Jack Gelber: Consider This explores the works of American playwright Jack Gelber (1932–2003), whose groundbreaking, immersive play The Connection (produced by The Living Theatre in 1959) served as the link between the Art Theatre/Beat Generation and the Off-Off-Broadway movement.
With The Connection, Gelber provided a Pirandellian framework in which actors playing junkies demonstrated what it was like to wait for a fix. This play forever cemented Gelber’s status in the American theater, and yet his subsequent works have been overlooked. This study, the first monographlength work dedicated to Gelber’s plays, will consider Jack Gelber’s theatrical works as important social humanist absurdist parables that force the audience to consider how the systems we create are flawed, to the extent that some addictions are permissible (even championed), and how we have an obligation to recognize that our social structures are upheld by, to use Gelber’s word, “phonies.” Gelber provides no easy answers. Rather, his plays attempt to shake audiences out of passive spectatorship both in the theater and (as is the hope) in their lives. The plays of Gelber will be analyzed closely, supplemented (where possible) with critical reactions to the plays as produced, while contextualizing each work within its own socioeconomic moment.
This book will appeal to scholars, professors, students, and other historians who have an interest in American playwriting.
By:
John Patrick Bray
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 156mm,
ISBN: 9781032868394
ISBN 10: 1032868392
Series: Routledge Studies in Edward Albee and American Theatre
Pages: 174
Publication Date: 25 July 2025
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming
Introduction 1 The Connection and The Apple: Gelber’s Work with the Living Theatre 2 Square in the Eye and The Cuban Thing: Absurdist Domestic Dramas 3 Sleep, Barbary Jones, and Farmyard 4 Eat Shit: Jack Gelber’s New Play Rehearsal and Starters 5 Underproduced: Gelber’s Work in the 80s and 90s: Rio Preserved, Chambers, Big Shot, Magic Valley, 6 Tough Love Dylan’s Line Conclusion: Consider this
John Patrick Bray is a playwright, screenwriter, and freelance anthology editor. He is a Professor and current Graduate Coordinator in the Department of Theatre and Film at the University of Georgia, USA.
