The History, Geography, and Heterogeneity of American Dramatic Realism

Abstract

By Joel Pfister University of North Carolina Press, 1995 American dramatic realism has always presented a paradox: while it dominates theatrical and dramatic institutions, major theatrical practitioners and academics denigrate its mimetic conventions and ideological import. Although playwrights such as David Mamet, August Wilson, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Eugene O'Neill command the stage, dramatic anthologies, and journalistic attention, scholars and artists attack dramatic realism from a broad range of academic and aesthetic perspectives. Deconstructionists castigate realism's reverence for referentiality, order, and closure and deride its reliance on consistent subjects as an origin of meaning (Barlow 162-66; Belsey). Feminists have suggested that portraying existing social conditions and behavior automatically surrenders to ideological prejudices implicated in the oppression of women (Case; Diamond). Politically progressive playwrights and critics drawing from either the Workers' Theatre Movement or Brechtian traditions also mistrust the ideological presuppositions of realist drama. They reject the obfuscation of social relationships and systems of exploitation resulting from the typically domestic focus of realist plays, and they censure the passive, self-indulgent attitude encouraged in the audiences of such plays (Boal; McGrath). Adherents to Antonin Artaud's theatrical ideals dismiss realism as a collection of passionless, worn-out conventions that cannot produce the ecstatic energies possible on the stage (Brook; Grotowski). A broad array of theatrical and performance innovators connected to neither Brecht nor Artaud also turn away from realism because of its rigid conventions, which favor the demands of mimetic representation over the wider possibilities of theatrical expression (Foreman). Invoking dramatic realism as a unified style pervasive and obvious in its features, such approaches fail to explain its appeal in the theater and universities of the US. Fortunately, a few re-