Not just a comprehensive guide to current professional practices - it goes beyond to explain the theory behind the practice, so you understand how the rules came about and when it's appropriate to break them. Presents the basics and beyond, employing clear explanations of standard practice together with substantial illustrations and diagrams to reveal the real world of film production and covering the most up-to-date information on equipment. Also has an accompanying companion website with hours of video footage offering key instruction in topics such as camera basics, lighting essentials, shooting methods, and much more.

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice presents the most current international scholarship on the complexity and subversive potential of women's comedic speech, literature, and performance. Earlier comedy theorists such as Freud and Bergson did not envision women as either the agents or audiences of comedy, only as its targets. Only more recently have scholarly studies of comedy begun to recognize and historicize women's contributions to-and political uses of-comedy. The essays collected here demonstrate the breadth of current scholarship on gender and comedy, spanning centuries of literature and a diversity of methodologies. Through a reconsideration of literary, theatrical, and mass media texts from the Classical period to the present, Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice responds to the historical marginalization and/or trivialization of both women and comedy. The essays collected in this volume assert the importance of recognizing the role of women and comedy in order to understand these texts, their historical contexts, and their possibilities and limits as models for social engagement. In the spirit of comedy itself, these analyses allow for opportunities to challenge and reevaluate the theoretical approaches themselves.

Reading Westworld is the first volume to explore the cultural, textual and theoretical significance of the hugely successful HBO TV series Westworld. The essays engage in a series of original enquiries into the central themes of the series including conceptions of the human and posthuman, American history, gaming, memory, surveillance, AI, feminism, imperialism, free will and contemporary capitalism. In its varied critical engagements with the genre, narratives and contexts of Westworld, this volume explores the show's wider and deeper meanings and the questions it poses, as well considering how Westworld reflects on the ethical implications of artificial life and technological innovation for our own futurity. With critical essays that draw on the interdisciplinary strengths and productive intersections of media, cultural and literary studies, Reading Westworld seeks to respond to the show's fundamental question; "Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?" It will be of interest to students, academics and general readers seeking to engage with Westworld and the far-reaching questions it poses about our current engagements with technology.

BILLY, the ground-breaking biography of the nation's favourite iconoclast, gave millions of readers a fascinating insight into the personal and professional life of the genius that is Billy Connolly. Then, in the sequel to that bestselling book, the award-winning Pamela Stephenson celebrated life with the Scottish beastie as he hit the big six-oh. In it we relive colourful and epic moments from Billy's early life in Glasgow - the background to an intimate portrait of his marriage with Pamela and his life in Scotland, LA and the rest of the world. Witty, insightful and intimate, BRAVEMOUTH draws the reader into two very different worlds - hers of international sexology and the serious psychology of humorists, his of incontinence pants, being married to a shrink... and the finer points of banjo playing.

This book examines queer visibility in reality television, which is arguably the most prolific space of gay, lesbian, transgender and otherwise queer media representation. It explores almost two decades of reality programming, from Big Brother to I Am Cait, American Idol to RuPaul's Drag Race, arguing that the specific conventions of reality TV-its intimacy and emotion, its investments in celebrity and the ideal of authenticity-have inextricably shaped the ways in which queer people have become visible in reality shows. By challenging popular judgements on reality shows as damaging spaces of queer representation, this book argues that reality TV has pioneered a unique form of queer-inclusive broadcasting, where a desire for authenticity, rather than being heterosexual, is the norm. Across all chapters, this book investigates how reality TV's celebration of 'compulsory authenticity' has circulated 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable' ways of being queer, demonstrating how possibilities for queer visibility are shaped by broader anxieties and around selfhood, identity and the real in contemporary cultural life.

Richard Pochinko (1946-89) played a pioneering role in North American clown theater through the creation of an original pedagogy synthesizing modern European and indigenous Native American techniques. In "Clown Through Mask," Veronica Coburn and onetime Pochinko apprentice Sue Morrison lay out the methodology of the Pochinko style of clowning and offer a bold philosophical framework for its interpretation. Morrison is today a leading teacher of Pochinko's Clown through Mask technique and this book extends significantly the literature on this underdocumented form of theater.

This book identifies and analyzes the ways in which RuPaul's Drag Race has reshaped the visibility of drag culture in the US and internationally, as well as how the program has changed understandings of reality TV. This edited volume illustrates how drag has become a significant aspect of LGBTQ experience and identity globally through RuPaul's Drag Race, and how the show has reformed a media landscape in which competition and reality itself are understood as given. Taking on lenses addressing race, ethnicity, geographical origin, cultural identity, physicality and body image, and participation in drag culture across the globe, this volume offers critical, non-traditional, and first-hand perspectives on drag culture.

Suzan-Lori Parks confirmed herself as one of the most exciting and successful playwrights of her generation when her work Topdog/Underdog was awarded the 2002 Pulitzer Prize, making her the only African American woman to win the award. Despite the cultural weight of this achievement, Parks remains difficult both to pigeonhole and to summarize. This volume seeks to provide a context for her work, with essays from major and emerging scholars addressing the importance of factors such as gender, ethnicity, language and history in plays from her first major work, Imperceptible Mutabilities of the Third Kingdom to the 365 Days / 365 Plays project. Suzan-Lori Parks: A Casebook represents the first major study of this unique voice in contemporary drama. Contributors: Leonard Berkman, Jason Bush, Shawn Marie-Garrett, Andrea Goto, Heidi Holder, Barbara Ozieblo, Kevin J. Wetmore Jr and Harvey Young. Kevin J. Wetmore Jr is Professor of Theatre at Loyola Marymount University, as well as being a professional actor and director of the Comparative Drama Conference. He is the author of The Athenian Sun in an African Sky and Black Dionysus: Greek Tragedy and African American Theatre. Alycia Smith-Howard an Assistant Professor at New York University in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where she is the Artistic Director of the Gallatin Arts Festival and the Book Reviews Editor at the New England Theatre Journal. A Fellow of the Folger Shakespeare Library, her areas of specialization include Shakespeare, performance history, feminist theatre aesthetics and literature and drama of the south.

The child star is an iconic figure in Western society representing a growing cultural trend which idolises, castigates and fetishises the image of the perfect, innocent and beautiful child. In this book, Jane O'Connor explores the paradoxical status of the child star who is both adored and reviled in contemporary society. Drawing on current debates about the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood and fears about children 'growing up too soon', she identifies hostile media attention around child stars as indicative of broader social concerns about the 'correct' role and place of children in relation to normative ideals of childhood. Through reference to extensive empirical examples of the way child stars such as Shirley Temple, Macaulay Culkin, Charlotte Church and Jackie Coogan have been constructed in the media, this book illustrates both the powerlessness and the power held by this tiny band of children, and demonstrates their significance as representatives of the public face of childhood throughout the twentieth century and beyond.

This book explores the growing trend of intermediality in cinematic representations of the Holocaust. It turns to the in-betweens that characterise the cinematic experience to discover how the different elements involved in film and its viewing collaborate to produce Holocaust memory. Cinematic Intermedialities is a work of film-philosophy that places a number of different forms of screen media, such as films that reassemble archive footage, animations, apps and museum installations, in dialogue with the writing of Deleuze and Guattari, art critic-cum-philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman and film phenomenologies. The result is a careful and unique examination of how Holocaust memory can emerge from the relationship between different media, objects and bodies during the film experience. This work challenges the existing concentration on representation in writing about Holocaust films, turning instead to the materials of screen works and the spectatorial experience to highlight the powerful contribution of the cinematic to Holocaust memory.

Arguing that Brecht's aesthetic theories are still highly relevant today, and that an appreciation of his theory and theatre is essential to an understanding of modern critical theory, this book examines the influence of Brecht's aesthetic on the pre-eminent materialist critics of the twentieth century: Louis Althusser, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Frederic Jameson, Theodor W. Adorno and Raymond Williams. Re-reading Brecht through the lens of post-structuralism, Sean Carney asserts that there is a Lacanian Brecht and a Derridean Brecht: the result of which is a new Brecht whose vital importance for the present is located in decentred theories of subjectivity. Brecht and Critical Theory maps the many ways in which Brechtian thinking pervades critical thought today, informing the critical tools and stances that make up the contemporary study of aesthetics.

Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner have been partners in life and work for more than forty years. Over those years they have been comedic pioneers in television, sound recording, film, theatre, and animation. They have won numerous prestigious awards and endeared themselves to generations of Americans. Although Lily Tomlin is the famous one-Ernestine ('Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?') and Edith Ann ('And that's the truth.') - her most meaningful work has been created in partnership with Jane Wagner. This book explores the ways they have used and expanded notions of queer to make their unique impact on American culture.

'Theater legend Malina has written one of the most interesting studies of the avant-garde theatrical movement published in the last several years.' - CHOICE Judith Malina and The Living Theatre have been icons of political theatre for over six decades. What few realise is that she originally studied under one of the giants of twentieth century culture, Erwin Piscator, in his Dramatic Workshop at The New School in New York. Piscator founded the Workshop after emigrating to New York, having collaborated with Brecht to create "epic theatre" in Germany. The Piscator Notebook documents Malina's intensive and idiosyncratic training at Piscator's school. Part diary, part theatrical treatise, this unique and inspiring volume combines: complete transcriptions of Malina's diaries from her time as a student at the Dramatic Workshop, as well as reproductions of various of Piscator's syllabi and teaching materials; notes on Malina's teachers, fellow students - including Marlon Brando and Tennessee Williams - and New School productions; studies of Piscator's process and influence, along with a new essay on the relationship between his teaching, Malina's work with the Living Theatre and "The Ongoing Epic"; an introduction by performance pioneer, Richard Schechner. The Piscator Notebook is a compelling record of the genealogy of political theatre practice in the early 20th Century, from Europe to the US. But it is also a stunningly personal reflection on the pleasures and challenges of learning about theatre, charged with essential insights for the student and teacher, actor and director. 'Piscator is the greatest theatre man of our time.' - Bertolt Brecht

This collection of essays reveals the extent to which politics is fundamental to our understanding of Samuel Beckett's life and writing. Bringing together internationally established and emerging scholars, Beckett and Politics considers Beckett's work as it relates to three broad areas of political discourse: language politics, biopolitics and geopolitics. Through a range of critical approaches, including performance studies, political theory, gender theory, historicizing approaches and language theory, the book demonstrates how politics is more than just another thematic lens: it is fundamentally and structurally intrinsic to Beckett's life, his texts and subsequent interpretations of them. This important collection of essays demonstrates that Beckett's work is not only ripe for political engagement, but also contains significant opportunities for understanding and illuminating the broader relationships between literature, culture and politics.

'Theater legend Malina has written one of the most interesting studies of the avant-garde theatrical movement published in the last several years.' CHOICE

Judith Malina and The Living Theatre have been icons of political theatre for over six decades. What few realise is that she originally studied under one of the giants of twentieth century culture, Erwin Piscator, in his Dramatic Workshop at The New School in New York. Piscator founded the Workshop after emigrating to New York, having collaborated with Brecht to create "epic theatre" in Germany.

The Piscator Notebook documents Malina s intensive and idiosyncratic training at Piscator s school. Part diary, part theatrical treatise, this unique and inspiring volume combines:

• complete transcriptions of Malina s diaries from her time as a student at the Dramatic Workshop, as well as reproductions of various of Piscator s syllabi and teaching materials;
• notes on Malina s teachers, fellow students including Marlon Brando and Tennessee Williams and New School productions;
• studies of Piscator s process and influence, along with a new essay on the relationship between his teaching, Malina s work with the Living Theatre and "The Ongoing Epic";
• an introduction by performance pioneer, Richard Schechner.

The Piscator Notebook is a compelling record of the genealogy of political theatre practice in the early 20th Century, from Europe to the US. But it is also a stunningly personal reflection on the pleasures and challenges of learning about theatre, charged with essential insights for the student and teacher, actor and director.

'Piscator is the greatest theatre man of our time.' Bertolt Brecht

First published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Japanese folk performing arts incorporate a body of entertainments that range from the ritual to the secular. They may be the ritual dances at Shinto shrines performed to summon and entertain deities; group dances to drive away disease-bearing spirits; or theatrical mime to portray the tenets of Buddhist teachings. These ritual entertainments can have histories of a thousand years or more and, with such histories, some have served as the inspiration for the urban entertainments of no, kabuki and bunraku puppetry. The flow of that inspiration, however, has not always been one way. Elements taken from these urban forms could also be used to enhance the appeal of ritual dance and drama. And, in time, these urban entertainments too came to be performed in rural or regional settings and today are similarly considered folk performing arts. Professor Terence Lancashire provides a valuable introductory guide to the major performance types as understood by Japanese scholars.

During the 1950s and early 1960s, school air-raid drills, bomb shelters, and unnerving civil defense films served as constant reminders of the looming threat of nuclear war. Throughout America, a widespread civil defense effort used town meetings, public school educational programs, and the mass media--television, radio, and especially, motion pictures--to mobilize every citizen for a protracted Cold War. This volume explores how American popular culture has portrayed civil defense from mid-twentieth-century to the immediate post-September 11 era. With analysis of everything from early government propaganda films and 1950s science fiction films to Happy Days, the Reagan-era TV movie The Day After, and the small-screen nostalgia trend after 9/11, this work shows that whatever the future holds, popular culture has and will continue to address our nuclear fears.

African American theater buildings were theaters owned or managed by blacks or whites for an African American audience. Such theaters included nickelodeons, vaudeville houses, musical houses and neighborhood movie theaters. Although nearly 2,000 African American theater buildings existed in the 20th century, very little has been written about them. In this book, the African American theater buildings from 1900 through 1955 are arranged by state, then by city, and then alphabetically under the name by which they were known. The street address, dates of operation, number of seats, architect, whether it was a member of TOBA (Theater Owners Booking Association), type of theater (nickelodeon, vaudeville, musical, drama or picture), alternate name(s), race and name of manager or owner, whether the audience was mixed, and the fate of the theater are provided where known. Commentary by theater historians is also provided.

This book examines the proliferation of surrogacy storylines on TV, exploring themes of infertility, motherhood, parenting and family. It investigates how, despite reproductive technologies' ability to flex contours of family, the shows' narratives work to uphold the white, heterosexual, genetically-reproduced family as the ideal. In dialogue with responses from a range of female viewers, both mothers and non-mothers, the book scrutinises the construction of family ideology on television with studies including Coronation Street (1960-present), Giuliana & Bill (2009-2014), Rules of Engagement (2007-2013), The New Normal (2012-2013), Top of the Lake: China Girl (2017) The Handmaid's Tale (2017-present) and film Baby Mama (2008). These studies raise a number of questions; is homosexuality only acceptable when it echoes heterosexual norms? Are female characters only fulfilled when they are genetic mothers? Does heterosexual romance override technology in the cure for infertility? While the answers to these questions may suggest that television still conforms to heteronormative narratives, this book importantly demonstrates that audiences desire alternative happy endings that show infertile female characters more positively and recognise alternative kinship formations as meaningful.

Each chapter in this important critical reader tackles the theory and practice of modern performance work, and enables students and teachers to see what is at stake in analysing dance, drama, music and videos using contemporary critical theories. Including Elizabeth Wright on psychoanalysis, Baz Kershaw on the politics of performance, Jatinder Verma on multiculturalism, E. Ann Kaplan on MTV and video, Lizabeth Goodman on feminism and AIDS, Stephen Connor on postmodernism and many others.

Award-winning cine-maVRicks Eric R. Williams, Carrie Love and Matt Love introduce virtual reality cinema (also known as 360 Degrees video or cine-VR) in this comprehensive guide filled with insider tips and tested techniques for writing, directing and producing effectively in the new medium. Join these veteran cine-VR storytellers as they break down fundamental concepts from traditional media to demonstrate how cine-VR can connect with audiences in new ways. Examples from their professional work are provided to illustrate basic, intermediate and advanced approaches to crafting modern story in this unique narrative space where there's no screen to contain an image and no specific stage upon which to perform. Virtual Reality Cinema will prepare you to approach your own cine-VR projects via: Tips and techniques for writing, directing and producing bleeding-edge narrative cine-VR projects; More than a hundred photos and illustrations to explain complex concepts; Access to more than two hours of on-line cine-VR examples that you can download to watch on your own HMD; New techniques developed at Ohio University's Game Research and Immersive Design (GRID) Lab, including how to work with actors to embrace Gravity and avoid the Persona Gap, how to develop stories with the Story Engagement Matrix and how to balance directorial control and audience agency in this new medium. This book is an absolute must read for any student of filmmaking, media production, transmedia storytelling and game design, as well as anyone already working in these industries that wants to understand the new challenges and opportunities of virtual reality cinema.

Butoh, also known as dance of darkness, is a postmodern dance form that began in Japan as an effort to recover the primal body or the body that has not been robbed, as butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata put it. Butoh has become increasingly popular in the United States and throughout the world, diversifying its aesthetic while at the same time asserting the power of its spiritual foundations. Dancing into Darkness is Sondra Horton Farleigh's chronological diary of her deepening understanding of and appreciation for this art form as she moves from a position of aesthetic response as an audience member to that of assimilation as a student of Zen and butoh. Farleigh witnesses her own artistic and personal transformation through essays, poems, interviews, and reflections spanning twelve years of study, much of it in Japan. Numerous performance photographs and original calligraphy by Farleigh's Zen teacher, Shodo Akane, illuminate her words.

Featuring interviews with 27 award-winning and emerging filmmakers, this book is the first comprehensive look at independent filmmaking careers in South East Asia with never-before published insights into the lives and careers of some of the most influential filmmakers in one of the world's most exciting screen production regions. Celebrating filmmaking in South East Asia, the interviews offer unique perspectives that highlight the various paths filmmakers have taken to establish and develop their independent filmmaking careers. Presenting filmmakers whose films span narrative, documentary and experimental genres, and from all ten South East Asian nations, the filmmakers in this collection include: Camera d'Or winner Anthony Chen Sundance Grand Jury Prize nominee Mouly Surya NETPAC Award Winner Sheron Dayoc Brunei's first female director, Siti Kamaluddin Directors of the Wathann Festival, Thaiddhi and Thu Thu Shein Lao's only female and first horror film director, Mattie Do Aimed at aspiring filmmakers with a focus on career building outside of global production hubs, Meissner has curated a collection of interviews that reflects the diversity and ambition of filmmaking in South East Asia. The book is accompanied by a companion website (www.southeastasianfilmcareers.com) that includes 27 micro-documentaries on the included filmmakers.

What does the Coen Brothers' Barton Fink have in common with Norman McLaren's Synchromy? Or with audiovisual sculpture? Or contemporary music video? Composing Audiovisually interrogates how the relationship between the audiovisual media in these works, and our interaction with them, might allow us to develop mechanisms for talking about and understanding our experience of audiovisual media across a broad range of modes. Presenting close readings of audiovisual artefacts, conversations with artists, consideration of contemporary pedagogy and a detailed conceptual and theoretical framework that considers the nature of contemporary audiovisual experience, this book attempts to address gaps in our discourse on audiovisual modes, and offer possible starting points for future, genuinely transdisciplinary thinking in the field.