'This is a collection of ten long essays arranged around the primordial subject of realism and non-realism, or anti-realism, in the drama, as this subject manifests itself in modern Europe and
contemporary America from Ibsen to Shaw to the symbolists, expressionists, surrealists, dadaists, futurists, and absurdists. This book treats not only the issue of realism versus anti-realism
in theater from a practical as well as a theoretical point of view. It also treats at least two subjects related to this issue: the superfical or bourgeois realism that has long crippled the
theater versus the critical and sometimes poetic realism that liberates it; and the avant-garde, the rearguard, and the middle-to-advanced artistic ground in between claimed by Bertolt Brecht
and Harold Pinter. Special attention is paid, moreover, to the first thoroughgoing American avant-garde dramatist, Gertrude Stein. In sum, this book treats the subject of realism and
non-realism from the point of view of the theater's ability to create not only the illusion of reality onstage, but also the reality of illusion'--Publisher's description, back cover.
