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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Individual actors & performers
King Lear is arguably the most complex and demanding play in the
whole of Shakespeare. Once thought impossible to stage, today it is
performed with increasing frequency, both in Britain and America.
It has been staged more often in the last fifty years than in the
previous 350 years of its performance history, its bleak message
clearly chiming in with the growing harshness, cruelty and violence
of the modern world. Performing King Lear offers a very different
and practical perspective from most studies of the play, being
centred firmly on the reality of creation and performance. The book
is based on Jonathan Croall's unique interviews with twenty of the
most distinguished actors to have undertaken this daunting role
during the last forty years, including Donald Sinden, Tim
Pigott-Smith, Timothy West, Julian Glover, Oliver Ford Davies,
Derek Jacobi, Christopher Plummer, Michael Pennington, Brian Cox
and Simon Russell Beale. He has also talked to two dozen leading
directors who have staged the play in London, Stratford and
elsewhere. Among them are Nicholas Hytner, David Hare, Kenneth
Branagh, Adrian Noble, Deborah Warner, Jonathan Miller and Dominic
Dromgoole. Each reveals in precise and absorbing detail how they
have dealt with the formidable challenge of interpreting and
staging Shakespeare's great tragedy.
Constituting the first comprehensive look at Ruth Maleczech's work,
Jessica Brater's companion is a landmark study in innovative
theatre practice, bringing together biography, critical analysis,
and original interviews to establish a portrait of this Obie-award
winning theatre artist. Tracing Maleczech's background, training,
and influences, the volume contextualizes her work and the founding
of Mabou Mines within the wider landscape of American avant-garde
theatre. It considers her performances and productions, revealing
both her interest in making ordinary women important onstage, and
her predilection for resurrecting extraordinary women from history
and finding their resonances within a contemporary theatrical
context. Brater considers Maleczech's investment in redrawing the
boundaries of what women are allowed to say, both on stage and off,
and shows how her commitment to radical artistic and production
risks has reshaped the contours of a contemporary theatrical
experience. Highlights of the volume include discussion of
productions such as Mabou Mines' Lear, Dead End Kids, Hajj, Lucia's
Chapters of Coming Forth by Day, Red Beads, and La Divina
Caricatura, as well as a close look at Maleczech's final
work-in-progress, Imagining the Imaginary Invalid.
The figure of Stella Adler towers high among the memorable acting
teachers in American theatre. Her methods of training, her
principles of acting and character interpretation, her analyses of
the seminal plays of the modern theatre comprise a legacy for
everyone who followed her. In this book, that legacy gains the
special immediacy and authenticity of her own spoken words. Over
three years in the 1970s, Joanna Rotte worked with Adler as a
student and as an actress under her direction, all the white taking
the copious notes that have become the heart of this book.
Throughout, Adler speaks about her principles in a tough minded and
demanding way, inspired by her overriding conviction that as a
person an actor 'becomes bigger through working'. This book
provides an opportunity to sit in on the classes of this remarkable
woman of whom her student Marlon Brando said, "My debt and
gratitude to her are enormous. As a teacher of acting, she has few
peers. As a human being, few equals."
**THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLER** _______________ 'I want to
be Sheila Hancock when I grow up' Lorraine Kelly 'Wise, witty, kind
and true' - Sunday Times 'A sparkling memoir as funny and
insightful as it's moving' - Daily Mail 'A captivating memoir' -
Mail on Sunday _______________ A gloriously irreverent memoir from
the frontline of old age - by the Sunday Times-bestselling author
and legendary actor In Old Rage, one of Britain's best loved actors
opens up about her ninth decade. Funny, feisty, honest, Sheila
Hancock makes for brilliant company as she talks about her life as
a daughter, a sister, a mother, a widow, an actor, a friend and
looks at a world so different from the wartime world of her
childhood. And yet - despite age, despite rage - she finds there
are always reasons for joy. _______________ 'The much-loved actor
candidly shares the fear, joy and frustration she has found in her
ninth decade' - Guardian, Books of the Year 2022 'Sheila Hancock
reflects upon her life and career with all the winning candour and
warm-heartedness we have come to expect from the legendary actress'
- Waterstones
For years, I have wanted to write a book about the relentless
determination it takes to succeed in the arts. Whether as a young
artist in New York City, as a music coordinator of a Broadway
musical, or as a musician traveling through Europe, I will share
with you excitement, acclaim, and culture. Onward and Upward is the
true account of my pursuit of a dream; a career in music. In this
around-the-world journey, I share my stories of culture, family,
laughter, friendship, wisdom, and heartache, with a generous splash
of the likes of Strauss, motorcycle chases, and Hollywood. Any
aspiring artist, would-be world traveler, or entrepreneur, will
benefit from reading this book. Learn from another's experience
about dedication, passion, and culture. Partly by means of
behind-the-scene memoirs, partly by means of journal entries, we
will walk hand in hand on this most extraordinary journey through a
life in the arts.
Is there a fundamental connection between New York's Elevator
Repair Service's 9-hour production of The Great Gatsby and a
Kathakali performance? How can we come to appreciate the slowness
of Kabuki theatre as much as the pace of the Whatsapp theatre of
post-Arab Spring Turkey? Can we go beyond our own culture's
contemporary definition of a 'good play' and think about the
theatre in a deep and pluralistic manner? Drawing on his extensive
experience working with theatre artists, students and thinkers
across the globe - up to and including an hour-long audience with
the Dalai Lama - playwright Abhishek Majumdar considers why we make
theatre and how we see it in different parts of the world. His own
work has taken him from theatre in Japan to dance companies in the
Phillippines, writers in Lebanon and Palestine, theatre groups in
Burkina Faso, war-torn areas like Kashmir and North Eastern India,
and to China and Tibet, Argentina and Mexico. Via a far-reaching
and provocative collection of essays that is informed by this
wealth of experience, Majumdar explores: - how different cultures
conceive theatre and how the norm of one place is the experiment of
another; - the ways in which theatre across the world mirrors its
socio political and philosophical climate; - how, for thousands of
years, theatre has been a tool to both disrupt and to heal; - and
how, even within the many differences, there are universals from
which we can all learn and how theatre does cross borders Of
interest to theatre makers everywhere - be they writers, actors,
directors or designers - this book offers an oversight, as well as
interrogation, into the place of theatre in the world today.
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