This is the first book to explore the notion of sacred places from the perspective of performance studies and presents both practice-as-research accounts alongside theoretical analysis. It is multidisciplinary, bringing together religious studies, philosophy and anthropological approaches under the umbrella of performance studies. By focusing on practice and performance rather than theology it also expands the notion of sacred places to non-religious contexts. This new collection offers a multi-layered and contemporary approach to the question of sacred sites, their practices, politics and ecologies. The overarching critical framework of inquiry is performance studies, a multidisciplinary methodological perspective that stresses the importance of investigating the practices and actions through which things are conducted and processes activated. This is an innovative perspective that recognizes the value, function and role that practices and their materialities have in the constitution of special places, their developments in culture, and the politics in place for the conservation of their sense of specialness. The questions investigated are: what is a sacred place? Is a place inherently sacred or does it become sacred? Is it a paradigm, a real location, an imaginary place, a projected condition, a charged setting, an enhanced perception? What kind of practices and processes allow the emergence of a sacred place in human perception? And what is its function in contemporary societies? The book is divided into three sections that evidence the three approaches that are generally engaged with and through which sacred places are defined, actualized and activated: Crossing, Breathing and Resisting. There is a strong field of international contributors including practitioners and academics working in the United Kingdom, the United States, Poland and Australia. Primary interest will be students, academics and practitioners studying or working in theatre and performance studies; fine art; architecture; cultural and visual studies; geography; religious studies; and psychology. Potential for classroom use, and very strong potential for inclusion on reading lists as a secondary text for undergraduate and postgraduate courses in fine art, live art, performance art, performance and theatre studies.

It is often said that the greater Los Angeles area is the largest movie set in the world, and if a person lives there long enough their home or street will probably be featured in a film or television show. The tourism industry in Tinseltown is huge business, with thousands of devoted fans each day flocking to see just where their favorite star's blockbuster was filmed.

This work documents locations used in over 335 motion pictures and 86 television series filmed in Los Angeles and San Diego. The locations were identified and verified after an extensive review of films, video tapes, site photographs, and personal interviews with film industry personnel. Included are synopses of the motion pictures and television series cited; an exhaustive index provides instant access to names, places, monuments, landmarks, film studios, film titles and television titles.

On March 12, 1993, Lillian Gish's memorial service was attended by a host of celebrities whose lives had been touched by her long and remarkable career. From her first film, ""An Unseen Enemy"" (1912), to her last, ""The Whales of August"" (1987), Lillian Gish personified film.With a theatrical career spanning nearly 100 years, Gish saw motion pictures evolve from flickers to blockbusters. Almost always playing someone who needed to be rescued or protected, her trademark delicacy and vulnerability were, however, only part of her persona. She was a strong and complex woman whose painful childhood taught her frugality, love for her mother and her sister, Dorothy, and a distrust of men. In this, her most complete biography, the author, who was her friend, chronicles the hardships, heartaches, and fierce determination that shaped her from her days as a fatherless child to those as head of her family, and on to a time when she became nearly a legend. Featuring rare photographs and intimate recollections of Lillian, Dorothy, and other important figures, the biography is helpful in understanding film history as well as one of its most beautiful and important figures.

Barcelona-born, New York-based artist Francesc Torres (born 1948), a pioneer of installation art, is one of the most important European artists of his generation. In What Does History Know of Nail-Biting, which borrows its subtitle from Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, the artist explores a body of work made by Harry Randall, a photographer and filmmaker who was one of 3,500 Americans who joined the International Brigades to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Many of the so-called Abraham Lincoln Brigade did not make it home, but Randall did. Forty-five minutes of 16mm film, shot by Randall between 1937 and 1938, becomes the material for Torres' new limited-edition artist's book, which explores what history looks like outside of concrete historical events, trying to capture the fragmentation and confusion that silently seeps through the official narratives of history.

Rowan and Martin's ""Laugh-In"" was one of the quirkiest and most unusual programs on television, defying definition as simply comedy, variety, or burlesque. The show had audiences laughing for six seasons and continues to make appearances in revivals, reunions, and salutes. Even with corny and now dated humor, the show's signature lines and gags are ingrained in popular American culture.This critical history of ""Laugh-In"" is arranged chronologically and includes background details on the show's creators and the events leading up-to ""Laugh-In's"" creation. In addition to an analysis of the original six seasons, the text includes information on lookalike shows that emerged after ""Laugh-In's"" success, and on the various resurgences of the show that continued up into the nineties. An appendix contains a complete program history with principal production credits and episode guides.

Though they were close friends, Rudyard Kipling and Sir Henry Rider Haggard wrote about adventure and the exotic in very different ways. Examined together, their works illuminate each other. The writings of both authors have been adapted to the screen, stage, television, and radio numerous times (with varying degrees of fidelity) and this is a complete guide to those adaptations. In the main section of the book each original literary work is summarized, followed by a complete filmography and analysis for each film based on that story or poem. Separate sections provide information on adaptations created for radio, stage, and television. Photographs are included from films ranging from ""The Jungle Book"" (Kipling) to King Solomon's ""Mines"" (Haggard).

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a wave of TV shows, first on premium cable channels like HBO and then basic cable networks like FX and AMC, dramatically stretched television's inventiveness, emotional resonance and ambition. Shows such as The Wire, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Deadwood, The Shield tackled issues of life and death, love and sexuality, addiction, race, violence and existential boredom. Television shows became the place to go to see stories of the triumph and betrayals of the American Dream at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This revolution happened at the hands of a new breed of auteur: the all-powerful writer-show runner. These were men nearly as complicated, idiosyncratic, and "difficult" as the conflicted protagonists that defined the genre. Given the chance to make art in a maligned medium, they fell upon the opportunity with unchecked ambition. Difficult Men features extensive interviews with all the major players, including David Chase and James Gandolfini (The Sopranos), David Simon, Dominic West and Ed Burns (The Wire), Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad), Matthew Weiner and Jon Hamm (Mad Men), David Milch (NYPD Blue, Deadwood) and Alan Ball (Six Feet Under), in addition to dozens of other writers, directors, studio executives and actors. Martin takes us behind the scenes of our favourite shows, delivering never-before-heard story after story and revealing how TV has emerged from the shadow of film to become a truly significant and influential part of our culture. Brett Martin is the author of The Supranos: The Book(2007). His work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Food and Wine and Vanity Fair. Difficult Men is an insightful history of popular US TV drama which traces the emergence of shows such as The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men and The Wire, and explores their engagement with important social issues around love, sexuality, race and violence.

This book focuses on the mother-daughter relationship as it features in a number of films from the 1990s onwards. Bringing the insights of psychoanalysis and feminism to bear on a diverse and compelling range of representations of the mother-daughter dynamic, the author addresses a range of questions relating to the social, historical and cultural conditions which go to inform the female experience. These include, in relation to Dolores Claiborne, Heavenly Creatures and The Others, an exploration of different forms of familial violence and resistance to it and in One True Thing, Stepmom and Pieces of April, questions about the construction of the ideal mother and her loss. From The Piano’s engagement with French feminism and Losing Chase’s reworking of the life and work of Virginia Woolf to the depiction of cross-racial relationships during apartheid in Friends, the films that go to make up this study all share a central concern with both the literal and symbolic forms that the mother-daughter relationship encompasses.

The theatre had a difficult time establishing itself in Massachusetts. Colonial authorities in Boston were adamantly opposed to theatrical amusements of any kind. In the mid-eighteenth century, even theatricals performed in the homes of private citizens aroused the indignant ire of puritanically minded authorities. In 1750 the General Court of Massachusetts passed an act prohibiting stage plays or any other theatrical entertainment. In 1762, the New Hampshire House of Representatives refused a theatre troupe admission to the town of Portsmouth on the ground that plays had a 'peculiar influence on the minds of young people and greatly endangered their morals by giving them a taste for intriguing amusement and pleasure.'The first public dramatic performance in Boston was produced at a coffeehouse on State Street by two English actors and some local volunteers. In 1775 General John Burgoyne, himself an actor and playwright, converted Boston's Faneuil Hall into a theatre, where he presented, among other pieces, ""The Blockade of Boston"". After the Revolutionary War, in February 1794, the dramatic history of Boston may be said to have begun with the opening of the Boston Theatre.The history of Boston theatres from the eighteenth century through the present is covered in this well illustrated work. Although the theatre had a somewhat rocky beginning, by 1841 more than 15 theatre houses - including the Boston Theatre, Concert Hall, Merchants Hall, Boylston Hall, the Washington Gardens Amphitheatre, the Tremont Theatre, the Washington Theatre, the American Amphitheatre, the Federal Street Theatre, Mr. Saubert's Theatre, the Lion Theatre, the National Theatre (which boasted gas lighting), and the Howard Athenaeum - were all established.After these first theatres paved the way and puritanical restraint had been overcome, the public's enthusiasm for varied entertainment prevailed and theatres proliferated in the city. This book details the long and storied history of Boston theatre construction, alteration, restoration, and, in many cases, destruction. Information is also provided about building architecture, types of performances, ticket prices and other interesting data about each theatre's history.

Paul Bern was second only to Irving Thalberg at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the 1930s. Known throughout the movies as 'Hollywood's Father Confessor', Bern had earned a reputation for being a loyal and supportive friend and for becoming one of MGM's most respected and creative directors. In short, it was nearly impossible to find anyone who would say anything negative about Paul Bern. Until he died. Then he would be accused of becoming so depressed and despondent over his own impotence that he had no choice but to commit suicide, and he would be denounced for attempting to rape his new bride, Jean Harlow, and of beating her bloody with a cane on their wedding night just two months earlier.But MGM publicity people and studio police knew how Paul Bern really died. They knew a long-ago common-law wife had recently emerged from the fog of mental illness believing she was still married to Paul, and they knew she had visited him the night before he was found dead. They knew she had killed him, but they also knew that publicly revealing Bern's first marriage would mark his current marriage - a marriage to MGM's now fastest rising star - as bigamous. So, they staged a suicide and embarked on a very public tarnishing of Bern's memory and legacy, leaving the world to believe he was impotent and suicide-obsessed and killed himself out of frustration with his marriage to a sex symbol. This biography rights that wrong by uncovering startling facts about Bern and MGM's tarnishing of his memory. It features almost 100 rare photos, many never before seen, along with three appendices examining the handwriting on the alleged suicide note and Bern's will and estate.

This work contains the histories of 17 radio audience participation shows on the air during the 1940s and 1950s. They are Arthur Godfrey's ""Talent Scouts"", Art Linkletter's ""House Party"", ""Break the Bank"", ""The Breakfast Club"", ""Bride and Groom"", ""Can You Top This?"", ""Dr. Christian"", ""Dr. I.Q."", ""Double or Nothing"", ""Information Please"", ""Queen for a Day"", ""Stop the Music!"", ""Strike It Rich"", ""Take It or Leave It"", ""Truth or Consequences"", ""Welcome Travelers"", and ""You Bet Your Life"". Included for each show are the premise it was based upon, the producers, host, announcer, vocalists, orchestra conductor, writers, sponsors, the ratings, and the air dates. Biographical sketches are provided for 177 figures who were connected to radio audience participation shows. A guide to network audience participation shows follows the text as an appendix.

More than a history of Western movies, The American West on Film intertwines film history, the history of the American West, and American social history into one unique volume. The American West on Film chronicles 12 Hollywood motion pictures that are set in the post–Civil War American West, including The Ox-Bow Incident, Red River, High Noon, The Searchers, The Magnificent Seven, Little Big Man, and Tombstone. Each film overview summarizes the movie's plot, details how the film came to be made, the critical and box-office reactions upon its release, and the history of the time period or actual event. This is followed by a comparison and contrast of the filmmakers' version of history with the facts, as well as an analysis of the film's significance, then and now. Relying on contemporary accounts and historical analysis as well as perspectives from filmmakers, historians, and critics, the author describes what it took to get each movie made and how close to the historical truth the movie actually got. Readers will come away with a better understanding of how movies often reflect the time in which they were made, and how Westerns can offer provocative social commentary hidden beneath old-fashioned "shoot-em-ups."

Edward G. Robinson, a 1930s cinema icon, had an acting career that spanned over 60 years. After a brush with silent films, he rose to true celebrity status in sound feature films and went on to take part in radio and television performances, then back to Broadway and on the road in live theatre. This work documents Robinson's every known public performance or appearance, listing also co-workers, source material, background and critical commentary. The entries include feature films, documentaries, short subjects, cartoons, television and radio productions, live theatre presentations, narrations, pageants, and recordings that Robinson was involved with during his professional life. Also included are entries relating to Robinson's life and career, ranging from his art collection to his wives.

Many movie genres developed during the silent era, but none was as lasting as comedies. Actors and actresses stood in front of crude, hand-cranked cameras and invented a style that made people laugh and forget their troubles.This is a comprehensive reference work to the people, studios, technical companies and terms associated with silent film comedy. For people, there is a capsule biography, with birth and death rates and a summary of their contribution to the genre. For studios and companies, there is a brief history, focusing on their work in silent film comedy. For terms, a full definition is given.

The result of nearly 15 years of research, this comprehensive analysis of Boris Karloff's life and career, incorporates criticism, in-depth production information, discussion of major cinematic themes and characters, and a look at the historical periods and events depicted in the films. Extensive biographical and career information is dovetailed with a discussion of the classic Hollywood era in order to examine Karloff's overall contribution to American cinema. Each of Karloff's horror films is examined at length, as well as his contributions to other media. Over 100 posters, portraits, film scenes and candid photos illustrate the text, and numerous contemporaries (Evelyn Karloff, Laurence Olivier, Henry Brandon, Ian Wolfe, Zita Johann, others) are quoted throughout.

When Charlie Chaplin left Keystone Studios for more money and greater creative control at Essanay Film Manufacturing Company, he added more depth to his character, more thought to his direction, and more substance to his humor: at Essanay, he grew from a comedian to a true cinematic artist. This work carefully examines all sixteen Chaplin comedies produced at Essanay, showing Chaplin as an artist in transition from the knockabout Keystone farces to more refined, sometimes brilliant Mutual productions. From ""His New Job"" (1915) to ""Triple Trouble"" (1918), the book covers each film with key details, a history of its production, and valuable commentary that places the picture in context within Chaplin's canon.

To today's radio listener, it is difficult to imagine the influence radio once held over the American people. Unlike movies or newspapers, radio both informed and entertained its audience without requiring them to participate. Part of its success depended upon the people who created the sound effects--a squeaking door, the approach of a horse, or a typewriter. The author did live sound effects during the Golden Age of radio. He provides many insights into the early days of the medium as it grappled with entertaining an audience based on a single sense (hearing). How the sounds were produced is fully covered as are the artists responsible for their production. Stories of successful effects production are balanced by embarrassing or funny failures. A list of artists and their shows is included. This entry refers to the LARGE PRINT edition. For the standard edition please see ISBN 978-0-7864-2266-1.

Born in the 1920s during the emergence of radio, schools of the air broadcast an impressive array of instructional programs for the classroom. These broadcast schools operated at the national, state and local levels; issued teacher manuals and learning materials; and offered enormous educational resources to students in both rural and urban areas. This work gives the history of 14 schools of the air, and fills an important gap in scholarship about American education and broadcast media. The book also assesses the successes and failures of the school of the air movement, and examines reasons for its demise.

Cast, production credits, release date, and running time are provided for each of the Tarzan films. The plot synopses include the storyline, background information on the making of the film, and contemporary critical commentary. Also examined is Tarzan on television, from the TV movie Tarzan and the Trappers (1958) to the 1991 series. Heavily illustrated. This entry refers to the LARGE PRINT edition. For the standard edition please see ISBN 978-0-7864-1109-2.

'Quinn Martin was the most innovative and most creative of his kind. He was a man in touch with the future, far more than the times. His characters were not stereotypical characters. His production methods were not stereotypical either. He was unique in a number of ways. That's why his shows did so well' - Lynda Day George, guest star on QM's ""The Fugitive"", ""The FBI"", and other shows.Quinn Martin was the producer of such television shows as ""The Invaders"", ""Barnaby Jones"", ""The Untouchables"", ""The Streets of San Francisco"", ""Cannon"" and ""12 O'Clock High"", to name just a few. How each series made it to the networks, what problems occurred during their production, and why they were cancelled are examined. Martin's devotion to his shows, his hands-on approach to the writing, casting and editing of each episode, his interactions with network executives, and the high standards he set for his crew and actors are widely admired in the industry.

Hitler and the Nazis saturated their country with many types of propaganda to convince the German citizenry that the Nazi ideology was the only ideology. As Joseph Goebbels, who was in charge of propaganda for Nazi Germany, said, ""The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it."" One type of propaganda that the Nazis relied on heavily was cinematic.This work focuses primarily on Nazi propaganda feature films and feature-length documentaries made in Germany between 1933 and 1945 and released to the public. Some of them were Staatsauftragsfilme, films produced by order of and financed by the Third Reich. The films are arranged by subject and then alphabetically, and complete cast and production credits are provided for each. Short biographies of actors, directors, producers, and others who were involved in the making of Nazi propaganda films are also provided.

Often forgotten among the actors, directors, producers and others associated with filmmaking, art directors are responsible for making movies visually appealing to audiences. As such they sometimes make the difference between a hit and a bomb.This biographical dictionary includes not only the world's great and almost-great artists, but the unjustly neglected film designers of the past and present. Among the more than 300 art directors and designers are pioneers from silent films, designers from Hollywood and Europe's Golden Ages, Asian figures, post - Golden Age personalities, leaders of the European and American New Waves, and many contemporary designers. Each entry consists of biographical information, an analysis of the director's career and important films, and an extensive filmography including mentions of Academy Award nominations and winners.

This is an anthology representing the best of papers presented at the 31st Comparative Drama Conference (Los Angeles, California). A three-day event, the conference drew 161 scholars from all over the world.This volume features 16 research papers, a roundtable discussion, review essay, and six book reviews. The papers included here present research about the Chicano Theatre, America's Vietnam War and 9/11 in the French Theatre, Actresses and Modern Hamlet, the Asian Theatre and 12 others. The roundtable discussion is on the future of dramatic literature in the academy. Reviews of selected books are also included.

On April 29, 1789, a band of mutineers turned an otherwise common, uneventful voyage into an unforgettable legend. The confrontation between Lieutenant William Bligh and Master's Mate Fletcher Christian of the H.M.S. Bounty has become one of the most famous stories in the annals of maritime history. Consequently, volumes have been written regarding the mutiny, its protagonists and its aftermath on Pitcairn Island. From William Bligh's firsthand account published in 1790 to 20th century cinematic representations, this copiously illustrated reference book examines more than 1700 books, articles and other materials which deal with the now infamous mutiny on the Bounty and its legacy. Covering the most important material published from 1790 through 2006, it provides descriptive analytical discussions of major works including nonfiction accounts, fictional representations, poetry, articles and movies. Presented chronologically by date of publication, the major works trace the history of the reactions, emotions and opinions that the mutiny has generated in the reading public, allowing the reader to consider each work within the cultural and scholarly context of its respective period. Each section includes an annotated bibliography of selected works and further supplemented with a bibliography of additional literature from the time period. Appendices direct readers to related Internet resources and notable documentaries, and a list of references is included.

With its laser-focus on the verbal and visual infrastructure of narrative, The Metanarrative Hall of Mirrors is the first sustained comparative study of how image patterns are tracked in prose and cinema. In film examples ranging from Citizen Kane through Apocalypse Now to Blade Runner 2049, then on to Christopher Nolan’s 2020 Tenet, Garrett Stewart follows the shift from celluloid to digital cinema through various narrative manifestations of the image, from freeze-frames to computer-generated special effects. By bringing cinema alongside literature, Stewart discovers a common tendency in contemporary storytelling, in both prose and visual narrative, from the ongoing trend of “mind-game” films to the often puzzling narrative eccentricities of such different writers as Nicholson Baker and Richard Powers—including the latter’s eerie mirroring of reader empathy in his 2021 Bewilderment.