Staging the Impossible: The Fantastic Mode in Modern Drama : Praeger : 9780313272707 : 0313272700 : 30 Nov 1992 : Staging the Impossible explores the most recent critical thinking on the relationship between the literary mode of the fantastic and the literary genre of drama with respect to modern theatre. While a few monographs treat a particular dimension of the fantastic in drama, the Gothic or the fairy tale for instance, no other volume provides a critically sophisticated introduction to the diversity of fantastic drama written and performed in this century. The essays here lay to rest the illusion that realism is the only genuine form of theatrical expression and the notion that cinema special effects have rendered science fiction and the stage incompatible. Competing with the realism of the first half of the twentieth century and the new realism of the second half have been a range of successful theatrical repertoire, including the absurd, the horrific, the supernatural, the myth