Tragedy & Comedy

Prior to his career in social criticism, the American writer Paul Goodman had a prolific career in avant-garde literature, including some 18 works for the stage. His plays, mostly written in the 1940s, were typically experimental. Their professional productions were either unsuccessful or flopped, including the three productions staged with The Living Theatre in the 1950s and one with The American Place Theatre in 1966. His lack of recognition as a litterateur in the 1950s helped drive him to his successful career in social criticism in the 1960s. Goodman's plays include Stop-Light, a collection of verse drama adaptations of the Japanese Noh art form; Childish Jokes: Crying Backstage, a short farce; Faustina, telling the story of Faustina the Younger with Reichian themes; The Young Disciple, a free interpretation of the Gospel of Mark; The Cave at Machpelah, a verse drama based on Abraham's biblical sacrifice of Isaac; Jonah, a comedy based on biblical Jonah's life after escaping from the whale, with Jewish cultural jokes; and a collection of "Cubist plays" with abstracted plot elements, meant to demonstrate his theory of literary structure.