Critique Of The Ideological Fantasy And Beyond

This dissertation focuses on the American mass commercial drama and alternative drama from 1945 to 2008 from the perspective of ideological critique and transcendence. The paper is, by putting the non-Broadway alterative drama in the complete system of the American theatre industry in which the interaction between the alternative drama and the Broadway's commercial theater are obviously seen, to analyze four ideological illusions in the plays, namely the illusion of rationalism, of individualism, of democracy and freedom, and of the manifest destiny.The dissertation reaches the following conclusions:The plays of alternative drama in the Off-Broadway, Off-Off Broadway and regional theatre convergence of Antonin Artaud's brutal theatre theory and Brecht's epic drama theory creatively adopt the non-rational or madness to criticize and surpass the mainstream ideological illusions. This tendency was rooted in the ancient Greek tragedy and has formed its foundation in the serious drama ever since. At the same time the tendency has become the target of repression and exclusion by the authority for its power of both subverting the established ideas and breaking the ideological illusions. American alternative drama inherits and absorbs this suppressed tradition, carrying on what Nietzsche revealed as the modern irrational Western drama theory.Alternative drama fights against the Broadway mass commercial drama which carries the ideological illusion. Most of the alternative plays are played at the small old theatres, abandoned basements, bars, mezzanines, churches and other non-Broadway theater stages, whose location carries the meaning of what Bakhtin calls the Carnival "plaza". Non-Broadway's alternative drama has always been committed to the change of the stereotypes of the traditional theatre, allowing the audience to actively participate in the drama performances, calling back the true nature of the play as a public revelry, or a ceremony for the instinct.Alternative theatre speaks for the silent group, and offers them a stage of voices. The group includes vagrants, homosexuals, minorities, and the mad. They are actually outside of the mainstream group who takes them as mad. Alternative theatre carries with them a second sight—the perception the mainstream culture lacks—out of their oppressed state which makes them see through the problems of the civilization. Through the figures in the play, the American dramatists form their critique of the official ideological illusion, exploring ways of the dilemma brought by the civilization. Tennessee Williams aimed to reconstruct the mysterious world in his plays in the 1950s; Edward Albee expressed his Mao-style socialist ideals in his plays in the 1960s; John Guare called for the return of the traditional American moral values of the family in the 1970s; and in the 21^st century Tony Kushner proposed a different social discipline—the maternal principle. Drama becomes the media for playwright to express their own ideas and the laboratory to test the social attitudes and social changes. Alternative theatre, therefore, can be taken as the serious drama for life.The dissertation also holds the idea that another danger should be guarded against, and that is the will of the other could be re-ideologized when the ideological illusion is put to criticism, forming the vicious cycle. Amiri Baraka's theater practice shows his failure of coping with this problem.American theatrical culture has maintained a strong vitality, not only because it has the world's most advanced art of the Broadway theater, but also because it has a large group of dramatists showing their resistance to the commercial Broadway theater. It is they who assume the duty of intellectuals, challenge the authority and stereotypes, and voice their ideas, so that they could always take the social problems into their consideration, maintaining their independent way of thinking and at the same time helping form the American way of self transcendence.