CONNECTION AND COMPLICITY: FIVE PLAYWRIGHTS OF THE SIXTIES

This dissertation focuses on five American playwrights of the 1960s in order to examine how their works reflect, react to and contribute to the intellectual and cultural milieu of the period. The first chapter of the study argues that the dominant social force of the 1960s--the counter culture--began to form at the close of the 1950s. At that time there was a general shift in attitudes, and the ideas put forth by writers such as Paul Goodman, Herbert Marcuse, Jacques Ellul and R. D. Laing began to dominate the intellectual and cultural spheres of the nation. Chapter I also shows that there was a similar shift in the theatre of the time. Groups like the Living Theatre and playwrights such as Jack Gelber and Edward Albee rebelled against the traditional, well-made plays of the American theatre and turned to the European avant-garde for many of their techniques. Drama in the 1960s thus moved toward a confrontation with controversial subject matter, toward experimentation with technique and toward more varied forms. The remainder of the dissertation examines the dramas of Jack Gelber, Edward Albee, Arthur Kopit, Sam Shepard and David Rabe in order to show how their works reflect the counter cultural shift away from establishment society and away from traditional theatre.; Three plays by Jack Gelber are discussed in the second chapter to show how Gelber foreshadowed concerns of the counter culture. He was intent, as was the counter culture, on erasing the boundary between art and life and between the stage and the audience. Moreover, Gelber focused on dreams, a major motif used by dramatists throughout the 1960s.; Chapter III uses the early plays of Edward Albee to show that he was linked to the counter culture through his concern with identity and social conditions. Albee turned to the absurdists for much of his inspiration. We find in his works a concern with the loss of meaning in contemporary life and the hope that we can still overcome that loss.; Chapter IV focuses on Indians, a play by Arthur Kopit. This play reflects the revisionist attitude taken by the theatre of the decade and the counter culture. Kopit examines the American past and shows that our history is as tainted with imperialist tendencies as our involvement in Vietnam suggests.; In Chapter V four plays by Sam Shepard are examined to show that Shepard, like many playwrights of the time and like the counter culture itself, was interested in speaking only to those who already accepted the notion that mainstream society lacks the sensitivity necessary for our survival.; The final full-length chapter discusses two plays by David Rabe that reflect the anti-Vietnam war sentiment that lay at the core of the counter culture. Rabe also reflects an Artaudian vision, and his dramas, through their violence, impose the kind of suffering upon his audience that Artaud would have praised and that so many dramatists of the 1960s tried to achieve.; The conclusion maintains that American theatre of the 1960s contributed to the drama of this country by introducing to American audiences significant avant-garde trends from Europe and by exploring new avenues of theatricality. Like the counter culture, the drama of the sixties was imbued with an intense romantic individualism, and once the war in Vietnam ceased being a focal point, the energy of both the avant-garde theatre and the counter cultural dissipated.