Тексты для чтения на английском по разным темам и с разными уровнями сложности.
Perhaps more than any other art form, the American theatre has suffered from the invention of the new technologies of mass reproduction. Whereas painting and writing can choose their distance from (or intimacy with) mass culture, much of the age-old material of the theatre has been subsumed by motion pictures and television; what the theatre can do that cannot be done elsewhere is not always clear. As a consequence, the Broadway theatre, which in the 1920s seemed a vital area of American culture and, in the high period of the playwright Eugene O’Neill, a place of cultural renaissance, has become nearly defunct. A brief, and largely false, spring took place in the period just after World War II. Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, in particular, both wrote movingly and even courageously about the lives of “left-out” Americans, demanding attention for the outcasts of a relentlessly commercial society. Half a century later, however, they both seemed more traditional and less profoundly innovative than their contemporaries in the other arts — more profoundly tied to the conventions of European naturalistic theatre and less inclined or able to renew and rejuvenate the language of their form. The one completely original American contribution to the stage, the musical theatre, blossomed in the works of Frank Loesser (Guys and Dolls in particular, which the critic Kenneth Tynan regarded as one of the greatest of American plays), but it exists today largely as a revival art and in the brave “holdout” works of the composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim (Company, Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods). When new kinds of popular music (particularly rock) took the place of the Broadway theatre song as the soundtrack of American romance, the stage lost its revivifying contact with the street and became an increasingly distant form.
Слова:
intimacy — тесная связь, близость, интимность
to subsume — относить к какой-либо категории, группе
consequence — (по)следствие, результат
vital — жизненный, жизненно важный
renaissance — ренессанс, возрождение, оживление
defunct —несуществующий, исчезнувший, вымерший
to leave out — пропускать, не включать, не обращать внимания на кого-л., исключать
outcast — изгнанный, отверженный
relentlessly — безжалостно, неумолимо
profoundly — глубоко, основательно, полно
innovative — новаторский, передовой, рационализаторский
contemporary — современник, сверстник, ровесник
convention — условность, обычай, традиция, правила поведения
to rejuvenate — восстанавливать, ремонтировать, реконструировать, омолаживать(ся)
revival — возрождение, оживление
to hold out — выдерживать, держаться до конца
lyricist — поэт-песенник
