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This exceptional collection explores the mutual concerns of dramatic theater, film, and those who comment on them. Plays, Movies, and Critics opens with an original play by Don DeLillo. In the form of an interview, DeLillo's short play works as a kind of paradigm of the theatrical or cinematic event and serves as a keynote for the volume.
DeLillo's interview play is accompanied in this collection by interviews with theater director Roberta Levitow, Martin Scorsese, and film/theater critic Stanley Kauffmann. Other contributions include a critical look at the current American theater scene, analyses of the place of politics in the careers of G. B. Shaw and Luigi Pirandello, a compelling reading of Chekhov's "The Seagull", a detailed inquiry into the obsessions that energize the works of Sam Shepard, provocative reinterpretations of the films Mean Streets and The Sheltering Sky, and a translation of AndrÉ Bazin's important piece on theology and film.Contributors. AndrÉ Bazin, Robert Brustein, Bert Cardullo, Anthony DeCurtis, Don DeLillo, Jesse Ward Engdhal, Richard Gilman, Jim Hosney, Mame Hunt, Jonathan Kalb, Stanley Kauffmann, Jody McAuliffe, Mary Ann Frese Witt, Jacquelyn Wollman, David Wyatt
List of contents
Introduction / Jody McAuliffe
The Rapture of the Athlete Assumed into Heaven / Don DeLillo
Reinventing American Theater / Robert Brustein
The Seagull: Art and Love, Love and Art / Richard Gilman
The Late Beginner: Bernard Shaw Becoming a Dramatist / Stanley Kauffmann
Fascist Discourse and Pirandellian Theater / Mary Ann Frese Witt
Shepard's Split / David Wyatt
Between L.A. and New York: An Interview with Roberta Levitow / Mame Hunt
Cinema and Theology / Andre Bazin
The Passion of St. Charles: Martin Scorsese's
Mean Streets / Jim Hosney, Jacquelyn Wollman, and Jesse Ward Engdahl
The Church of the Desert: Reflections on
The Sheltering Sky / Jody McAuliffe
What the Streets Mean: An Interview with Martin Scorsese / Anthony DeCurtis
An Interview with Stanley Kauffmann / Bert Cardullo
Afterword: The Critic as Humanist / Jonathan Kalb
Notes on Contributors
Index
About the author
Jody McAuliffe, ed.
