The Theory of the Modern Stage: An Introduction to Modern Theatre and Drama

by Eric Bentley (Editor)

This is an anthology in which Artaud, Brecht, Gordon Craig, Stanislavski and other great theatrical theorists reveal ideas underlying their productions and point to the possiblilities of the modern theatre.

Genres: Theatre, Art, Theory, Nonfiction, Drama, Plays

496 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Eric Russell Bentley was a British-born American theater critic, playwright, singer, editor, and translator whose work shaped twentieth-century theatrical discourse. Educated at University College, Oxford, and Yale University, where he earned his doctorate, he later taught at Black Mountain College and Columbia University and served as theatre critic for The New Republic. Known for his incisive and uncompromising criticism, he became one of the foremost English-language authorities on Bertolt Brecht, translating, editing, and performing Brecht’s work and recording landmark albums of Brecht songs. Bentley was also an accomplished playwright, with Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been, drawn from Un-American Activities Committee hearings, becoming his most produced play. He appeared for decades as a cabaret performer and was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame. An advocate for artistic and political freedom, he publicly opposed the Vietnam War and later spoke openly about his homosexuality and its influence on his work.

Reviews

[Daniel Gallimore · Rating 4 out of 5]

484 pages of modern dramatic theory (much of it translated material) may not be everyone's cup of tea, but the writing has an heroic quality as the dramaturgs battle against the dictates of fashion and sometimes difficult political circumstances, and in theory's original sense of contemplation ('theoria') Appia on stage lighting and so on become resoundingly poetic. Eric Bentley was a Brechtian (he first met Brecht in 1942 and died in 2020 at the age of 103), but for my money the figure who stands literally and spiritually at the heart of this book is Stanislavsky with his insistence that acting is not about lying convincingly but can actually reveal the actor's inner truth. Given the topic's complexity, Lukacs' argument that in the relativistic modern age drama is no longer able to achieve 'the great and spontaneous unity of ethics and aesthetics' that is taken for granted in the ancients and in Shakespeare is also helpful.

[Tentatively, Convenience · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hhmm.. Welp, my copy is a hardback from 1972 - but this edition is close enuf. This has writings by Antonin Artaud, Bertold Brecht, & E. Gordon Craig - amongst many others - but these 3 are probably enuf to get across the idea of why I'm giving it a high rating. Craig, if I remember correctly, proposed a theater of all sets, lighting & motion - W/O actors. Now, I skimming thru his section of this bk & I see no reference to that & I don't know if Craig actually ever realized those ideas or even if I'm confused about the whole business. Nonetheless, it's largely b/c of my association of Craig w/ such things that I give this bk the rating I do. At any rate, this is probably the largest concentration of theater theory that I've ever read & it's important to me for that alone. I've gone thru the "plays" section of my library - picking out the ones I've read to list here on GoodReads. It's interesting to see the collection of plays that I have & to then see how few of them I've read. It reminds me that I don't like reading plays much. &, as w/ all my attempts to scratch the surface of what I've read, it makes me want to read MORE, MORE!

[Libby · Rating 3 out of 5]

have only read "Naturalism in the Theater"- Zola and "The Sociology of Modern Drama" -Lukacs

a good collection of criticism to have

[Wendy]

I know I read some of this, way back in my drama days, as some of it is underlined and circled. Ah drama classes, how I miss you!