Superfluities Redux
On culture and theatre, by George Hunka
A new journal for theatre minima and organum posts exclusively can now be found here.
Saturday, 06 October 2007
Act French: Contemporary Plays from France. Edited by Philippa Wehle. 196 pages, with an introduction, "The Power of Words," by Wehle, and short biographies of the playwrights. PAJ Publications, 2007. Paperback, $18.95.
Just published by PAJ Publications, this anthology of seven recent plays is a fine picture of contemporary French drama, often neglected here in the United States. Among the best plays in the volume are José Pliya's Pinteresque examination of power, colonialism and sexuality We Were Sitting on the Shores of the World ... and Michel Vinaver's oratorio on the World Trade Center disaster, 11 September 2001; perhaps my favorite is Emmanuelle Marie's self-styled "partita" on female sexuality, Cut, which easily leaves The Vagina Monologues in the dust. (Sad to note that Marie died on 10 May 2007, just before this book went to press.)
These plays reflect a renewed interest in content and language inflected with a strong sense of both global concerns and deeply intimate personal experience, quite often simultaneously. It's nice, especially, to have these works in a single volume; many of them constitute the first United States publications of these dramatists. The volume is prefaced with a knowledgable, informative introduction by Philippa Wehle, which sets the plays in their historical and political contexts. This book, along with a collection of plays by Maria Irene Fornes, Letters from Cuba, is among the first results of a revitalised book publication effort from PAJ: attractive, well-designed volumes devoted to contemporary drama and theatre from around the world, with more to come.
Posted at 10.20 am in /Drama
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