In this volume an international cast of scholars explores conceptions of the self in the literature and culture of the Early Modern England. Drawing on theories of performativity and performance, some contributors revisit monological speech and the soliloquy - that quintessential solo performance - on the stage of Marlowe, Shakespeare and Jonson. Other authors move beyond the theatre as they investigate solo performances in different cultural locations, from the public stage of the pillory to the mental stage of the writing self. All contributors analyse corporeality, speech, writing and even silence as interrelated modes of self-enactment, whether they read solo performances as a way of inventing, authorizing or even pathologizing the self, or as a mode of fashioning sovereignty. The contributions trace how the performers appropriate specific discourses, whether religious, medical or political, and how they negotiate hierarchies of gender, rank or cultural difference. The articles cut across a variety of genres including plays and masques, religious tracts, diaries and journals, poems and even signatures. The collection links research on the inward and self-reflexive dimension of solo-performances with studies foregrounding the public and interactive dimension of performative self-fashioning. The articles collected here offer new perspectives on Early Modern subjectivity and will be of interest to all scholars and students of the Early Modern period.

Theatre Sound includes a brief history of the use of sound in the theatre, discussions of musicals, sound effects, and the recording studio, and even an introduction to the physics and math of sound design. A bibliography and online reference section make this the new essential work for students of theatre and practicing sound designers.

Swortzell has constructed a seminal reference work that chronicles the history, current state of artistic achievement, and foremost future needs of children's theater in 44 different countries. . . . an excellent first resource for diverse forms of research, and quite accessible to both undergraduate and graduate students. "Choice"

After a visit to the Children's Educational Theatre in New York City, the first American theatre intended specifically for children and adolescents, Mark Twain declared that children's theatre is one of the very, very great inventions of the twentieth century.

The "Guide" is designed as a reference book, surveying theatre for young people in forty-five countries from Australia to Zimbabwe, as well as examining some of the provocative paradoxes, questions, and concerns that plague and inspire children's theatre. Arranged in alphabetical order by country, the Guide documents the history of the children's theatre movement in each country, defines its current state of artistic achievement, and projects its foremost needs for the future. For each chapter, the "Guide" includes profiles of representative companies. Important productions and influential dramatists, directors, designers, performers, and pedagogues are also mentioned.

The first ever full-length study of the Royal Court Theatre's International Department, covering the theatre's unique programming of international plays and seasons, its London-based residences for writers from overseas, and the legacies of workshops conducted in more than 30 countries.

The Routledge Companion to Applied Performance provides an in-depth, far-reaching and provocative consideration of how scholars and artists negotiate the theoretical, historical and practical politics of applied performance, both in the academy and beyond. These volumes offer insights from within and beyond the sphere of English-speaking scholarship, curated by regional experts in applied performance. The reader will gain an understanding of some of the dominant preoccupations of performance in specified regions, enhanced by contextual framing. From the dis(h)arming of the human body through dance in Colombia to clowning with dementia in Australia, via challenges to violent nationalism in the Balkans, transgender performance in Pakistan and resistance rap in Kashmir, the essays, interviews and scripts are eloquent testimony to the courage and hope of people who believe in the power of art to renew the human spirit. Students, academics, practitioners, policy-makers, cultural anthropologists and activists will benefit from the opportunities to forge new networks and develop in-depth comparative research offered by this bold, global project.

This book is the first to examine early Tudor theatre specifically from the perspective of the great households of England. The aristocrats of the sixteenth century commissioned, funded, and staged complex and often lavish entertainments for their households including plays, masques, concerts, dances, and sports. These thematically and stylistically unified revels, watched by guests and retainers, were designed to swell the social and artistic reputation of the patron and to communicate his ideology - in fact to delight the eye and ear while selectively educating the mind and soul. Theatre became for the nobleman a means to secure loyalty, a loyalty that both reflected and reinforced his political power. Important both as a collection of primary source documents and for its detailed examination of them, Patrons and Performance first considers the evolution, theatrical talents, duties and privileges, and techniques of retained performers, including Chapel Children and Gentlemen, minstrels, playwrights, and players. It then proceeds to a discussion of the interlude and of how the unique relationship between nobleman and artist affects the play's characters, theme, and structures.

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Influence is a scathing and bitingly funny play about the media personalities that dominate our lives and the divisions that can shatter families. Operator, is a play about a young, charming, go-getter, Jake who is the ideal candidate for an executive position with a thriving local company. Jake has a secret weapon: his skills at exploiting, manipulating and manoeuvring would put Machiavelli in the shade.

Performance events have long had a central place in Indonesian societies in displaying power, affirming social relations, celebrating shared values, and at times conveying potent political critique. How have they responded to the momentous social and political changes of recent years - the dismantling of the centralised, authoritarian Suharto regime and its replacement with a more open, regionally-focused political system, the rapid expansion of global cultural influence? Investigations of diverse performance genres from different regions illustrate the way general socio-political processes play out locally, and how particular groups are responding. Exploring performed understandings of identity and community, such studies expand knowledge of a complex, contested period of change in Indonesia and the workings of contemporary performance in giving it expression. With contributions by Chua Beng Huat, Alexandra Crosby, Barbara Hatley, Ariel Heryanto, Brett Hough, Rachmah Ida, Reza Idria, Edwin Jurriens, Yoshi Fajar Kresno Murti, Neneng Yanti K Lahpan, Ugoran Prasad, Wawan Sofwan, Aline Scott-Maxwell, Fridus Steijlen, Alia Swastika, Denise Varney.

Theatre as Voyeurism (re)defines voyeurism as an 'exchange' between performers and audience members, privileging pleasure (erotic and aesthetic) as a crucial factor in contemporary theatre. This intriguing group of essays focuses on artists such as Jan Fabre, Romeo Castellucci, Ann Liv Young, Olivier Dubois and Punchdrunk.

This book explains the connections between traditional performance (e.g. masked dances, prophecy, praise recitations), contemporary theatre (Wole Soyinka, Ola Rotimi, Tess Onwueme, Femi Osofisan, and Stella Oyedepo) , and the political sphere in the context of the Yoruba people in Nigeria.

(Applause Books). Have you ever noticed how clever you feel in the theatre? You get the joke when no one on the stage is laughing. You see the threat that no one on the stage seems to notice. You weep when leading characters do not shed a tear. Sometimes you feel an almost God-like understanding of people and events. Who put you in this privileged position? The Audience & The Playwright analyzes the tactics used by all playwrights, from Sophocles to David Mamet, to give the audience extraordinary powers and a unique role that it will play perfectly and without rehearsal. Structured as an evening in the theatre, the book is analytical but straightforward, serious but entertaining. A working playwright's view of what really happens between the stage and the audience, from the beginning of the play until the end, it is a book for the serious theatregoer, as well as a book for the college classroom. "Mayo Simon would be a wonderful opening night date. He knows the theatre like the palm of his hand, loves it, and articulates it. Short of Mayo as a date, this book is your best companion." Jon Jory Professor of Acting & Directing, University of Washington School of Drama

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 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.

"This wise volume, written by a veteran director and observer of premodern plays, offers good advice for neophyte and experienced directors." Choice

The work of an acclaimed critic and director, this book breaks new ground by describing how the rehearsal process highlights the principal theatrical issues of Shakespeare's late plays: Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. Drawing on his extensive experience with the rehearsal and performance at Stratford, Ontario in 1986, and at the National Theatre in 1988, Warren demonstrates how rehearsal creates extreme contrasts of mood and action, places intense personal crises in a wider political framework, and inspires spiritual journeys in the actors. Addressing many aspects of production--acting, direction, design, lighting, music, and audience response--this work will be important to all those involved with Shakespearean drama and its performance.

Continuing a tradition that dates back to 1920, this beloved annual honors 10 new plays and musicals and three regional plays cited in the Harold and Mimi Steinberg New Play Awards and Citations competition. As always, "The Best Plays Theater Yearbook" includes a comprehensive collection of facts and figures about the year in United States theatre."The Best Plays of 2006-2007" where chosen from Broadway, Off Broadway, and Off Off Broadway productions of new plays that opened between June 1, 2006 and May 31, 2007. Essays, noted below, celebrate each one.The plays are: "Blackbird", by David Harrower (essay by David Cote); "The Clean House", by Sarah Ruhl (essay by Anne Marie Welsh); "The Coast of Utopia", by Tom Stoppard (essay by Charles Wright); "Dying City", by Christopher Shinn (essay by Charles Isherwood); "Frost/Nixon", by Peter Morgan (essay by Charles McNulty); "The Pain and the Itch", by Bruce Norris (essay by John Istel); "Passing Strange", by Stew and Heidl Rodewald (essay by Alisa Solomon); "Radio Gold", by August Wilson (essay by Christopher Rawson); "The Scene", by Theresa Rebeck (essay by Chris Jones); and "Spring Awakening", by Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik (essay by Michael Feingold. )

Now in its 4th edition, this is an accessible and comprehensive introduction to the critical study of drama. Using familiar examples of classic and contemporary works such as Shakespeare's King Lear, Ibsen's A Doll's House and Timberlake Wertenbaker's Our Country's Good, the book explores the essential elements of play texts, from character, dialogue and plot to theatrical space. With more in depth guidance on how to study plays in and as performance, both live and in recordings available online, the 4th edition of Studying Plays now includes: * new examples throughout the book drawn from a range of 21st-century plays by established and emergent writers for diverse theatres and companies * new explorations of how plays structure and engage audience response * a complete new section on the analysis of theatre of witness and testimony; monodrama; and postdramatic texts.

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 is the first major book-length study for four decades to examine the plays written by D. H. Lawrence, and the first ever book to give an in-depth analysis of Lawrence's interaction with the theatre industry during the early twentieth century. It connects and examines his performance texts, and explores his reaction to a wide-range of theatre (from the sensation dramas of working-class Eastwood to the ritual performances of the Pueblo people) in order to explain Lawrence's contribution to modern drama. F. R. Leavis influentially labelled the writer 'D. H. Lawrence: Novelist'. But this book foregrounds Lawrence's career as a playwright, exploring unfamiliar contexts and manuscripts, and drawing particular attention to his three most successful works: The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd, The Daughter-in-Law, and A Collier's Friday Night. It examines how Lawrence's novels are suffused with theatrical thinking, revealing how Lawrence's fictions - from his first published work to the last story that he wrote before his death - continually take inspiration from the playhouse. The book also argues that, although Lawrence has sometimes been dismissed as a restrictively naturalistic stage writer, his overall oeuvre shows a consistent concern with theatrical experiment, and manifests affinities with the dramatic thinking of modernist figures including Brecht, Artaud, and Joyce. In a final section, the book includes contributions from influential theatre-makers who have taken their own cue from Lawrence's work, and who have created original work that consciously follows Lawrence in making working-class life central to the public forum of the theatre stage.

This book examines experimental Irish theatre that ran counter to the naturalistic 'peasant' drama synonymous with Irish playwriting. Focusing on four marginalised playwrights after Yeats, it charts a tradition linking the experimentation of the early Irish theatre movement with the innovation of contemporary Irish and international 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.

This volume focuses on the theatre history of Asian countries, and discusses the specific context of theatre modernization in Asia. While Asian theatre is one of the primary interests within theatre scholarship in the world today, knowledge of Asian theatre history is very limited and often surprisingly incorrect. Therefore, this volume addresses a major gap in contemporary theatre studies. The volume discusses the conflict between tradition and modernity in theatre, suggesting that the problems of modernity are closely related to the idea of tradition. Although Asian countries preserved the traditional form and values of their respective theatres, they had to also confront the newly introduced values or mechanisms of European modernity. Several papers in this volume therefore provide critical surveys of the history of theatre modernization in Asian countries or regions-Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, India Malaysia, Singapore, and Uyghur. Other papers focus on specific case studies of the history of modernization, discussing contemporary Taiwanese performances, translations of modern French comedy into Chinese, the modernization of Chinese Xiqu, modern Okinawan plays, Malaysian traditional performances, Korean national theatre, and Japanese plays during World War II. Renowned academics and theatre critics have contributed to this volume, making it a valuable resource for researchers and students of theatre studies, literature, and cultural studies.