Now that directors such as Stephen Spielberg, George Lucas, and Francis Ford Coppola are celebrated along-side movie stars, it is hard to imagine that little more than a century ago the director was a nameless, faceless entity-an overseer of workflow in the shuffle of shadows offstage.

In surveying the pioneers who transformed theater into the dynamic art form it is today, "Directors on Directing" presents a timeless collection of writings offering insight into what it means to direct and how to better appreciate theatrical performances.

Outlaws, irreverent humorists, political underdogs, authoritarians - and the silhouette, throughout, of a contemporary Australian woman: these are some of the figures who emerge from Philippa Kelly's extraordinary personal tale, The King and I. Kelly uses Shakespeare's King Lear as it has never been used before - to tell the story of Australia and Australians through the intimate journey she makes with Shakespeare's old king, whose struggles and torments are touchstones for the variety, poignancy and humour of Australian life. We hear the shrieking of birds and feel the heat of dusty towns, and we also come to know about important moments in Australia's social and political landscape: about the evolution of women's rights; about the erosion and reclamation of Aboriginal identity and the hardships experienced by transported settlers; and about attitudes toward age and endurance. At the heart of this book is one woman's personal story, and through this story we come to understand many profound and often hilarious features of the land Down Under.

Building on Robert J. Landy's seminal text, Handbook of Educational Drama and Theatre, Landy and Montgomery revisit this richly diverse and ever-changing field, identifying some of the best international practices in Applied Drama and Theatre. Through interviews with leading practitioners and educators such as Dorothy Heathcote, Jan Cohen Cruz, James Thompson, and Johnny Saldana, the authors lucidly present the key concepts, theories and reflective praxis of Applied Drama and Theatre. As they discuss the changes brought about by practitioners in venues such as schools, community centres, village squares and prisons, Landy and Montgomery explore the field's ability to make meaning of a vast range of personal and social issues through the application of drama and theatre.

For more than 15 years Jonathan Kalb has been a singularly perceptive commentator on American and European theatre. These essays and reviews, by the 1991 winner of the George Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism, set a new standard for theatre writing today. This collection begins with a brave and piercing appraisal of the state of current theatre criticism, in a section Kalb characteristically calls 'Critical Mess'. He goes on to revisit the work of Samuel Beckett, as performed in well-meaning efforts to bring it to a new, wider (TV) audience; to consider today's political theatre, particularly in the flourishing form of one-person shows; to explore the theatrical landscape of a reunited Germany, where the Berliner Ensemble is no longer a showcase for the East, and finally to cover what's going on back home in New York -- everything from 'The Lion King' and 'Dame Edna' to plays of David Mamet and Arthur Miller (new and old) and to the latest trends in the Broadway musical.

A gang of teenage girls gathers in an abandoned treehouse to summon the ghost of Pablo Escobar. Are they messing with the actual spirit of the infamous cartel kingpin? Or are they really just messing with each other? A roller coaster ride through the danger and damage of girlhood - the teenage wasteland - has never been so much twisted fun. Critic's Pick! "Highly entertaining - equally funny and scary." - The New York TimesFour Stars! "Just when you think you know where the play is heading, there's a disorienting coup de theatre that leaves you shaken. Our Dear Dead Drug Lord isn't for the faint of heart, but neither is coming of age." - Raven Snook, Time Out Critic's Pick! "Highly entertaining - equally funny and scary - the play starts off as a hoot and winds up a primal scream. They're throwing quite a seance at the McGinn/Cazale Theater." - Ben Brantley, The New York Times "As funny as it is violent and dark... Our Dear Dead Drug Lord is not quiet, small, or apologetic. It is loud and messy and truthful. It is incredibly complicated and a thing of extreme beauty. It is everything in women that society tells them they need to repress, and in this I found it incredibly enjoyable and inspiring." - Brittany Crowell, New York Theatre Guide "The challenges of female adolescence... explored with a remarkably fresh, honest and sometimes hilarious perspective." - Brian Scott Lipton, Theater Pizzazz "Unsettling... Scheer's characters are brilliantly drawn... the work of a born playwright and a unique new voice... As a story of female empowerment, it is both scary and revealing." - Victor Gluck, Theater Scene "An imaginative and ultimately savage new play... An offbeat Mean Girls sort of dramedy that unexpectedly concludes in a violent burst of magical realism." - Michael Sommers, New York Stage Review

Drugs and Theater in Early Modern England asks why Shakespeare and his contemporary playwrights were so preoccupied with drugs and poisons and, at a deeper level, why both critics and supporters of the theater, as well as playwrights themselves, so frequently adopted a chemical vocabulary to describe the effects of the theater on audiences. Drawing upon original medical and literary research, Pollard shows that the potency of the link between drugs and plays in the period demonstrates a model of drama radically different than our own, a model in which plays exert a powerful impact on spectators' bodies as well as minds. Early modern physiology held that the imagination and emotions were part of the body, and exerted a material impact on it, yet scholars of medicine and drama alike have not recognised the consequences of this idea. Plays, which alter our emotions and thought, simultaneously change us physically. This book argues that the power of the theater in early modern England, as well as the striking hostility to it, stems from the widely held contemporary idea that drama acted upon the body as well as the mind. In yoking together pharmacy and theater, this book offers a new model for understanding the relationship between texts and bodies. Just as bodies are constituted in part by the imaginative fantasies they consume, the theater's success (and notoriety) depends on its power over spectators' bodies. Drugs, which conflate concerns about unreliable appearances and material danger, evoked fascination and fear in this period by identifying a convergence point between the imagination and the body, the literary and the scientific, the magical and the rational. This book explores that same convergence point, and uses it to show the surprising physiological powers attributed to language, and especially to the embodied language of the theater.

George Kelly was a pioneer realist in the American theater who not only enjoyed popular and critical success, but also remained true to his own moral vision of theater as an art form despite what he considered vulgar influences that catered to the popular taste. Drawing upon the canon of Kelly's published plays as well as on manuscripts for four plays never before published or widely discussed by critics, this volume chronicles the evolution of this important craftsman and director from his earliest and most critically lauded examinations of America's upper middle-class family life to his often spartan commentary on changing American morals and tastes.

Calling into question the short-sighted assessments of scholars and critics who discount Kelly's achievements as formulaic and misogynistic, this reference reveals the broad spectrum of critical opinion which generally admired his theatrical skill and moral commitment. An opening biography surveys Kelly's career, while the chapters that follow give detailed information about his works. Included are plot synopses and production histories of his plays, along with an extensive annotated bibliography of reviews and scholarly studies.

This book marks a significant methodological shift in studies of black British women's theatre: it looks beyond published plays to the wealth of material held in archives of various kinds, from national repositories and themed collections to individuals' personal papers. It finds there a cache of unpublished manuscripts and production recordings distinctive for their non-naturalistic aesthetics. Close analysis of selected works identifies this as an intersectional feminist creative practice. Chapters focus on five theatre companies and artists, spanning several decades: Theatre of Black Women (1982-1988), co-founded by Booker Prize-winning writer Bernardine Evaristo; Munirah Theatre Company (1983-1991); Black Mime Theatre Women's Troop (1990-1992); Zindika; and SuAndi. The book concludes by reflecting on the politics of representation, with reference to popular postmillennial playwright debbie tucker green. Drawing on new interviews with the playwrights/practitioners and their peers, this book assembles a rich, interconnected, and occasionally corrective history of black British women's creativity. By reproducing 22 facsimile images of flyers, production programmes, photographs and other ephemera, Black British Women's Theatre: Intersectionality, Archives, Aesthetics not only articulates a hidden history but allows its readers their own encounter with the fragile record of this vibrant past.

In this concise and accessible volume, a noted keyboard artist and Bach specialist takes a fresh look at the performance of J. S. Bach's keyboard music. Addressing the nonspecialist player, Richard Troeger presents a wide range of historical information and discusses its musical applications. The author shares accounts of the musical styles Bach employed and the instruments he knew. In direct and pragmatic terms, he clarifies the importance of notational and style details as guides to the composer's intentions, particularly emphasizing changes in notational norms between Bach's time and the present. Troeger offers core information on dynamics, articulation, tempo, rhythm, ornamentation and accompaniment. He considers controversial issues as well, establishing the importance of the clavichord in Bach's milieu and examining the link between baroque music and rhetoric - a dramatic relationship that can bring great vitality to performance.

This book presents new insights into the production and reception of Irish drama, its internationalisation and political influences, within a pivotal period of Irish cultural and social change. From the 1950s onwards, Irish theatre engaged audiences within new theatrical forms at venues from the Pike Theatre, the Project Arts Centre, and the Gate Theatre, as well as at Ireland's national theatre, the Abbey. Drawing on newly released and digitised archival records, this book argues for an inclusive historiography reflective of the formative impacts upon modern Irish theatre as recorded within marginalised performance histories. This study examines these works' experimental dramaturgical impacts in terms of production, reception, and archival legacies. The book, framed by the device of 'archival memory', serves as a means for scholars and theatre-makers to inter-contextualise existing historiography and to challenge canon formation. It also presents a new social history of Irish theatre told from the fringes of history and reanimated through archival memory.

Bertolt Brecht's silent Kattrin in Mother Courage, or the disability performance lessons of his Peachum in The Threepenny Opera; Tennessee Williams' limping Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie and hard-of-hearing Bodey in A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur; Samuel Beckett's blind Hamm and his physically disabled parents Nagg and Nell in Endgame - these and many further examples attest to disability's critical place in modern drama. This Companion explores how disability performance studies and theatre practice provoke new debate about the place of disability in these works. The book traces the local and international processes and tensions at play in disability theatre, and offers a critical investigation of the challenges its aesthetics pose to mainstream and traditional practice. The book's first part surveys disability theatre's primary principles, critical terms, internal debates and key challenges to theatre practice. Examining specific disability theatre productions of modern drama, it also suggests how disability has been re-envisaged and embodied on stage. In the book's second part, leading disability studies scholars and disability theatre practitioners analyse and creatively re-imagine modern drama, demonstrating how disability aesthetics press practitioners and scholars to rethink these works in generative, valuable and timely ways.

This book offers a glimpse of new perspectives on how philosophy performs in the gaps between thinking and acting. Bringing together perspectives from world-renowned contemporary philosophers and theorists - including Judith Butler, Alphonso Lingis, Catherine Malabou, Jon McKenzie, Martin Puchner, and Avital Ronell - this book engages with the emerging field of performance philosophy, exploring the fruitful encounters being opened across disciplines by this constantly evolving approach. Intersecting dramatic techniques with theoretical reflections, scholars from diverse geographical and institutional locations come together to trace the transfers between French theory and contemporary Anglo-American philosophical and performance practices in order to challenge conventional approaches to knowledge. Through the crossings of different voices and views, the reader will be led to explore the in-between territories where performance meets traditionally philosophical tools and mediums, such as writing, discipline, plasticity, politics, or care.

"Broadway is a commercial institution. It has nothing whatsoever to do with pretentious artistic notions. It's there for one purpose, and one purpose alone- to make money." So begins the comments by the successful Broadway and television producer Alexander Cohen made just before his recent death-his thoughts on the state of Broadway today."The theatre is too much in transition these days]. It's static; treading water, so to speak. I'm only interested in keeping my current shows open as long as I can." The words of Sir Cameron Mackintosh-his personal views on the current state of the art.Executive Producer Steven Rivellino has taken a long hard look at the business of theatre-Broadway and the West End-at the turn of this new century, and Bright Lights, Big Changes is his own candid personal analysis. Rivellino, author of the successful Mysterious Places, Mysterious Dreams, has cleverly zeroed in on what makes the industry tick. He easily articulates how the industry has changed; how we arrived where we are today; and openly discusses some of the current and future trends in theatrical production we will be seeing in the coming years.Bright Lights, Big Changes is a cogent and succinct analysis of the business of theatre today, on both sides of the Atlantic-a must read for anyone working within the industry, students of theatre; and for those passionate theatre lovers worldwide.

'One in four people in Germany today have a so-called migration background, however, the relationship between theatre and migration there has only recently begun to take centre stage. Indeed, fifty years after large-scale Turkish labour migration to the Federal Republic of Germany began, theatre by Turkish-German artists is only now becoming a consistent feature of Germany's influential state-funded theatrical landscape. Drawing on extensive archival and field work, this book asks where, when, why, and how plays engaging with the new realities of "postmigrant" Germany have been performed over the past 30 years. Focusing on plays by renowned artists Emine Sevgi OEzdamar, and Feridun Zaimoglu/Gunter Senkel, it asks which new realities have been scripted in the theatrical sphere in the process - in the imaginations of playwrights, readers, audience members; in the enactment and direction of scripts on stage; and in the performance of new institutional approaches and cultural policies. Highlighting the role this theatre has played in a larger, ongoing re-scripting of the German stage, this study presents a critical perspective on contemporary European theatre and opens innovative developments in the conceptualization of theatre and post/migration from the German context to English language readers.

New version approved for virtual performance! What "The Irish Curse" is - and how it manifests itself - is the raw centerpiece of this wicked, rollicking and very funny new play. From its blistering language to its brutally honest look at sex and body image, The Irish Curse is a revealing portrait of how men, and society, define masculinity. In doing so, it dares to pose the fundamental question that has been on the minds of men since the beginning of time: "Do I measure up to the next guy?" Size matters to a small group of Irish-American men (all professionally successful New Yorkers) who meet every Wednesday night, in a Catholic church basement, at a self-help group for men with small penises. This alleged Irish trait is the focus of their weekly sessions, as they all feel this "shortcoming" has ruined their lives. One evening, when a twentysomething blue-collar guy joins the group, he challenges everything the other men think about "the Irish Curse"... tackling their obsession with body image and unmasking the comical and truthful questions of identity, masculinity, sex and relationships that men face every day.

Harold Pinter is one of the most important writers in English of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century. This brief biography offers fresh insights into his life and work, concentrating on the themes, patterns, relationships, ideas and language common to his life and creative output. Placing Pinters life and work alongside each other, the study illuminates Pinters vision of society, politics, gender, sex, violence and human relationships. Drawing upon the full-range of his output, his letters, journalism, writings about him, Baker combines a biographical approach with close (re)readings of his work to create a fresh perspective on his life and art. The book offers students, academics and readers a rich depiction of Harold Pinter, the man and the writer.