Understanding Beth Henley

by Robert J. Andreach

A reunification of the Mississippi playwright's two distinctive periods of work

Beth Henley remains best known for Crimes of the Heart, a play that won the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award and later was made into a major motion picture. In this introduction to the Mississippi-born playwright and her body of work, Robert J. Andreach presents Henley's plays as a unified whole, considering both her more...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 157003639X
• ISBN13: 9781570036392
• Release Date: July 2006
• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.5" x 7.2"

Customer Reviews

Covers the full range of Ms. Henley's works

Although best known for her prize winning play 'Crimes of the Heart, Ms. Henley has written numerous other plays, some award winning, some made into movies but all of then generally being considered as preserving regional theater voices to the stage and doing so with a wider appeal. This book, one of a series on contemporary American writers. They are designed to explain the regional variations, the deviations from the standard form if you will that new writers keep evolving. The books explain the material, themes, use of language, point of view, structures, symbolism and responses of the writer. It shows the reader what the author is attempting to express and the means by which it is conveyed. They are not an attempt to take the place of the writers art, but to provide for the reader certain background information that makes the reader have a more profitable literary experience. This book by Dr. Andreach discusses Ms. Henley's plays in a way that shows how her craft is developing over time and the relationship between her works from first to last.