After fifteen years of marriage, Daniel and Sylvia find themselves drifting further apart with each passing day. Until one morning, they find themselves abruptly united by every parent's worst nightmare... The shoes have been polished, the vases are full and the phone is ringing off the hook, but there's one thing they're still missing...answers. Forced into a confrontation, years of resentment and things long left unsaid rise to the surface as they question the circumstances that brought them to this point, and what happens to your relationship when the only thing holding you together, threatens to tear you apart. A timely spotlight on love and loss, Til Death Do Us Part is the debut play of Safaa Benson-Effiom, and was a finalist in the 2020 Theatre503 International Playwriting Award and Soho Theatre's 2019 Tony Craze award. Originally presented as a Theatre503 and Darcy Dobson Productions co-production.

Provides a comprehensive survey of approaches to genre in Shakespeare's work. Contributors probe deeply into genre theory and genre history by relating Renaissance conceptions. In this sense, the volume proposes to read Shakespeare through genre and, just as importantly, read genre through Shakespeare.

This 11-volume collection contains titles originally published between 1931 and 1992. It examines the genre of comedy, from its roots in ancient Greece, through the centuries, to the relatively modern stand-up variety. The individual titles include the theory of comedy; perspectives on women and comedy; comedy in film; European comedy; Restoration comedy and more. This set will be a valuable resource for those students interested in comedy in both literature and drama.

This set gathers together a collection of previously out-of-print titles that examine China's great heritage in literature, poetry, theatre and performance, painting and crafts. This reference resource spans Chinese traditions and artforms to provide in-depth analysis of some of China's great cultural treasures from many different periods in the country's long history.

Like many western boomtowns at the turn of the twentieth century, Spokane, Washington, enjoyed a lively theatrical scene, ranging from plays, concerts, and operas to salacious variety and vaudeville shows. Yet even as Spokanites took pride in their city's reputation as a ""good show town,"" the more genteel among them worried about its ""Wild West"" atmosphere. In Show Town, historian Holly George correlates the clash of tastes and sensibilities among Spokane's theater patrons with a larger shift in values occurring throughout the Inland West - and the nation - during a period of rapid social change. George begins this multifaceted story in 1890, when two Spokane developers built the lavish Auditorium Theater as a kind of advertisement for the young city. The new venue catered to a class of people made wealthy by speculation, railroads, and mining. Yet the refined entertainment the Auditorium offered conflicted with the rollicking shows that played in the town's variety theaters, designed to draw in the migratory workers - primarily single men - who provided labor for the same industries that made the fortunes of Spokane's elite. As well-to-do Spokanites attempted to clamp down on the variety theaters, performances at even the city's more respectable, ""legitimate"" playhouses began to reflect a movement away from Victorian sensibilities to a more modern desire for self-fulfillment - particularly among women. Theaters joined the debate over modern femininity by presenting plays on issues ranging from woman's suffrage to shifting marital expectations. At the same time, national theater monopolies transmitted to the people of Spokane new styles and tastes that mirrored larger cultural trends. Lucidly written and meticulously researched, Show Town is a groundbreaking work of cultural history. By examining one city's theatrical scene in all its complex dimensions, this book expands our understanding of the forces that shaped the urban American West.

This unique text is both an accessible introduction and specialist review of contemporary dramatherapy practice today. The collected chapters introduce critical and cohesive perspectives on dramatherapy as it is being practiced, developed and advanced in diverse contexts, and also investigate the connections between the discipline of dramatherapy both as an allied health profession, a form of psychotherapy and a traditional form of theatre and healing. In so doing, the volume unpicks the relationship between drama and therapy, exploring some of its key philosophies and practices, and examining its efficacy. Edited by two experienced lecturers and dramatherapists, the book stands as a timely and crucial resource for students and practitioners alike in this growing field. It is essential reading for students on dramatherapy, arts therapy and applied theatre degree programmes, and useful background reading for students of theatre and performance, counselling and psychotherapy.

There is no fourth wall in popular performance. The show is firmly rooted in the here and now, and the performers address the audience directly, while the audience answer back with laughter, applause or heckling. Performer and role are interlaced, so that we are left uncertain about just how the persona we see onstage might relate to the private person who presents it to us. Popular Performance defines and surveys varieties of performance where the main purpose is to entertain, and where there is no shame in being trivial, frivolous or nonsensical as long as people go home happy at the end of the show. Contributions by new and established scholars focus particularly on how it is made, explaining the techniques of performance and production that make it so appealing to audiences. With sections examining how popular performance works in a range of historical and contemporary examples, readers will gain insights into: * performance forms associated with the variety tradition: music hall, vaudeville, cabaret, variety * performance forms associated with circus: wild west shows, clowning * issues relating to the identity of the performer in relation to magic, burlesque, pantomime in contemporary performance * issues relating to venue and audience in relation to contemporary street theatre, stand-up, and live sketch comedy.

Intimacy Across Visceral and Digital Performance is an edited collection designed to address a diverse set of critical responses to and practical interrogations of the notion of being intimate in emergent and hybrid performance practices, aiming to elicit connectivity and provoke debate about the potency, nature and agency of intimacy in contemporary performance.Lauren Berlant suggests that 'intimacy (...) involves an aspiration for a narrative about something shared' (2000, p. 1). Sensing intimacy in performance relocates registers of affect from the private experience to the public sphere. Within the current climate of intense global political, social and financial insecurity and unrest, at a time infused with both hope and fear, artists appear to be demonstrating a desire for intimacy and closeness with the Other. Those public figurings of intimacy - staged through contemporary performance, visual culture and digital art practices - become the cultural fuel which, when placed alongside political potentialities, can ignite debates and provocations such as those contained herein.

Following an outline history of the monologue as an independent genre in the theater of Latin America, this bibliography incorporates all published and unpublished, staged and unstaged monologue pieces written in Latin America. The bibliographical entries are grouped in three chronological periods reflecting the fundamentally distinct nature of the monolgue during each of its periods of development. Within each grouping, the plays are listed alphabetically by author under an alphabetical roster of country headings. Each playwright's years of birth and death are given, if known, as well as the country of origin if that differs from the geographical category into which the dramatist has been placed. All known editions of the monologues are included. For unpublished works, an abbreviated reference source is given. Each title is followed by the generic description applied to the work by the author or publisher, or by reviewers or historians in the case of unpublished pieces. The secondary bibliography lists works which deal with the monologue as a literary genre.

Based on her award-winning blog, "The Feminist Spectator," Jill Dolan presents a lively feminist perspective in reviews and essays on a variety of theatre productions, films and television series--from The Social Network and Homeland to Split Britches' Lost Lounge.
Demonstrating the importance of critiquing mainstream culture through a feminist lens, Dolan also offers invaluable advice on how to develop feminist critical thinking and writing skills. This is an essential read for budding critics and any avid spectator of the stage and screen.

This text proposes a new way to consider theatre and performance that claims a special relationship to reality, truth and authenticity. It documents innovations in devising and staging theatre and performance that takes reality as its subject, cultural shifts that have generated theatre of the real, some of its problems and some possibilities.

The crafts of governance and diplomacy are spectacular, theatrical, and performative. Performing Statecraft investigates the performances of states, their leaders, and their citizens on an expanded field of the global arts of statecraft to consider the role of performance in the domestic and international affairs of states, and the interventions into global politics by artists, scholars, and activists. Treating theatre as both an art form and a practice of political actors, this book draws together scholarship on the embodied dimensions of governance, the stagecraft of revolution, arts activism on the world stage, sports performance by heads of state, the performativity of national dress, speechmaking and colonialism, war and medicine, singing diplomats, indigenous sovereignties, and performed nationalisms. It brings the perspective and methods of performance studies to bear on global politics, offering exciting new insights into encounters between states, sovereigns, and people. Whether one is watching a campaign speech, a nightly news broadcast, a sacred dance, or a play about global conflict, these chapters make clear the importance of performance as a tool wielded by amateurs and professionals to articulate the nation in global spaces.

From ca. 1300 a new genre developed in European literature, Neo-Latin drama. Building on medieval drama, vernacular theatre and classical drama, it spread around Europe. It was often used as a means to educate young boys in Latin, in acting and in moral issues. Comedies, tragedies and mixed forms were written. The Societas Jesu employed Latin drama in their education and public relations on a large scale. They had borrowed the concept of this drama from the humanist and Protestant gymnasia, and perfected it to a multi media show. However, the genre does not receive the attention that it deserves. In this volume, a historical overview of this genre is given, as well as analyses of separate plays. Contributors include: Jan Bloemendal, Jean-Frederic Chevalier, Cora Dietl, Mathieu Ferrand, Howard Norland, Joaquin Pascual Barea, Fidel Radle, and Raija Sarasti Willenius.

This book investigates the implications of technology on identity in embodied performance; the discussion within it forms a forum of debate exploring the interrelationship of and between identities in performance practices, informed by new technologies. This collection considers how identity is formed, de-formed, constructed, deconstructed, blurred and celebrated within diverse approaches to technological performance practices.Digital practices as experimental artworks and performances both serve as critique and have an indirect affect on the social and political. The discussions included in this collection highlight how a redefinition of the latter term comes about in as much as they question the very nature of our accepted ideas and belief systems regarding new technologies. These essays demonstrate how embodied technological practice, as with all avant-garde art, presents itself and any analysis applied to it as an experimental extension of the socio-political and cultural experience of an epoch.

Ethical Exchanges in Translation, Adaptation and Dramaturgy examines compelling ethical issues that concern practitioners and scholars in the fields of translation, adaptation and dramaturgy. Its 11 essays, written by academic theorists as well as scholar-practitioners, represent a rich diversity of philosophies and perspectives, and reflect a broad international frame of reference: Asia, Europe, North America, and Australasia. They also traverse a wide range of theatrical forms: classic and contemporary playwrights from Shakespeare to Ibsen, immersive and interactive theatre, verbatim theatre, devised and community theatre, and postdramatic theatre. In examining the ethics of specific artistic practices, the book highlights the significant continuities between translation, adaptation, and dramaturgy; it considers the ethics of spectatorship; and it identifies the tightly interwoven relationship between ethics and politics.

With a companion website that includes short online film episodes, this book proposes expansive ways of deconstructing and re-constituting sexuality and gender and thus more embodied and ethical ways of 'doing' life, and offers an understanding and critique of embodiment through an integration of performance, psychotherapy and feminist philosophy.

Born in 1916 in La Jolla, California, Gregory Peck took up acting in college on a lark that would lead to a career. In his early years, he appeared in a series of summer stock engagements and Broadway shows. He became a star within a year after arriving in Hollywood during World War II, and he won an Academy Award nomination for his second film. From the 1940s to the present, he has played some of film's most memorable and admired characters. This volume provides complete information about Gregory Peck's work in film, television, radio, and the stage. Entries are included for all of his performances, with each entry providing cast and credit information, a plot summary, excerpts from reviews, and critical commentary. A biography and chronology highlight significant events in his life, while a listing of his honors and awards summarizes the recognition he has received over the years. For researchers seeking additional information, the book includes descriptions of special collections holding material related to Peck's work, along with an extensive bibliography of books and articles.

Since the beginning of theatre history, scandals have taken place and the variety of causes, processes and types of interactions makes them an interesting object of study. Theatre scandals often indicate clashes with a dominant ideology or with the ideology of a particular group in society. Sometimes, following a scandal, the attacked ideology changes and incorporates the possibility of the aesthetics or themes that caused the clash. In this way, scandals can cause dynamic changes within cultural systems. Next to theoretical considerations the contributors, all members of the IFTR Theatrical Event Working Group, present in their various case studies a wide cultural and chronological diversity of theatre scandals, all of which were experienced as very shocking moments in theatre history.

Patty Duke is one of the few former child actors who has survived the transition from child to adolescent to adult and gone on to greater fame and success in her adult years. Academy Award-winner, television comedy series star, talk-show hostess, author, and aspiring director, this multi-talented actress has become an entertainment industry phenomenon. Researchers as well as film, television, and theater buffs will be interested in Stephen Eberly's research guide, which presents a biography of Patty Duke together with complete and detailed listings of her television, movie, and stage appearances; awards; and recordings.

Lillian Russell was the Victorian era's symbol of talent, charm, and beauty. She was introduced by impresario Tony Pastor in 1880, and was considered an emblem of feminine beauty until the turn of the century. Although her voice still set a standard of excellence, by that time America's vision of loveliness had changed, and her middle-aged body could not meet the new challenge on the musical stage. Russell responded with extraordinary resilience. She adapted with the times and became the Igrande dameR of the American theatre in non-musical plays, burlesque, variety, and the lecture circuit. She wrote widely-read newspaper columns in which she pioneered an optimistic philosophy of self-help, and she used her numerous connections to champion the causes that she held dear.

Carefully researched, this reference book is a comprehensive and thoroughly documented guide to Lillian Russell's life and career. A biography places her in the social and cultural context of her time and adds previously ignored information about her parents, birth, coming-of-age in the Midwest, early career, daughter, and death. A chronology then gives a detailed listing of events in her life and career. The chapters that follow are devoted to her many performances. Entries in each section provide cast and credit information, plot synopses, review excerpts, and critical commentary. Several appendices offer additional information about her work, and an extensive annotated bibliography lists sources of additional information.

A complete guide for professional and aspiring literary managers. Written for the professional market of literary managers and dramaturgs, as well as university students of directing and dramaturgy. Stands out from other books in this area with its clear, step-by-step focus on all aspects of the profession.

Staging the Impossible explores the most recent critical thinking on the relationship between the literary mode of the fantastic and the literary genre of drama with respect to modern theatre. While a few monographs treat a particular dimension of the fantastic in drama, the Gothic or the fairy tale for instance, no other volume provides a critically sophisticated introduction to the diversity of fantastic drama written and performed in this century. The essays here lay to rest the illusion that realism is the only genuine form of theatrical expression and the notion that cinema special effects have rendered science fiction and the stage incompatible. Competing with the realism of the first half of the twentieth century and the "new realism" of the second half have been a range of successful theatrical repertoire, including the absurd, the horrific, the supernatural, the mythic, the dream-vision quest, the postmodern, the hyper-realistic, and the science fictional. Wide ranging in time and space, this volume comprises fourteen essays on the fantastic on the modern stage, assessing dramatic works from the United States, Ireland, England, Western Europe, and the Caribbean. Canonical figures, such as Strindberg, Yeats, Beckett, Ionesco, Cocteau, and Stoppard are studied, along with neglected figures, such as Wassily Kandinsky, better known as an expressionist painter, and Halper Leivick, author of the Yiddish play The Golem, and innovative new performance troupes and individual artists, such as Squat Theatre and Spalding Gray. Concluding essays are devoted to contemporary experimental theatre and postmodern drama. A study of science fiction on stage includes an annotated listing of fortyEnglish-language plays. Concerned with the interstice of theatre and the fantastic, this work will be valuable to students and scholars of both, of genre studies, and of contemporary literature in general.

This engaging text explores the role of the writer and the text in collaborative practice through the work of contemporary writers and companies working in Britain, offering students and aspiring writers and directors effective practical strategies for collaborative work.

This book provides biographical and analytical data on significant historical and contemporary practitioners and theorists of the theatrical design field who have contributed to the development of the art. Beginning with a historical survey on the evolution of theatrical design, the volume features entries on some 270 set, costume, lighting, and theatre building designers, mainly dating from the fifteenth century to the present. Coverage is international, with a necessary emphasis on the United States and Western Europe.

Essays of varying length describe and evaluate the career and contributions of each designer, providing information on positions, productions, and awards and generally ending with sources for further reading. Particularly valuable are the detailed chronological listings of design credits given as available, mainly for prominent twentieth century figures. Appendixes to the volume list the designers chronologically by birth date and also by country of birth. The volume ends with an annotated general bibliography on theatre design and designers and an index. The only reference book specifically dedicated to theatrical designers, its coverage will significantly extend the information contained in more general works on theatre presently available for library research.