In this lively work, Beatrice K. Otto takes us on a journey around the world in search of one of the most colorful characters in history--the court jester. Though not always clad in cap and bells, these witty, quirky characters crop up everywhere, from the courts of ancient China and the Mogul emperors of India to those of medieval Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas. With a wealth of anecdotes, jokes, quotations, epigraphs, and illustrations (including flip art), Otto brings to light little-known jesters, highlighting their humanizing influence on people with power and position and placing otherwise remote historical figures in a more idiosyncratic, intimate light.Most of the work on the court jester has concentrated on Europe; Otto draws on previously untranslated classical Chinese writings and other sources to correct this bias and also looks at jesters in literature, mythology, and drama. Written with wit and humor, "Fools Are Everywhere" is the most comprehensive look at these roguish characters who risked their necks not only to mock and entertain but also to fulfill a deep and widespread human and social need.

Rob Ryder made that pledge to his wife, and he was determined to stick to it. As technical consultant on blockbuster sports films, he had seen up close how the film business works and what kind of chaos can, and usually does, ensue. And now he was ready to take it on!

"Hollywood Jock" is the suspenseful, dramatic, outrageous, and honest true story of the year when Rob Ryder, screenwriter, laid it all on the line -- and kicked, scratched, wheeled, dealed, and fought like hell to hit the Tinseltown big time. It is a chronicle of schmoozing producers, shopping screenplays, corralling sports legends, and dodging irate actors -- a fascinating perspective on the highs, the very lows, and the behind-the-scenes madness that makes the world of Hollywood so endlessly compelling . . . and infamously brutal.

In the mid-1970s, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Andy Kaufman, Richard Lewis, Robin Williams, Elayne Boosler, Tom Dreesen, and several hundred other shameless showoffs and incorrigible cutups from across the country migrated en masse to Los Angeles, the new home of Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. There, in a late-night world of sex, drugs, dreams and laughter, they created an artistic community unlike any before or since. It was Comedy Camelot-but it couldn't last.William Knoedelseder was then a cub reporter covering the burgeoning local comedy scene for the Los Angeles Times. He wrote the first major newspaper profiles of several of the future stars. And he was there when the comedians-who were not paid by the clubs where they performed- tried to change the system and incidentally tore apart their own close-knit community. In I'm Dying Up Here he tells the whole story of that golden age, of the strike that ended it, and of how those days still resonate in the lives of those who were there. As comedy clubs and cable TV began to boom, many would achieve stardom.... but success had its price

This book provides a feminist analysis of #MeToo and the sexual assault allegations against celebrity perpetrators which have emerged since the Weinstein story of October 2017. It argues for the importance of understanding #MeToo in relation to an on-going history of Anglo-American feminist activism, theory and interdisciplinary research. Boyle investigates how speaking out about rape, sexual assault and harassment on social media can be understood in relation to second-wave feminist traditions of consciousness-raising. Her argument explores the media depiction of feminism - and feminists - in the wake of Weinstein and the cultural values associated with men's abuse, particularly within the film and television industries. The book concludes with an exploration of what the #MeToo era has meant for men as victims/survivors and as alleged perpetrators, in relation to narratives of victimisation and of monstrosity.

This is the first monograph on the procession and installation practice of Trinidadian-born, Japan based artist Marlon Griffith. With essays by Emelie Chhangur, Chanzo Greenidge, Gabriel Levine, and Claire Tancons, Marlon Griffith: Symbols of Endurance explores Griffith's unique contribution to contemporary art through a detailed analysis of the artist's formative engagement with vernacular tradition, popular and festive forms of civic celebration, and performative forms of colonial cultural resistance in the Americas.Symbols of Endurance follows Griffith's artistic trajectory from his early career as a designer, or `Masman', for Carnivals in Trinidad and London and considers these origins in relation to his later largescale public processions created and staged in-situ across the globe for contemporary art audiences.This publication is a major contribution for anyone engaged in participatory practices of collective and creative resistance, performance as mode of public address and intercultural exchange, and alternative forms of exhibition making in the civic sphere.Published in partnership with Art Gallery of York University.

Since the 2000s, the Japanese word shojo has gained global currency, accompanying the transcultural spread of other popular Japanese media such as manga and anime. The term refers to both a character type specifically, as well as commercial genres marketed to female audiences more generally. Through its diverse chapters this edited collection introduces the two main currents of shojo research: on the one hand, historical investigations of Japan's modern girl culture and its representations, informed by Japanese-studies and gender-studies concerns; on the other hand, explorations of the transcultural performativity of shojo as a crafted concept and affect-prone code, shaped by media studies, genre theory, and fan-culture research. While acknowledging that shojo has mediated multiple discourses throughout the twentieth century-discourses on Japan and its modernity, consumption and consumerism, non-hegemonic gender, and also technology-this volume shifts the focus to shojo mediations, stretching from media by and for actual girls, to shojo as media. As a result, the Japan-derived concept, while still situated, begins to offer possibilities for broader conceptualizations of girlness within the contemporary global digital mediascape.

Anthology of writings and commentary from Australia's foremost theatre writer and Currency Press founder: Not Wrong Just Different traces the development of theatre in Australia from the time that Katharine Brisbane joined the staff of the Australian in mid 1967 right up to today's state of the performing arts. From Brecht to Barry Humphries, from Chekhov to Patrick White, Katherine Brisbane's lucid account of Australian theatre is presented comprehensively in this original collection.

A true icon of America at a turning point in its history, Gypsy Rose Lee was the first--and the only--stripper to become a household name, write novels, and win the adulation of intellectuals, bankers, socialites, and ordinary Americans. Her outrageous blend of funny-smart sex symbol with the aura of high culture--she boasted that she liked to read Great Books and listen to classical music while taking off her clothes on-stage--inspired a musical, memoirs, a portrait by Max Ernst, and a species of rose. "Gypsy" is the first book about Gypsy Rose Lee's life, fame, and place in America not written by a family member, and it reveals her deep impact on the social and cultural transformations taking shape during her life.

Rachel Shteir, author of the prize-winning "Striptease," gives us Gypsy's story from her arrival in New York in 1931 to her sojourns in Hollywood, her friendships and rivalries with writers and artists, the Sondheim musical, family memoirs that retold her history in divergent ways, and a television biopic currently in the making. With verve, audacity, and native guile, Gypsy Rose Lee moved striptease from the margins of American life to Broadway, Hollywood, and Main Street. "Gypsy" tells how she did it, and why.

This Palgrave Pivot questions how a new generation of alternative stand-up comedians and the political world continue to shape and influence each other. The Alternative Comedy Movement of the late 1970s and 1980s can be described as a time of unruly experimentation and left-wing radicalism. This book examines how alternative comedians continue to celebrate these characteristics in the twenty-first century, while also moving into a distinct phase of artistic development as the political context of the 1970s and 1980s loses its immediacy. Sophie Quirk draws on original interviews with comedians including Tom Allen, Josie Long, John-Luke Roberts and Tony Law to chart how alternative comedians are shaped by, and in turn respond to, contemporary political challenges from neoliberalism to Brexit, class controversy to commercialism. She argues that many of our assumptions about comedy's politics must be challenged and updated. This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the working methods and values of today's alternative comedians.

We have grown accustomed to the ubiquity of corporate influence in retail outlets, restaurants, and even higher education-but what happens when corporations take over desire? The Naked Result: How Exotic Dance Became Big Business explores the changing world of striptease, tracing its path from the unruly underground to brightly lit, branded "gentlemen's clubs." Drawing on her own experience as an exotic dancer, Jessica Berson examines the ways that striptease embodies conflicting notions of race, class, and female sexuality, and how the exotic dance industry deploys these differences to codify and commodify our erotic imagination. Chain clubs, fitness programs, and music videos are moving exotic dance into the mainstream, and stripping its historical potential to embody and express subversive desires-erotic and otherwise-and generate resistant modes of female erotic subjectivity. Through case studies including Boston's Combat Zone in the 1970s-80s, the development of lap dancing in London in the 1990s, and the triumph of corporate striptease in post-Giuliani New York City in the last decade, The Naked Result reveals an industry that increasingly eradicates individuality and agency in order to increase profits. Ultimately, The Naked Result argues that corporatization has cheerfully smothered the diversity of sexual desire and expression for both dancers and customers, repackaging the most mysterious human emotions into easily branded experiences no more personal or powerful than those to be found in any themed restaurant or coffee mega-chain.

Great Adaptations: Screenwriting and Global Storytelling is the Second Place Winner in the 2019 International Writers Awards! A vast majority of Academy Award-winning Best Pictures, television movies of the week, and mini-series are adaptations, watched by millions of people globally. Great Adaptations: Screenwriting and Global Storytelling examines the technical methods of adapting novels, short stories, plays, life stories, magazine articles, blogs, comic books, graphic novels and videogames from one medium to another, focusing on the screenplay. Written in a clear and succinct style, perfect for intermediate and advanced screenwriting students, Great Adaptations explores topics essential to fully appreciating the creative, historical and sociological aspects of the adaptation process. It also provides up-to-date, practical advice on the legalities of acquiring rights and optioning and selling adaptations, and is inclusive of a diverse variety of perspectives that will inspire and challenge students and screenwriters alike. Please follow the link below to a short excerpt from an interview with Carole Dean about Great Adaptations: https://fromtheheartproductions.com/getting-creative-when-creating-great-adaptations/

This book stages a dialogue between international researchers from the broad fields of complexity science and narrative studies. It presents an edited collection of chapters on aspects of how narrative theory from the humanities may be exploited to understand, explain, describe, and communicate aspects of complex systems, such as their emergent properties, feedbacks, and downwards causation; and how ideas from complexity science can inform narrative theory, and help explain, understand, and construct new, more complex models of narrative as a cognitive faculty and as a pervasive cultural form in new and old media. The book is suitable for academics, practitioners, and professionals, and postgraduates in complex systems, narrative theory, literary and film studies, new media and game studies, and science communication.

Situated at the crossroads of performance practice, museology, and cultural studies, live arts curation has grown in recent years to become a vibrant interdisciplinary project and a genuine global phenomenon. Curating Live Arts brings together bold and innovative essays from an international group of theorist-practitioners to pose vital questions, propose future visions, and survey the landscape of this rapidly evolving discipline. Reflecting the field's characteristic eclecticism, the writings assembled here offer practical and insightful investigations into the curation of theatre, dance, sound art, music, and other performance forms-not only in museums, but in community, site-specific, and time-based contexts, placing it at the forefront of contemporary dialogue and discourse.

Whether social, cultural, or individual, the act of imagination always derives from a pre-existing context. For example, we can conjure an alien's scream from previously heard wildlife recordings or mentally rehearse a piece of music while waiting for a train. This process is no less true for the role of imagination in sonic events and artifacts. Many existing works on sonic imagination tend to discuss musical imagination through terms like compositional creativity or performance technique. In this two-volume Handbook, contributors shift the focus of imagination away from the visual by addressing the topic of sonic imagination and expanding the field beyond musical compositional creativity and performance technique into other aural arenas where the imagination holds similar power. Topics covered include auditory imagery and the neurology of sonic imagination; aural hallucination and illusion; use of metaphor in the recording studio; the projection of acoustic imagination in architectural design; and the design of sound artifacts for cinema and computer games.

In the span of four months in 2012, Tig Notaro was hospitalized for a debilitating intestinal disease called C. diff, her mother unexpectedly died, she went through a breakup, and then she was diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer. Hit with this devastating barrage, Tig took her grief onstage. Days after receiving her cancer diagnosis, she broke new comedic ground, opening an unvarnished set with the words: 'Good evening. Hello. I have cancer. How are you? Hi, how are you? Is everybody having a good time? I have cancer.' The set instantly went viral, and was ultimately released as Tig's sophomore album, Live, which sold one hundred thousand units in just six weeks and was later nominated for a Grammy. Now, the wildly popular star takes stock of that no good, very bad year - a difficult yet astonishing period in which tragedy turned into absurdity and despair transformed into joy. An inspired combination of the deadpan silliness of her comedy and the open-hearted vulnerability that has emerged in the wake of that dire time, I'm Just a Person is a moving and often hilarious look at this very brave, very funny woman's journey into the darkness and her thrilling return from it.

A collection of scenes from Hispanic as well as Native-American, African-American, Jewish-American, and Asian-American theater; background information and discussion/analysis follow each scene.

A vivid, engaging account of the artists and artworks that sought to make sense of America's first total war, Grand Illusions takes readers on a compelling journey through the major historical events leading up to and beyond US involvement in WWI to discover the vast and pervasive influence of the conflict on American visual culture. David M. Lubin presents a highly original examination of the era's fine arts and entertainment to show how they ranged from patriotic idealism to profound disillusionment. In stylishly written chapters, Lubin assesses the war's impact on two dozen painters, designers, photographers, and filmmakers from 1914 to 1933. He considers well-known figures such as Marcel Duchamp, John Singer Sargent, D. W. Griffith, and the African American outsider artist Horace Pippin while resurrecting forgotten artists such as the mask-maker Anna Coleman Ladd, the sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, and the combat artist Claggett Wilson. The book is liberally furnished with illustrations from epoch-defining posters, paintings, photographs, and films. Armed with rich cultural-historical details and an interdisciplinary narrative approach, David Lubin creatively upends traditional understandings of the Great War's effects on the visual arts in America.