Urban Drama : The Metropolis in Contemporary North American Plays

Identifying an apprehension about the nature and constitution of urbanism in North American plays, Westgate examines how cities like New York City and Los Angeles became focal points for identity politics and social justice at the end of the twentieth century, and how urban crises inform the dramaturgy of contemporary playwrights. "Identifying an apprehension about the nature and constitution of urbanism in North American plays, Urban Drama examines how cities like New York City and Los Angeles became focal points for identity politics and social justice at the end of the twentieth century. In plays as different as Tony Kushners Angels in America, Anna Deavere Smiths Twilight Los Angeles, 1992, and David Henry Hwangs FOB, these concerns became spatialized against the urban environment, suggesting a shift of consciousness toward what critical geography has argued: The social is always spatial. Urban Drama interrogates how this shift informs playwriting in the 1980s and 1990s and inspires new modes of dramatic representation"-- Provided by publisher Front Matter....Pages i-xi Introduction: A Rhetoric of Sociospatial Drama....Pages 1-15 Front Matter....Pages 17-17 “Against the Law in this City”: Public Space in New York City....Pages 19-57 “City, Bad Place”: Architecture and Disorientation in New York City....Pages 59-89 Front Matter....Pages 91-91 “Livin’ in a Paradise”: Suburbanism in Los Angeles....Pages 93-124 “Does it Explode?”: Ghettoization and Rioting in New York City and Los Angeles....Pages 125-157 “Part of the City”: Enclaves and Exiles in Los Angeles....Pages 159-192 Back Matter....Pages 193-239