ABSTRACT
Twentieth-century monodrama crystallizes into a gender-conscious musical genre that is overwhelmingly concerned with the condition and consequences of female imprisonment. The term 'monodrama' was reintroduced and redefined in progressive theatres and cabarets at the beginning of the twentieth century precisely to distinguish it from melodrama, the more ancient and theorized genre, and to draw attention to its depiction of 'inner processes'. Penney suggests that the common erasure of Erwartung's generic designation of monodrama, in discussions that classify the work as an opera, has drawn attention away from the work's uniqueness and how it connects to earlier vocal traditions. The author is indebted to Laurence Senelick's work on monodrama in early twentieth-century Russian theatre and cabaret; the term 'co-experience' appears in his translation of Nikolai Evreinov's 'Introduction to Monodrama', 1908, in Russian Dramatic Theory from Pushkin to the Symbolists.
