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The American Stage and the Great Depression: A Cultural History of the Grotesque proposes a correlation between the divided "mind" of America during the depression and popular stage works of the era. Theatre works such as Jack Kirkland's comic-horrific adaptation of Tobacco Road, Olsen and Johnson's "scream-lined revue", Hellzapoppin, and successful plays by Robert E. Sherwood, Clare Boothe Luce, and S. N. Behrman are interpreted as theatrical reflections of depression culture's sense of being trapped between a discredited past and a nightmarish future. The author analyzes the America of the 1930s as an era of the "grotesque", in which the irreconcilable were forced into tense and dynamic coexistence, and by examining these works of theatre as products of particular historical circumstances, argues for a strong connection between cultural history and theatre history.
List of contents
List of illustrations; Acknowledgments; Introduction: loving the grotesque; 1. The grotesque and the Great Depression; 2. The political analogy; or, 'tragicomedy' in an in-between age; 3. Misery burlesqued: the peculiar case of Tobacco Road; 4. Chaos and cruelty in the theatrical space: Horse Eats Hat, Hellzapoppin, and the pleasure of farce; Appendix: cast and staff information for principal productions; Notes; Bibliography; Index.
Summary
This book proposes a correlation between the divided 'mind' of America during the Depression and popular stage works of the era, which are interpreted as theatrical reflections of Depression culture's sense of being trapped between a discredited past and a nightmarish future.
