Through a collection of original essays and case studies, this innovative book explores theory as an accessible, although complex, tool for theatre practitioners and students. These chapters invite readers to (re)imagine theory as a site of possibility or framework that can shape theatre making, emerge from practice, and foster new ways of seeing, creating, and reflecting. Focusing on the productive tensions and issues that surround creative practice and intellectual processes, the contributing authors present central concepts and questions that frame the role of theory in the theatre. Ultimately, this diverse and exciting collection offers inspiring ideas, raises new questions, and introduces ways to build theoretically-minded, dynamic production work.

'Performing Contagious Bodies' explores live/body art and installation practices through theories of ritual and magic. Featuring discussion of a wide range of contemporary international practice, the book explores the intersections of performance studies, art history, anthropology and contemporary visual art practices.

It is no coincidence that many of the most celebrated female performers throughout both the 19th and 20th centuries - women widely considered to represent the spirit of their times - were Jewish. Mock traces a lineage that stretches from the first international stage stars, Rachel of the Comedie-Francaise and Sarah Bernhardt, to stars of film and television such as Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler and Roseanne. In a unique enquiry, this book embraces issues of gender, sexuality, race, class and nationality through the figure of the Jewish woman to show how a very specific marginal identity has transformed mainstream cultures.

Is William Shakespeare of Stratford-Upon-Avon the true author of the poems and plays attributed to him? This book once and for all silences those critics who say he isn't. It takes particular aim at those who champion Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, whose crest was a wild blue boar.

Who are these heretics who would strip Shakespeare of his laurels and drape them on a "nobler" brow? Foremost are John Thomas Looney, the Charlton Ogburn family and the latter-day anti-Stratfordians Richard Whalen, John Michell, David McCullough, Lewis H. Lapham, Mark Anderson and others.

Using their own words against them, this book meticulously examines the claims of these Naysayers and destroys them.

In addition, you'll learn about Shakespeare's early decline and fall as a literary giant; why so little is known of Shakespeare's life; and why his closest colleagues, Ben Jonson and the Shakespeare Folio editors, Heminges and Condell, have been branded fools or liars.

Whether you are a teacher, student or simply someone interested in one of the foremost literary questions of the day, it's important to read "Spearing the Wild Blue Boar."

"A forgotten yet award-winning playwright, Cal Yeomans was one of the founders of gay theatre whose work was fueled by gay liberation and extinguished by the AIDS epidemic. Exploring both sex and sexuality so candidly, he burst the boundaries of what was considered acceptable. His writings were not only manifestations of the sexual liberation of the times, but were also attempts to overcome what he had been raised to despise. Schanke's examination of Yeomans' life and legacy allows a rare exploration into the pivotal moment of gay American history between the Stonewall riots and the AIDS epidemic"--

Traditions of folk drama exist throughout the world, ranging from simple forms that involve few people, rudimentary texts, and crude performance practices, to complex forms involving entire towns, highly elaborated texts, and performance practices that have developed over hundreds of years. Yet folk drama lacks, to this day, a full-length study from the perspectives of either folkloristics or drama studies. This work seeks to fill that lack by undertaking a bi-disciplinary study of the idea of folk drama, drawing on examples from around the world, including Yangge (China), Ta'ziyeh (Iran), Bhavai (India), Karagoz (Turkey), Apidan (Nigeria), and the Mummers' Play (England). It examines the meanings of "folk" and "drama," the significance of ritual and performance in folk drama, the frequently encountered problem of Eurocentric bias, the conventional tripartite division of drama into elite, popular, and folk categories, the need for a methodology capable of describing all aspects of folk drama performance, and the taxonomic place of folk drama in both folkloristics and drama studies. On the basis of this examination, Rethinking Folk Drama establishes a new basis for understanding the ubiquity and variety of folk drama.

The careers, directing accomplishments, ideas, and techniques of six distinguished directors of the European stage--each considered a master of the art--are surveyed in depth by author Samuel L. Leiter in this groundbreaking study. Konstantin Stanislavsky, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Max Reinhardt, Jacques Copeau, Bertolt Brecht, and Jean-Louis Barrault, representative of the broad spectrum of directorial art as it has developed in this century, are examined in six exhaustively detailed, yet compact chapters. In Leiter's informative introduction, salient aspects of the director's art exemplified by these innovators are identified and examined: choice of repertory from the intellectually provocative to the escapist; stylistic attitudes toward production from Stanislavsky's "spiritual naturalism" to Meyerhold's biomechanics and constructivism; rehearsal methods from the dictatorial to the openly collaborative; and a continuing fascination with the shape and function of the performance space. Many of the directors emerge as multifaceted hommes de theatre--writing, directing, acting, designing sets and lighting, and producing. The theoretical writings of the majority of these great directors have become the foundation for Western theatre thought in our time. Each chapter contains capsule descriptions of the landmark productions of the individual director and the volume concludes with a section of brief chronologies for each person and a select bibliography. A single director is the subject of each of the six chapters, which are organized into numerous subsections that discuss the individual's career, his overarching conceptions of theatre art and directing, and finally his actual working methods.Almost every chapter has information on a director's repertory, major productions, theoretical concerns, techniques of working with actors, playwrights, designers, and composers, casting methods, production preparations, and rehearsal processes. Taken as a whole, these chapters reveal the wide divergence of directorial styles and techniques and the multiplicity of approaches open to exponents of the art. The separate chronologies and select bibliography are especially helpful. Students of stage directing and their teachers, active professionals in the field, and literate general readers who seek a broader understanding of twentieth century theatre and stage direction will find this a handy and invaluable resources. This work could be profitably used as a text or supplementary reading for classes in stage directing and is a companion to Leiter's From Belasco to Brook: Representative Directors of the English-Speaking Stage (Greenwood Press, 1991).

Offers access to projects of some of the top professionals working in Real-Time Content Production today like engineering teams from "The Mandalorian" & League of Legends as well as video content designers for The Foo Fighters and Back to the Future, The Musical Includes reviews of real-time content production workflow for virtual production Features discussion from the software developers about the origins of their platforms

Die trauma van die "has been" ontsnap niemand nie. Die liggaam bly die gewildste prooi van tyd. Vir die hoogste bome wat die meeste wind vang, is dit dikwels pynliker en hierdie mense se opstand daarteen is pateties en vernederend. In Jasmyn word ’n vervalle ou skoonheidsikoon, Beulah, genadeloos belig vanuit ’n ongewone invalshoek: as prooi en as begenadigde. Die verstand wat in haar vervalle liggaam gehuisves word, is egter nog naaldskerp. ’n Onverwagte erflating deur ’n eertydse miljarderminnaar word die hoogtepunt en afloop van die drama. Beulah erf R40 miljoen, mits sy ’n minnaar werf wat ten minste 20 jaar haar junior is, ’n verjongingsprogram voltooi met riglyne rakende dieet, plastiese chirurgie, sielkundige berading, hormoonmanipulasie en nuut geskepte ikoonstatus. Laasgenoemde word moontlik gemaak deurdat die oorlede minnaar geld nalaat om ’n nuwe skoonheidseep, Beulah Jasmine, internasionaal vry te stel.

The digital broadcasting of performances to cinemas, or 'livecasting', burst onto the world scene in 2006. This book explores the reasons for its rise by examining the aesthetics of filming theatre and opera performances, as well as exploring who the audiences are and what they want.

Play helps define who we are as human beings. However, many of the leisurely/ludic activities people participate in are created and governed by corporate entities with social, political, and business agendas. As such, it is critical that scholars understand and explicate the ideological underpinnings of played-through experiences and how they affect the player/performers who engage in them. This book explores how people play and why their play matters, with a particular interest in how ludic experiences are often constructed and controlled by the interests of institutions, including corporations, non-profit organizations, government agencies, religious organizations, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Each chapter explores diverse sites of play. From theme parks to comic conventions to massively-multiplayer online games, they probe what roles the designers of these experiences construct for players, and how such play might affect participants' identities and ideologies. Scholars of performance studies, leisure studies, media studies and sociology will find this book an essential reference when studying facets of play.

Theatre and Dictatorship in the Luso-Hispanic World explores the discourses that have linked theatrical performance and prevailing dictatorial regimes across Spain, Portugal and their former colonies. These are divided into three different approaches to theatre itself - as cultural practice, as performance, and as textual artifact - addressing topics including obedience, resistance, authoritarian policies, theatre business, exile, violence, memory, trauma, nationalism, and postcolonialism. This book draws together a diverse range of methodological approaches to foreground the effects and constraints of dictatorship on theatrical expression and how theatre responds to these impositions.

The Children's Troupes and the Transformation of English Theater 1509-1608 uncovers the role of the children's companies in transforming perceptions of authorship and publishing, performance, playing spaces, patronage, actor training, and gender politics in the sixteenth century. Jeanne McCarthy challenges entrenched narratives about popular playing in an era of revolutionary changes, revealing the importance of the children's company tradition's connection with many early plays, as well as to the spread of literacy, classicism, and literate ideals of drama, plot, textual fidelity, characterization, and acting in a still largely oral popular culture. By addressing developments from the hyper-literate school tradition, and integrating discussion of the children's troupes into the critical conversation around popular playing practices, McCarthy offers a nuanced account of the play-centered, literary performance tradition that came to define professional theater in this period. Highlighting the significant role of the children's company tradition in sixteenth-century performance culture, this volume offers a bold new narrative of the emergence of the London theater.

Using the tools of performance studies, gender theory, and cultural history, Brenda Foley explores the striking similarities between beauty pageantry and striptease. For example, women in both project a 'normal' femininity and adhere to a strict hierarchy (Miss America contestants look down upon Miss Universe contestants, while theatrical 'burlesque artists' saw themselves as far above mere carnival strippers). Undressed for Success collects extensive primary source research - newspapers, journals, trade publications, photography collections, press releases, memoirs, and interviews with both strippers and pageant contestants - and employs a wide array of gender, feminist, and performance theory to analyze them.

This book serves as analysis of the aesthetics of materiality in the multifaceted work of Antonin Artaud, one of Twentieth-Century France's most provocative and influential figures, spanning literature, performance, art, cinema, media and critical theory.

Theatre has often found itself at the centre of recent debates over censorship and the arts, as a result of coverage of events such as the protests against the play "Behzti" and the controversy over "Jerry Springer: The Opera." This book offers the first sustained study of censorship of the British stage from 1968 into the twenty-first century.

Of the Four Amigos who won a rowing bronze at the Mexico Olympics, three are still alive: Jim, an investment banker who thinks an AC after his name might legitimise a life of squalid dealing; Dick, a heart surgeon, who can, if he chooses, put in a good word with the Honours Committee; and Stephen, the least successful, grieving the death of his son. They and their wives come together for a two-week holiday in paradise. Sure, there's a bit of bad blood between them and a few old scores to settle, but when it all comes down to it, mates are mates, right?

'Hegemony and Fantasy in Irish Drama, 1899-1949' offers a theoretically innovative reconsideration of drama produced in the Irish Renaissance, as well as an engagement with non-canonical drama in the under-researched period 1926-1949.

Modern theater is a field marked by competing, and often contradictory, impulses and developments. A critique of certain types of theatre is a productive force within modernism and a force that led to the most successful reforms of modern theatre and drama. This exciting collection of essays in Palgrave's "Performance Interventions" series rethinks the historical formations and functions of antitheatricality within modern drama, opera, literature, film, and art.

From the aftermath of World War II to the convulsions of Brexit, festivals have deployed Shakespeare as a model of inclusive and progressive theatre to seek cultural solutions to Europe's multi-faceted crises. Shakespeare on European Festival Stages is the first book to chart Shakespeare's presence at continental European festivals. It examines the role these festivals play in European socio-cultural exchanges, and the impact festivals make on the wider production and circulation of staged Shakespeare across the continent. This collection offers authoritative, lively and informed accounts of the production of Shakespeare at the following festivals: the Avignon Festival and Le Printemps des comediens in Montpellier (France), the Almagro festival (Spain), Shakespeare at Four Castles (Czech Republic and Slovakia), the International Shakespeare Festival in Craiova (Romania), the Shakespeare festivals in Elsinore (Denmark), Gdansk (Poland), Gyula (Hungary), Itaka (Serbia), Neuss (Germany), Patalenitsa (Bulgaria), Rome and Verona (Italy). Shakespeare on European Festival Stages is essential reading for students, scholars and practitioners interested in Shakespeare in performance, in translation and in a post-national Shakespeare that knows no borders and belongs to all of Europe.

David Garrick played over 90 roles on the British stage as well as writing plays, songs, and innumerable letters. As a theatrical manager he watched over the Drury Lane theater for 29 seasons.