“The most lavish and picturesque special effects are what come out of the mouths of the people onstage…Mr. Kushner makes words sing, swoon and somersault as no other living American playwright does.” –Ben Brantley, New York Times “Rapture comes naturally to playwright Tony Kushner, and in The Illusion, he plants a big swoony kiss on the lips of the theater.” –Nelson Pressley, Washington Post “[The Illusion] certainly has the stamp of Kushner’s delight in language. This is a modern interpretation, filled with energy, colour and humour.” –Telegraph (UK) “Fantastical tribute to the magic of theater…You may resist its charms at first, but soon enough you soften and, intoxicated by Kushner's language and swayed by the music of his ideas, you submit to The Illusion's ravishments.” –TimeOut New York Tony Kushner’s adaptation of The Illusion triumphs as a thoroughly modern rendering of Pierre Corneille’s neoclassical French comedy while featuring the exquisite wordplay, beguiling comedy and fierce intelligence found in all of Kushner’s work. An enchanting argument for the power of theatrical imagination over reality, The Illusion weaves obsession and caprice, romance and murder, fact and fiction, into an enticing exploration of the greatest illusion of all—love.

The Vital Lie is the first book to examine the reality-illusion conflict in modern drama from Ibsen to present-day playwrights. The book questions why vital lies, lies necessary for life itself, are such an obsessive concern for playwrights of the last hundred years. Using the work of fifteen playwrights, Abbott seeks to discover if modern playwrights treat illusions as helpful or necessary to life, or as signals of sicknesses from which human beings need to be cured. What happens to characters when they are forced to face the truth about themselves and their worlds without the protection of their illusions? The author develops a three-part historical analysis of the use of the reality-illusion theme, from its origins as a metaphysical search to its current elaborations as a theatrical game.

"The precise elation between the spectator and the work of art was a matter of great interest to late renaissance and baroque artists, playwrights as well as painters, In Shakespeare's plays the relation between audience and stage life is crucial. The plays constantly remind the audience of the complex fictiveness of their experience yet they also project a reality specifically through illusion. indirections is a study of twelve plays in which Shakespeare sets up situations and relationships between the characters analogous to the relationship established between audience and play. this book examines the varied uses of illusion, deceit, disguise, and manipulation in the plays, both comedies and tragedies, and traces Shakespeare's use of illusion through his career- from the buoyant optimism of the great comedies and the ambiguity of the middle years to the new richness and power in the romanceds. Dawson suggests that the way characters respond to illusory situations sets up a model for the way audiences are meant to respond to the plays themselves. Such action at least intially establishes a basis for the movement of characters from self-delusion to self-knowledge. This process of self- realization enables the characters to distinguish truth from appearance, love from infatuation; and significantly, it is a direct result of involvement with illusion and role-playoing. It is as if the characters must arrive, within the movement of the plot, at an understanding of, and response to, the nature of drama itself parallel to the audience's characters, where each in a sense represents the other, depends for its life on the physical and psychic distances created by the theater."- Anthony B. Dawson.

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, University of Kassel, course: 20th Century British and American Drama, language: English, abstract: Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" has become one of the major works in American dramatic history (Roundane 42) and a huge career boost for Albee himself. This is not surprising as this masterpiece is considered to be revolutionary and ambitious as well as scandalous and highly controversial at the same time. The play, which has been discussed so passionately, "gives us four almost unrelievably nasty people who for something like three-and-a-half hours ...] take part in a drunken orgy of backbiting, bitchery, humiliation, verbal castration, exposure and physical mauling" (Hilfer 121). Not only wanting to entertain the audience but also including social criticism, Albee makes use of essential themes which help to make people understand their situation and to make them realize the necessity to act in order to modify society. In the course of this paper, I am going to attempt to illustrate the importance of the American Dream and to establish a connection to the topic of truth and illusion which can be understood as the basis of Albee's concept. To start with, I will exemplify different aspects of the American Dream and point out selected features of the characters that can be linked to the American Dream. In order to appreciate most of the professional criticism, it is of the utmost importance to look at the issue of truth and illusion that is predominant in many parts of the play. Examining the subject matter of illusion, I will concentrate on the imaginary son as well as the relationship between the guests Nick and Honey. In a last step, I am going to explain the issue of truth in the play by examining the killing of the imaginary son and the confession of Nick and his wife. Examining selected scenes, I will try to clarify the aspects Albee criticizes and explain th

Excerpt from The Cave of Illusion: A Play in Four Acts la piece qu'on va lire appartinent a un genre igrat et difficile, mais il semble bein que ce genre soit aujourd'hui le moins artificiel, le plus vivant, le plus sincerem et qui sait? le seul qui reponde a toutes les realites, et surtout aux plus hautes, de notre vie. L'experience nous montre qu'il n'est plus possible de faire de bonnes tragedies. Parcourez toute lalitterature de la seconds moitie de ce siecle, vous n'en trouverez probablement qu'une qui ne tombera pas dans l'oubli, c'est l'Atlanta in Calydon de Swinburne. Il est vrai que c'est moins une tragedie qu'un grand poeme lyrique dialogue. D'autre part, la piece poetique, qu'elle se presentesous forme de drame romantique ou de fantaisis lyrique, se fait extremement rare. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Nadia Anwar analyzes selected post-independence Nigerian dramas using the conceptual framework of metatheatre, a theatrical strategy that foregrounds the process of play-making by breaking the dramatic illusion. She argues that distancing, as a function of metatheatre, creates a balanced theatrical experience and environment in terms of the emotive and cognitive levels of reception of a particular performance. Anwar's book is the first in-depth study to apply the concept of metatheatre to Nigerian drama. She brings the perspectives of Bertolt Brecht, Thomas J. Scheff, and other theoreticians of dramatic distancing to the analysis of plays by authors such as Wole Soyinka, Ola Rotimi, Femi Osofisan, Esiaba Irobi, and Stella ‘Dia Oyedepo.