This collection of essays dissects American plays, movies and other performance types that examine America and its history and culture. From Amerindian stage performances to AIDS and post-9/11 America, it displays the various and important ways theatre and performance studies have examined and conversed with American culture and history.

Autorentext
WILLIAM W. DEMASTES is Professor of English at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA. IRIS SMITH FISCHER is Associate Professor of English at the University of Kansas, USA.

Inhalt
The Savage Other: "Indianizing" and Performance in Nineteenth-Century American Culture; R.K. Bank Defining Faith: Theatrical Reactions to Pro-Slavery Christianity in Antebellum America; A.E. Hughes Negotiating a New Identity: Irish-Americans and the Variety Theatre in the 1860s; S. Kattwinkel Drama and Cultural Pluralism In The America of Susan Glaspell's Inheritors.; N.H.Real Beneath the Horizon: Pipe Dreams, Identity, and Capital in Eugene O'Neill's First Broadway Play; J.E.Jenkins Vernacularizing Brecht: The Political Theater of the New Deal; I.Saal Let Freedom Ring: Mordecai Gorelik's Politicized Stage Designs; A.Fletcher Choreographing America: Re-defining American Ballet in the Age of Consensus; A.Harris Arthur Miller: In Memoriam; C.Bigsby Menageries, Melting Pots, Movies: Tennessee on America; J.V. Haedicke Facts on Trial: Documentary Theatre and Zoot Suit; J.O'Connor "The Ground on Which I Stand is I, Too, Am America": African American Cycle Dramatists, Dramas and the Voice of Inclusion; L.Menson-Furr My Uncle Sam in Consumer Society: Len Jenkin and the Death of Death of a Salesman; S.Feffer From Paradise to Parasite: Information Theory, Noise, and Disequilibrium in John Guare's Six Degrees of Separation; M.Heuvel "Not Very Steven Spielberg"?: Angels in America on Film; D.Geis Reflections in a Pool: Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses and post-9/11 New York City; A.Nouryeh An American Echo: Suzan-Lori Parks's The America Play and James Scruggs's Disposable Men; R.Vorlicky List of Contributors Index