Author Description

Product Description This book is not available. From the Author Abstract: It is my belief that theatre is the telling of stories, and that playwrighting is the creation of those stories. Regardless of the underlying motives (to make the audience think, to make them feel, to offend them or to draw them in,) the core of the theatre world is the storyline. Some critics write of the importance of audience effect and audience reception; after all, a performance can only be so named if at least one person is there to witness it. So much of audience effect is based the storyline itself - that structure of which is created by the power characters have over others. Theatre generalists learn of Aristotle's well-made play structure. Playwrights quickly learn to distinguish between protagonists and antagonists. Actors are routinely taught physicalizations of creating "status" onstage. A plotline is driven by the power that people, circumstances, and even fate exercise over protagonists. Most audience members naturally sympathize with the underdog or victim in a given storyline, and so the submissive or oppressed character becomes (largely) the most integral. By what process, then, is this sense of oppression created in a play? How can oppression/victimization be analyzed with regard to character development? With emerging criticism suggesting that the concept of character is dying, what portrayals of victim have we seen in the late 20th century? What framework can we use to fully understand this complex concept? What are we to see in the future, and how will the concept evolve? In my attempt to answer these questions, I first analyze the definition of "victim" and what categories of victimization exist--the victim of a crime, for example, or the victim of psychological oppression. "Victim" is a word with an extraordinarily complex definition, and so for the purposes of this study, I focus entirely on social victimization--that is, oppression or har