{"product_id":"9781611177381","title":"Understanding John Guare","description":"\u003cb\u003eA comprehensive study of an award-winning playwright known for unconventional blending of genres\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003eJohn Guare, one of the most innovative and influential contemporary American playwrights of the last sixty years, is best known for such works as \u003ci\u003eHouse of Blue Leaves,\u003c\/i\u003e winner of an Obie Award, the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play, and four Tony Awards, and \u003ci\u003eSix Degrees of Separation,\u003c\/i\u003e recipient of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best American Play and the Olivier Best Play Award and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama. In \u003ci\u003eUnderstanding John Guare,\u003c\/i\u003e William W. Demastes provides a concise biography and analyzes the playwright's career from his earliest works produced off-off Broadway in the 1960s to his most recent Broadway play, \u003ci\u003eA Free Man of Color,\u003c\/i\u003e a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in Drama.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOften compared to his contemporaries Sam Shepard and David Mamet, who have distinctive voices tied to their mastery of realistic, idiomatic American English, Guare has a style that is perhaps more varied, Demastes speculates, the result of his formal training in theater. After earning a bachelor's degree from Georgetown University, Guare earned an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama. He then polished his theater craft in New York City during the exciting and turbulent 1960s, breaking from realist conventions and creating an unlikely blend of comedy, burlesque, stand-up comedy, and absurdly incongruous plotlines. The result has been a theater of surprise that is rich in stage action and experimentally invigorating.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDemastes examines Guare's tools and techniques such as mixing serious with comic, creating characters who break into song and dance, inserting stand-up comedy routines, and drawing from the most absurd incongruities of everyday life. In doing so, Guare has created plays about the best and worst of humanity, about lost souls, and about delusional ideals.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"University of South Carolina Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47057553948912,"sku":"9781611177381","price":39.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781611177381_p0.jpg?v=1763844778","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781611177381","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}