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Overview
Mama Dada is the first book to examine Gertrude Stein's drama within the history of the theatric and cinematic avant-gardes. It explores her development of a unique playwriting esthetic based in avant-garde drama, cinema, and queer identity. This is the first study to examine in detail Stein's major plays—Four Saints in Three Acts (1927), They Must. Be Wedded. To Their Wife. (1931), Listen to Me (1936), Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights (1938), Yes Is for a Very Young Man (1944-46), and The Mother of Us All (1945-46)—and to distinguish between her major and minor dramatic works. It is also the first book to consider Stein's impact as a major influence on the American avant-garde, in particular her influence on The Living Theater, Richard Foreman, and Robert Wilson. Through close examination of her career and work (as text and in performance), Sarah Bay-Cheng aims to demystify Stein's drama and to connect her achievements to a larger historical and theoretical tradition in European and American theater.Synopsis
Mama Dada is the first book the examine Gertrude Stein's drama within the history of the theatrical and cinematic avant-gardes. Since the publication of Stein's major writings by the Library of America in 1998, interest in her dramatic writing has escalated, particularly in American avant-garde theaters. This book addresses the growing interest in Stein's theater by offering the first detailed analyses of her major plays, and by considering them within a larger history of avant-garde performance. In addition to comparing Stein's plays and theories to those generated by Dadaists, Surrealists, and Futurists, this study further explores the uniqueness of Stein via these theatrical movements, including discussions of her interest in American life and drama, which argues that a significant and heretofore unrecognized relationship exists among the histories of avant-garde drama, cinema, and homosexuality. By examining and explaining the relationship among these three histories, the dramatic writings of Stein can best be understood, not only as examples of literary modernism, but also as influential dramatic works that have had a lasting effect on the American theatrical avant-garde.