Street Scene | Steet Scene in a Contemporary Context
In this essay, Petrusso shows how much Rice’s
play has in common with today’s daytime television
soap operas.
When Elmer Rice’s Street Scene was first produced in 1929, it was unlike most other plays of the day. The play featured numerous, realistic characters, and many, sometimes intersecting, story lines, and neither of these aspects was developed in depth. Rice was discouraged from even producing Street Scene at all by his colleagues. Yet the drama was produced and was somewhat successful. To emphasize its realism, Rice insisted that the original production feature prerecorded street noise and other natural sounds to underscore that this tenement was really in the heart of New...
[The entire page is 1585 words long]
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