Hollywood on Stage : Playwrights Evaluate the Culture Industry

A collection of original essays 16 analyzing plays about the movie industry from the 1920s to the present. They concentrate however on such contemporary playwrights as David Mamet, Sam Shepard, David Rabe, and Adrienne Kennedy, highlighting their deconstruction of Hollywood myths to reveal painful

Playwrights have been depicting Hollywood as a cultural desert and an industry of profit-driven philistines ever since the early days of the movies. This collection of original essays covers the period from the 1920s to the present but concentrates on such contempory playwrights as David Mamet, Sam Shepard, David Rabe, Arthur Kopit, and Adrienne Kennedy. A substantial proportion of the volume is devoted to a discussion of the way in which these authors deconstruct Hollywood myths to reveal painful social and psychological issues in American life, providing a deeper and darker picture than the simple satires of movie-making in the 1920s and 1930s or Odets''s comparison of the commercially debased Hollywood with the higher, purer art of the theatre. To complete and further complicate the picture, the volume concludes with essays on the African American experience, gay writers, and feminist writing as seen through the lens of Marlane Myer''s ETTA JENKS. It is obvious that the legitimate stage remains a watchdog and constant critic of what is possibly the world''s most powerful cultural phenomenon This book will be eargerly read by all students of film, theatre, and 20th century literature.