A two-play dramatisation of Philip Pullman's extraordinary award-winning fantasy trilogy, first seen at the National Theatre. His Dark Materials takes us on a thrilling journey through worlds familiar and unknown. For Lyra and Will, its two central characters, it's a coming of age and a transforming spiritual experience. Their great quest demands a savage struggle against the most dangerous of enemies. They encounter fantastical creatures in parallel worlds - rebellious angels, soul-eating spectres, child-catching Gobblers and the armoured bears and witch-clans of the Arctic. Finally, before reaching, perhaps, the republic of heaven, they must visit the land of the dead. This adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, by Nicholas Wright, was first performed at the National Theatre in London in 2003.

Karl Koenig's plays for the festivals of the year are arguably his most original creations. Written to be performed in Camphill communities, they show a deep understanding of the Christian festivals. With one exception, all fourteen plays were written during the early years of the Camphill movement, and Koenig's hope was that their performance would help bring communities together. Not only is their content entertaining and informative, but the act of performing provides great benefits as social therapy. Since then, the plays have been translated into many languages and performed in Camphill and other communities around the world. This is the first time that the original texts of all the plays have been published together. They are presented with an introduction and commentary by series editor Richard Steel, alongside fascinating performance photographs.

This bibliography will give comprehensive coverage to published commentary in English on Shakespeare and the Classical Tradition during the period from 1961-1985. Doctoral dissertations will also be included. Each entry will provide a clear and detailed summary of an item's contents. For pomes and plays based directly on classical sources like Antony and Cleopatra and The Rape of Lucrece, virtually all significant scholarly work during the period covered will be annotated. For other works such as Hamlet, any scholarship that deals with classical connotations will be annotated. Any other bibliographies used in the compiling of this volume will be described with emphasis on their value to a student of Shakespeare and the Classics.

Twenty-two leading experts on early modern drama collaborate in this volume to explore three closely interconnected research questions. To what extent did playwrights represent dramatis personae in their entertainments as forming, or failing to form, communal groupings? How far were theatrical productions likely to weld, or separate, different communal groupings within their target audiences? And how might such bondings or oppositions among spectators have tallied with the community-making or -breaking on stage? Chapters in Part One respond to one or more of these questions by reassessing general period trends in censorship, theatre attendance, forms of patronage, playwrights' professional and linguistic networks, their use of music, and their handling of ethical controversies. In Part Two, responses arise from detailed re-examinations of particular plays by Shakespeare, Chapman, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Cary, Webster, Middleton, Massinger, Ford, and Shirley. Both Parts cover a full range of early-Stuart theatre settings, from the public and popular to the more private circumstances of hall playhouses, court masques, women's drama, country-house theatricals, and school plays. And one overall finding is that, although playwrights frequently staged or alluded to communal conflict, they seldom exacerbated such divisiveness within their audience. Rather, they tended toward more tactful modes of address (sometimes even acknowledging their own ideological uncertainties) so that, at least for the duration of a play, their audiences could be a community within which internal rifts were openly brought into dialogue.

Analyzing Shakespeare's views on theatre and magic and John Dee's concerns with philosophy and magic in the light of the Italian version of philosophia perennis (mainly Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola and Giordano Bruno), this book offers a new perspective on the Italian-English cultural dialogue at the Renaissance and its contribution to intellectual history. In an interdisciplinary and intercultural approach, it investigates the structural commonalities of theatre and magic as contiguous to the foundational concepts of perennial philosophy, and explores the idea that the Italian thinkers informed not only natural philosophy and experimentation in England, but also Shakespeare's theatre. The first full length project to consider Shakespeare and John Dee in juxtaposition, this study brings textual and contextual evidence that Gonzalo, an honest old Counsellor in The Tempest, is a plausible theatrical representation of John Dee. At the same time, it places John Dee in the tradition of the philosophia perennis-accounting for what appears to the modern scholar the conflicting nature of his faith and his scientific mind, his powerful fantasy and his need for order and rigor-and clarifies Edward Kelly's role and creative participation in the scrying sessions, regarding him as co-author of the dramatic episodes reported in Dee's spiritual diaries. Finally, it connects the Enochian/Angelic language to the myth of the Adamic language at the core of Italian philosophy and brings evidence that the Enochian is an artificial language originated by applying creatively the analytical instruments of text hermeneutics used in the Cabala.

What is the role of disgust or revulsion in early modern English literature? How did early modern English subjects experience revulsion and how did writers represent it in poetry, plays, and prose? What does it mean when literature instructs, delights, and disgusts? This collection of essays looks at the treatment of disgust in texts by Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, Jonson, Herrick, and others to demonstrate how disgust, perhaps more than other affects, gives us a more complex understanding of early modern culture. Dealing with descriptions of coagulated eye drainage, stinky leeks, and blood-filled fleas, among other sensational things, the essays focus on three kinds of disgusting encounters: sexual, cultural, and textual. Early modern English writers used disgust to explore sexual mores, describe encounters with foreign cultures, and manipulate their readers' responses. The essays in this collection show how writers deployed disgust to draw, and sometimes to upset, the boundaries that had previously defined acceptable and unacceptable behaviors, people, and literatures. Together they present the compelling argument that a critical understanding of early modern cultural perspectives requires careful attention to disgust.

First published in 1970, this work explores the literary genre of satire. After identifying the definitive aspects of satire, it goes on to examine the subjects which can be susceptible to satire, the modes and means of satire, the tone of satire and the satirist's relationship with the reader. In doing so, it introduces the reader to a number of key satirical writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer, Jonathan Swift, John Dryden, Samuel Johnson and Henry Fielding. This book presents a comprehensive overview the genre and provides a useful starting point for those wishing to further study satirical literature.

Many scholars have been calling for a new edition of Sir John Harington's Epigrams. Gerard Kilroy, using the three manuscripts arranged and revised by the author, offers the first complete text in print of Harington's four hundred Epigrams, uncovers Harington's elaborate design of forty theological decades, and restores the emblems and political elegies that Harington uses to frame his complete collection and define its serious purpose.

Actors of colour need the best speeches to demonstrate their skills and hone their craft. Roberta Uno has carefully selected monologues that represent African-American, Native American, Latino, and Asian-American identities. Each monologue comes with an introduction and notes on the characters and stage directions to set the scene for the actor. This new edition now includes more of the most exciting and accomplished playwrights to have emerged over the 15 years since the Monologues for Actors of Color books were first published, from new, cutting edge talent to Pulitzer winners.

Fergus met Frankie on his first day at school and they've been in each others' shadow ever since. As teenagers they skipped school and drank cider on the ferry over the River Mersey, dreaming about travelling the world. In September 2004, Fergus persuaded Frankie to join his security team in Baghdad: GBP10,000 a month, tax free; their last chance to 'load up' in this increasingly privatised war. Together they risked their lives in a city steeped in violence, terror and greed, and awash with billions of US dollars. Three years later, Frankie is killed on Route Irish, the most dangerous road in the world. Back in Liverpool, a grief-stricken Fergus rejects the official explanation that Frankie was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and begins his own investigation into his soul mate's death. Only Rachel, Frankie's partner, grasps the depth of Fergus's sorrow, and the lethal possibilities of his fury as he struggles to find his old self and the happiness he shared with Frankie twenty years earlier on the Mersey. Features the full screenplay, character backstory, production notes and photographs from the film, plus background essays by Mark Townsend, Haifa Zangana and Mike Phipps.

Desires of Credit in Early Modern Theory and Drama traces the near-simultaneous rise of economic theory, literary criticism, and public theater in London at the turn of the seventeenth century, and posits that connecting all three is a fascination with creating something out of nothing simply by acting as if it were there. Author Brian Sheerin contends that the motivating force behind both literary and economic inquiry at this time was the same basic quandary about the human imagination--specifically, how investments of belief can produce tangible consequences. Just as speculators were realizing the potency of collective imagination on economic circulation, readers and dramatists were becoming newly introspective about whether or not the 'lies' of literature could actually be morally 'profitable.' Could one actually benefit by taking certain fictions 'seriously'? Each of the five chapters examines a different dimension of this question by highlighting a particular dramatization of economic trust on the Renaissance stage, in plays by Marlowe, Shakespeare, Heywood, Dekker, and Jonson. The book fills a gap in current scholarship by keeping economic and dramatic interests rigorously grounded in early modern literary criticism, but also by emphasizing the productive nature of debt in a way that resonates with recent economic sociology.

On the heels of their six-time Academy Award (R)-winning smash, La La Land, Oscar (R)-winning director Damien Chazelle and star Ryan Gosling reteam for Universal Pictures' First Man, the riveting story of NASA's mission to land a man on the moon, focusing on Neil Armstrong and the years 1961-1969. A visceral, first-person account, based on the book by James R. Hansen, the movie explores the sacrifices and the cost-on Armstrong and on the nation-of one of the most dangerous missions in history. First Man: The Annotated Screenplay is the official companion to the movie, and features a wealth of stunning photography, alongside the full shooting script. Academy Award (R)-winning screenwriter Josh Singer (Spotlight) and James R. Hansen, whose book First Man is the only authorized biography of Armstrong, provide an in-depth commentary on the challenges of dramatizing a fact-based historical motion picture. Exclusive annotations separate those facts from the dramatic fictions the filmmakers utilized, as well as explain the overarching dramatic choices made in telling the story of the man behind the icon.

This manga recreation of Shakespeare's tricksiest comedy plays out its serial deceptions and counterfeits against the operatic backdrop of a later Italian landscape. But don't believe everything you hear...

The significance of human anatomy to the most physical of art forms, the theatre, has hitherto been an under-explored topic. Filling this gap, Christian Billing questions conventional wisdom regarding the one-sex anatomical model and uses a range of medical treatises to delineate an emergent two-sex paradigm of human biology. The impact such a model had on the staging of the human form in English professional theatre is also explored in appraisals of: (i) the homo-erotic significance of a two-sex paradigm; (ii) social and theatrical cross-dressing; (iii) the uses of theatrical androgyny; (iv) masculine corporality and the representation of assertive women; and (v) the theatrical poetics of human dissection. Billing supports cultural and scientific study with close-readings of Lyly, Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, Dekker, Beaumont, Fletcher, and Ford. The book provides a sophisticated and original analysis of the early modern stage body as a discursive site in wider debates concerning sexuality and gender.

A genius with language, but convinced of his own ugliness, Cyrano secretly loves the radiant Roxane. While Roxane is in love with the beautiful but inarticulate Christian. Cyrano's generous offer to act as go-between sets in motion a poignant and often hilarious love-triangle, in which each character is torn between the lure of physical attraction and the seductive power of words. Martin Crimp's adaptation of Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac premiered at the Playhouse Theatre, London, in November 2019.

My story is about love... No, it's about loss... No, it's about love and loss and pain and loneliness... But it's funny! Calvin is going to completely revolutionise his life. Escape his abusive boyfriend, detonate his inner sex bomb, see (and shag) the world. Yes, he's going to change things, and everything will be wonderful, and he's going to be so happy. Definitely. Finally. Right? Together with Wilf, a rusty Volkswagen Polo which, like Calvin, has seen better days, they hit the road on a wild ride of dodgy Airbnbs, greasy takeaways, anonymous graveyard sex and banging 80s power ballads - ending up somewhere they never imagined they'd go. But is Calvin breaking free, breaking down, or just breakdancing in hot pants? This riotous and heartfelt new play from James Ley (Love Song to Lavender Menace) takes audiences on a hilarious and unapologetic ride through Scotland as Calvin and Wilf attempt to escape loneliness, cope with mental illness and learn to love themselves, with the help of one another. This edition was published alongside the production at Traverse Theatre for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August 2022.

Dress by Ganni. Bra by Coco de Mer. Knife by Stanley. A gripping revenge tale about an actress in her 40s under investigation for the murder of an auteur theatre director whilst rehearsing a stage production of Hitchcock's Psycho. A whip-smart take on what it means to be middle-aged and female in an industry captivated by stardust and beauty. This edition was published to coincide with the run at The Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 2022.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
"Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes"
"Part One, Millennium Approaches"
"Part Two, Perestroika"
"A vast, miraculous play... provocative, witty and deeply upsetting... a searching and radical rethinking of American political drama." - Frank Rich, "New York Times"
""Angels in America" is the finest drama of our time, speaking to us of an entire era of life and death as no other play within memory. It ranks as nothing less than one of the greatest plays of the twentieth century." - John Heilpern, "New York Observer"
"A victory for theater, for the transforming power of the imagination to turn devastation into beauty." - John Lahr, "New Yorker"
""Angels in America" is the broadest, deepest, most searching American play of our time." - Jack Kroll, "Newsweek"
This new edition of Tony Kushner's masterpiece is published with the author's recent changes and a new introduction in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of its original production. One of the most honored American plays in history, "Angels in America" was awarded two Tony Awards for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. It was made into an Emmy Award-winning HBO film directed by Mike Nichols. This two-part epic, subtitled "A Gay Fantasia on National Themes," has received hundreds of performances worldwide in more than twenty-six languages.

A collection of playscripts and texts that give an English-reading audience access to key plays as well as less well-known and previously untranslated works - a superb resource for scholars and theatre practitioners. This volume makes available some of the most influential, imaginative and exciting plays to come out of East and West Africa from the 1970s to the present day. Deliberately excluding playscripts by the regions' two best known playwrights, Wole Soyinka and Ngugi wa Thiong'o, whose work was profiled in African Theatre 13 the editors have selected plays, some well-known and some less widely available, that represent the diversity and richness of thesetwo very different African regions. The playscripts include a new translation from Amharic, as well as the English version of a play originally written in French, making more theatre from some of Africa's multitude of languages accessible to an English-reading audience. Each script is accompanied by an essay from an expert on the work, the playwright, and the context in which the play was produced, so that the volume will be of maximum use to both researchers and students of African theatre. Volume Editors: MARTIN BANHAM & JANE PLASTOW Series Editors: Martin Banham, Emeritus Professor of Drama & Theatre Studies, University of Leeds; James Gibbs, Senior Visiting Research Fellow, University of the West of England; Femi Osofisan, Professor of Drama, University of Ibadan; Jane Plastow, Professor of African Theatre, University of Leeds; Yvette Hutchison, Associate Professor, Department of Theatre & Performance Studies, University of Warwick

With On Screen Writing, director Edward Dmytryk offers a clear, methodical overview of the needs, practices, and problems of screenwriting, including extensive coverage of adaptation. Written In an informal, anecdotal style and using script examples from Hollywood classics, Dmytryk presents a practical set of principles for writing engaging, filmable screenplays. Originally published in 1985, this reissue of Dmytryk's classic screenwriting book includes a new critical introduction by Mick Hurbis-Cherrier, as well as chapter lessons, discussion questions, exercises, and a glossary.

Somewhere in the world, a man sits alone outside a prison. Who is he, and why is he there? Is it a choice, or a punishment? With The Prisoner, the internationally renowned theatre director Peter Brook and his long-time collaborator Marie-Helene Estienne ask provocative and profound questions about justice, guilt, redemption - and what it means to be free. The Prisoner opened at Theatre des Bouffes du Nord, Paris, in March 2018, before an international tour which included performances at the Edinburgh International Festival, the National Theatre of Great Britain, and Theatre for a New Audience in New York. 'The most pioneering theatre director of the twentieth century' Independent on Peter Brook