DECONSTRUCTING CHARACTER: Transformations in Postmodernist American Drama

“Deconstructing Character: Transformations in Postmodernist American Drama” explores the experimentation of the late fifties and early sixties, and goes on to examine the impact it had on the conventional categories of drama.

The transformation act, which began as an acting exercise, developed into a medium of exploration of the fragmented and fractured self. Moving into philosophical and existential inquiry it went on to become a method of structural coherence. It method of structural coherence. It approaches questions of space, of body language, of audience involvement and accommodates both ritual and myth.

The present work views theatrical concepts and literary constructs as interrelated entities and traces the connections between experimentation and theory through the plays of American dramatists 1960–1990.