Beat Drama - Playwrights and Performances of the 'Howl’ Generation

Readers and acolytes of the vital early 1950s-mid 1960s writers known as the Beat Generation tend to be familiar with the prose and poetry by the seminal authors of this period - Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane Di Prima, and many others

Yet all of these authors, as well as other less well-known Beat figures, also wrote plays - and these, together with their countercultural approaches to what could or should happen in the theatre - shaped the dramatic experiments of the playwrights who came after them, from Sam Shepard to Maria Irene Fornes, to the many vanguard performance artists of the seventies

This volume, the first of its kind, gathers essays about the exciting work in drama and performance by and about the Beat Generation, ranging from the well-known Beat figures such as Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs, to the “Afro-Beats” - LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Bob Kaufman, and others

It offers original studies of the women Beats - Di Prima, Bunny Lang - as well as groups like the Living Theater who in this era first challenged the literal and physical boundaries of the performance space itself

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction

Part I - The “Canonical” Beat Writers
Jack Kerouac: The Beat Generation

Gregory Corso and the Cambridge Poets' Theatre - Ronna Johnson, Tufts University, USA

Lawrence Ferlinghetti: One-act Plays - Deborah Geis, DePauw University, USA

Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs: Forerunners of Performance Poetry

Part II - The New York Poets Theatre
Diane Di Prima: Murder Cake, Whole Honey, and other works

Michael McClure: Poetic Plays

John Wieners: Theatre Experiments and Poetic Plays

Frank O'Hara: Drama and the Transition to Language Poetry

Part III - From the Margins: Drama of the Afro-Beats and Women Beats
LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka): Dutchman and Other Plays; Theatre of Black Power - Jimmy Fazzino, University of California-Santa Barbara, USA

Bob Kaufman and Ted Joans: Political Performance

Ed Bullins and Black Arts drama

Adrienne Kennedy and Surrealism

Bunny Lang and Cambridge Poets Theatre - Kevin Killian

Anne Waldman and Feminist Performance

Maria Irene Fornes, Rochelle Owens, Rosalyn Drexler

Part IV - Transitions: From Experimental Theatre to Film
The Living Theater: Confronting Audiences - Tim Good, DePauw University, USA

Sam Shepard: Early Plays

Beats Making Films: Pull My Daisy

Playing the Beats: Heart Beat, Howl

Adapting Kerouac: The Subterraneans, On the Road - Sara Villa, University of Montreal

Notes on Contributors
Index

The Series Editors are Enoch Brater and Mark Taylor-Batty