Lovesick: Modernest Plays Of Same-Sex (Gay) Love [Paperback]

Laurence Senelick (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 12, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0415185572 | ISBN-13: 978-0415185578

This volume makes available an international collection of plays, from Britain, the US, Germany, France and Russia, providing an essential and fascinating resource for anyone interested in the theatre culture of this period.
Lovesick brings together six plays, each with individual introductions, including an author biography and a production history. The editor provides a contextual introduction to the volume offering valuable information about the ancestry of gay theatre and queer performance.
The anthology reveals how 'sexual deviance' made its way into the drama of this time, and also how homosexual playwrights used comic or lyrical devices in order to celebrate a 'superior sensibility'.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The theater, with its reputation for loose sexual behavior, rejection of traditional gender and social roles, and emphasis on the imagination, has always provided a place for gay men and lesbians. From Charlotte Charke (a cross-dressing lesbian who acted and managed theaters in 18th-century London) to Oscar Wilde to contemporary "out" playwrights like Craig Lucas and Paula Vogel, the stage has been a home for same-sex love. Laurence Senelick's Lovesick is an astonishing collection of six plays that have helped, each in different ways, define 20th-century gay and lesbian drama. Amazingly, as important as these works are to gay and theatrical history, few of them have been readily available in English. Senelick, a theater historian and critic, has culled plays from the British stage (The Blackmailers was presented in London in 1894, the year before Oscar Wilde was sentenced to prison), the Russian symbolist movement (Mikhail Kuzmin's 1907 play The Dangerous Precaution), and the Weimar Republic (the 1925 play Ania and Esther, by Klaus Mann, the son of Thomas Mann and author of the novel Mephisto), as well as three others from the German, American, and French stages. The text of each play is presented in full, introduced and contextualized with copious historical notes. Senelick's research is impeccable, his prose entertaining; Lovesick is a vital contribution to both gay and lesbian studies and theater history. --Michael Bronski

From Library Journal

During the period in which the six plays in this anthology were written and first performed, homosexuality was beginning to "come out of the closet" and be used as a theme in art and literature. The plays, which represent the United States, Britain, Germany, Russia, and France, depict varying types of same-sex love. Included are The Blackmailer, a society comedy by associates of Oscar Wilde, and Ania and Esther by Klaus Mann, son of Thomas Mann. Each play is accompanied by an introduction, author biography, and production history. Senelick (drama, Tufts) provides a valuable introduction to the history of gay theater. While most of the plays offer a rather negative view of same-sex love, they do represent an important piece of gay and lesbian history. Recommended for theater arts and gay/lesbian collections.AHoward Miller, St. Louis
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 216 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (February 12, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415185572
• ISBN-13: 978-0415185578
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,202,203 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)