Dramatic Apparitions and Theatrical Ghosts

The Staging of Illusion across Time and Cultures

Ann C. Hall, Alan Nadel, Ann C. Hall, Alan Nadel

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781350371699
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781350371705
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Drama
• Index: Literature

Ghosts haunt the stages of world theatre, appearing in classical Greek drama through to the plays of 21st-century dramatists. Tracing the phenomenon across time and in different cultures, the chapters collected here examine their representation, dramatic function, and what they may tell us about the belief systems of their original audiences and the conditions of theatrical production. As illusions of illusions, they foreground many dramatic themes common to a wide variety of periods and cultures.

Arranged chronologically, this collection examines how ghosts represent political change in Athenian culture in three plays by Aeschylus; their function in traditional Japanese drama; the staging of the supernatural in the dramatic liturgy of the early Middle Ages; ghosts within the dramatic works of Middleton, George Peele, and Christopher Marlowe, and the technologies employed in the 18th and 19th centuries to represent the supernatural on stage.

Coverage of the dramatic representation of ghosts in the 20th and 21st centuries includes studies of Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit, August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle, plays by Sam Shepard, David Mamet, and Sarah Ruhl, Paddy Chayefsky's The Tenth Man, Suzan-Lori Parks' Topdog/Underdog, and the spectral imprint of Shakespeare's ghosts in the Irish drama of Marina Carr, Martin McDonagh, William Butler Yeats, and Samuel Beckett. The volume closes by examining three contemporary American indigenous plays by Anishinaabe author, Alanis King.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Dedication
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Summoning the Illusion within the Illusion: An Introduction
• 1 Made of Anxiety: Two (or Three) Ghosts in Aeschylus
• 2 A Theatre of Ghosts: Spirits on the Traditional Japanese Stage
• 3 The Holiest of Ghosts: Staging the Supernatural in the Early Middle Ages
• 4 “I Am Not Here”: Staging the (Un)Dead and the Thresholds of Theatrical Performance
• 5 Creating Stage Ghosts: The Archeology of Spectral Illusion
• 6 Blithe Spirit: A Spectral Anatomy of Astral Bigamy
• 7 The Ghost of Unrequited Love Possesses the Modern Heart: Paddy Chayefsky’s Dybbuk in The Tenth Man
• 8 Of Outlaws and Spirits: Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love (1983) and David Mamet’s Prairie du Chien (1979) and The Shawl (1985)
• 9 Literal Ghosts, Figurative Humanity and the Specter of Capitalism in August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle
• 10 “All Spooked Out”: Topdog/Underdog’s Ghosts
• 11 Deficient Visitations: Staging Ghostliness and Irishness in Martin McDonagh’s Comedy
• 12 Holding the Dead Close: The Comfort of Ghosts in the Plays of Sarah Ruhl
• 13 Anishinaabe, Dakhὀta, and Nimiipuu Hauntings in the Indigenous Drama of Alanis King, LeAnne Howe and Beth Piatote
• Index
• Copyright