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Architecture’s Musical Silence and Its Representation of Postmodern Urbanism in Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2022, 35(3), pp.167-186
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama
  • Received : November 25, 2022
  • Accepted : December 8, 2022
  • Published : December 31, 2022

Jung,Byung-Eon 1

1부산대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This essay examines the ways in which the musicality of architectural silence is appropriated as a strategy for representing postmodern urbanism in Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain. Relying on the aesthetic value of silence in John Cage’s chance music, the essay pays attention to the representational possibility of silence created by the glass walls of Janeway House and Farnworth House. As the walls let light or sound freely come into the inside of the buildings, Greenberg employs the play as a vehicle for the landscape of a postmodern city “faithfully” represented by giving up his authorial desire of order. The episodes of the play are not consistently related with each other, and its characters are also so fragmented at non-places of the city that they are philosophically situated at “homelessness.” The audience are given freedom to fill out areas of indeterminacy in an attempt to create their own interpretation of the play. Breaking from the conventional system of order, the play tries to close the gap between art and life. Thus, it is contended that Greenberg makes audiences face the reality of life itself, while paving way to the representation of the unrepresentable.

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