W. B. Worthen

The history of drama is typically viewed as a series of inert «styles.» Tracing British and American stage drama from the 1880s onward, W. B. Worthen instead sees drama as the interplay of text, stage production, and audience.<br /><br />How are audiences manipulated? What makes drama meaningful? Worthen identifies three rhetorical strategies that distinguish an O&apos;Neill play from a Yeats, or these two from a Brecht. Where <i>realistic</i> theater relies on the...