Stan Lai (Lai Shengchuan) is one of the most celebrated theatre practitioners working in the Chinese-speaking world. His work over three decades has pioneered the course of modern Chinese language theatre in Taiwan, China, and other Chinese speaking regions. "The preeminent Chinese playwright and stage director of this generation." (China Daily) "The best Chinese language playwright and director in the world." (BBC) Lai's works include masterpieces of the modern Chinese language theatre like Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land, The Village, and his epic 8 hour A Dream Like A Dream, all of which are in this collection. These volumes feature works from across Lai's career, providing an exceptional selection of a diverse range of performances. Volume Three contains: A Dream Like a Dream Ago

Steven Berkoff is the playwright, director and actor whom theatre scholars have until now chosen to ignore. Yet this notorious Cockney enfant terrible has left an imprint on modern British theatre is as impossible to ignore as his presence on the stage. This study of this contentious, larger-than-life figure examines the strategies adopted by Berkoff in the construction and projection of his multifaceted public persona. into the dynamic processes involved in the self-mythologization of a theatre artist famously concerned with revealing himself through his plays and writings, Robert Cross covers all of Berkoff's works, including Greek, East, Kvetch and Metamorphosis, as well as looking at his choice of film roles, including Octopussy and The Krays. With its specific approach, this text attempts to fill a large gap in theatre scholarship and also attempts to contribute to our understanding of the role of peformance in identity formation in general. academic researchers and teachers involved in theatre and drama studies, English literature, cultural and film studies and psychology should find this long-awaited and lively study both provocative and informative.

Providing one of the first critically sustained engagements with the new forms of verbatim and testimonial theatre that emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s, this book examines what distinguishes verbatim theatre from the more established documentary theatre traditions developed initially by Peter Weiss, Bertolt Brecht and Erwin Piscator. Examining a wide range of verbatim and testimonial plays from around the world, this book looks beyond the discourses of the real that have tended to dominate scholarship in this area and instead argues that this kind of theatre engages in acts of truth telling. Through its analysis of a range of international plays from UK, Germany, America, Australia and South Africa, the book explores theatre's dramaturgical interrogation of testimony and how the act of witnessing itself is reconfigured when relocated outside of the psychoanalytic frame and positioned as contributing to a decolonisation of testimony. -- .

The definitive guide to a Hollywood legend. Few stars are as loved as Audrey Hepburn, today as much as ever. Beautiful, delicate, graceful - but always warm and natural - she stole our hearts. She was also brave, working tirelessly for UNICEF in the face of her own failing health. in this moving and heartwarming biography Alexander Walker traces the extraordinary combination of luck and talent that allowed a fragile little girl,who nearly died in Hitler's occupied Europe, to conquer, in just one year, the New York stage and the Hollywood screen. Walker analyses her ascent to power and world fame and reveals the sadness of her life: two failed marriages, a broken engagement, and the crushing disappointment that occupied her triumph in My Fair Lady. Most importantly of all, this biography reveals what no one has known until now: the truly terrifying family secret that tore Audrey's childhood apart and kept her forever silent about her parents.

A career-spanning volume, Tyler Perry: Interviews collects sixteen interviews, ranging from the early 2000s to 2018. Once a destitute and struggling playwright, Tyler Perry (b. 1969) is now a multimedia phenomenon and one of the most lucrative auteurs in Hollywood. Known for his unwavering and audacious rhetorical style, Perry has produced an impressive body of work by rejecting Hollywood's procedures and following his personal template. Featuring mostly African American actors and centering primarily on women, Perry's films lace drama and comedy with Christianity. Despite the skepticism of Hollywood executives who claimed that church-going black people do not go to the movies, Perry achieved critical success with the release of his first film, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, which became the US's highest-grossing movie of 2005. With his movies, Perry has discovered an untapped Audience for the stories he has to offer-stories about adversity, faith, family, and redemption. Critics, including African American filmmaker Spike Lee, have censured Perry's work for being repetitive and reinforcing negative stereotypes that have long plagued the African American community. Supporters, however, praise Perry for creating films that allow his Audience to see themselves onscreen. Regardless of how his films are received, Perry's accomplishments-establishing the Tyler Perry brand, building one of the largest movie studios in the country, employing more African Americans in front of and behind the camera than any other studio, and creating cinematic content for Audiences other filmmakers have ignored-undeniably establish him as one of the most powerful multimedia moguls in the country.

Through the performance ritual, the audience vicariously experiences the freedom, cultural risks, and utopian possibilities that society has denied them. Audience members are encouraged to touch us, smell us, feed us, defy us. In this strange millenial ceremony, the pandora box opens and the post-colonial demons are unleashed. - Guillermo Gomez-Pena's Performance Diaries
Guillermo Gomez-Pena has been variously described as among the most significant of late-twentieth-century performance artists - The Village Voice; a peacemaker in the worlds culture clash - Vanity Fair; and a wizard of language - The Chicago Tribune. He is without doubt, a unique outsider-artist who crosses the border and talks back.
In Dangerous Bordercrossers, Gomez-Pena continues his epic, artistic journey through globalisation, the commodification of identity, and the continuing culture wars. His writings, like his performances, point towards a borderless future and a poetics of hybridity.
This latest anthology of his performance chronicles, diary entries, poems, essays, and texts, sheds an extraordinary light on the life and work of this migrant provocateur. He documents and illuminates his brilliantly inventive collaborations with Roberto Sifuentes and Sara Shelton-Mann, among others, and reveals, for the first time, what it's like to be a Chicano on the road.
Dangerous Bordercrossers is at once sexy, scary and inspiring. Be prepared to be provoked.

Through the performance ritual, the audience vicariously experiences the freedom, cultural risks, and utopian possibilities that society has denied them. Audience members are encouraged to touch us, smell us, feed us, defy us. In this strange millenial ceremony, the pandora box opens and the post-colonial demons are unleashed. - Guillermo Gomez-Pena's Performance Diaries
Guillermo Gomez-Pena has been variously described as among the most significant of late-twentieth-century performance artists - The Village Voice; a peacemaker in the worlds culture clash - Vanity Fair; and a wizard of language - The Chicago Tribune. He is without doubt, a unique outsider-artist who crosses the border and talks back.
In Dangerous Bordercrossers, Gomez-Pena continues his epic, artistic journey through globalisation, the commodification of identity, and the continuing culture wars. His writings, like his performances, point towards a borderless future and a poetics of hybridity.
This latest anthology of his performance chronicles, diary entries, poems, essays, and texts, sheds an extraordinary light on the life and work of this migrant provocateur. He documents and illuminates his brilliantly inventive collaborations with Roberto Sifuentes and Sara Shelton-Mann, among others, and reveals, for the first time, what it's like to be a Chicano on the road.
Dangerous Bordercrossers is at once sexy, scary and inspiring. Be prepared to be provoked.

Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi (b. 1960) is as famous for his remarkable films as for his courageous defiance of Iran's state censorship. Panahi achieved international recognition with his feature film debut, The White Balloon, the first Iranian film to receive an award at the Cannes Film Festival. His subsequent films-The Mirror, The Circle, and Offside-continue to receive acclaim throughout the world, yet they remain largely unseen in his own country due to years of conflict with the Iranian government. In spite of multiple arrests, a brief imprisonment, and a ban on making movies and giving interviews, Panahi speaks openly and passionately in this unique, invaluable collection of twenty-five interviews, open letters, and his own court statement, in which he makes a compelling case for artistic freedom and humanism. Many of these documents have been translated from Persian and appear in English for the first time, including an interview done exclusively for this volume. In sparkling, lively interviews, Panahi reveals his influences, politics, and filmmaking practices. He explains the challenges he faces while working within (and often around) Iran's heavily restricted film industry, providing the reader a unique vantage point from which to consider Iranian cinema and society.

The remarkable career of American actress Eve Arden (1908-1990) is thoroughly chronicled from her earliest stage work in 1926 (under her given name Eunice Quedens) to her final television role in a 1987 episode of Falcon Crest. Included are detailed descriptions and critical commentaries of the actress's 62 feature film appearances between 1929 and 1982, notably her Oscar-nominated performance as Joan Crawford's sardonic confidante in 1945's Mildred Pierce. Complete coverage is provided of Eve Arden's work in the popular radio and television series Our Miss Brooks, and her later costarring stint with Kaye Ballard in the two-season TV sitcom The Mothers-in-Law. Also listed are her many other radio and television appearances, as well as her theatrical roles in such Broadway productions as Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 and Let's Face It.

The double act has been at the heart of the British entertainment scene for over 150 years: from its start in the music halls, through radio shows such as Hancock's Half Hour playing in virtually every household and on cinema and television, from Carry On films to Withnail and I. Explore the influence of comedy duos on their audience and how their performances evolved over time, the importance of the subtle art of the straight man next to the comic and discover some acts who might have passed you by. This book is a tribute to the comedians who have entertained the public for so long, dedicating their lives to adding a bit of laughter to the mundane everyday. The Double Act will appeal to all lovers of British comedy as it takes them through the golden moments of its history.

'A wonderful account of a life filled with far more ups and downs than its subject's languid demeanour ever suggested.' Miles Jupp. Even if the name doesn't ring a bell, you'd recognise David Tomlinson's face - genial and continually perplexed, he was Mr Banks in Mary Poppins, Professor Browne in Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Peter Thorndyke in The Love Bug. To many, he's the epitome of post-war British comedy. But at times his life was more tragedy than comedy. A distinguished RAF pilot in the Second World War, his first marriage was to end in horrific tragedy and his next romance ended with his lover marrying the founder of the American Nazi Party. He did find love and security in his second marriage, but drama still played its part in his life - from the uncovering of an earthshattering family secret to the fight for an autism diagnosis for his son, up against the titans of the British medical establishment. Tomlinson may have died over twenty years ago, but his star continues to shine. In Disney's British Gentleman, Nathan Morley reveals the remarkable story of one of Disney's most beloved icons for the very first time.

Garry O'Connor, highly respected for his theatrical biographies, presents a richly drawn, fully dimensional portrait of the great actor Paul Scofield. He interviewed the intensely private Scofield himself, as well as many of the actors and directors he has worked with, including Simon Callow, Trevor Nunn, Richard Eyre and Peter Hall. The result is a masterly biography that paints a revealing portrait of a man who, for the serious film and theatre-goer, is more of an icon than any other living actor.

Following in the footsteps of his renowned teacher Konstantin Stanislavsky, Michael Chekhov's work as an actor, author and theatre practitioner gave great insight into how to access the creative self. This revised and updated edition of Michael Chekhov includes: * A biographical introduction to Chekhov's life * A clear explanation of his key writings * An analysis of his work as a director * A practical guide to Chekhov's unique actor-training exercises. As a first step towards critical understanding, and as an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners offer unbeatable value for today's student.

Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl, born less than a year apart, lived so close to each other that Riefenstahl could see into Dietrich's Berlin flat. Coming of age in the Weimar Republic, both sought fame in Germany's silent film industry. While Dietrich's depiction of Lola Lola in The Blue Angel catapulted her to Hollywood stardom, Riefenstahl-who missed out on the part-insinuated herself into Hitler's inner circle and directed Nazi propaganda films, most famously, Triumph of the Will. Dietrich could never truly go home again, while Riefenstahl was contaminated by her political associations. Moving deftly between two stories never before told together, Karin Wieland contextualises these lives, chronicling revolutions in politics, fame and sexuality on a grand stage.

Never Quote the Weather to a Sea Lion (and other uncommon tales from the founder of the Big Apple Circus) is a celebration of Paul Binder's life in and around the circus. Drawing on thirty-five years with the show he created, the Big Apple Circus' founder and founding Artistic Director invites us inside the fence every kid peers through for an intimate look at the uncommon life of circus artists, their animal partners, and the roustabouts who spend their days in a world that is both close-knit and international, high-minded and low comedy, death-defying and ludicrous.

Never Quote the Weather to a Sea Lion (and other uncommon tales from the founder of the Big Apple Circus) balances the weird and the workaday, the curious and the commonplace, the exhilaration and the exhaustion of life in the circus, with simple portrayals of ordinary people going about the business of achieving the extraordinary.

In 1958, Gary Graver moved from his hometown of Portland, Oregon to Los Angeles, California with dreams of an acting career in Hollywood. Soon after his arrival, he caught a double bill in a small theater on Hollywood Boulevard, the lower half of which was the recently released Touch of Evil. Upon viewing the B classic, Graver decided he wanted to be a director and spent many years honing his craft, as both a cinematographer and a director, not to mention writer, actor, and producer-much like his idol, Orson Welles. In 1970, when Graver learned that Welles was in town, he impulsively called up the director and offered him his services as a cameraman. It was only the second time in Welles's career that he had received such an offer from a cinematographer, the other being from Gregg Toland, who worked on one of the greatest films ever, Citizen Kane. In Making Movies with Orson Welles, Graver recounts the highs and lows of the moviemaking business as he and one of the most important and influential directors of all time struggled to get films produced. The two men collaborated on more than a dozen projects, including F for Fake, Filming Othello, and the still-unreleased The Other Side of the Wind. Their close friendship and creative filmmaking partnership would endure for 15 years, until Welles' death in 1985. Also including a filmography of works and 20 photos from Graver's personal collection, this fascinating memoir recalls what it was like to work with the legendary Welles and offers advice and tales of caution for future filmmakers.

The early years of the twenty-first century have witnessed a proliferation of non-fiction, reality-based performance genres, including documentary and verbatim theatre, site-specific theatre, autobiographical theatre, and immersive theatre. Insecurity: Perils and Products of Theatres of the Real begins with the premise that although the inclusion of real objects and real words on the stage would ostensibly seem to increase the epistemological security and documentary truth-value of the presentation, in fact the opposite is the case. Contemporary audiences are caught between a desire for authenticity and immediacy of connection to a person, place, or experience, and the conditions of our postmodern world that render our lives insecure. The same conditions that underpin our yearning for authenticity thwart access to an impossible real. As a result of the instability of social reality, the audience, Jenn Stephenson explains, is unable to trust the mechanisms of theatricality. The by-product of theatres of the real in the age of post-reality is insecurity.

Vsevolod Meyerhold considers the life and work of the extraordinary twentieth-century director and theatre-maker. This compact, well-illustrated volume includes: a biographical introduction to Meyerhold's life a clear explanation of his theoretical writings an analysis of his masterpiece production Revisor, or The Government Inspector a comprehensive and usable description of the 'biomechanical' exercises he developed for training the actor. As a first step towards critical understanding, and as an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners offer unbeatable value for today's student.

Hans Conried was once described by the well-known Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper as "a high-strung, droll fellow, plagued by a multitude of talents." Conried was indeed a talented and versatile actor, but his talent often went unrecognized because his versatility worked against him and made it difficult for him to find his niche as an actor. Hans Conried gets the recognition he deserves in this work. Part One covers his birth in 1917 and his early years, the launch of his career as a radio actor, his move to motion pictures, his marriage, and his military service in the Philippines, Korea, and Japan in World War II. Part Two deals with Conrieds return to the United States following the war, the birth of his first child, the decline of radio and his first television performances, and his involvement with such productions as The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T, The Twonky, Peter Pan, Can-Can, and numerous others. Part Three details his work with Jack Paar (Conried became a semi-regular "television personality" on the early Tonight Show), his summer stock theater work, and his work doing guest spots on various programs and providing voices for cartoon characters. Part Four discusses Conrieds final years touring with stock productions, his increasing health problems and problems at home, and his death in 1982.

Born into an upper-crust family in New Orleans, Cora Bell Witherspoon (1890-1957) was an orphan by the age of 10 and a professional actress by 15. She was seen on Broadway from 1910 till 1946 in 36 productions and was a popular character actress in Hollywood between 1931 and 1954. On stage she played roles like Sallie McBride in Daddy Long Legs, Josephine Trent in The Awful Truth, Martha Culver in The Constant Wife, Prudence in Camille, and Mrs. Grant in The Front Page. Like many Hollywood supporting players, her screen time was limited. She made the most of it, whether as W.C. Fields's shrewish wife in The Bank Dick, Bette Davis's fair weather friend Carrie in Dark Victory, the earthy, amorous maid Patty in Quality Street, or the overbearing dowager Mrs. Williamson in The Mating Season. On both stage and screen, Witherspoon portrayed a range of stereotypes of older women. In the end, though, she created her own type, incarnating the fashionable, frivolous, flighty, and fawning society woman, often with a thinly veiled libidinous quality. In addition to a detailed account of Witherspoon's theater and film career, this groundbreaking biography reveals her upbringing and family background and discusses her struggle with substance abuse, which resulted in two highly publicized arrests and one conviction.