History Plays (PAJ Books) - Softcover

Charles L. Mee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801857929 ISBN 13: 9780801857928

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998

Synopsis

A well established historian, Charles Mee is known in different circles as an avant-garde playwright whose caustic, anarchic plays are often based on historical events. Mee's plays combine wickedly witty dialogue with slapstick comedy, seeking not so much to explain historical events as to show the mindlessness of those who make history. His characters range from Hecuba to Wittgenstein to Claire Booth Luce to Joe Pesci; the settings from Carthage to Palm Beach. Mee's plays have been produced at theaters including the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago; the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles; and the Public Theater in New York City. His collaboration with the choreographer Martha Clark, Vienna: Lusthaus, won the Obie Award for Best Play in 1986.

About this title

About the Author:

Other plays by Charles Mee include Chiang Kai Chek, My House was Collapsing Toward One Side, Agamemnon, Another Person is a Foreign Country, and The Imperialists at the Club Cave Canem. Among his books are Playing God; The Genius of the People; Meeting at Potsdam; The End of Order, and The Marshall Plan.

Review:

In the trashed, surreal world of Charles L. Mee's plays, fairy tales are garbled, chums converse―like Eichmann―from inside individual glass booths, and dead national leaders perform jaunty dances with their bare buttocks.

(New York Times)

About this edition

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0801857929
• ISBN 13: 9780801857928
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 344