WVU Libraries: Media Listing

20th Century Drama

Displaying 1 - 50 of 50

Title:	Ah, wilderness!
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT7081 AV LIB
Subject:	American drama. Drama 20th century. Television plays.
Abstract:	A Long Wharf Theatre Company production of Eugene O'Neill's nostalgic paean to the rites of adolescence. This affectionate comedy presents a 17 year old boy's coming of age during a summer in 1906 New England where he experiments with his first romantic crush, poetry, politics, wicked women and alcohol.

Title:	All my sons
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT4193 AV LIB
Subject:	Feature films. American drama. Drama 20th century.
Abstract:	Set during World War II, a troubled father and son know that a second son will never return from the war, even though the mother believes her missing boy will soon come home. But such turmoil only conceals greater anguish as suspicion falls on the father for hiding a devastating secret.

Title:	America: Broadway and dramatic realism
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA DV0248 AV LIB
Subject:	Theater United States History 20th century. Realism in literature. American drama 20th century History and criticism.
Abstract:	Theater director Sir Richard Eyre discusses dramatic realism on Broadway. Through interviews and archival footage, he explores playwrights who looked at the dark side of the American Dream, then studies musicals and their early innovators.

Title:	Bertolt Brecht.
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT4618 AV LIB
Subject:	German drama 20th century. Theater Biography.
Abstract:	A documentary portrait of this bold theatrical innovator and his work, showing his literary and social roots and the development of his vision of the theater.

Title:	Boys in the Band
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT4139 AV LIB
Subject:	Homosexuality in motion pictures. Feature films. Drama 20th century. American drama.
Abstract:	Boys in the Band was one of the first films to deal honestly with the miseries and heartbreaks of homosexual life in modern America.

Title:	Butley
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA DV0228 AV LIB
Subject:	College teachers Drama. Feature films. Drama 20th century.
Abstract:	Butley, a professor at a London University, finds out that his wife wants a divorce, his boyfriend is leaving him and his untalented colleague is getting a book published all in one day. Savage satire by Simon Grey.

Title:	Endgame
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT4154 AV LIB
Subject:	Drama 20th century. Theater of the absurd. Feature films.
Abstract:	The San Quentin Drama Workshop presents an English version of Beckett's play Fin de partie, or Endgame.

Title:	Enemies
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA DV0257 AV LIB
Subject:	Strikes and lockouts Russia 20th century Drama. Russian drama 20th century Film and video adaptations. Feature films.
Abstract:	Maxim Gorky's powerful drama about the social ferment that culminated in the 1917 Russian Revolution is set on an estate in provincial Russia in 1905. In a sunlit-dappled garden, some factory owners and their wives discuss the unrest amongst the workers. Rather than submit to a strike, they decide to close down the factory. When an owner is slain in a scuffle with a workman, the ensuing investigation uncovers the socialist fervor that is sweeping the countryside.

Title:	Enemy of the People
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT7034 AV LIB
Subject:	Feature films. Television adaptations. Television plays. Drama 20th century. American drama.
Abstract:	Arthur Miller's reworking of the classic play by Henrik Ibsen. A powerful study of an honest man persecuted because of his insistence on telling the truth.

Title:	Equus
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT4966 AV LIB
Subject:	Feature films. Drama 20th century.
Abstract:	Psychiatrist Martin Dysart is handed the most shocking case of his career when Alan Strang is entrusted to his care. Strang has blinded six horses with a metal spike, an eerie and terrifying act. The suspects in the psychological mustery that ensues include Alan's father, a man with a secret life, and the girl who was found hysterical on the night of the crime. The revelations lead doctor and patient to a climactic session in which the truth will be found, but at a price neither dares to contemplate.

Title:	Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman cometh
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT7093 AV LIB
Subject:	Drama 20th century. American drama
Abstract:	A film version of Eugene O'Neill's play which centers around wornout drunks and whores who have found sanctuary in Harry Hope's saloon. Each has their own "pipe-dream" about the future that sustains them until Hickey, the "Iceman", attempts to free them from their illusions by stripping them of their lies and guilt.

Title:	Father
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT7148 AV LIB
Subject:	Drama 20th century
Abstract:	A production of Strindberg's play Fadren (the father) about a tragic family feud. In the bitter atmosphere of a Calvary Captain's household, he and his wife, Laura, square off in an implacable battle of wills. But she devises a fiendishly subtle plan: to drive him insane by rumoring that he already is -- and by insinuating that he is not really the father of their child.

Title:	Frank Capra's Arsenic and old lace
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA DV2083 AV LIB
Subject:	Serial murders Drama. Aunts Drama. Feature films. Screwball comedy films. Comedy films. American drama 20th century Film and video adaptations. Films for the hearing impaired.
Abstract:	An easy going drama critic discovers that his kind and gentle Aunts Abby and Martha have a bizarre habit of poisoning gentlemen callers and burying them in the cellar.

Title:	Fugard's Sizwe Bansi is dead
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT7450 AV LIB
Subject:	Blacks South Africa Drama. African drama. Drama 20th century.
Abstract:	Discusses stylization, avant-gardism, black theatre, and realism using Athol Fugard's play Sizwe Bansi is Dead.

Title:	Galileo
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA DV0376 AV LIB
Subject:	Astronomy History Drama. Astronomers Italy Drama. Mathematicians Italy Drama. Feature films. Biographical films. Drama 20th century
Abstract:	This bio-pic is about Galileo, the 17th century Italian who laid the foundations of modern science. Galileo made himself one of the world's first telescopes and discovered the moons of Jupiter. He supported Copernicus' theory that the Earth revolved around the Sun. This brought him into conflict with the Catholic Church. By threatening him with torture, the Church forced him to recant his views in front of a tribunal, and sentenced him to house arrest. However, Galileo's trials and theories inspired others like Newton and Kepler to prove that the Earth was not the center of the Universe.

Title:	Harold Pinter with Benedict Nightingale
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT4948 AV LIB
Subject:	Authors, English 20th century Interviews. Drama 20th century.
Abstract:	Harold Pinter discusses his work with Benedict Nightingale with particular reference to his play "One for the road" which investigates torture in totalitarian regimes.

Title:	Heidi chronicles
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT6892 AV LIB
Subject:	Feature films. Drama 20th century. American drama.
Abstract:	Wendy Wasserstein's the Heidi Chronicles portrays a modern woman's personal struggles in the decades of the 60's, 70's, and 80's.

Title:	Homecoming.
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA DV0284 AV LIB
Subject:	Drama 20th century Feature films.
Abstract:	Deals with an all-bachelor, blue-collar family in North London disrupted by the return of the eldest son and his wife from America.

Title:	House of Bernarda Alba
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT7836 AV LIB
Subject:	Women Spain Family relationships Drama. Mourning customs Spain Drama. Drama 20th century.
Abstract:	Set in rural Spain at the turn of this century, the scene is a cloistered household managed by a newly widowed mother of five daughters. Under the shadow of the church and the tyranny bred from a need to protect the reputation of the family, the matron (Bernarda Alba) represses her daughters by enforcing an eight year mourning period. The tensions build rapidly among the imprisoned women, with a demented grandmother playing a role resembling that of a Greek chorus. Eventually, the natural spirits of the daughters circumvent Bernarda, but with tragic results.

Title:	In celebration
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA DV0286 AV LIB
Subject:	Working class families England Yorkshire Drama. Drama 20th century. Feature films.
Abstract:	Three sons return to the primitive Yorkshire mining town of their birth to celebrate their parents' fortieth wedding anniversary. During the celebration, their submerged hatreds and fears emerge from behind their model blue collar family facade.

Title:	Irish theater: raw bones and poetry
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA DV0247 AV LIB
Subject:	Theater Ireland History 19th century. Theater Ireland History 20th century. Irish drama 19th century. Irish drama 20th century.
Abstract:	"This program, hosted by renowned theater director Sir Richard Eyre, describes the battle for an authentic Irish theater, a theater of the working class, with realistic language and gritty social and political content. The influences of Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, John Millington Synge, and Sean O'Casey are analyzed in detail..." -- Films for the humanities & sciences website.

Title:	Looking back: British theater, two wars later
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA DV0249 AV LIB
Subject:	Theater Great Britain History 20th century. English drama 20th century History and criticism.
Abstract:	Focuses on theater in London from the 1920s to the 1960s, as self-expression struggled against rigid governmental censorship. Discusses contributions of playwrights John Osborne, Noel Coward, Terence Rattigan, Rodney Ackland, Brendan Behan, and Shelagh Delaney and with producers "Binky" Beaumont, George Devine, and John Littlewood.

Title:	Luther
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA DV0230 AV LIB
Subject:	Reformation Drama. Feature films. Biographical films. Drama 20th century.
Abstract:	An examination of two decades in the life of Martin Luther, whose deepening religious dilemmas and disillusionment with the Catholic Church culminated in an act of conscience and defiance that precipitated the Reformation.

Title:	Maids
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA DV0229 AV LIB
Subject:	Feature films. Drama 20th century.
Abstract:	Two Parisian sisters, Solange and Claire, serve as maids to a cruel socialite, but whenever she leaves, the two act out a bizarre, complex role-playing psychodrama of domination and control that feeds their powerful lust for revenge upon the mistress they serve.

Title:	Major Barbara
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT7399 AV LIB
Subject:	Feature films. Drama 20th century. Comedy films.
Abstract:	Bernard Shaw's story of the daughter of an armaments millionaire who joins the Salvation Army but later joins her new husband in his business when she realizes that his factory will enable her to save more souls than her charity work. The factory also will serve as an avenue for more money for the Salvation Army.

Title:	Master Harold... and the boys
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT4823 AV LIB
Subject:	Feature films. Drama 20th century
Abstract:	A young South African white man's frustration with the return home of his alcoholic, handicapped father turns into racist viciousness against the two black men who work for the family.

Title:	Member of the wedding
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT4213 AV LIB
Subject:	Feature films. American drama Women authors. Drama 20th century.
Abstract:	A motherless 12-year-old girl learns something about life when her sister gets married and a friend dies in this film adaption of Carson McCuller's play.

Title:	Modern American drama: Eugene O'Neill: Long day's journey into night.
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT0837 AV LIB
Subject:	American drama 20th century History and criticism.
Abstract:	Abridged version of an O'Neill masterpiece. Discovery is forced upon delusion and truth upon lies to produce a poetic portrait of O'Neill's morphine-addicted mother and her tragic family.

Title:	Mourning becomes Electra
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT7082 AV LIB
Subject:	American drama. Drama 20th century.
Abstract:	A television adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's classic American drama of love, revenge, murder and suicide. Set against the backdrop of a small New England town, it is a post-Civil War saga of a fictionalized family in a sometimes idealized, other times reflected version of O'Neill's own life and family. Loosely based on an ancient play by Sophocles.

Title:	New tenant
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT3486 AV LIB
Subject:	Drama 20th century. Comedy films. Theater of the absurd.
Abstract:	Presents an adaptation of the Ionesco play. In this "Theater of the Absurd" play, a new tenant moves into an apartment and brings in so much furniture with him that he is unable to get out.

Title:	'Night, mother
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT4824 AV LIB
Subject:	Drama 20th century Mothers and daughters Drama. Feature films. Suicide Drama.
Abstract:	Adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Marsha Norman, this taunt drama stars Anne Bancroft and Sissy Spacek as mother and daughter. Jessie (Spacek), puts all her affairs in order before telling her mother that she plans to commit suicide that evening. As her mother makes a frantic attempt to convince her to change her mind, many deeply embedded emotions rise to the surface.

Title:	Persecution and assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as performed by the inmates of the asylum of Charenton under the direction of the Marquis de Sade
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT6624 AV LIB
Subject:	Feature films. Drama 20th century.
Abstract:	The infamous Marquis de Sade, confined to an asylum, directs the other inmates in a re-enactment of the bloody assassination of French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat.

Title:	Philadelphia, here I come
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA DV0378 AV LIB
Subject:	Feature films. Drama 20th century.
Abstract:	Concerns the emotional struggle of a young Irishman preparing to emigrate to America, with one actor portraying his public self and another his private thoughts.

Title:	Piano lesson
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT6445 AV LIB
Subject:	Television plays. Feature films. Drama Black authors. Drama 20th century. American drama.
Abstract:	August Wilson's Pulitzer Prize-winning tale of a family caught between their heritage and a dream for the future. The Charles family clashes over the fate of a magnificent, carved piano that carries their family's story from their days as slaves. Boy Willie wants to sell the piano to buy a farm--the same fields their family worked as slaves. But his sister, Berniece, refuses to part with it. For her, the piano is their very soul, a legacy of pride and struggle that symbolizes their survival as a family. To resolve the conflict they must first deal with the past.

Title:	Picnic
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT4378 AV LIB
Subject:	Feature films. American drama. Drama 20th century.
Abstract:	The story covers one Labor Day week-end in a small Kansas town, and tells about the impact a virile drifter has on the lives of several women in town.

Title:	Playboy of the Western World
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT3484 AV LIB
Subject:	Feature films. Drama 20th century. Irish drama.
Abstract:	A bashful young man is transformed into a dashing hero after he "murders" his father.

Title:	Pygmalion
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT2039 AV LIB
Subject:	Drama 20th Century.
Abstract:	Follows the transformation of a Cockney flower girl's speech, dress, and manners as the result of a wager between Professor Henry Higgins and Colonel Pickering until she successfully passes as a duchess at an ambassador's reception.

Title:	Raisin in the sun
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT3546 AV LIB
Subject:	Drama 20th century. American drama African American authors.
Abstract:	Based in a Chicago ghetto in the mid-1950's, A Raisin in the Sun is the story of the Younger family. The just-widowed mother, her son and his wife, and the sister live together and cope with bigotry and hatred, as well as the strains of everyday living.

Title:	Samuel Beckett: silence to silence
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT2445 AV LIB
Subject:	Drama 20th century Irish drama.
Abstract:	Modern Irish playwright Samuel Beckett is portrayed through photographs, recitations of his works, and dramatizations of moments from his life.

Title:	Six characters in search of an author
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT6893 AV LIB
Subject:	Feature films. Drama 20th century.
Abstract:	"A director and a group of actors shooting a film are interrupted by the arrival of six people -- fictional characters in search of the writer who has abandoned them, unused, and incomplete. They demand that their story be finished, and to persuade the audience, recount their dark, strange histories."--Container.

Title:	Sorrows of gin
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT7445 AV LIB
Subject:	Feature films. Families Drama. American drama. Drama 20th century
Abstract:	The story of an eight year old girl's search for a sense of family amid the sophisticated and detached whirl of her parents' lives in modern suburban America.

Title:	Suddenly, last summer
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT3819 AV LIB
Subject:	Feature films. American drama. Drama 20th century.
Abstract:	A psychological drama about the effects of the sordid death of a young man upon his cousin, whose life and sanity are endangered, and upon his mother, a wealthy New Orleans widow whose diseased adoration of her son draws her into his depravity.

Title:	Swamp dwellers
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT7452 AV LIB
Subject:	Feature films. Drama 20th century. African drama.
Abstract:	A young African returns to his village from the city and discovers that he has grown too sophisticated to accept his parents' supertitious beliefs. Disillusioned also by urban life, he is caught between two conflicting cultures, unable to identify with either.

Title:	Tea and sympathy
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT4138 AV LIB
Subject:	Feature films. Homosexuality in motion pictures. Drama 20th century.
Abstract:	Drama about a teenaged boy at a New England boarding school who is wrongly accused of homosexuality. The wife of a housemaster offers the boy her understanding and love when she finds that he is deeply troubled about the accusations and questioning himself.

Title:	Thornton Wilder's Our town.
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT6931 AV LIB
Subject:	City and town life United States History Drama. Drama 20th century. American drama.
Abstract:	Presents Thornton Wilder's great American play about the residents of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire, during the early years of the 20th century. Features Hal Holbrook (Stage Manager), Ned Beatty (Dr. Gibbs), Robby Benson (George Gibbs), and Barbara Bel Geddes (Mrs Webb)

Title:	Three sisters
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA DV0285 AV LIB
Subject:	Feature films. Drama 20th century
Abstract:	Nearly a thousand miles away from their beloved Moscow, three sisters live in virtual exile. Olga attemps to support her family and home that is the sole legacy from their late father. Masha finds relief from an empty marriage by being involved with a passionate young colonel. Irina wills herself to return the affections of an ardent suitor in the hope that he will whisk her off to the city. Sift through the debris of their shattered dreams on the eve of the social and political upheaval that will transform Russia forever.

Title:	Top girls
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA DV1438 AV LIB
Subject:	Feminism and theater. Drama 20th century.
Abstract:	Explores Caryl Churchhill's play about the deliberate choices women must make about their own presentation for advancement in a patriarchal world. Includes commentary before the play and interviews with the playwright, director and cast members after the play.

Title:	Touch of the poet
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	VT7101 AV LIB
Subject:	Feature films. Drama 20th century. American Drama.
Abstract:	"Produced on Broadway in 1958, five years after Eugene O'Neill's death, the play was conceived as part of a nine-play chronicle spanning 175 years in the life of an American family. 'A Touch of the Poet,' set in a shabby tavern outside Boston in 1828, centers on Cornelius Melody, a proud Irishman who clings to memories of European gentility."

Title:	Waiting for Godot
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT4153 AV LIB
Subject:	Feature films. Drama 20th century. Theater of the absurd.
Abstract:	Abandoning sequential action, excluding everything in the nature of plot and creating an atmosphere of non-logic, Beckett brings the theatre of the absurd to its apogee in Waiting for Godot.

Title:	Well of the saints
Library:	Downtown Library, Media Services
Call Number:	MEDIA VT3485 AV LIB
Subject:	Irish drama. Drama 20th century.
Abstract:	An adaptation of John Synge's play of the same title, a naturalistic comedy which is based on the language, humor, and folk imagination of the Irish peasantry.