Customer Reviews

The Longman Anthology of Drama and Theater: A Global Perspective, Compact Edition

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American theatre has been slower than any of the other arts to recognize the need to pay attention to what's going on outside the United States and Europe. Most introductory theatre texts make only passing mention of the theatres of Asia, Africa and South America. Anthologies of drama published in the States have likewise generally failed to address the dramatic literature of these regions. Consequently, most Americans, including theatre students, are woefully ignorant of the rich theatrical traditions of two thirds of the world's people.

In the context of this vast blindness, the Longman Anthology of World Drama is a milestone work. It includes both traditional and modern plays from China, India and Japan (integrated into the historical sequence rather than tagged on as appendices.) It treats of African theatre in connection with African-American diaspora theatre. It represents Latin and South American theatre with interesting works from the 16th century to modern Hispanic absurdism. On top of this remarkable diversity, it provides a very solid foundation in the traditional Western canon, with a particularly good sequence tracing the rise of modern realism out of romanticism.

There is an enormous amount of material in this tome, and much to commend. The only serious shortcomings are a sparseness and lack of clarity in the historical background articles (these will confuse students with no framework to build on), and some poor choices in excerpts of supporting criticism (the Victor Turner article will go completely over the heads of the uninitiated, and the excerpt by Zeami is a dull genealogy of the ritual roots of Noh theatre rather than any of the more interesting bits on the art of the performer.)

I'm very pleased with this anthology partly because of its international scope, but also because it provides useful theoretical documents that augment and support the plays the authors have chosen. The introductions to each period and country are detailed, interesting, and easy to read.

The students in my undergraduate theatre history course have almost unanimously agreed to keep this text as part of their permanent collection--a rare reaction indeed! The choice of plays was excellent, combining some wonderful translations of important Western European texts with interesting, hard-to-find world theatre classics.

I highly recommend it as a teaching resource--particularly for theatre history, world drama, and intro to theatre courses. Your students will thank you (and they'll keep this one!).

This anthology does a great job of providing a snapshot of works that any theater goer of interest can appreciate. Warning there is a lot to read here folks. The only downside is that there is another book other which is not the Compact Edition that is a better buy for a couple more bucks. The sweet thing is that b/c all of these works are classic and popular, getting the newest edition really doesn't matter much to me.

I needed to buy this for my World Drama class. It has so many plays that I will be keeping it and I will use it for my History of Theatre class as well. Helps save money, I like that.

I used the ISDN that was provided by my instructor and received the wrong version of the book. The book its self is fine and delivery was as stated. It just wasn't what I needed.