and critic to twentieth century British theatre. Priestley was often criticised for being either too populist or too experimental and this ...
Federico García Lorca
1st Edition
By Maria M. Delgado
March 10, 2008
Immortalized in death by The Clash, Pablo Neruda, Salvador Dalí, Dmitri Shostakovich and Lindsay Kemp, Federico García Lorca's spectre haunts both contemporary Spain and the cultural landscape beyond. This study offers a fresh examination of one of the Spanish language’s most resonant voices; ...