What Is Theatre?: Incorporating The Dramatic Event and Other Reviews, 1944-1967 - Softcover

Bentley, Eric

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11 ratings by Goodreads

9780809096954: What Is Theatre?: Incorporating The Dramatic Event and Other Reviews, 1944-1967

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0809096951 ISBN 13: 9780809096954

Publisher: Hill and Wang, 2000

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Introduction by Donald Lyons

What Is Theatre?, originally published in 1968, collects all of Eric Bentley's theater criticism. Bentley's most productive years as a reviewer coincided with some of the greatest years of twentieth-century drama. His essays cover the premieres of works by T. S. Eliot, Tennessee Williams, Jean Anouilh, and Arthur Miller, among others, as well as subjects as far-ranging as Charlie Chaplin and the Peking Opera--and each contains insights that are still relevant. What Is Theatre? is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding what our American theater has been, is now, and could become.

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About the Author:

Eric Bentley is considered the world's greatest authority on Brecht. He is the author of many books, including, most recently, Bentley on Brecht. He lives in New York.

Review:

"First-rate dissection of styles in American acting . . . Contains some of the most penetrating comments yet made on Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams."--The Times Literary Supplement

"Combines theoretical knowledge and practical fervor in a way unknown to modern English criticism."--Kenneth Tynan, The Observer

"Bentley is one of the true essayists of t he century, in the class of Gide or Camus or Mann."--Albert Bermel, The New Leader

"The greatest critic of the drama now writing in English."--Jacques Barzun

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