Every Good Boy Deserves Favor and Professional Foul

Every Good Boy Deserves Favor and Professional Foul
Author: Tom Stoppard
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Total Pages: 98
Release: 2011-05-16
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 080219527X

It is Tom Stoppard's very special skill as the master comedian of ideas in the modern theater to create brilliant, biting humor out of serious concerns. Virtually assaulting the audience with a cascade of words and a conspicuous display of intellect, Stoppard, in "Every Good Boy Deserves Favor," contrasts the circumstances of a political prisoner and a mental patient in a Soviet insane asylum, to question the difference, if any, between free will and the freedom to conform. The situation, in which the mental patient "hears" an orchestra, is both chilling and funny as we are introduced to two men who happen to share the same name, are in carcerated in the same cell, and are attended by the same doctor.

Tom Stoppard in Conversation

Tom Stoppard in Conversation
Author: Tom Stoppard
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Total Pages: 330
Release: 1994
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780472065615

British playwright Tom Stoppard in his own words

The Cambridge Companion to Tom Stoppard

The Cambridge Companion to Tom Stoppard
Author: Katherine E. Kelly
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2001-09-20
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780521645928

Companion to the work of playwright Tom Stoppard who also co-authored screenplay of Shakespeare in Love.

The Theatre of Tom Stoppard

The Theatre of Tom Stoppard
Author: Anthony Jenkins
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 216
Release: 1989-04-20
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780521379748

Despite their box-office success, Tom Stoppard's plays have sometimes aroused academic hostility, his critics accusing Stoppard of cold intellectualism or frivolous showmanship. The purpose of this study is to examine the special problem of Stoppard's use of humor and games in conveying serious ideas. As an actor and director, Anthony Jenkins is concerned not just with the literary merit of Stoppard's plays, but also with the way they are written and shaped by the formal conventions particular to the media of stage, radio, and television. This book studies the stage space of each play as well as the actor's pauses and inner emotions. As a lecturer on drama, Jenkins follows Stoppard's career chronologically so that the radio and television plays are woven in with, and support various claims concerning, the major stage works. Unlike similar critical analyses of Stoppard's theater, this volume discusses all the latest plays, including The Real Thing, The Dog It Was That Died, and Squaring the Circle.

The Cambridge Introduction to Tom Stoppard

The Cambridge Introduction to Tom Stoppard
Author: William Demastes
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 179
Release: 2012-11-22
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1139851713

Tom Stoppard is widely considered to be one of the most important dramatists of contemporary theatre. In this Introduction, William Demastes provides an accessible overview of Stoppard's life and work, exploring all the complexity and variety that makes his drama so unique. Illustrated with images from a diverse range of Stoppard productions, the book provides clear evaluations of his major works, including Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Travesties, Arcadia and The Coast of Utopia, to provide the most up-to-date assessment available. Detailed chapters situate each play in the context of its sources, which include Shakespeare and contemporary existential thought, espionage, quantum physics, chaos theory, romanticism, landscape design, nineteenth-century European intellectual thought and European totalitarianism. The book also includes a section on Stoppard's Academy Award-winning film Shakespeare in Love.

Themes in Drama: Volume 12, Drama and Philosophy

Themes in Drama: Volume 12, Drama and Philosophy
Author: James Redmond
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 250
Release: 1990-07-05
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780521383813

This collection surveys madness in drama. It includes articles on 'The Duchess of Malfi'; virginity and hysteria in 'The Changeling'; the confined spectacle of madness in Beys's 'The Illustrious Madmen'; The male gaze in 'Woyzeck' - representing Marie and madness; and other drama examples.

Stoppard's Theatre

Stoppard's Theatre
Author: John Fleming
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2009-11-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0292781970

With a thirty-year run of award-winning, critically acclaimed, and commercially successful plays, from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1967) to The Invention of Love (1997), Tom Stoppard is arguably the preeminent playwright in Britain today. His popularity also extends to the United States, where his plays have won three Tony awards and his screenplay for Shakespeare in Love won the 1998 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. John Fleming offers the first book-length assessment of Stoppard's work in nearly a decade. He takes an in-depth look at the three newest plays (Arcadia,Indian Ink, and The Invention of Love) and the recently revised versions of Travesties and Hapgood, as well as at four other major plays (Rosencrantz,Jumpers,Night and Day, and The Real Thing). Drawing on Stoppard's personal papers at the University of Texas Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center (HRHRC), Fleming also examines Stoppard's previously unknown play Galileo, as well as numerous unpublished scripts and variant texts of his published plays. Fleming also mines Stoppard's papers for a fuller, more detailed overview of the evolution of his plays. By considering Stoppard's personal views (from both his correspondence and interviews) and by examining his career from his earliest scripts and productions through his most recent, this book provides all that is essential for understanding and appreciating one of the most complex and distinctive playwrights of our time.

Stages of Struggle

Stages of Struggle
Author: John Louis DiGaetani
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2015-01-27
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0786482591

One way or another, all playwrights use their work to explore the issues that interest them. The characters in a play may trumpet their creator's political views from the stage, or an unusual structure or set design may result from the playwright's interest in theatrical form. It is also common, particularly in the plays of the 20th and 21st century, to see a playwright delving into psychological issues raised by his own mental struggles or those of people he loves. Luigi Pirandello, tormented by the schizophrenia of his wife and other family members, repeatedly explored the problems caused by different visions of reality. Noel Coward's self-obsessed characters reflect his own narcissism. Alcoholism is a recurrent theme in the works of many playwrights, including Eugene O'Neill, Edward Albee, and Brian Friel. Through their exploration of these issues and more, the great writers of the theater have turned suffering into art. This book looks at the work of 20 playwrights to see how their examination of the disturbed mind has influenced the modern theater.