Through an innovative interdisciplinary reading and field research, Igor Chabrowski analyses the history of the development of opera in Sichuan, arguing that opera serves as a microcosm of the profound transformation of modern Chinese culture between the 18th century and 1950s. He investigates the complex path of opera over this course of history: exiting the temple festivals, becoming a public obsession on commercial stages, and finally being harnessed to partisan propaganda work. The book analyzes the process of cross-regional integration of Chinese culture and the emergence of the national opera genre. Moreover, opera is shown as an example of the culture wars that raged inside China's popular culture.

With the advancement of cybernetics, avatars, animation, and virtual reality, a thorough understanding of how the puppet metaphor originates from specific theatrical practices and media is especially relevant today. This book identifies and interprets the aesthetic and cultural significance of the different traditions of the Italian puppet theater in the broader Italian culture and beyond. Grounded in the often-overlooked history of the evolution of several Italian puppetry traditions - the central and northern Italian stringed marionettes, the Sicilian pupi, the glove puppets of the Po Valley, and the Neapolitan Pulcinella - this study examines a broad spectrum of visual, cinematic, literary, and digital texts representative of the functions and themes of the puppet. A systematic analysis of the meanings ascribed to the idea and image of the puppet provides a unique vantage point to observe the perseverance and transformation of its deeper associations, linking premodern, modern, and contemporary contexts.

With the paranormal becoming so mainstream in the last decade between television, books, and movies, is the craze actually brand new? Before there was the entertainment industry that we know of today, plays and musicals were one of the primary forms of expression and reflections of society's beliefs of their time. This book will cover an analysis of the belief in the supernatural throughout the course of humanity's existence and showing that in a way, the paranormal has always been normal. Using elements of theatre as the research vehicle, as well as establishing the relationship between acting and the unknown, this book examines the rich relationship between theatre and the paranormal. Finally, this book will challenge the reader to consider the possibility of using theatre as a method for researching and investigating the paranormal. Readers will be asked to consider what would happen if investigators and "ghost hunters" took on the role of an actor and the haunted location becomes a performance space, thus welcoming communication and activity from the other side.

In Place of a Show is a compelling account of Western theatre buildings in the 21st century: theatres stripped of their primary purpose, lying empty, preserved as museums, or demolished. Playfully combining first-person narratives, scholarly research and visual documents, Augusto Corrieri explores the material and imaginative potentials of these places, charting interconnections between humans, birds, vegetation, and the beguiling animations of inanimate things, such as walls, curtains and seats. Across four chapters we learn of the uncanny dismantling and reconstitution of a German Baroque auditorium during the Second World War; the phantasmal remains of a demolished music hall in London's East End; a Renaissance Italian theatre, fleetingly transformed into an aviary by the appearance of a swallow; and a lavish opera house emerging from the Amazon rainforest. In these pages we are invited to discover theatres as sites of anomalous encounters and surprising coincidences: places that might reveal the performative entanglement of human and nonhuman worlds.

Contemporary Women Stage Directors opens the door into the minds of 27 prolific female theatre directors, allowing you to explore their experience, wisdom and knowledge. Directors give insight into their diverse approaches to the key challenges of directing theatre, including choosing projects, engaging with scripts, conceptualizing visual and acoustic production elements, collaborating with actors and production teams, building their careers, and navigating challenges and opportunities posed by gender, race and ethnicity. The directors featured include Maria Aberg, May Adrales, Sarah Benson, Karin Coonrod, Rachel Chavkin, Lear deBessonet, Nadia Fall, Vicky Featherstone, Polly Findlay, Leah Gardiner, Anne Kauffman, Lucy Kerbel, Young Jean Lee, Patricia McGregor, Blanche McIntyre, Paulette Randall, Diane Rodriguez, Indhu Rubasingham, KJ Sanchez, Tina Satter, Kimberly Senior, Roxana Silbert, Leigh Silverman, Caroline Steinbeis, Liesl Tommy, Lyndsey Turner, and Erica Whyman. These women are making profoundly exciting theatre in some of the most influential organizations across the English-speaking world- from Broadway to the West End, from the National Theatre in London to Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles. As generally mid-career professionals, they are informed by both their hard-earned expertise and their forward-looking energy. They offer astute observations about the current state of the art form, as well as inspiring visions of what theatre can accomplish in the decades to come.

What do we watch when we watch war? Who manages public perceptions of war and how? Watching War on the Twenty-First-Century Stage: Spectacles of Conflict is the first publication to examine how theatre in the UK has staged, debated and challenged the ways in which spectacle is habitually weaponized in times of war. The 'battle for hearts and minds' and the 'war of images' are fields of combat that can be as powerful as armed conflict. And today, spectacle and conflict - the two concepts that frame the book - have joined forces via audio-visual technologies in ways that are more powerful than ever. Clare Finburgh's original and interdisciplinary interrogation provides a richly provocative account of the structuring role that spectacle plays in warfare, engaging with the works of philosopher Guy Debord, cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard, visual studies specialist Marie-Jose Mondzain, and performance scholar Hans-Thies Lehmann. She offers coherence to a large and expanding field of theatrical war representation by analysing in careful detail a spectrum of works as diverse as expressionist drama, documentary theatre, comedy, musical satire and dance theatre. She demonstrates how features unique to the theatrical art, namely the construction of a fiction in the presence of the audience, can present possibilities for a more informed engagement with how spectacles of war are produced and circulated. If we watch with more resistance, we may contribute in significant ways to the demilitarization of images. And what if this were the first step towards a literal demilitarization?

Performing Immanence: Forced Entertainment is a unique probe into the multi-faceted nature of the works of the British experimental theatre Forced Entertainment via the thought of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Jan Suk explores the transformation-potentiality of the territory between the actors and the spectators, namely via Forced Entertainment's structural patterns, sympathy provoking aesthetics, audience integration and accentuated emphasis of the now. Besides writings of Tim Etchells, the company's director, the foci of the analyses are devised as well as durational projects of Forced Entertainment. The examination includes a wider spectrum of state-of the-art live artists, e.g. Tehching Hsieh, Franko B or Goat Island, discussed within the contemporary performance discourse. Performing Immanence: Forced Entertainment investigates how the immanent reading of Forced Entertainment's performances brings the potentiality of creative transformative experience via the thought of Gilles Deleuze. The interconnections of Deleuze's thought and the contemporary devised performance theatre results in the symbiotic relationship that proves that such readings are not mere academic exercises, but truly life-illuminating realizations.

Explores the ways television documents, satirizes, and critiques the political era of the Trump presidency. In American Television during a Television Presidency, Karen McNally and contributors critically examine the various ways in which television became transfixed by the Trump presidency and the broader political, social, and cultural climate. This book is the first to fully address the relationship between TV and a presidency consistently conducted with television in mind. The sixteen chapters cover everything from the political theater of televised impeachment hearings to the potent narratives of fictional drama and the stinging critiques of comedy, as they consider the wide-ranging ways in which television engages with the shifting political culture that emerged during this period. Approaching television both historically and in the contemporary moment, the contributors-an international group of scholars from a variety of academic disciplines-illuminate the indelible links that exist between television, American politics, and the nation's broader culture. As it interrogates a presidency played out through the lens of the TV camera and reviews a medium immersing itself in a compelling and inescapable subject, American Television during a Television Presidency sets out to explore what defines the television of the Trump era as a distinctive time in TV history. From inequalities to resistance, and from fandom to historical memory, this book opens up new territory in which to critically analyze television's complex relationship with Donald Trump, his presidency, and the political culture of this unsettled and simultaneously groundbreaking era. Undergraduate and graduate students and scholars of film and television studies, comedy studies, and cultural studies will value this strong collection.

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."

Theatre in London has celebrated a rich and influential history, and in 1976 the first volume of J. P. Wearing s reference series provided researchers with an indispensable resource of these productions. In the decades since the original calendars were produced, several research aids have become available, notably various reference works and the digitization of important newspapers and relevant periodicals. The second edition of The London Stage 1890 1899: A Calendar of Productions, Performers, and Personnel provides a chronological calendar of London shows from the first of January, 1890, through the 31st of December, 1899. The volume chronicles more than 3,000 productions at 31 major central London theatres during this period. For each entry the following information is provided: .Title .Author .Theatre .Performers .Personnel .Opening and Closing Dates .Number of Performances Other details include genre of the production, number of acts, and a list of reviews. A comment section includes other interesting information, such as plot description, first-night reception by the audience, noteworthy performances, staging elements, and details of performances in New York either prior to or after the London production. Among the plays staged in London during this decade were Alice in Wonderland, Arms and the Man, Cyrano de Bergerac, An Ideal Husband, The Prisoner of Zenda, and The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, as well as numerous musical comedies (British and American), foreign works, operas, and revivals of English classics. A definitive resource, this edition revises, corrects, and expands the original calendar. In addition, approximately 20 percent of the material in particular, information of adaptations and translations, plot sources, and comment information is new. Arranged chronologically, the shows are fully indexed by title, genre, and theatre. A general index includes numerous subject entries on such topics as acting, audiences, censorship, costumes, managers, performers, prompters, staging, and ticket prices. The London Stage 1890 1899 will be of value to scholars, theatrical personnel, librarians, writers, journalists, and historians."

A LA Times best theater book of 2022 Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard, by most accounts the leading British playwrights of our time, might seem to come from very different aesthetic, cultural and political worlds. But as Carey Perloff's fascinating new book reveals, the two have much in common. By examining these contemporaries alongside one another and in the context of the rehearsal room, we can glean new insights and connections, including the impact of their Jewish background on their work and their passion for the details of stagecraft. Readers of Pinter and Stoppard: A Director's View will emerge with a set of tools for approaching their work in a performance environment and for unlocking the mysteries of the plays for audiences. Esteemed theatre director Carey Perloff draws upon her first-hand experience of working with both writers, creating case studies of particular plays in production to provide new ways of positioning the work today. 30 years after major criticism on both playwrights first emerged, this is a ripe moment for a fresh examination of the unique contribution of Pinter and Stoppard in the twenty-first century.

An international arts organisation and network engaging with music, dance, theatre and visual art, Phakama creates adventurous, site-responsive performances with large groups of people from diverse backgrounds. With contributions from participants, artists, academics and cultural commentators from India, Ireland, South Africa, the UK and USA, this book features case studies, interviews and articles covering two decades of practice. At the heart of the book is a selection of carefully explained and beautifully illustrated exercises which will enable Phakama's methodology to be used by organisations and practitioners working with young people internationally. Phakama is a Xhosa and Zulu word for stand up, arise, empower yourself. With a focus on collaborative, non-hierarchical performance making, Phakama invites cultural sharing and critical engagement with the world we live in. As well as engaging with political and critical concerns about contemporary theatre and performance, the book offers unique approaches to devising theatre, applied and social theatre, intercultural performance practices and pedagogic models of collaboration and cultural leadership.

The past two decades have witnessed the emergence of a lively Portuguese-language theatre festival circuit, where Brazilian, Portuguese, and Lusophone African artists come together and jointly negotiate the cultural dynamics of an emerging transnational community grounded in a common language and shared colonial histories. Christina S. McMahon trains a sharp ethnographic eye on African performances staged at these festivals, revealing how festival productions and their aftermath can generate new perspectives on race and gender, colonial trauma, and the economics of cultural globalization. Featuring in-depth analysis of performances and artist interviews from Cape Verde, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique - countries with vibrant theatre practices and vexed colonial pasts - the book reveals how international festivals can be valuable platforms for new intercultural dialogues and diplomatic possibilities. Recasting Transnationalism through Performance offers a fresh look at the role of theatre in navigating new postcolonial realities.

Directing with the Michael Chekhov Technique explores the collaborative process between a play's director and the entire production team, making the journey of a production process cohesive using the Michael Chekhov Technique. No other technique provides the tools for both actor and director to communicate as clearly as does Michael Chekhov. Directing with the Michael Chekhov Technique is the first book to apply the insights of this celebrated technique to the realities of directing a theatrical production. The book chronicles the journey of a play, from conception through production, through the eyes of the director. Drawn from the author's rehearsal journals, logs and notes from each performance, the reader is shown how to arrive at a concept, create a concept statement and manage the realization of the play, utilizing specific techniques from Michael Chekhov to solve problems of acting and design. As with all books in the Theatre Arts Workbook series, Directing with the Michael Chekhov Technique will include online video exercises, "Teaching Tip" boxes which streamline the book for teachers, and a useful Further Reading section. Directing with the Michael Chekhov Technique is the perfect guide to the production process for any director.

Life in Iran as an artist under the Shah and during the Iranian Revolution A Man of the Theater tells the personal story of a theater artist caught between the two great upheavals of Iranian history in the 20th century. One is the White Revolution of the 1960s, the incomplete and uneven modernization imposed from the top by the dictatorial regime of the Shah, coming in the wake of the overthrow of the popular Mosaddegh government with the help of the CIA. The other one is the Iranian Revolution of 1979, a great rising of Iranian society against the rule of the Shah in which Khomeini's Islamist faction ends up taking power. Written in a simple direct style, Rahmaninejad's memoir describes his fraught creative life in Tehran during these decades, founding a theater company and directing plays under the increasing pressure of the censorship authorities and the Shah's secret police. After being arrested and tortured by the SAVAK and after spending years in Tehran's infamous Evin prison and being a cause celebre of Amnesty International, Rahmaninejad is freed by the Revolution of 1979. But his new-found freedom is short-lived; the progressive intellectuals and artists find themselves overpowered and outmaneuvered by the better organized Islamists, leading to renewed terror and to exile. In Western perception, the Iranian Revolution, which this year has its 40th anniversary, often overshadows the decades of Iran's modern history that preceded it. A Man of the Theater fills this gap. The title derives from a time of torture in prison when interrogators ordered him to write everything about his activities. To avoid revealing anything incriminating he took pen in hand and wrote and wrote about all his artistic passions, beginning, "Here it is-this is my life! I am an artist! A man of the theater!"