Written in clear, accessible language, this guide challenges and encourages students to grapple with the difficult ideas and questions posed by Beckett's texts.Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) is one of the most important twentieth century writers, seen as both a modernist and postmodernist, his work has influenced generations of playwrights, novelists and poets. Despite his notorious difficulty, Beckett famously refused to offer his readers any help in interpreting his work. Beckett's texts examine key philosophical-humanist questions but his writing is challenging, perplexing and often intimidating for readers. This guide offers students reading Beckett a clear starting point from which to confront some of the most difficult plays and novels produced in the twentieth century, texts which often appear to work on the very edge of meaninglessness.Beginning with a general introduction to Beckett, his work and contexts, the guide looks at each of the major genres in turn, analysing key works chronologically. It explains why Beckett's texts can seem so daunting and confusing, and focuses on key questions and issues. Giving an accessible account of both the form and content of Beckett's work, this guide will enable students to begin to get to grips with this fascinating but daunting writer."Continuum's Guides for the Perplexed" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers and subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging - or indeed downright bewildering. Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject difficult to grasp, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of demanding material.

After the 1917 revolution, Russian and Soviet avant-garde theatre attempted to create a new art for post-revolutionary society. This reconsideration of the Russian avant-garde theatre investigates the burgeoning new drama/theatre forms of the period. Kleberg considers assumptions made about the audience and by the audience, and seeks to determine whether discrepancies existed between the two. Offering fresh insights into the modernist period of Russian theatre, Theatre as Action provides a new typology of the stage/audience relationship in modernist Russian theatre. Constructivism of the 1920's is discussed on light of the plays of Meyerhold, Eisenstein, and Treytykov. The relation of the Soviet Russian avant-garde to the aesthetics of Bertold Brecht is also examined. This original, comprehensive work is a major contribution to our understanding of the confrontation of the ideal and the reality of Soviet 1920's, revealing the Wagnerian and Symbolist utopia beneath, and its crisis. It will be of particular interest to students of literature and drama.

Edwin Booth was the foremost Shakespearean actor in late nineteenth-century America, enjoying almost mythic status. This comprehensive analysis and documentation of his career provides an aperture from which to view theatre and society of the period. The scholarly bibliography of over 1,000 annotated entries includes substantive writings about Booth in books, journals, and dissertations covering 130 years during and after his career as well as ephemeral references to Booth in the major journals of his day and a section of specialized reference materials relating to Booth. Among its unique features are a section on Booth's own writings and a section on Booth manuscript materials identified in sixty-four repositories in the United States and England. A biographical sketch analyzes Booth's career in terms of the major periods and upheavals in his life: his early fame, the death of his first wife, the assassination of President Lincoln by his brother, his management of Booth's Theatre, and his national and international tours. Accompanying this is a chronology of major events, a genealogical chart, and reproductions of portraits and playbills. Fully indexed, this volume makes a wealth of material readily available to Booth scholars as well as to others researching related theatre and social history.

This book traces the history of 'girls' aesthetics,' where adult Japanese women create art works about 'girls' that resist motherhood, from the modern to the contemporary period and their manifestation in Japanese women's theatrical and dance performance and visual arts including manga, film, and installation arts.

How does the entrance of a character on the tragic stage affect their visibility and presence? Beginning with the court culture of the seventeenth century and ending with Nietzsche's Dionysian theater, this monograph explores specific modes of entering the stage and the conditions that make them successful-or cause them to fail. The study argues that tragic entrances ultimately always remain incomplete; that the step figures take into visibility invariably remains precarious. Through close readings of texts by Racine, Goethe, and Kleist, among others, it shows that entrances promise both triumph and tragic exposure; though they appear to be expressions of sovereignty, they are always simultaneously threatened by failure or annihilation. With this analysis, the book thus opens up possibilities for a new theory of dramatic form, one that begins not with the plot itself but with the stage entrance that structures how characters appear and thus determines how the plot advances. By reflecting on acts of entering, this book addresses not only scholars of literature, theater, media, and art but anyone concerned with what it means to appear and be present.

This reference traces in fascinating detail the exceptionally long career of Helen Hayes, the "First Lady of the American Theatre." In addition to a biography of the actress, which charts the development of her unique talent and the successes and tragedies of her personal life, the book supplies a chronology which provides quick access to the major events which shaped both her character and her career. In sections devoted individually to Stage, Film, Television, and Radio, the actress' work in each of these media is charted. Cast lists, plot synopses, reviews, and commentary bring vivid immediacy to these records. Additional material in the Appendices provides information on her aural/video recordings as well as her stunning list of Awards and Honors. Included is the program from a gala salute to her 50th Anniversary on the stage. A detailed index concludes the work.

Few American phenomena are more evocative of time, place, and culture than the drive-in theater. From its origins in the Great Depression, through its peak in the 1950s and 1960s and ultimately its slow demise in the 1980s, the drive-in holds a unique place in the country's collective past. Michigan's drive-ins were a reflection of this time and place, ranging from tiny rural 200-car "ozoners" to sprawling 2,500-car behemoths that were masterpieces of showmanship, boasting not only movies and food, but playgrounds, pony rides, merry-go-rounds, and even roving window washers.

This series of three volumes provides a groundbreaking study of the work of many of the most innovative and important British theatre companies from 1965 to the present. Each volume provides a survey of the political and cultural context; an extensive survey of the variety of theatre companies from the period, and detailed case studies of six of the major companies drawing on the Arts Council Archives to trace the impact of funding on the work produced. 1965-1979, covers the period often accepted as the 'golden age' of British Fringe companies, looking at the birth of companies concerned with touring their work to an ever-expanding circuit of 'alternative' performance venues. Leading academics provide case studies of six of the most important companies, including: * CAST, by Bill McDonnell (University of Sheffield, UK) * The People Show, by Grant Tyler Peterson (Brunel University London, UK) * Portable Theatre, by Chris Megson (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK) * Pip Simmons Theatre Group, by Kate Dorney (The Victoria and Albert Museum, UK) * Welfare State International, by Gillian Whitely (Loughborough University, UK) * 7:84 Theatre Companies, by David Pattie (University of Chester, UK).

This series of three volumes provides a groundbreaking study of the work of many of the most innovative and important British theatre companies from 1965 to the present. Each volume provides a survey of the political and cultural context, an extensive survey of the variety of theatre companies from the period, and detailed case studies of six of the major companies. Volume Two, 1980-1994, covers the period when cuts under Margaret Thatcher's Tory government changed the landscape for British theatre. Yet it also saw an expansion of companies that made feminism and gender central to their work, and the establishment of new black and Asian companies. Leading academics provide case studies of six of the most important companies, including: * Monstrous Regiment, by Kate Dorney (The Victoria & Albert Museum) *Forced Entertainment, by Sarah Gorman (University of Roehampton, London, UK) * Gay Sweatshop, by Sara Freeman (University of Puget Sound, USA) * Joint Stock, by Jaqueline Bolton (University of Lincoln, UK) * Theatre de Complicite, by Michael Fry * Talawa, by Kene Igweonu (Canterbury Christ Church University, UK)

Murder, mayhem, and magic. Pushed by his wife to seize the throne, Macbeth kills his rightful liege and then tries desperately to hold onto the kingdom that he has wrongfully usurped. Prophesy and magic abound in this dark, moody, and atmospheric play. Out, damned spot Out, I say One- two -why then 'tis time to do't. Hell is murky. Fie, my lord, fie A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?

This study seeks to reunite American drama with more of the mainstream of American literature using contemporary literary theories of feminism, Derrida, Lacan, as well as the nature of language. It also focuses on the theatrical ways that plays work through performance and staging. This reveals how contemporary playwrights see themselves not as authors, but as parts of a team of designers, actors, and directors. Stage directions are largely omitted, but knowledge of original productions--both as seen live and recorded on tapes archived at Lincoln Center--reveal aspects of fragmentation of scenery, minimalist acting, emphasis on the "unsayable," which makes these plays far more postmodern than they might seem merely as read. More importantly, the final chapter reveals how these techniques culminate in 1990s play' ability to extend beyond the real in a myriad of ways, all united by a new, postmodern view of the divine as interpenetrating reality. In one sense, this seems to be juggling quite a few different items-poststructural theory, modernist realists, as well postmodern deconstructive realists and theatrical practice. All fit together neatly, however, in each chapter through a focus on performance, staging is seen as central to the dramatic experience, with reviews, photographs, and archival videotapes of productions used to verify and explore the plays' meanings. The plays, taken as a whole, reflect the key issues of American society from reactions to the Vietnam War, through issues of sexual preference, race, and feminism and its backlash, through issues of wealth and poverty to arrive at a new vision of a forgiving divine which accepts without judgment all the issues of diversity. American Drama and the Postmodern is an important book for collections in American literature, drama and theatre, as well as for literary theory.

British Theatre and the Great War examines how theatre in its various forms adapted itself to the new conditions of 1914-1918. Contributors discuss the roles played by the theatre industry. They draw on a range of source materials to show the different kinds of theatrical provision and performance cultures in operation not only in London but across parts of Britain and also in Australia and at the Front. As well as recovering lost works and highlighting new areas for investigation (regional theatre, prison camp theatre, troop entertainment, the threat from film, suburban theatre) the book offers revisionist analysis of how the conflict and its challenges were represented on stage at the time and the controversies it provoked. The volume offers new models for exploring the topic in an accessible, jargon-free way, and it shows how theatrical entertainment of the time can be seen as the `missing link' in the study of First World War writing.

This is the first published resource on the life and seventy-year theatrical career of award-winning actress Eva Le Gallienne. It traces Le Gallienne's acting debut in 1914, her travels to the United States, and the successes and failures of her New York City repertory theatres. Also noted are Le Gallienne's critically acclaimed performances in such plays as Liliom, The Swan, The Master Builder, Hedda Gabler, The Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard, The Seagull, Camille, Romeo and Juliet, Alice in Wonderland, Mary Stuart, and The Royal Family. The book covers not only her Broadway engagements, but also her many lecture and theatre tours. Also highlighted are her receipt of the National Medal of Arts presented by President Ronald Reagan and the National Artist Award presented by the American National Theatre and Academy. The book is divided into six parts--a biography, a chronology focusing on the highlights of Le Gallienne's career, a list of all productions (stage, film, television, radio, and discography), an annotated bibliography of all items written by Le Gallienne, an annotated bibliography of over 300 items written about Le Gallienne in books, magazines, and newspapers, and a list of archival resources. The section of productions includes such information as titles, authors, directors, producers, venue, casts, designers, length of run, and locations of reviews. This book is an invaluable resource for courses in American Theater, Theater History, American Studies, Introduction to Theater, Women's Theater, Women's Studies, and Introduction to Film.

This ambitious collection of essays covers American drama in its entirety-from its inception in colonial America, through its many incarnations in the nineteenth century, to its zenith in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Differentiating itself from other treatments of the genre, the handbook will not only highlight the major works of the twentieth century, but will also attend carefully to earlier works and contexts. The collection's first part will explore the genre's eighteenth-century genesis. William Dunlap's complex, sympathetic portrait of British forces in Andre is counterbalanced by the biting anti-colonial political satire of the nation's first female playwright, Mercy Otis Warren, through an appraisal of her witty, subversive skewering of British loyalists in The Group. The nineteenth century saw the form diversifying with offerings like the antebellum era's reform plays, the melodrama, and the musical-a flowering that was given a new center of action in the growth of Broadway. A full survey of the vexing tradition of minstrelsy and the struggles of Black Americans on the stage provides a transition into the twentieth century. The new approaches to playwriting and performance pioneered by Eugene O'Neill, Susan Glaspell, and the Provincetown Players gave theater a new cachet early in the century through the possibilities offered by naturalism and expressionism. Overtly political content took the stage in the protest plays of Clifford Odets during the Great Depression though in general a more insular realism proved the dominant style, albeit one interrupted by recurring periods of experimentalism. Key moments and artists who defined the later half of the twentieth-century are illuminated through in-depth essays on the scathing indictments of the American dream put forward by Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee; the impact of the countercultural, mixed-race musical Hair; the complex nature of David Mamet's social critique; the energy of experimental, off-Broadway theater; the importance of place and memory in August Wilson's works; and the acute anxiety over the AIDS crisis during the Regan eighties as presented in Angels in America. The volume will conclude with a consideration of what lies ahead for the nation's drama, focusing on the pivotal work of leading lights such as Sarah Ruhl and Suzan Lori-Parks.

This volume of new essays represents a collective, academic, and activist effort to interpret German literature and culture in the context of the international #MeToo movement, illustrating and interrogating the ways that "rape cultures" persist. Responding to the worldwide impact of the #MeToo movement, this volume investigates not only the ubiquity of sexual abuse and sexual violence but also the transhistorical and transnational failure to hold perpetrators accountable. From a range of disciplines, the collected essays engage current cultural and political discourses about systemic sexism, feminist theory and practice, and gender-based discrimination from an academic and activist perspective. The focus on national cultures of German-speaking Europe from the mid-eighteenth century to the present captures the persistence of normalized and institutionalized sexism, reframed through the lens of a contemporary political and social movement. German #MeToo argues that sexual violence is not a universal human constant. Rather, it is nurtured and sustained by the social, political, cultural, legal, and economic fabric of specific societies. The authors sustain and vary their exploration of #MeToo-related issues through considerations of rape, prostitution, sexual murder, the politics of consent, and victim-blaming as enacted in literary works by canonical and marginalized authors, the visual arts, the graphic novel, film, television, and theater. The analysis of rape myths - of discourses and practices in German history and culture that subtend and indemnify sexual violence - is a central subject of this edited volume. Throughout, German #MeToo challenges narratives of sex-based discrimination while emphasizing the strategies of resistance and the importance of telling one's own story.

Generally taking place in front of closed curtains during set changes between acts, the entr'acte delivers a fleeting new purpose and event to the otherwise sometimes inert space between stage and pit. This collection employs the entr'acte as a model for conceptualizing emerging formations of publics and of public space.

In the minds of today's audiences, George Burns was a solo act. But in the history of show business, he will long be remembered for his work with Gracie Allen. Few performers have enjoyed so much popular and critical acclaim. Together they enjoyed phenomenal success in vaudeville, radio, television, and film. Although they were celebrities, the two performers enjoyed a life remarkably free of scandal. After the death of Allen in 1964, Burns made commercials, a music video, and an exercise video. He wrote books and won numerous awards, and his nightclub and convention appearances did not stop until shortly before his death.

Through a thoughtful biography and detailed entries, this book serves as a comprehensive reference to the careers of Burns and Allen together and individually. The biography summarizes their rise as vaudeville performers, their work in a range of media, and Burns' continued achievements after Allen's death. Sections of the book cover their work on the stage, on radio, on television, and in films. Each section provides detailed entries for their performances, including cast and credit information, plot synoposes, and review excerpts. Appendices list their awards, personal appearances, and archives; and an extensive annotated bibliography cites and discusses sources of additional information.

Political Performance in Syria, charts the history of a theatre that has sought the expansion of civil society and imagined alternate political realities. In doing so, the manuscript situates the current use of performance and theatre by artists of the Syrian Revolution within a long history of political contestation.

This core text offers insight into theatre-making that takes place in communities across the world. Offering an overview of the theory that underpins practice in applied drama, this thought-provoking text outlines practices in the context of contemporary political and theoretical concerns. It considers the role of artists who work in challenging settings, including prisons, schools, hostels for the homeless, care homes for the elderly and on the street. In so doing, the book poses critical questions about the aesthetics and ethics of applied theatre. It also invites debate about the environments in which applied theatre takes place. Written by an experienced academic in the field, this lively text is the ideal introductory text for students on Applied Theatre degree programmes and those taking Applied Theatre modules on Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies programmes. It is also essential reading for practitioners of applied theatre looking for a comprehensive insight into theatre-making and its impact in an increasingly globalized world.