The use of film and video is commonplace in contemporary theatre, viewed by some as contaminating theatre's 'liveness', by others as inevitable and desirable. After tracing the history of current approaches back to early practitioners such as M li s, Painl v and Piscator, "Staging the Screen" explores in detail recent productions by Svoboda, the Wooster Group, Forkbeard Fantasy, Forced Entertainment, Station House Opera, and Lepage. It charts the impact of developing technologies and addresses critical issues raised by multi-media and intermedia work.

Traditional speech work has long favored an upper-class white accent as the model of intelligibility. Because of that, generations of actors have felt disconnected from their own identities and acting choices. This much-needed textbook redresses that trend and encourages actors to achieve intelligibility through rigorous language analysis and an exploration of their own accent and articulation practices. Following an acting class model, where you first analyze the script then reveal yourself through it, this work breaks down a process for analyzing language in a way that excites the imagination. Guiding the student through the labyrinth of abstract concepts and terms, readers are delivered into the practicality of exercises and explorations, giving them self-awareness that enables them to make their own speech come alive. Informed throughout by notes from the author's own extensive experience working with directors and acting teachers, this book serves as an ideal speech-training resource for the 21st -century actor, and includes specially commissioned online videos demonstrating key exercises.

Technical automation - the ability of man-made (or god-made) objects to move and act autonomously - is not just the province of engineering or science fiction. In this book, Maria Gerolemou, by taking as her starting point the close semantic and linguistic relevance of technical automation to natural automatism, demonstrates how ancient literature, performance and engineering were often concerned with the way nature and artifice interacted. Moving across epic, didactic, tragedy, comedy, philosophy and ancient science, this is a brilliant assembly of evidence for the power of 'automatic theatre' in ancient literature. Gerolemou starts with the earliest Greek literature of Homer and Hesiod, where Hephaestus' self-moving artefacts in the Iliad reflect natural forces of motion and the manufactured Pandora becomes an autonomous woman. Her second chapter looks at Greek drama, where technical automation is used to augment and undermine nature not only through staging and costume but also in plot devices where statues come to life and humans behave as automatic devices. In the third chapter, Gerolemou considers how the philosophers of the 4th century BCE and the engineers of the Hellenistic period with their mechanical devices contributed to a growing dialogue around technical automation and how it could help its audience glance and marvel at the hidden mechanisms of self-motion. Finally, the book explores the ways technical automation is employed as an ekphrastic technique in late antiquity and early Byzantium.

Costume Design for Performance offers a detailed insight into the creative process behind designing costumes for the performing arts, including theatre, opera, dance and film. Guiding the reader through the essential steps of the designing process, Bettina John combines extensive knowledge of the industry with insights gleaned from leading experts in the performing arts. Featuring over 200 original artworks by more than thirty designers, this book gives a rare insight into this highly individual and creative process. Topics covered include script analysis; in-depth research techniques; practical techniques to explore design; basic drawing techniques; character development; the role of the costume designer and wider team and finally, advice on portfolio presentation.

Emphasising the artistry behind the decisions made by theatrical sound designers, this guide is for anyone seeking to understand the nature of sound and how to apply it to the stage. Through tried-and-tested advice and lessons in practical application, The Art of Theatrical Sound Design allows developing artists to apply psychology, physiology, sociology, anthropology and all aspects of sound phenomenology to theatrical sound design. Structured in three parts, the book explores, theoretically, how human beings perceive the vibration of sound; offers exercises to develop support for storytelling by creating an emotional journey for the audience; considers how to collaborate and communicate as a theatre artist; and discusses how to create a cohesive sound design for the stage.

Throughout history, scenography has played a significant role in theatre, always drawing upon the latest technologies of manufacture and control. In the twenty-first century, it is fast becoming an artistic practice in its own right, engaging with audiences in varied ways. Christopher Baugh considers how change in scenographic identity has impacted upon the place and meaning of performance over the past 300 years.
Thoroughly revised and updated, the second edition discusses:
- moving light technologies
- the Internet as a platform of performance
- urban scenography
- scenography's role in the creation of memory
- the development of scenography as a collaborative practice.

This book articulates the first theoretical context for a 'cyborg theatre, ' metaphorically integrating on-stage bodies with the technologized, digitized, or mediatized, to re-imagine subjectivity for a post-human age. It covers a variety of examples, to propose new theoretical tools for understanding performance in our changing world.

The performances of Luis Valdez's El Teatro Campesino, the farmworkers' theater, and Amiri Baraka's (LeRoi Jones's) Black Revolutionary Theater (BRT) during the 1960s and 1970s, offer preeminent examples of social protest theater during a momentous and tumultuous historical juncture. The performances of these groups linked the political, the cultural, and the spiritual, while agitating against the dominant power structure and for the transformation of social and theatrical practices in the U.S. Founded during the Delano Grape Pickers' Strike and Black Power rebellions of the mid-1960s, both El Teatro and the BRT professed cultural pride and group unity as critical corollaries to self-determination and revolutionary social action.
"Taking It to the Streets" compares the performance methodologies, theories, and practices of the two groups, highlighting their cross-cultural commonalties, and providing insights into the complex genre of social protest performance and its interchange with its audience. It examines the ways in which ritual can be seen to operate within the productions of El Teatro and the BRT, uniting audience and performers in subversive, celebratory protest by transforming spectators into active participants within the theater walls --and into revolutionary activists outside. During this critical historical period, these performances not only encouraged community empowerment, but they inculcated a spirit of collective faith and revolutionary optimism. Elam's critical reexamination and recontextualization of the ideologies and practices of El Teatro and the BRT aid in our understanding of contemporary manipulations of identity politics, as well as current strategies forracial representation and cultural resistance.
"A major contribution to our understanding of how social protest came to be so strong and how Black and Chicano theatre contributed to the synergy of those times." --Janelle Reinelt, University of California, Davis
Harry J. Elam, Jr., is Associate Professor of Drama and Director of the Committee on Black Performing Arts, Stanford University.

Sound provides a lively and engaging overview of relevant critical theory for students and researchers in theatre and performance studies. Addressing sound across history and through progressive developments in relevant technologies, the volume opens up the study of theatrical production and live performance to understand conceptual and pragmatic concerns about the sonic. By way of developed case studies (including Aristophanes's The Frogs, Shakespeare's The Tempest, Cocteau's The Human Voice, and Rimini Protokoll's Situation Rooms), readers can explore new methodologies and approaches for their own work on sound as a performance component. In an engagement with the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of sound studies, this book samples exciting new thinking relevant to theatre and performance studies. Part of the Theory for Theatre Studies series which introduces core theoretical concepts that underpin the discipline, Sound provides a balance of essential background information and new scholarship, and is grounded in detailed examples that illuminate and equip readers for their own sonic explorations. Volumes follow a consistent three-part structure: a historical overview of how the term has been understood within the discipline; more recent developments illustrated by substantive case studies; and emergent trends and interdisciplinary connections. Volumes are supported by further online resources including chapter overviews, illustrative material and guiding questions. Online resources to accompany this book are available at: https://bloomsbury.com/uk/theory-for-theatre-studies-sound-9781474246460/

Nephew of Anton Chekhov and a disciple of Konstantin Stanislavskii, Russian emigre actor Michael Chekhov (1891-1955) created one of the most challenging and inspiring acting theories of the 20th century. This book is a reinterpretation of Chekhov's theory both in the context of the cultural and political milieu of his time and in the light of theatre semiotics: from Prague Structuralism to French Poststructuralism and contemporary performance theory. This work presents Chekhov's understanding of the actor's stage product- stage mask - as a psychological, psychophysical and cultural construct engaged with the mysteries of the actor/character or, what Mikhail Bakhtin describes as the author/hero, dialectical relationships. It offers new horizons in interdisciplinary and intercultural visions on theatre acting described by Chekhov as a most liberating and cathartic process.

The definitive text for today's and tomorrow's lighting designers, covering the complete history, theory and practice of lighting design. With over four hundred illustrations and nearly sixty colour photographs, as well as interviews with many well-known professionals, Stage Lighting Design is a comprehensive, insightful and inspiring book that every designer and would-be designer should own. It is arranged in four sections: Design: the basic principles, illustrated with reference to specific productions History: a brief survey of the historical development of stage lighting The Life: interviews with 14 other lighting designers, plus notes on Pilbrow's own career Mechanics: a comprehensive section dealing with all the technical data today's designer will need.

What is the role of costume in Shakespeare production? Shakespeare and Costume in Practice argues that costume design choices are central not only to the creation of period setting and the actor's work on character, but to the cultural, political, and psychological meanings that the theatre makes of Shakespeare. The book explores questions about what the first Hamlet looked like in his mourning cloak; how costumes for a Shakespeare comedy can reflect or critique the collective nostalgias a culture has for its past; how costume and casting work together to ask new questions about Shakespeare and race. Using production case studies of Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Tempest, the book demonstrates that costume design can be a site of experimentation, playfulness, and transgression in the theatre - and that it can provoke audiences to think again about what power, race, and gender look like on the Shakespearean stage.

The Model as Performance investigates the history and development of the scale model from the Renaissance to the present. Employing a scenographic perspective and a performative paradigm, it explores what the model can do and how it is used in theatre and architecture. The volume provides a comprehensive historical context and theoretical framework for theatre scholars, scenographers, artists and architects interested in the model's reality-producing capacity and its recent emergence in contemporary art practice and exhibition. Introducing a typology of the scale model beyond the iterative and the representative model, the authors identify the autonomous model as a provocative construction between past and present, idea and reality, that challenges and redefines the relationship between object, viewer and environment. The Model as Performance was shortlisted for the best Performance Design & Scenography Publication Award at the Prague Quadrennial (PQ) 2019.

This book is a collection of essays that capture the artistic voices at play during a staging process. Situating familiar practices such as reimagining, reenactment and recreation alongside the related and often intersecting processes of transmission, translation and transformation, it features deep insights into selected dances from directors, performers, and close associates of choreographers. The breadth of practice on offer illustrates the capacity of dance as a medium to adapt successfully to diverse approaches and, further, that there is a growing appetite amongst audiences for seeing dances from the near and far past. This study spans a century, from Rudolf Laban's Dancing Drumstick (1913) to Robert Cohan's Sigh (2015), and examines works by Mary Wigman, Madge Atkinson (Natural Movement), Doris Humphrey, Martha Graham, Yvonne Rainer and Rosemary Butcher, an eclectic mix that crosses time and borders.

Giving equal space to the sanctity of script and the artistic freedom of directors, this book addresses the difficulties encountered by playwrights and directors as they bring a script to the stage. Inspired directors can help a writer of genius turn his play into exciting theatre, but playwrights find that giving directors leeway to interpret and modify text can result in directors' overriding authorial intentions. This book presents the best that has been written by literary theorists on the current definitions of text and attempts to depart from quick rule-of-thumb assessments of the problem.

Drawing from definitive articles in literary and theatre journals, part one gives the reader basic concepts and terminology. Interviews with playwrights and directors, showing the complexity of the issue, appear in part two, and part three includes case studies of playwrights and directors who faced production crises. Legal aspects of collaboration are considered in part four. The book concludes with a positive approach and possible solution to the problem.

How do theatre lighting designers decide what is 'the right light' for each moment of a production? What informs their choices? Why does the audience respond more strongly when the lighting feels 'right'? By interviewing nineteen prominent lighting designers and weaving their insights through his own narrative, Nick Moran aims to answer such questions. This book considers practice across different types of theatre, including opera, dance, musicals and drama. Rather than being a technical manual, it allows lighting designers to contribute contrasting and complementary ideas about how to approach lighting design. Moran argues that the best stage lighting is made with emotion, passion and soul, by creative artists willing to take risks. Includes interviews with: Neil Austin - Lucy Carter - Jon Clark - Natasha Chivers - Paule Constable - James Farncombe - Rick Fisher - Mark Henderson - David Howe - Michael Hulls - Mark Jonathan - Peter Mumford - Ben Ormerod - Bruno Poet - Paul Pyant - Nick Richings - Johanna Town - Hugh Vanstone - Katharine Williams

Motion Capture in Performance explores the historical origins, properties and implications of Motion Capture. It introduces a new mode of performance for the commercial film, animation, and console gaming industries - 'Performance Capture', a distinct interdisciplinary discourse in the fields of theatre, animation, performance studies and film.

This diverse book brings together theoretical and practical viewpoints on objects in performance, how they can be part of theatre scenery, equal partners in performance, or autonomous things. Through close analysis of specific performances, Eleanor Margolies examines actor training, scenography, materials, construction techniques and object theatre. The text investigates a number of critical questions, including: what the difference is between a theatre prop and an everyday object; how audiences respond to the various ways that props are used by actors and designers; and whether devising with 'stuff' affect the making process or the attitudes to materiality embodied in performance. With discussions of papier mache and collapsing chairs, fake food and stage blood, Props is an essential sourcebook for students, practitioners and researchers of theatre, design and prop-making.

How has light influenced the staging of theatre throughout history? What does light contribute to performance? How does it make meaning? This collection explores the creative potential of light in the theatre. Through a wide range of extracts from historical accounts, new research and rare documents, some presented for the first time in English, Scott Palmer provides new ways of thinking about lighting as a creative performance practice. Focusing on elements such as: * the emergence of lighting design in the theatre * equipment and techniques * the dramaturgy of light * its impact on actor, audience and playhouse * the semiotics and phenomenology of light in performance the book reveals why light has such a profound effect on the audience's experience of a theatrical event.

Sound experimentation by avant-garde theatre artists of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries is an important but largely ignored aspect of theatre history. In this book, Curtin shows how attention to this activity enhances our understanding of artistic practice (modernism) and historical circumstance (modernity) and considers how avant-gardists staged sonic modernity by exploring its conceptual and communicative possibilities as well as its experiential realities. He critically examines avant-garde theatre through a composite analysis of dramatic texts, historical productions, sound recordings, philosophical speculations, and social movements.

How do audiences look at actors in costume onstage? How does costume shape theatrical identity and form bodies? What do audiences wear to the theatre? This lively and cutting-edge book explores these questions, and engages with the various theoretical approaches to the study of actors in performance. Aoife Monks focuses in particular on the uncanny ways in which costume and the actor's body are indistinguishable in the audience's experience of a performance. From the role of costume in Modernist theatre to the actor's position in the fashion system, from nudity to stage ghosts, this wide-ranging exploration of costume, and its histories, argues for the centrality of costume to the spectator's experience at the theatre. Drawing on examples from paintings, photographs, live performances, novels, reviews, blogs and plays, Monks presents a vibrant analysis of the very peculiar work that actors and costumes do on the stage.

A veteran Broadway producer, Philip Rose here recalls the challenges and controversy he faced in bringing to the stage such ground-breaking shows as A Raisin in the Sun, Purlie Victorious, and The Owl and the Pussycat. Rose's experiences with these and other productions abound with crises and comedy that flood the pages of this memoir.

The new edition features additional real life application photos, diagrams, examples, and case studies on color theory in makeup design, including new examples of tattoo covering and prosthetic painting using optical mixtures, airbrush, and stippling Features a brand-new chapter on color inspiration in make-up and design Includes expanded discussion on undertones, skin variations, color correction, pigments, colored gels, and more

Written for all media-make up students this new edition of The Complete Make-up Artist will help you develop the skills needed to become a qualified, professional make-up artist. Endorsed by both Habia and VTCT, it covers all aspects of media make-up, from working in fashion and beauty to period and character make-up, and is fully updated with the latest national occupational standards.

This trans-historical essay collection explores spectacular analogue performance technologies from Ancient Greece to before the Second World War in a study that is the first of its kind. From Heron of Alexandria's mechanical theatres to the fin de siecle theatre phone, from ancient mechanical elephants to early modern automata, from Enlightenment electrical experiments to Victorian spectral illusions, this volume offers an original examination of the precursors of contemporary digital performance. Featuring essays by contributors including Johannes Birringer, Odai Johnson, Kate Newey and Richard Beacham amongst others, the volume is the first book to offer key insights on analogue precursors to contemporary digital performance.