The preacher and his place

The essays that Martha Halsey and Phyllis Zarlin have written and collected in this volume deal with plays and playwrights primarily and only incidentally with actors, producers, theater buildings, mime, and other such manifestations of the performing arts. The period the authors cover is from the 1940s to the present. The Spanish Civil War (1936-39) shattered theatrical life. After the conflict ended on April 1, 1939, the theater was barely nourished by recourse to its past. Then "the contemporary Spanish theater" began on a particular date: October 14, 1949. On that night a new playwright, Antonio Buero Vallejo, saw the first performance of his Historia de una escalera (Story of a Staircase) produced at the Teatro Español. It spoke deeply to Spanish audiences then, and instilled a new vitality into the Spanish theater and attracted to drama a new generation of playwrights. It is those writers and younger ones that have followed in their footsteps that are studied in this fine collection of essays. The distinguished editors introductory essay, "Is There Life after Lorca?" is a readable survey of the period, and it sets the tone for the following specialized essays by other authors and by themselves.