Nadezhda Ptushkina's plays reflect her keen interest in constructing multidimensional characters that reflect the myriad ways people are affected by today's turbulent world. Often writing strong female roles, she does not shy away from exploring the sometimes tragic implications that lie behind her comical, almost farcical scenes. Ptushkina questions the nature of love, and explores the boundaries between the spiritual and the base, the constructive and the destructive, that lie within every human being. Conflict between the sexes constitutes the core of Ptushkina's plays, in which she warns the audience against confusing sex and love. Ptushkina rejects any notion that men and women are the same, seeing gender differences rather than personality differences as the main source of tension between men and women. Her plays thus dwell on this 'battle of the sexes' and the resulting lack of respect for women that she sees in today's Russia.In this new translation, western readers have a chance to discover why Ptushkina's work holds such wide appeal in the Russian theatre.

Explore the world with your students and discover its wonders - all while developing the English skills they need to become successful global citizens. Through spectacular National Geographic video and inspiring photography students will travel the globe, learning about different countries, cultures, people, and their customs. With clearly structured methodology and explicit grammar instruction, this six-level primary series is packed with fascinating facts that spark curiosity, personalisation activities that get your students talking and new online resources that make it even easier to bring the world to the classroom and the classroom to life.

With the globalization of business, American snack maker Boltz Foods is expanding into world markets and a naive American businessman who's never traveled abroad is selected to lead the way. Pursued by a Japanese competitor bent on sabotage, this comic adventure weaves in and out of different time- zones through a Japanese resort, Russian sauna, French restaurant, German barbershop, Westminster Abbey, Spanish bullring and the Tower of Babel. Going Global is a slapstick portrait of a clueless American caught up in a whirlwind of wacky multi-cultural gaffes, who at the end, finds there's no place like home."

Using side-by-side pairings of first drafts and final versions, including full-page reproductions from the poets’ personal notebooks, as well as an insightful essay on each poem’s journey from start to finish, The Art of Revising Poetry tracks the creative process of twenty-one of the United States’ most influential poets as they struggle over a single word, line break, or thought. This behind-the-scenes look into the creative minds of working poets, including African American, Latino, Asian American, and Native poets from across the US, is an essential resource for students practicing poetry, and for instructors looking to enliven the classroom with real world examples. Students learn first-hand from the deft revisions working poets make, while poetry teachers can show in detail how experienced poets self-edit, tinker, cut, rearrange, and craft a poem. The Art of Revising Poetry is a must-have for aspiring poets and poetry teachers at all levels.

Explore the world with your students and discover its wonders - all while developing the English skills they need to become successful global citizens. Through spectacular National Geographic video and inspiring photography students will travel the globe, learning about different countries, cultures, people, and their customs. With clearly structured methodology and explicit grammar instruction, this six-level primary series is packed with fascinating facts that spark curiosity, personalisation activities that get your students talking and new online resources that make it even easier to bring the world to the classroom and the classroom to life.

Simultaneously a handbook and a critique of one, Beyond Craft combines an orientation to the field of creative writing with an insight into current scholarship surrounding creative writing pedagogy. A much-needed alternative to the traditional craft guide, this text pairs advice and exercises on composition with an illuminating commentary on the issues surrounding these very techniques. Teaching the craft whilst apprising students of the issues of craft pedagogy, this book allows them to gain an awareness of how current pedagogy comes at the expense of larger and increasingly relevant cultural concerns. Westbrook and Ryan bring emerging writers into the larger conversations that define the field, inviting them to: - Contextualize their own writing practices and educational experiences in relation to the history of creative writing as an academic discipline. - Determine how New Critical lore and Romantic mythology may affect-even distort-their understanding of literary production. - Critically examine their notions of authorship, collaboration, and invention in relation to contemporary literary and rhetorical theory. - Understand and evaluate the economic, social, political, and professional challenges facing creative writers today. - Analyze the contemporary literary marketplace not only to identify potential publication contexts but also to understand how issues of diversity and bias affect writing communities. - Reflect on how increasingly rapid technological developments may affect their own writing and the future of literature. Earnestly self-aware throughout, Beyond Craft both inducts new writers into the field of creative writing and infuses them with an understanding of the wider dialogue surrounding their craft.

Contemporary theatre is going through a period of unparalleled excitement and challenge. Terms like 'postmodern' and 'postdramatic' have their own contested and defended histories, while notions of truth in verbatim theatre are open to serious critical challenge. Theatre writing can result in no words being spoken and nothing appearing on the page, and productions are stretching the boundaries of space, place and context like never before. This revised and significantly expanded edition of New Performance/New Writing explores immersive and solo theatre, autoethnography, applied drama, performance writing, plot, story, narrative and devising. It presents an invaluable response to questions that arise from new theatre, prompting active reading that enhances classroom and workshop learning, and improves productivity in rehearsal. Each chapter explores a key aspect of theatre study, while an extensive timeline of theatre events gives a broad overview of its evolution. Case studies on practitioners as diverse as Kneehigh, Punchdrunk, Mark Ravenhill and Forced Entertainment are scattered throughout the book, along with detailed suggestions for workshops, which encourage readers to test some of the book's ideas in practice.

It's not what you think. You may have heard Casanova's legend, but have you heard his heart? Could you read between the lines of the playwright who wrote the play Casanova and why he assumes that role of his character given the power of Cupid's bow and arrow? But he is just like you and I. After all, we all use the power of the bow and arrow in some form, whether through beauty, power, or wit. And we use that power to some extent to shapes love's stage. Admittedly, some are better than others. And of course, our intentions are good. Well, at least we try most of the time. But unfortunately there are desires and motivations which we know not of, and nor do we know where they are from. In fact, we just don't know ourselves. If you were given all the power of the bow and arrow, how would you act? Is there any guarantee that your aim would be any better than the blind whims of Cupid? Especially in a world where love loves to hide, mask itself in indifference and most of all, act. We will quickly learn that the real story is what is happening behind the stage, under the stage, in the earth deep below the stage, over the stage, behind the pen, inside the heart, in the heavens, and in that place so distant and so far back-a place called home. This is a story dictated by characters with no roles, stars with no spoken parts, no cameos, and no love shared at all. Something happened that moved Casanova's heart. It moved the characters on the stage, and it is about to move the heavens. It seems today that the earth is shaking and the ground is moving, and it is getting more frequent. You had better check your foundations like Casanova did. If our house is unsteady, perhaps we might want to checkhere, and it might just heal the world.