Variações excêntricas do corriqueiro: The Vegetable, Scandalabra e a escrita dramática como espaço experimental

The Vegetable, or From President to Postman and Scandalabra: A Farce Fantasy in a Prologue and Three Acts still inhabit the Fitzgerald canon as works of dubious quality due to the total disaster of their first productions— an opinion that reflects many a researcher’s tendency to analyze the two plays as pertaining to the tradition of dramatic realism. This view also ignores the expectations of the public at the time, the prevalent theatrical trends, and—perhaps more importantly—Literary Modernism, which mixed dramatic conventions and prose to create hybrid pieces called closet dramas. This paper analyzes the two aforementioned plays through the Modernist closet drama perspective. It aims to recognize the authors’ stage directions as a space for experimenting with prose, seeking parallels with plays that were written during the same time period and that also tried to subvert the use of stage directions.