Download or read book Tragicomedy and Contemporary Culture written by John Orr and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-27 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines the historical relationship between tragicomedy in the modernist theatre and the performative culture of Western consumer societies. While discussing a wide range of playwrights, it focusses specifically on the work of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Sam Shepard. Their plays, it is argued, illuminate the forms of pleasure, fear, performance and corruption which dominate our daily lives. Tragicomedy is seen as unique becuae of the existential playfulness and confusion of its protagonists, and because of its muted vision of apocalypse in the nuclear age.