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''Plays of Three Decades'' is a collection of three plays by the prolific playwright, screenwriter, and science writer Robert Ardrey. The three plays included are ''Thunder Rock'', Ardrey's international classic about hope and human progress; ''Jeb'', Ardrey's post-WWII civil rights play about a black soldier returning from the Pacific; and ''Shadow of Heroes'', a documentary drama about the prelude to and aftermath of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The last play resulted in the release of two political prisoners from Soviet custody.〔Quinn, Edward. ''History in Literature: A Reader's Guide to 20th Century History and the Literature It Inspired.'' New York: Infobase. 2009. Pp. 173-4. Print.〕〔Ardrey, Robert. Quoted in Quinn, Edward. ''History in Literature: A Reader's Guide to 20th Century History and the Literature It Inspired.'' New York: Infobase. 2009. Pp. 173-4. Print: "On October 18, 1958, eleven days after the () opening, Radio Budapest announced that Rajk had been released from prison and returned with her son to Budapest."〕 ==Preface== ''Plays of Three Decades'' includes a lengthy preface by the author entitled "A Preface to the Plays Including Certain Personal Reflections." The introduction includes information about Ardrey's personal relationship to the theater, but it is mainly concerned with detailing the history of the avant garde theater movement of 1930's New York which Ardrey identifies the plays as belonging to. An ''avant garde'' theatre occurs when enough skeptical artists raise their voices in a common tune. The three plays presented in this volume might be dedicated to that ''avant garde'' theatre of which they were a part and which, born in the 1930's, died prematurely soon after the Second World War and like a tropical sunset left no afterglow. We had no real name for our kind of play in America. Sometimes we called it the Theatre of Social Protest, a phrase which scarcely did the plays justice. On the Continent it was called the ''théâtre engagé''—the theatre engaged with its times—and that is the term I prefer."〔Ardrey, Robert "A Preface to the Plays Including Certain Personal Reflections." pp. 8-37 in ''Plays of Three Decades.'' New York: Atheneum. 1968. Print〕 Ardrey writes that the ''théâtre engagé'' was part of a larger flourishing of dramatic talent that began in 1920's New York. Among the playwrights important to this moment he identifies Eugene O'Neill, Sidney Howard, Maxwell Anderson, Elmer Rice, Marc Connelly, Philip Barry, S. N. Behrman, Robert E. Sherwood, George S. Kaufman, Moss Hart, Howard Lindsay, Russel Crouse, Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht.〔 But the necessity for an avant garde movement, he writes, came with the Great Depression. Ardrey graduated from the University of Chicago in 1930, after having become the writing protege of Thornton Wilder. His graduation came during the beginning of the Great Depression. He writes that the lack of career prospects gave him plenty of time to write while he made a living on odd jobs. Among these were working (without qualifications) as a statistician, lecturing in anthropology at the Chicago World's Fair, conducting door-to-door surveys in Chicago's West Side slums, and forging medieval plainsongs.〔 He also writes that the Great Depression required that artists become engaged with the times. The beginning of serious engagement in the theater he identifies as Clifford Odets' play of 1935, ''Waiting for Lefty''. ''Waiting for Lefty'' was produced by the radical theater collective the Group Theatre, who would eventually produce several of Ardrey's plays, including ''Thunder Rock''. Ardrey writes that after ''Waiting for Lefty'' many significant socially engaged plays followed: Sidney Kingsley's ''Dead End'', Irwin Shaw's ''Bury the Dead'', Odets' third play, ''Golden Boy'', and Lillian Hellman's ''The Little Foxes'' and ''Watch on the Rhine''. His own own first three contributions to the movement were ''Star Spangled'' (produced in 1937), ''Casey Jones'' (1938), and ''How to Get Tough About It'' (also 1938). Though all three of these plays received significant critical praise〔Wood, E.R. "Introduction" in Ardrey, Robert, ''Thunder Rock.'' London, 1966, p. 16.〕〔Atkinson, Brooks. Quoted on the 1938 playbill of ''Casey Jones'' from the Group Theater production at the Fulton Theater.〕〔Kissel, Howard. ''David Merrick, the Abominable Showman: The Unauthorized Biography'' 1993. New York: Applause Books. p. 71.〕 the overall reviews were mixed and the plays were commercially unsuccessful.〔 In recognition of ''Casey Jones'', though, Ardrey was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for promise as a young playwright.〔The Robert Ardrey Estate Website. () "About"〕 At the end of the decade, Ardrey writes, the Great Depression ceased to be the most important issue which a socially engaged theater would have to address. "The threat of war began to overshadow the reality of want."〔 It was in response to this threat, motivated especially by the exigency of the Munich Agreement, that Ardrey wrote ''Thunder Rock.'' 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Plays of Three Decades」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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