This book explores the role of alchemy, Paracelsianism, and Hermetic philosophy in one of Shakespeare's last plays, The Winter's Tale. A perusal of the vast literary and iconographic repertory of Renaissance alchemy reveals that this late play is imbued with several topoi, myths, and emblematic symbols coming from coeval alchemical, Paracelsian, and Hermetic sources. It also discusses the alchemical significance of water and time in the play's circular and regenerative pattern and the healing role of women. All the major symbols of alchemy are present in Shakespeare's play: the intertwined serpents of the caduceus, the chemical wedding, the filius philosophorum, and the so-called rex chymicus. This book also provides an in-depth survey of late Renaissance alchemy, Paracelsian medicine, and Hermetic culture in the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages. Importantly, it contends that The Winter's Tale, in symbolically retracing the healing pattern of the rota alchemica and in emphasising the Hermetic principles of unity and concord, glorifies King James's conciliatory attitude.

The voices that are represented in this collection come from various parts of the world and express the views of practitioners and scholars who have all had first-hand experience working in Zimbabwean theatre from the last days of Rhodesia to Zimbabwe. The collection views the long continuum of developments in local theatre history as a case of the intrusive hegemonies that came with colonial Rhodesia as a conquest society, and localised identities in the form of the persistence of indigenous and syncretic popular forms. With time, all these came together to constitute the makings of a contested post-colony in contemporary theatre practice in Zimbabwe. The primary interest of scholars who are represented here is located at the intersection of political, cultural and performative discourses and the flow of Zimbabwean history. The focus, moreover, is not only on the history of performance cultures in postcolonial Zimbabwe - it extends its critical gaze to include the history of political ideas that gave rise to cultural contestation in the field of theatre and performance.

This innovative, theoretical work focuses on temporal issues in theatre and the 'chemistry' of theatre - the ways in which a variety of factors in performance combine to make up what we call 'theatre'. Discussing a range of canonical plays, from Shakespeare to Beckett, the book makes a unique contribution to theatre and performance studies.

The first International Festival of Women in Experimental Theatre, the Magdalena Project, took place in Cardiff in 1986. Fifteen countries were represented by 30 women. This illustrated volume documents the unique event and offers insight into the origins and organization of the workshop, probes into the problems of authority and power relations within the group, records individual training sessions and presents short profiles of each performer. The author explores some of the theoretical issues relating to women's theatre and the state of experimental theatre, which emerged from the festival.

This book offers fresh, critical insights into Shakespeare in Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan. It recognises that Shakespeare in East Asian education is not confined to the classroom or lecture hall but occurs on diverse stages. It covers multiple aspects of education: policy, pedagogy, practice, and performance. Beyond researchers in these areas, this book is for those teaching and learning Shakespeare in the region, those teaching and learning English as an Additional Language anywhere in the world, and those making educational policies, resources, or theatre productions with young people in East Asia.

The idea of American musical theatre conjures up images of bright lights and big city, but its lifeblood is found in local and amateur productions at schools, community theatres, summer camps, and more. In Beyond Broadway, author Stacy Wolf considers the widespread presence and persistence of musical theatre in U.S. culture, and examines it as a live, pleasurable, participatory experience of creating, watching, and listening. Why does local musical theatre flourish in America? Why do so many Americans passionately engage in a century-old artistic practice that requires intense, person-to-person collaboration? Why do audiences flock to see musicals in their hometowns? How do corporations like Disney and Music Theatre International enable musical theatre's energetic movement through American culture? Touring from Maine to California, Wolf visits elementary schools, a middle school performance festival, afterschool programs, high schools, summer camps, state park outdoor theatres, community theatres, and dinner theatres, and conducts over 200 interviews with practitioners and spectators, licensors and Disney creatives. In Beyond Broadway, Wolf tells the story of musical theatre's abundance and longevity in the U.S. as a thriving, joyful activity that touches millions of lives.

MARIONETTES MASKS and SHADOWS BY WINIFRED H. JVIILLS Head of Art Department, Fairmount Junior High Training School, Cleveland, Ohio LOUISE M. DUNN Assistant Curator of Education, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio Illustrated by CORYDON BELL Garden City, New York DOUBLEDAY, DORAN COMPANY, INC. 1928 To Adventurers among Puppets and Plays CONTENTS MARIONETTES I. The Marionette Its Family Tree . II. The Marionette Its Famous Friends III. Choosing Your Play IV. Making Your Stage V. Making Your Marionette VI. Making Your Scenery .... VII. Making Your Properties VIIL Lighting Your Stage .... IX Training Your Puppeteers . X. Presenting Your Play . . i 25 33 47 S 84 1 02 112 VII Contents MASKS . I. The Map of the Mask 143 II. Occasions for Wearing the Mask . . 152 III. Making the Mask ....... 160 IV. The Costume and Setting for the Mask. 168 V. The Mask with Pantomime, Music and Dance . 196 SHADOWS I. The Mystery of the Shadow ., II. Making a Shadow Play . III. Producing Cut-out Shadow Plays IV. Producing Human Shadow Plays Bibliography . . . Index 205 212 215 225 24 265 Vlll ILLUSTRATIONS Tree of the Marionettes .... Frontispiece HALFTONES MARIONETTES FACING PAGE Marionette play, Men of Iron given by ninth year pupils, Fairmount Junior High School, Cleveland, Ohio 18 Scenes from Marionette play, cc Adventures of Alice, given by ninth year pupils Fairmount Junior High School at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Marionettes made by Tuesday Marionette Club 34 ix Illustrations FACING PAGE Scenes from the Marionette play, Men of Iron 98 Marionette Ballet, Tetrouchka .... 114 Upper. Marionettes from The Adventures of Alice. Lower Left. Bear and Trainer from Men of Iron Lower Right. Marionettefrom Tetrouchka. 130 MASKS Masks made by students in Summer School, Cleveland School of Education. Indian Corn Maidens. Clowns. Japanese Characters Old Woman, Devil Mask, Old Man. .... 146 Upper Row. Bishop, Queen, King, Middle Row. Lady in Waiting, Crusader, Child Lower Row. Jester, Old Woman, Little Jack, 1 50 Masks. Upper Mummer, Queen, Jester Middle Egyptian Priest, Persian Poet, Greek Maiden Lower. Columbine and Pierrot . . 158 Characters from Christmas Mask . ., . 162 Scene from Christmas Mask given by ninth year Fairmount Junior High School pupils at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Lady in Waiting, King . 178 SHADOWS Upper Scene from cut out shadow play, The Traveling Musicians of Bremen-Lower Behind the scene in a cut out shadow play, given by eighth grade pupils of Fairmount Junior High School, Cleveland, Ohio . . 210 Illustrations FACING PAGE Scenes from the cut out shadow play, The Traveling Musicians of Bremen. . . . 214 Behind the scenes in the human shadow play The Indian and the Oki. 222 Scenes from the human shadow play, c The Indian and the Old 226 More scenes from the human shadow play, The Indian and the Oki 232 Scenes from the human shadow play, The Shepherdess 236 FULL PAGE LINE DRAWINGS PAGE Constructional drawing of Marionette stage, back view 50 Side view of Marionette stage, with lighting 51 Knight Marionette 77 FACING PAGE The Map of the Mask . 144 XI

The Sixth Edition employs a "read-explore-do" concept, fully integrating the additional case studies posted on the companion website with the background information provided in the book, and the exercises listed at the end of the chapter. Each chapter contains a learning module aligned with its content, designed to help the reader better grasp the theories, principles, terms, and practices related to each topic area. Contains chapter summaries, key terms, key concepts, chapter learning maps, and For Further Study sections.

Inspired by the podcast Dear Multi-Hyphenate, this book explores how to be a multi-hypenate - an artist with multiple proficiencies - in the entertainment industry. Answers questions about individual mission-driven entrepreneurship in the Theatre industry. Each chapter features an interview with a notable theatre artist.

This book investigates the role of arts practitioners in cultural policy-making, challenging the perception that arts practitioners have little or no involvement in policy and seeking to discover the extent and form of their engagement. Examining the subject through a case-study of playwriting policy in England since 1945, and paying particular attention to playwrights' organisations and their history of self-directed activity, the book explores practitioners' participation in cultural policy-making, encompassing both "invited" and "uninvited" interventions that also weave together policy activity and creative practice. It discusses why their involvement matters, and argues that arts practitioners and their organisations can be understood as participants in civil society whose policy activity contributes to the maintenance and enlargement of democratic practices and values.

Sets out a clear argument for care and caregiving as an aesthetic experience and aesthetic act. Written for all advanced students of nursing and applied theatre, as well as professionals in care, nursing and dramatherapy. The first and only book to advance this concept, disturbing the boundaries of artistic and care practice.

This book offers an exploration of the postcolonial hybrid experience in anglophone Caribbean plays and performance from a feminist perspective. In a hitherto unattempted consideration of Caribbean theatre and performance, this study of gendered identities chronicles the postcolonial hybrid experience - and how it varies in the context of questions of sex, performance and social designation. In the process, it examines the diverse performances of the anglophone Caribbean. The work includes works by Caribbean anglophone playwrights like Derek Walcott, Mustapha Matura, Michael Gikes, Dennis Scott, Trevor Rhone, Earl Lovelace and Errol John with more recent works of Pat Cumper, Rawle Gibbons and Tony Hall. The study would also engage with Carnival, calypso and chutney music, while commenting on its evolving influences over the hybrid imagination. Each section covers the dominant socio-political thematics associated with the tradition and its effect on it, followed by an analysis of contemporaneously significant literary and cultural works - plays, carnival narrative and calypso and chutney lyrics as well as the experiences of performers. From Lovelace's fictional Jestina to the real-life Drupatee, the book critically explores the marginalization of female performances while forming a hybrid identity.

As Mary Jane navigates both the mundane and the unfathomable realities of caring for Alex, her chronically ill young son, she finds herself building a community of women from many walks of life. Mary Jane is Pulitzer Prize finalist Amy Herzog's remarkably powerful and compassionate portrait of a contemporary American woman striving for grace.

Shakespeare and Digital Performance in Practice explores the impact of digital technologies on the theatrical performance of Shakespeare in the twenty-first century, both in terms of widening cultural access and developing new forms of artistry. Through close analysis of dozens of productions, both high-profile and lesser known, it examines the rise of live broadcasting and recording in the theatre, the growing use of live video feeds and dynamic projections on the mainstream stage, and experiments in born-digital theatre-making, including social media, virtual reality, and video-conferencing adaptations. In doing so, it argues that technologically adventurous performances of Shakespeare allow performers and audiences to test what they believe theatre to be, as well as to reflect on what it means to be present-with a work of art, with others, with oneself-in an increasingly online world.

There is extraordinary diversity, depth, and complexity in the encounter between theatre, performance, and human rights. Through an examination of a rich repertoire of plays and performance practices from and about countries across six continents, the contributors to this volume seek to open the way toward understanding the character and significance of this encounter. Divided into three interrelated sections, the book focuses on a range of critical and timely human rights questions as they relate to transitional justice, memory politics, citizenship, the 'War on Terror, ' transnational spectatorship, and the global economic order. Authors ask what artists, audiences and readers imagine, expect, and desire from the engagement of theatre and performance with these crucial questions. Ultimately, this book aims to provide nuanced, global perspectives on the emerging and transformative aesthetics, ethics and effects of this encounter at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Acting is all about charisma. Whether you’re an A-list star or an extra, when you’re on stage you need to perform in a way that makes your audience listen.

That stage presence is something we can all learn from. Every time you speak up in a meeting, recount an anecdote, or tell a joke, it’s essential to communicate with gravitas.

Jeannette Nelson knows a thing or two about gravitas. As Head of Voice at the National Theatre, she has spent three decades working with the world’s leading actors – from Al Pacino to Benedict Cumberbatch to Juliette Binoche – teaching them to speak clearly and move confidently.

Now, Nelson pulls back the curtain on the tricks that professional performers use to own the room. Starting with clear speech and good posture, before moving on to the art of rhetoric and overcoming stage fright, she outlines a holistic three-stage method to communicating with authority, authenticity and eloquence. Throughout, she peppers the book with stories of how world-renowned actors learnt to make themselves heard – and how you can, too.

The result is a fascinating and eminently practical guide to the art of performance. If all the world’s a stage, then this book will turn you into its lead actor.

Theatre and Event: Staging the European Century, examines how, in these first decades of the twenty-first century, contemporary European theatre-makers have sought to consider the disastrous events of the twentieth century as the 'unfinished business' of the contemporary. Kear argues that by thinking through the logic of the event, and the theatre event especially, contemporary performance practice enables an affective interrogation of 'the event' of the European century.Examining the work of leading theatre companies, Theatre and Event: Staging the European Century offers detailed expositions and engaged analyses of key works by Needcompany (Belgium), Jaunais Rigas Teatris (Latvia), Societas Raffaello Sanzio (Italy), National Theatre Wales (UK), and Studios Kabako (France/Democratic Republic of the Congo). This book offers an original conception of the theatre event as an event which exists in relation to, and performatively historicises, other 'events', requiring a critical and creative practice of spectatorship to animate its political affects.

This book examines contemporary English drama and its relation to the neoliberal consensus that has dominated British policy since 1979. The London stage has emerged as a key site in Britain's reckoning with neoliberalism. On one hand, many playwrights have denounced the acquisitive values of unfettered global capitalism; on the other, plays have more readily revealed themselves as products of the very market economy they critique, their production histories and formal innovations uncomfortably reproducing the strategies and practices of neoliberal labour markets. Stage Business and the Neoliberal Theatre of London thus arrives at a usefully ambivalent political position, one that praises the political power of the theatre - its potential as a form of resistance to the neoliberal rationality that rides roughshod over democratic values - while simultaneously attending to the institutional bondage that constrains it. For, of course, the theatre itself everywhere straddles the line of capitulating to the marketization of our cultural life.

The Merchant of Venice and Othello are the two Shakespeare plays which serve as touchstones for contemporary understandings and responses to notions of 'the stranger' and 'the other'. This groundbreaking collection explores the dissemination of the two plays through Europe in the first two decades of the 21st-century, tracing how productions and interpretations have reflected the changing conditions and attitudes locally and nationally. Packed with case studies of productions of each play in different countries, the volume opens vistas on the continent's turbulent history marked by the instability of allegiances and boundaries, and shifting senses of identity in a context of war, decolonization and migration. Chapters examine productions in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Italy, France, Portugal and Germany to shed light on wide-scale European developments for the first time in English. In a final section, performance insights are offered by interviews with three directors: Karin Coonrod on directing The Merchant in Venice at the Venetian Ghetto in 2016, Plamen Markov on his 2020 Othello for the Varna Theatre (Bulgaria) and Arnaud Churin, whose Othello toured France in 2019. In drawing attention to the ways in which historical circumstances and collective memory shape and refashion performance, Shakespeare's Others in 21st-century European Performance offers a rich review of European theatrical engagements with Otherness in the productions of these two plays.

This ground-breaking book is the first to bring an ecological focus to theatre and performance design, both in scholarship and in practice. Ecoscenography weaves environmental philosophies and practices across genres and fields to provide a captivating vision for the future of sustainable theatre production. The book forefronts leading designers that are driving this emerging field into the mainstream through their relational and reciprocal engagement with place, audiences, materials, and processes. Beyond its radical philosophy and framework, Ecoscenography makes a compelling case for pursuing an ecological ethic in theatre and performance design, not only as a moral imperative, but for the extraordinary possibilities that it offers for more-than-human engagement. Based on her personal insights as a leading ecological researcher and practitioner, Beer offers a rich resource for scholars, students and practitioners alike, opening up new processes and aesthetics of theatrical design that enhance the environmental and social advocacy of the field.

Queer exceptions is a study of contemporary solo performance in the UK and Western Europe that explores the contentious relationship between identity, individuality and neoliberalism. With diverse case studies featuring the work of La Ribot, David Hoyle, Oreet Ashery, Bridget Christie, Tanja Ostojic, Adrian Howells and Nassim Soleimanpour, the book examines the role of singular or 'exceptional' subjects in constructing and challenging assumed notions of communal sociability and togetherness, while drawing fresh insight from the fields of sociology, gender studies and political philosophy to reconsider theatre's attachment to singular lives and experiences. Framed by a detailed exploration of arts festivals as encapsulating the material, entrepreneurial circumstances of contemporary performance-making, this is the first major critical study of solo work since the millennium. -- .

Hysteria, trauma and melancholia are not only powerful tropes in contemporary culture, they are also prominent in the theatre. As the first study in its field, "Hysteria, Trauma and Melancholia" explores the characteristics and concerns of the Drama of Hysteria, Trauma and Melancholia through in-depth readings of representative plays.

In this selection of research articles Butterworth focuses on investigation of the practical and technical means by which early English theatre, from the fifteenth to the early seventeenth century, was performed. Matters of staging for both 'pageant vehicle' and 'theatre-in-the-round' are described and analysed to consider their impact on playing by players, expositors, narrators and prompters. All these operators also functioned to promote the closely aligned disciplines of pyrotechnics and magic (legerdemain or sleight of hand) which also influence the nature of the presented theatre. The sixteen chapters form four clearly identified parts-staging, playing, pyrotechnics and magic-and drawing on a wealth of primary source material, Butterworth encourages the reader to rediscover and reappreciate the actors, magicians, wainwrights and wheelwrights, pyrotechnists, and (in modern terms) the special effects people and event managers who brought these early texts to theatrical life on busy city streets and across open arenas. The chapters variously explore and analyse the important backwaters of material culture that enabled, facilitated and shaped performance yet have received scant scholarly attention. It is here, among the itemised payments to carpenters and chemists, the noted requirements of mechanics and wheelwrights, or tucked away among the marginalia of suppliers of staging and ingenious devices that Butterworth has made his stamping ground. This is a fascinating introduction to the very 'nuts and bolts' of early theatre. Staging, Playing, Pyrotechnics and Magic: Conventions of Performance in Early English Theatre is a closely argued celebration of stagecraft that will appeal to academics and students of performance, theatre history and medieval studies as well as history and literature more broadly. It constitutes the eighth volume in the Routledge series Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies and continues the valuable work of that series (of which Butterworth is a general editor) in bringing significant and expert research articles to a wider audience.

This volume offers rare insights into the connection between young audiences and the performing arts. Based on studies of adolescent and post-adolescent audiences, ages 14 to 25, the book examines to what extent they are part of our society s cultural conversation. It studies how these young people read and understand theatrical performance. It looks at what the educational components in their theatre literacy are, and what they make of the whole social event of theatre. It studies their views on the relationship between what they themselves decide and what others decide for them. The book uses qualitative and quantitative data collected in a six-year study carried out in the three largest Australian States, thirteen major performing arts companies, including the Sydney Opera House, three state theatre companies and three funding organisations. The book s perspectives are derived from world-wide literature and company practices and its significance and ramifications are international.

The book is written to be engaging and accessible to theatre professionals and lay readers interested in theatre, as well as scholars and researchers.

This extraordinary book thoroughly explains why young people (ages 14-25+) do and do not attend theatre into adulthood by delineating how three inter-linked factors (literacy, confidence, and etiquette) influence their decisions. Given that theatre happens inside spectators minds, the authors balance the theatre equation by focusing upon young spectators and thereby dispel numerous beliefs held by theatre artists and educators. Each clearly written chapter engages readers with astute insights and compelling examples of pertinent responses from young people, teachers, and theatre professionals. To stem the tide of decreasing theatre attendance, this highly useful book offers pragmatic strategies for artistic, educational, and marketing directors, as well as national theatre organizations and arts councils around the world. I have no doubt that its brilliantly conceived research, conducted across multiple contexts in Australia, will make a significant and original contribution to the profession of theatre on an international scale. Jeanne Klein, "University of Kansas, USA"

" Young Audiences, Theatre and the Cultural Conversation" is" "a compelling and comprehensive study on attitudes and habits of youth theatre audiences by leading international scholars in the field. This benchmark study offers unique insights by and for theatre makers and administrators, theatre educators and researchers, schools, parents, teachers, students, audience members of all ages.

A key strength within the book centers on the emphasis of the participant voices, particularly the voices of the youth. Youth voices, along with those of teachers and theatre artists, position the extensive field research front and center. George Belliveau, "The University of British Columbia, Canada""