Contents:
General Editor's Preface. Acknowledgements. 1. Preliminaries: Semiotics and Poetics: The Semiotics Enterprise; How Many Semiotics?; The material. 2. Foundations: Signs in the Theatre: Prague structuralism and the theatrical sign; Typologies of the sign. 3. Theatrical Communication: Codes, Systems and the Performance Text: Elements of theatrical communication; Theatrical Systems and Codes; Theatrical competence: frame, convention and the role of the audience. 4. Dramatic Logic: The construction of the dramatic world; Dramatic action and time; Actant, dramatis persona and the dramatic model. 5. Dramatic Discourse: Dramatic Communication; Context and deixis; Universe of discourse and co-text; Speech acts; The said and the unsaid: implicatures and figures; Textuality; Towards a dramatological analysis. 6. Concluding Comments: Theatre, Drama, Semiotics: Dramatic Text/performance text; A united enterprise? Suggestions for further reading. Bibliography. Index.

This book makes the case for Bertolt Brecht's continued importance at a time when events of the 21st century cry out for a studied means of producing theatre for social change. Here is a unique step-by-step process for realizing Brecht's ways of working onstage using the 2015 Texas Tech University production of Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children as a model for exploration. Particular Brecht concepts-the epic, Verfremdung, the Fabel, gestus, historicization, literarization, the "Not...but," Arrangement, and the Separation of the Elements-are explained and applied to scenes and plays. Brecht's complicated relationship with Konstantin Stanislavsky is also explored in relation to their separate views on acting. For theatrical practitioners and educators, this volume is a record of pedagogical engagement, an empirical study of Brecht's work in performance at a higher institution of learning using graduate and undergraduate students.

This volume forms part of the 5 volume set Early English Stages 1300-1660. This set examines the history of the development of dramatic spectacle and stage convention in England from the beginning of the fourteenth century to 1660.

This volume forms part of the 5 volume set "Early English Stages 1300-1660." This set examines the history of the development of dramatic spectacle and stage convention in England from the beginning of the fourteenth century to 1660.

The history of European drama began at the festivals of Dionysus in ancient Athens, where tragedy, satyr-drama and comedy were performed. Understanding this background is vital for students of classical, literary and theatrical subjects, and Alan H. Sommerstein's accessible study is the ideal introduction.
The book begins by looking at the social and theatrical contexts and different characteristics of the three genres of ancient Greek drama. It then examines the five main dramatists whose works survive - Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes and Menander - discussing their styles, techniques and ideas, and giving short synopses of all their extant plays.

A Trip to Niagara; or, Travellers in America, a three-act comedy, opened at New York's Bowery Theatre on November 28, 1828, for a long run. Scripted and later published by William Dunlap (1766-1839), the so-called "father of the American stage," this play offers a bounty to theater historians, dramatic critics, and all those interested in the American culture during Dunlap's lifetime. This study explores the Bowery, the play's moving diorama, the text, and the playwright, and emphasizes their interrelationships. This analysis of A Trip to Niagara as a theatrical event joins hands with dramatic criticism. An annotated transcript of the play is helpfully provided in the appendix of the book. This study contends that had there been no moving diorama, there would have been no play. Since William Dunlap called his text a "running accompaniment," it should be analyzed in terms of this function. The play's few critics have failed to do this. Hence, the interplay of the moving diorama (and conventional scenic backdrops) with the plot and characters comprises another significant segment of this study. This book makes significant contributions to studies of antebellum American theater, the Nationalist Period in American culture, and William Dunlap.

Re: Direction is an extraordinary resource for practitioners and students on directing. It provides a collection of ground-breaking interviews, primary sources and essays on 20th century directing theories and practices around the world.
Helpfully organized into four key areas of the subject, the book explores:
* theories of directing
* the boundaries of the director's role
* the limits of categorization
* the history of the theatre and performance art.
Exceptionally useful and thought-provoking introductory essays by editors Schneider and Cody guide you through the wealth of materials included here. Re: Direction is the kind of book anyone interested in theatre history should own, and which will prove an indispensable toolkit for a lifetime of study.

During the 19 years of her play-writing career, Aphra Behn had far more new plays staged than anyone else. This book is the first to examine all her theatrical work. It explains her often dominant place in the complex theatrical culture of Charles II's reign, her divided political sympathies, and her interests as a free-thinking intellectual. It also reveals her to be a brilliant theatrical practitioner who used the seen as richly and significantly as the spoken.

Eric Salmon contends that modern theatre is artistically endangered. This book is his evaluation of the present state of English-speaking theatre and an examination, through examples of twentieth-century plays, both good and bad, of the reasons for it. Salmon's method is critical-argumentative. He is as much concerned with staging methods and playing as with the plays themselves, though he regards the playwright as the primary artist in the theatre and the actor as an interpretor.

Unique in any Western language, this is an invaluable resource for the study of one of the world's great theatrical forms. It includes essays by established experts on Kabuki as well as younger scholars now entering the field, and provides a comprehensive survey of the history of Kabuki; how it is written, produced, staged, and performed; and its place in world theater. Compiled by the editor of the influential Asian Theater Journal, the book covers four essential areas - history, performance, theaters, and plays - and includes a translation of one Kabuki play as an illustration of Kabuki techniques.

Shakespeare Survey is a yearbook of Shakespeare studies and production. Since 1948, Survey has published the best international scholarship in English and many of its essays have become classics of Shakespeare criticism. Each volume is devoted to a theme, or play, or group of plays; each also contains a section of reviews of that year's textual and critical studies and of the year's major British performances. The theme for Volume 74 is 'Shakespeare and Education. The complete set of Survey volumes is also available online at https://www.cambridge.org/core/what-we-publish/collections/shakespeare-survey This fully searchable resource enables users to browse by author, essay and volume, search by play, theme and topic and save and bookmark their results.

The book explores European artists' critical engagement with the images and stories that politicians and the media use to advocate globalization.

This is the first book to dedicate scholarly attention to the work of Tarell Alvin McCraney, one of the most significant writers and theater-makers of the twenty-first century. Featuring essays, interviews, and commentaries by scholars and artists who span generations, geographies, and areas of interest, the volume examines McCraney's theatrical imagination, his singular writerly voice, his incisive cultural critiques, his stylistic and formal creativity, and his distinct personal and professional trajectories. Contributors consider McCraney's innovations as a playwright, adapter, director, performer, teacher, and collaborator, bringing fresh and diverse perspectives to their observations and analyses. In so doing, they expand and enrich the conversations on his much-celebrated and deeply resonant body of work, which includes the plays Choir Boy, Head of Passes, Ms. Blakk for President, The Breach, Wig Out!, and the critically acclaimed trilogy The Brother/Sister Plays: In the Red and Brown Water, The Brothers Size, and Marcus; Or the Secret of Sweet, as well as the Oscar Award-winning film Moonlight, which was based on his play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue.

This exploration of the territory between theory and practice in contemporary theatre features essays by academics from theatre and translation studies, and delineates a new space for the discussion of translation in the theatre that is international, critical and scholarly, while rooted in experience and understanding of theatre practices.

From the musical hits "Lion King" and "Bring In da Noise, Bring In da Funk," to important new off-Broadway plays such as "Beauty Queen of Leenane" and "Wit," the latest volume in this popular series features a chronological collection of facsimiles of every theater review and awards article published in the "New York Times" between January 1997 and December 1998. Includes a full index of personal names, titles, and corporate names. Like its companion volume, the "New York Times Film Reviews 1997-1998, " this collection is an invaluable resource for all libraries.

Locating Indian theatre as a major site of reappraisal and renewal both in India and in the world of performance, this book presents both a picture of traditional and contemporary theatre in India and an examination of its processes and practice. It questions the generative processes which impel theatre, the 'transformation' of individuals and groups through performance and the performative dynamics of 'self' and 'other'.

Each chapter of this book presents a different marginalized community and explores how it appropriates theatre for its own needs, which are often at odds with those of the powerful sponsoring organizations.  This fresh approach to the topic provides the reader with an innovative, critical way of studying community theatre.

eBook available with sample pages: HE:0415059291

Contents:
Acknowlegements. Introduction. Unit one: Are you sitting comfortably? Unit two: Realism: Telling it like it is? Unit three: presentation of character: non-standard language. Unit four: The protagonist. Unit five: Storytelling. Unit six: The grammar of sound. Unit seven:Book to film. Index of terms. Index of textx and writers. References and further reading.

"Provides a comparative approach to the internationally wide-spread phenomenon of the contemporary director-auteur in the theatre, urging a historical and theoretical exploration of the visions, methods, and stage idioms in the work of established artists. Sidiropoulou examines prominent examples of both older and more recent director-auteur work, aiming at re-asserting - to its artistic and academic audience - the value of balancing the established emphasis on the diegetic aspects of theatre with the ever-spreading varieties of dramatic de-"centering" and "dis-semination." This exciting work also poses questions of authorship, which necessarily imply the redefinition of the relationship between "playwright" and the director-playwright"--

Reconstructs the constitutive role that German actresses played on and off the stage in shaping not only modernist theater aesthetics and performance practices, but also influential strains of modern thought. Around 1900, German and Austrian actresses had allure and status, apparent autonomy, and unconventional lifestyles. They presented a complex problem socially and aesthetically, one tied to the so-called Woman Question and to the contested status of modernity. For modernists, the actress's socioeconomic mobility and defiance of gender norms opened space to contest social and moral strictures, and her mutability offered a means to experiment with identity. For conservatives, on the other hand, female performance could support antifeminist convictions and validate masculine authority by positing woman as nothing but a false surface shaped by productive male forces. Influential male-authored texts from the period thereby disavowed female subjectivity per se by equating "woman" and "actress." S. E. Jackson establishes the actress as a key figure in a discursive matrix surrounding modernity, gender, and subjectivity. Her central argument is that because the figure of the actress bridged such varied fields of thought, women who were actresses had a consequential impact that resonated in and far beyond the theater - but has not been explored. Examining archival sources such as theater reviews and writing by actresses in direct relation to canonical aesthetic and philosophical texts, The Problem of the Actress reconstructs the constitutive role that womenplayed on and off the stage in shaping not only modernist theater aesthetics and performance practices, but also influential strains of modern thought.