Perspectives on the Performance of French Piano Music offers a range of approaches central to the performance of French piano music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The contributors include scholars and active performers who see performance not as an independent activity but as a practice enriched by a wealth of historical and analytical approaches. To underline the usefulness of contextual understanding for performance, each author highlights the choices performers must confront with examples drawn from particular repertoires and composers. Topics explored include editorial practice, the use of early recordings, emergent disciplines such as analysis-and-performance, and traditions passed down from teacher to student. Themes that emerge demonstrate the importance of editions as a form of communication, the challenges of notation, the significance of detail and of deeper continuity, the importance of performing and teaching traditions, and the influence of cross disciplinary frameworks. A link to a set of performed examples on the frenchpianomusic.com website allows readers to hear and compare performances and interpretations of the music discussed. The volume will appeal to musicologists and analysts interested in performance, performers, students, and piano teachers.

The Affects, Cognition, and Politics of Samuel Beckett's Postwar Drama and Fiction: Revolutionary and Evolutionary Paradoxes theorizes the revolutionary and evolutionary import of Beckett's works in a global context defined by increasingly ubiquitous and insidious mechanisms of capture, exploitation, and repression, alongside unprecedented demands for high-volume information-processing and connectivity. Part I shows that, in generating consistent flows of solidarity-based angry laughter, Beckett's works sabotage coercive couplings of the subject to social machines by translating subordination and repression into processes rather than data of experience. Through an examination of Beckett's attack on gender/ class-related normative injunctions, the book shows that Beckett's works can generate solidarity and action-oriented affects in readers/ spectators regardless of their training in textual analysis. Part II proposes that Beckett's works can weaken the cognitive dominance of constrictive "frames" in readers/ audiences, so that toxic ideological formations such as the association of safety and comfort with simplicity and "sameness" are rejected and more complex cognitive operations are welcomed instead-a process that bolsters the mind's ability to operate at ease with increasingly complex, malleable, extensible, and inclusive frames, as well as with increasing volumes of information.

This book traces blackface types from ancient masks of grinning Africans and phallus-bearing Roman fools through to comedic medieval devils, the pan-European black-masked Titivillus and Harlequin, and racial impersonation via stereotypical 'black speech' explored in the Renaissance by Lope de Vega and Shakespeare. Jim Crow and antebellum minstrelsy recycled Old World blackface stereotypes of irrationality, ignorance, pride, and immorality. Drawing upon biblical interpretations and philosophy, comic types from moral allegory originated supposedly modern racial stereotypes. Early blackface traditions thus spread damning race-belief that black people were less rational, hence less moral and less human. Such notions furthered the global Renaissance's intertwined Atlantic slave and sugar trades and early nationalist movements. The latter featured overlapping definitions of race and nation, as well as of purity of blood, language, and religion in opposition to 'Strangers'. Ultimately, Old World beliefs still animate supposed 'biological racism' and so-called 'white nationalism' in the age of Trump.

Interest in the management of creative and cultural organisations has grown at pace with the size of this sector. This textbook uniquely focuses on how innovation in these industries transforms practice. Uncovering the strategic role of innovation for organizations in the creative and cultural sector, the book provides readers with practical guidance to help traverse seismic disruptions brought about by global health and economic crises. The authors examine how innovation in business models, products, services, and technology has disrupted the competitive landscapes of the arts world. Innovations are characterized as deriving from other industries as well as via exogenous shocks that privilege some companies over others. Case studies bring to life how innovation is used strategically in different ways around varying competitive forces. Enhanced by conceptual tools and replete with industry examples, this textbook is an ideal resource for students and reflective practitioners to understand how innovation can be a productive tool for transforming their own creative and cultural industry practice and performance during a period of rapid technological change and unprecedented societal challenge.

Digital technologies have transformed archives in every area of their form and function, and as technologies mature so does their capacity to change our understanding and experience of material and performative cultural production. There has been an exponential explosion in the production and consumption of video online and yet there is a scarcity of knowledge and cases about video and the digital archive. This book seeks to address that through the lens of the project Circus Oz Living Archive. This project provides the case study foundation for the articulation of the issues, challenges and possibilities that the design and development of digital archives afford. Drawn from eight different disciplines and professions, the authors explore what it means to embrace the possibilities of digital technologies to transform contemporary cultural institutions and their archives into new methods of performance, representation and history.

This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the fascinating and strikingly diverse history of imagination in the context of theatre and drama. Key questions that the book explores are: How do spectators engage with the drama in performance, and how does the historical context influence the dramaturgy of imagination? In addition to offering a study of the cultural history and theory of imagination in a European context including its philosophical, physiological, cultural and political implications, the book examines the cultural enactment of imagination in the drama text and offers practical strategies for analyzing the aesthetic practice of imagination in drama texts. It covers the early modern to the late modernist period and includes three in-depth case studies: William Shakespeare's Macbeth (c.1606); Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879); and Eugene Ionesco's The Killer (1957).

A clear, supportive and comprehensive guide to writing a play - based on the author's long-running playwriting masterclasses, as taught at the UK's National Theatre. This book leads you through everything you need to know, including: The theatrical tools and techniques you can use to bring your play to life on the stage (and how these differ from writing for film and TV); Discovering and trusting your writing process, with a range of approaches for developing your initial idea into a completed script; Understanding your characters, including their goals and central conflicts, and using emotional logic to connect them to your story; Finding the dramatic structure and theatrical setting that best suits your play; The key elements of constructing a great scene, including how to handle exposition, invoke tension, deepen characterisation and create effective transitions; Writing engaging, active dialogue by finding each character's voice, balancing exposition with subtext, and rooting what a character says in their specific context Throughout, you'll find examples from classical and modern plays, plus insights from other contemporary playwrights into their own writing journeys. Each chapter provides a set of exercises to help you practise what you've learnt. There's also advice on what to do once you've finished your script - including redrafting, receiving feedback and taking notes - and how to navigate your play's progress towards production. Whether you're an emerging playwright or embarking on your first-ever play, The Playwright's Journey will help you develop your creativity, strengthen your connection to your material, and transform your idea into a fully formed play that feels alive on the page - and the stage.

In Imaginary Performances in Shakespeare, visionary modernist theatre director Aureliu Manea analyses the theatrical possibilities of Shakespeare. Through nineteen Shakespeare plays, Manea sketches the intellectual parameters, the visual languages, and the emotional worlds of imagined stage interpretations of each; these nineteen short essays are appended by his essay 'Confessions,' an autobiographical meditation on the nature of theatre and the role of the director. This captivating book which will be attractive to anyone interested in Shakespeare and modern theatre.

Dramaturgy in the Making maps contemporary dramaturgical practices in various settings of theatre-making and dance to reveal the different ways that dramaturgs work today. It provides a thorough survey of three major areas of practice - institutional dramaturgy, production dramaturgy and dance dramaturgy - with each illustrated through a range of case studies that illuminate methodology and which will assist practitioners in developing their own 'dramaturgical toolbox'. In tracing the development of the role of the dramaturg, the author explores the contribution of Lessing, Brecht and Tynan, foundational figures who shaped the practice. She excavates the historical and theoretical contexts for each strand of the work, uniquely offering a history of dance dramaturgy and its associated theories. Based on extensive research, the volume features material from the author's interviews with fifty eminent professionals from Europe and North America, including: Robert Blacker, Jack Bradley, DD Kugler, Ruth Little and Hildegard De Vuyst. Through these, a detailed and precise insight is provided into dramaturgical processes at organisations such as the Akram Khan Company, les ballets C de la B (Gent), the National Theatre and the Royal Court (London), the Schaubuhne (Berlin) and The Sundance Institute Theatre Lab (Utah), among others. Dramaturgy in the Making will prove indispensable to anyone working in theatre or wanting to better understand the dramaturgical processes in performance-making today. The book features a foreword by Geoff Proehl, author of Toward a Dramaturgical Sensibility: Landscape and Journey.

Faced with a depleted planet and a series of connected crises, socially-minded agents and entities within the world of culture and the arts are reacting from within. With insights from sociology, economics, and cultural management and policy, this book aims to chronicle the journey of SMart - a cultural and artistic social enterprise now present in eight European countries - in order to illustrate such organisation's efforts to achieve its potential for social innovation and transformation. Tackling the endemic precariousness and intermittency of work through innovative arrangements for cultural workers and artists has been central to these efforts. In many cases, however, this activism not only had a direct impact at the level of individual and collective labor, but has transformed the ways culture is 'governed'. Readers of this book will better understand the connection between social innovation and culture and the arts; gain awareness of the trends and transformations within the field of culture and cultural work and their connection with institutional arrangements: and critically engage with the processes, challenges and benefits of scaling up and diffusing social innovation. The debates presented will be of relevance to scholars and students across disciplines, policy makers at both EU and national levels, practitioners and social activists.

The Complete Guide to Dance Nutrition is the first complete textbook written by an experienced dietitian specialising in the field of dance nutrition and provideS both dancers-in-training and instructors with practical advice on dance nutrition for health and performance. It is also highly relevant for dance professionals. With an in-depth and extensive coverage on all nutrition topics relevant to dancers, this textbook covers nutrition for the scenarios dancers face, including day to day training and rehearsals, peak performance, injuries, immunonutrition, nutrition and stress management. Information is included on topics applicable to individual dancers including advice for dancers with type 1 diabetes and clinical conditions relating to gut health. This book guides the reader through the macronutrients making up the diet, their chemical structure and their role in health and optimal performance. Readers will be shown how to estimate energy and nutrient needs based on their schedule, type of dance undertaken, and personal goals before considering the practical aspects of dance nutrition; from nutrition planning to dietary supplements, strategies for assessing the need to alter body composition and guidance on undertaking health focused changes is presented. The Complete Guide to Dance Nutrition combines and condenses the author's knowledge and many years of experience working in the dance industry to translate nutrition science into a practical guide. Bringing together the latest research in dance science and nutrition, this book aims to be a trusted reference and practical textbook for students of Dance, Dance Nutrition, Dance Performance, Sport Nutrition and Sport Science more generally as well as for those training in the dance industry, dance teachers and professionals.

This book is the first comprehensive study of the reception of Tennessee Williams in China, from rejection and/or misgivings to cautious curiosity and to full-throated acceptance, in the context of profound changes in China's socioeconomic and cultural life and mores since the end of the Cultural Revolution. It fills a conspicuous gap in scholarship in the reception of one of the greatest American playwrights and joins book-length studies of Chinese reception of Shakespeare, Ibsen, O'Neill, Brecht, and other important Western playwrights whose works have been eagerly embraced and appropriated and have had catalytic impact on modern Chinese cultural life.

Winner of the MRDS 2013 David Bevington Award for Best New Book in Early Drama Studies Many unspoken assumptions permeated the experience of performance in Shakespeare's theatre. Drawing on scientific treatises, murder pamphlets, travel narratives, dream manuals, religious sermons, festive sports, and other fascinating primary sources, Lin reconstructs playgoers' typical ways of thinking and feeling and demonstrates how these culturally-trained habits of mind shaped not only dramatic narratives but also the presentational dynamics of onstage action. Combining literary criticism, theatre history, and performance theory, this ground-breaking study explodes received ideas about mimesis, spectacle, and semiotics as it uncovers the ways in which early modern performance functioned as a material medium, revising and producing social attitudes and practices.

This book looks at the staging and performance of normality in early modern drama. Analysing conventions and rules, habitual practices, common things and objects, and mundane sights and experiences, this volume foregrounds a staged normality that has been heretofore unseen, ignored, or taken for granted. It draws together leading and emerging scholars of early modern theatre and culture to debate the meaning of normality in an early modern context and to discuss how it might transfer to the stage. In doing so, these original critical essays unsettle and challenge scholarly assumptions about how normality is represented in the performance space. The volume, which responds to studies of the everyday and the material turn in cultural history, as well as to broader philosophical engagements with the idea of normality and its opposites, brings to light the essential role that normality plays in the composition and performance of early modern drama.

Obscured behind concrete and razor wire, the lives of the incarcerated remain hidden from public view. Inside the walls, imprisoned people all over the world stage theatrical productions that enable them to assert their humanity and capabilities. Prison Theatre and the Global Crisis of Incarceration offers a uniquely international account and exploration of prison theatre. By discussing a range of performance practices tied to incarceration, this book examines the ways in which arts practitioners and imprisoned people use theatre as a means to build communities, attain professional skills, create social change, and maintain hope. Ashley Lucas's writing offers a distinctive blend of storytelling, performance analysis, travelogue, and personal experience as the child of an incarcerated father. Distinct examples of theatre performed in prisons are explored throughout the main text and also in a section of Critical Perspectives by international scholars and practitioners.

This book analyzes recent physics plays, arguing that their enaction of concepts from the sciences they discuss alters the nature of the decisions made by the characters, changing the ethical judgements that might be cast on them. Recent physics plays regularly alter the shape of space-time itself, drawing together disparate moments, reversing the flow of time, creating apparent contradictions, and iterating scenes for multiple branches of counterfactual history. With these changes both causality and responsibility shift, variously. The roles of iconic scientists, such as Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg, are interrogated for their dramatic value, placing history and dramatic license in tension. Cold War strategies and the limits of espionage highlight the emphatically personal involvement of ordinary individuals. This study is vital reading for those interested in physics plays and the relationship between the sciences and the humanities.

This volume investigates performance cultures as rich and dynamic environments of knowledge practice through which distinctive epistemologies are continuously (re)generated, cultivated, and celebrated. Epistemologies are dynamic formations of rules, tools, and procedures not only for understanding but also for doing knowledges. This volume deals in particular with epistemological challenges posed by practices and processes of interweaving performance cultures. These challenges arise in artistic and academic contexts because of hierarchies between epistemologies. European colonialism worked determinedly, violently, and often with devastating effects on instituting and sustaining a hegemony of modern Euro-American rules of knowing in many parts of the world. Therefore, Interweaving Epistemologies critically interrogates the (im)possibilities of interweaving epistemologies in artistic and academic contexts today. Writing from diverse geographical locations and knowledge cultures, the book's contributors-philosophers, political scientists as well as practitioners and scholars of theater, performance, and dance-investigate prevailing forms of epistemic ignorance and violence. They introduce key concepts and theories that enable critique of unequal power relations between epistemologies. Moreover, contributions explore historical cases of interweaving epistemologies and examine innovative present-day methods of working across and through epistemological divides in non-hegemonic, sustainable, creative, and critical ways. Ideal for practitioners, students and researchers of theater, performance, and dance as well as of philosophy and history (of science), Interweaving Epistemologies emphasizes the urgent need to acknowledge, study and promote epistemological plurality and diversity in practices of performance making as well as in scholarship on theater and performance around the globe today.

This book illuminates the shift in approaches to the uses of theatre and performance technology in the past twenty-five years and develops an account of new media dramaturgy (NMD), an approach to theatre informed by what the technology itself seems to want to say. Born of the synthesis of new media and new dramaturgy, NMD is practiced and performed in the work of a range of important artists from dumb type and their 1989 analog-industrial machine performance pH, to more recent examples from the work of Kris Verdonck and his A Two Dogs Company. Engaging with works from a range of artists and companies including: Blast Theory, Olafur Eliasson, Nakaya Fujiko and Janet Cardiff, we see a range of extruded performative technologies operating overtly on, with and against human bodies alongside more subtle dispersed, interactive and experiential media.

Encounters in Performance Philosophy is a collection of 14 essays by international researchers which demonstrates the vitality of the field of Performance Philosophy. The essays address a wide range of concerns common to performance and philosophy including: the body, language, performativity, mimesis and tragedy.

How to write a play and get it produced - a manual for playwrights. Playwright and former literary manager Tim Fountain guides the budding playwright over the many hurdles involved in getting a play on - from finding a story that only you know, through the detailed construction of the play, and on to the strategies you can use to get it on stage. * What kind of play do you want to write? * Where do you get your ideas from? * How much exposition do you need? * Where do you find your characters' voices? * What should you do when you get stuck? * Where should you send your play? The book also deals with the actual production: choosing directors, designers and actors, and coping with rehearsals, previews and press nights. Includes appendixes of vital websites, and contact details for new-writing theatres, agents and publishers. 'A marvellous and invaluable guide... full of wisdom and no-nonsense practical advice on the tricky but thrilling business of making plays' Willy Russell