In an age of globalization, performance is increasingly drawn from intercultural creativity and located in multicultural settings. This volume is the first to focus on the performing arts of Asian diasporas in the context of modernity and multiculturalism. The essays locate the contemporary performing arts as a discursive field in which the boundaries between tradition and translation, and authenticity and hybridity are redefined and negotiated to create a multitude of meaning and aesthetics in global and local contexts.
With contributions from scholars of Asian studies, theatre studies, anthropology, cultural studies, dance ethnology and musicology, this truly interdisciplinary work covers every aspect of the sociology of performance of the Asian diasporas.

William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" (c.1606) is a timeless tale of love, greed and power, which has given rise to heated debates around such issues as the representation of gender roles, political violence and the dramatisation of evil.
Taking the form of a sourcebook, this guide to Shakespeare's play offers:
- extensive introductory comment on the contexts, critical history and performance of the text, from publication to the present
- annotated extracts from key contextual documents, reviews, critical works and the text itself
- cross-references between documents and sections of the guide, in order to suggest links between texts, contexts and criticism
- suggestions for further reading.
Part of the "Routledge Guides to Literature," this volume is essential reading for all those beginning detailed study of "Macbeth "and seeking not only a guide to the play, but a way through the wealth of contextual and critical material that surrounds Shakespeare's text.

In his intriguing new book, David Goldblatt examines what he calls "the complex logic of ventriloquism" and its relationship with art, philosophy and the artistic process. In the conversational exchange between ventriloquist and dummy, Goldblatt recognizes a speaking in other voices, illusion without deception, talking to oneself, effacing oneself as speaker, being beside oneself - the ancient Greek notion of Ecstasisi - and the animation of inanimate objects as an unabashed anthropomorphism.
Like ventriloqual dummies, artworks take on personalities, characters of their own, often saying what the artist herself would or could not say in voices distinct from her (our) daily modes of expression. Goldblatt uses ventriloquism as an apt metaphor to help understand a variety of artworld phenomena - how the vocal vacillation between ventriloquist and dummy work is mimicked in the relationship of artist, artwork and audience, including the ways in which artworks are interpreted. Moreover, Goldblatt uses the concept of ventriloquism to generate insights into many of our important philosophers' writings on the arts, discussing the work of Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida, Cavell, Wittgenstein, among others.
Featuring a critical commentary by Garry L. Hagberg and preface by series editor, Saul Ostrow.

Talkin' to Myself: Blues Lyrics, 1921-1942 is a compendium of lyrics by the great blues recording artists of the classic blues era. It includes over 2000 songs, transcribed directly from the original recordings, making it by far the most comprehensive and accurate collection of blues lyrics available. Blues lyrics are recognized as a unique form of African-American poetry. They reflect myriad issues, well beyond the cliches of love gone wrong. The blues was a means of communicating a wide range of feelings on topics as varied as love, illness, politics, work and employment, recreation--the entire range of the African-American experience. Artists covered include many major blues performers, as well as the obscure. Some of the better known names include Kokomo Arnold; Blind Willie McTell; Robert Johnson; Charlie Patton; Lead Belly; Son House; Skip James; Blind Blake; Blind Lemon Jefferson; and dozens more. Today, the blues is enjoying a period of popularity and study that is unparalleled in their century-plus tradition. Talkin' to Myself: Blues Lyrics, 1921-1942 will appeal to students of American music, African-American culture, and folk poetry--as well as the myriad blues fans around the globe. It will stand as the standard collection for decades to come.

Talkin' to Myself, Blues Lyrics, 1921-1942 is a compendium of lyrics by the great blues recording artists of the classic blues era. It includes over 2000 songs, transcribed directly from the original recordings, making it by far the most comprehensive and accurate collection of blues lyrics available. Blues lyrics are recognized as a unique form of African-American poetry. They reflect myriad issues, well beyond the cliches of love gone wrong. The blues was a means of communicating a wide range of feelings on topics as varied as love, illness, politics, work and employment, recreation - the entire range of the African-American experience. Artists covered include many major blues performers, as well as the obscure. Some of the better known names include Kokomo Arnold, Blind Willie McTell, Robert Johnson, Charlie Patton, Lead Belly, Son House, Skip James, Blind Blake, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and dozens more. Today, the blues is enjoying a period of popularity and study that is unparalleled in their century-plus tradition. Talkin' to Myself. African-American culture, and folk poetry - as well as the myriad blues fans around the globe. It will stand as the standard collection for decades to come.

"Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting "offers new insight into the well-known tradition of acting. Rooted in practice this is the first book to contextualize the Stanislavsky tradition with reference to parallel developments in science, it presents an alternative perspective based on philosophy, physics, romantic science and theories of industrial management.
Working from practical sources, historical and archive material Jonathan Pitches traces an evolutionary journey of actor training from the roots of the Russian tradition, Konstantin Stanislavsky, to the contemporary Muscovite director, Anatoly Vasiliev. The book explores two key developments that emerge from Stanislavsky's system - one linear, rational and empirical, while the other is fluid, organic and intuitive. The otherwise highly contrasting acting theories of Vsevolod Meyerhold (biomechanics) and Lee Strasberg (the Method) are dealt with under the banner of the rational or Newtonian paradigm; Michael Chekov's acting technique and the little known ideas of Anatoly Vasiliev form the centerpiece of the other Romantic, organic strain of practice. "Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting" opens up the theatre laboratories of five major practitioners in the twentieth and twenty first centuries and scrutinizes their acting methodologies from a scientific perspective.

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.

In his intriguing new book, David Goldblatt examines what he calls "the complex logic of ventriloquism" and its relationship with art, philosophy and the artistic process. In the conversational exchange between ventriloquist and dummy, Goldblatt recognizes a speaking in other voices, illusion without deception, talking to oneself, effacing oneself as speaker, being beside oneself - the ancient Greek notion of Ecstasisi - and the animation of inanimate objects as an unabashed anthropomorphism.
Like ventriloqual dummies, artworks take on personalities, characters of their own, often saying what the artist herself would or could not say in voices distinct from her (our) daily modes of expression. Goldblatt uses ventriloquism as an apt metaphor to help understand a variety of artworld phenomena - how the vocal vacillation between ventriloquist and dummy work is mimicked in the relationship of artist, artwork and audience, including the ways in which artworks are interpreted. Moreover, Goldblatt uses the concept of ventriloquism to generate insights into many of our important philosophers' writings on the arts, discussing the work of Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida, Cavell, Wittgenstein, among others.
Featuring a critical commentary by Garry L. Hagberg and preface by series editor, Saul Ostrow.

This pioneering study is one of the major publications in the increasingly popular and largely undocumented area of circus studies. Through photographs and illustrations, Peta Tait presents an extraordinary survey of 140 years of trapeze acts and the socially changing ideas of muscular action in relation to our understanding of gender and sexuality. She questions how spectators see and enjoy aerial actions, and what cultural identities are presented by bodies in fast, physical aerial movement. Adeptly locating aerial performance within the wider cultural history of bodies and their identities, Circus Bodies explores this subject through a range of films such as Trapeze (1956) and Wings of Desire (1987) and Tait also examines live performances including: * the first trapeze performers: Leotard and the Hanlon Brothers * female celebrities; Azella, Sanyeah, black French aerialist LaLa, the infamous Leona Dare, and the female human cannonballs * twentieth-century gender benders; Barbette and Luisita Leers * the Codonas, Concellos, Gaonas, Vazquez and Pages troupes * imaginative aerial acts in Cirque de Soleil and Circus Oz productions. This book will prove an invaluable resource for all students and scholars interested in this fascinating field.

This is the first English translation of Michael Chekhov's two-volume autobiography, combining The Path of the Actor (1927) and extensive extracts from his later volume Life and Encounters. Full of illuminating anecdotes and insightful observations involving prominent characters from the MAT and the European theatre of the early twentieth century, Chekhov takes us through events in his acting career and personal life, from his childhood in St. Petersburg until his emigration to Latvia and Lithuania in the early 1930s. Accompanying Chekhov's witty, penetrating, and immensely touching accounts are extensive and authoritative notes compiled by leading Russian Chekhov scholar, Andrei Kirillov. Anglo-Russian trained actor Bella Merlin provides a useful hands-on overview of how the contemporary practitioner might utilise and develop Chekhov's ideas. Chekhov was arguably one of the greatest actors of the twentieth century. His life made a huge impact on his profession, and his actor-training techniques inspired many a Hollywood legend - including such actors as Anthony Hopkins and Jack Nicholson -while his books outlining his teaching methods and philosophy of acting are still bestsellers today The Path of the Actor is an extraordinary document which allows us unprecedented access into the life, times, mind and soul of a truly extraordinary man.

This pioneering study is one of the major publications in the increasingly popular and largely undocumented area of circus studies. Through photographs and illustrations, Peta Tait presents an extraordinary survey of 140 years of trapeze acts and the socially changing ideas of muscular action in relation to our understanding of gender and sexuality. She questions how spectators see and enjoy aerial actions, and what cultural identities are presented by bodies in fast, physical aerial movement. Adeptly locating aerial performance within the wider cultural history of bodies and their identities, Circus Bodies explores this subject through a range of films such as Trapeze (1956) and Wings of Desire (1987) and Tait also examines live performances including: * the first trapeze performers: Leotard and the Hanlon Brothers * female celebrities; Azella, Sanyeah, black French aerialist LaLa, the infamous Leona Dare, and the female human cannonballs * twentieth-century gender benders; Barbette and Luisita Leers * the Codonas, Concellos, Gaonas, Vazquez and Pages troupes * imaginative aerial acts in Cirque de Soleil and Circus Oz productions. This book will prove an invaluable resource for all students and scholars interested in this fascinating field.

This remarkable volume challenges scholars and students to look beyond a dominant European and North American 'metropolitan bank' of Shakespeare knowledge. As well as revealing the potential for a new understanding of Shakespeare's plays, Martin Orkin adopts a fresh approach to issues of power, where 'proximations' emerge from a process of dialogue and challenge traditional notions of authority. readers have journeyed to one another across time and space, to and from countless and always different historical, geographical and ideological locations. Engagement with a Shakespeare text always entails in part, then, cultural encounter or clash, and readings are shaped by a reader's particular location and knowledge. Part I of this book encourages us to recognise the way in which 'local' or 'non-metropolitan' knowledges and experiences might extend understanding of Shakespeare's texts and their locations. Part II demonstrates the use of local as well as metropolitan knowledges in exploring the presentation of masculinity in Shakespeare's late plays. These plays themselves dramatise encounters with different cultures and, crucially, challenges to established authority. global capitalism and the masculinist imperatives that drive it, Orkin's daring, powerful work will have reverberations throughout, but also well beyond the field of Shakespeare studies.

Guillermo GA3mez-PeAa has spent many years developing his unique style of performance-activism; his theatricalizations of postcolonial theory. In Ethno-Techno: Writings on Performance, Activism and Pedagogy, he pushes the boundaries still further, exploring what's left for artists to do in a post-9/11 repressive culture of what he calls 'the mainstream bizarre'.
Over forty-five photos document his artistic experiments and the text not only explores and confronts his political and philosophical parameters; it offers groundbreaking insights into his, and his company's, methods of production, development and teaching.
The result is an extraordinary and inspiring glimpse into the life and work of one of the most daring, innovative and challenging performance artists of our age.

To his many fans, he was known simply as "Mr. Excitement," a singer whose music and stage presence influenced generations of performers, from Elvis Presley to Michael Jackson. Jackie Wilson: Lonely Teardrops looks at the life and career of this deeply troubled artist. Published briefly in a limited edition in the United Kingdom, this Routledge edition makes available this definitive biography for Wilson's legions of fans. Also includes two 8-page photo inserts.

Expanding upon longstanding concerns in cultural history about the relation of text and image, this book explores how ideas move across and between expressive forms. The contributions draw from art and architectural history, film, theater, performance studies, and social and cultural history to identify and dissect the role that the visual and performing arts can play in the experience and understanding of the past.

The essays highlight the role of oral history in the documentation of the visual and performing arts. They share a common set of questions as they explore, firmly grounded in their distinctive disciplinary standpoints, the circuit of word, gesture, object in the formation and reproduction of knowledge, identity, and community. Blending theory and case study, they cover subjects such as the response of artists to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission; violence in Columbia and Mexico and the Balkan Wars; the circuit of sexual desire in contemporary art and photography; and sites of collective and personal memory, including the Internet, the urban landscape, family photographs, and hip hop.

Stressing the relationship of media to the formation of collective memory, the volume explores how media intertextuality creates overlapping repertoires for understanding the past and the present. Scholars of art history, media and cultural studies, literature, and performance studies will all find this work a valuable resource.

AM I OVERTHINKING THIS?: A JOURNAL is a companion to the popular book and a must-have space for overthinkers to get their thought spirals out of their heads and onto paper. Fun and inviting, with engaging charts, encouragement, and plenty of blank pages to process feelings and emotions, this journal is just the thing for people who write through their anxiety, need space to freely overthink, or loved the book and its humorous, relatable visuals.

This key text will be the first full-length research tool on Adrian Willaert, the Renaissance composer of motets and madrigals who came to prominence in the first part of the sixteenth century, and should prove invaluable to researchers and students.

THE LURE OF PERFECTION: FASHION AND BALLET, 1780-1830 offers a unique look at how ballet influenced contemporary fashion and women's body image, and how street fashions in turn were reflected by the costumes worn by ballet dancers. Through years of research, the author has traced the interplay between fashion, social trends, and the development of dance. During the 18th century, women literally took up twice as much space as men; their billowing dresses ballooned out from their figures, sometimes a full 55 inches, to display costly jewelry and fine brocade work; similar costumes appeared on stage. But clothing also limited her movement; it literally disabled them, making the dances themselves little more than tableaux. Movement was further inhibited by high shoes and tight corsets; thus the image of the rigidly straight, long-lined dancer is as much a product of clothing as aesthetics. However, with changing times came new trends. An increased interest in natural movement and the common folk led to less-restrictive clothing. As viewers demanded more virtuosic dancers, women literally danced their way to freedom.
THE LURE OF PERFECTION will interest students of dance and cultural history, and women's studies. It is a fascinating, well-researched look at the interplay of fashion, dance, and culture-still very much a part of our world today.

This volume focuses on the performing arts of the Asian diasporas and intercultural performances in the context of modernity and globalisation. A wide range of performing arts of the Asian diasporas and diverse intercultural performance practices across the world are examined by scholars of Asian studies, theatre studies, anthropology, cultural studies, dance ethnology and ethnomusicology. These essays locate the performing arts in late modernity as a discursive field in which the boundary between tradition and translation' and authenticity and hybridity' are negotiated and redefined to create a multitude of meanings and aesthetics in global and local contexts.
Various issues are addressed, including questions of identity, ethnicity, notions of displacement, gender, inter-ethnic power relations, inter-cultural negotiations and the social and political implications of performance. A number of cultural processes associated with diasporas and their performing arts are examined, such as the construction of diaspora memory', the translation of imagined' tradition, and cultural adaptation and innovation in a new home', all of which give shape to hybrid and multiple identities which cut across and intersect geo-political and national boundaries.

THE LURE OF PERFECTION: FASHION AND BALLET, 1780-1830 offers a unique look at how ballet influenced contemporary fashion and women's body image, and how street fashions in turn were reflected by the costumes worn by ballet dancers. Through years of research, the author has traced the interplay between fashion, social trends, and the development of dance. During the 18th century, women literally took up twice as much space as men; their billowing dresses ballooned out from their figures, sometimes a full 55 inches, to display costly jewelry and fine brocade work; similar costumes appeared on stage. But clothing also limited her movement; it literally disabled them, making the dances themselves little more than tableaux. Movement was further inhibited by high shoes and tight corsets; thus the image of the rigidly straight, long-lined dancer is as much a product of clothing as aesthetics. However, with changing times came new trends. An increased interest in natural movement and the common folk led to less-restrictive clothing. As viewers demanded more virtuosic dancers, women literally danced their way to freedom.
THE LURE OF PERFECTION will interest students of dance and cultural history, and women's studies. It is a fascinating, well-researched look at the interplay of fashion, dance, and culture-still very much a part of our world today.

Nuts and Bolts Filmmaking, an ideal book for the rapidly growing number of low-budget filmmakers, provides how-to information on the day-to-day techniques of actual low-budget production. Containing construction details describing how to replicate expensive tools for under $30 a piece, this book provides quick and inexpensive remedies to both the most common and most difficult production challenges. Nuts and Bolts Filmmaking is an invaluable resource to anyone looking to make a film without a big budget.
* Achieve professional results with inexpensive materials from your local hardware store
*A must-have reference for all low-budget and independent filmmakers
* Time-saving tips and techniques with easy-to-follow photos

This book explores the effects of modernization on the study, practice, and performance of Balinese traditional arts, especially the shadow play, through the analysis of oral and written discussion from local performers, administrators and students. This approach permits a rare view into contemporary Balinese conception and practices of music from the actual performers and scholars and covers diverse topics from village life to the educational curriculum.

Author Biography:
Petra Kuppers is Assistant Professor of Performance Studies at Bryant College. She is Artistic Director of the Olimpias Performance Research Project and she has written extensively in the fields of cultural, performance and disability studies.

'Terrific. So funny' Zadie Smith 'Monstrously depressing but so comic and well observed that I didn't really mind .... It is great' Dolly Alderton 'A dark comedy of female rage' Catherine Lacey 'Brilliant. For fans of Ottessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation' Pandora Sykes 'Funny, shocking, clever, and hugely entertaining' Roddy Doyle 'A definitive work of milennial literature' Jia Tolentino 'The best thing I've read in years' Emma Jane Unsworth 'Vicious ... hilariously spot on' Guardian In a windowless office, a woman explains something from her real, nonwork life - about the frustration and indignity of returning her online shopping - to her colleagues. One wears a topknot. Another checks her pedometer. Watching them all is Millie. Thirty-years-old and an eternal temp, she says almost nothing, almost all of the time. But then the possibility of a permanent job arises. Will it bring the new life Millie is envisioning - one involving a gym membership, a book club, and a lot less beer and TV - finally within reach? Or will it reveal just how hollow that vision has become? 'Made me laugh and cry enough times to feel completely reborn' The Paris Review 'A definite work of millennial literature. Wretchedly riveting, with the sick, obsessive pleasure of looking under a bandage at a wound' The New Yorker 'So darkly funny and acutely observed that it feels like a documentary' Andrew McMillan 'Anyone who has ever felt like their life is going nowhere - and to make it worse, going nowhere in an achingly slow manner - will recognize themselves' Nylon

Television today means moving pictures in colour with sound, brought to the viewer by terrestrial or satellite broadcast, cable or recording medium. The technique and processes necessary to create, record, deliver and display television pictures form the major part of this book.Television Fundamentals is written in clear English, with a minimum of mathematics. Readers are taken, in a logical sequence of small steps, through the fundamental principles of the subject, with practical applications and a guide to troubleshooting included. Encoding, decoding, recording and transmission are treated in depth.John Watkinson is an independent consultant in digital video, audio and data technology. He is a Fellow of the AES and presents lectures, conference papers and training courses worldwide. he is the author of numerous other Focal Press books, including: Compression in Video and Audio, The Art of Digital Audio and The Art of Digital Video (now in their second editions), the Art of Data Recording, An Introduction to Digital Audio, An Introduction to Digital Video, The Digital Video Tape Recorder and RDAT.