By Fiona Whelpton

ISBN: 9781847471253
Published: 2007
Pages: 184
Key Themes: conversion syndrome disorder, anxiety, abuse, activism, christianity

""After reading The Cycle Path I came away with a better understanding of the issues sufferers face and of the opportunities."" - Sir Nigel Crisp, Former NHS Chief Executive

""Delightful and full of expression and pathos."" - Sheila Johnson, Christian Herald

Description

The remarkable story of a woman who suffers from and overcomes Conversion Syndrome Disorder (CSD), a rare, crippling and extremely frightening condition which causes physical paralysis bought on by anxiety. This real life story describes how Fiona experienced domestic abuse, family problems and how she managed somehow to overcome all this not knowing for years what her illness was. She is now a successful journalist and activist. The Cycle Path is an admirable story of hope and empowerment and is essential reading for all health workers and sufferers of similar conditions - particularly as CSD is so unknown and widely misunderstood.

About the Author

Fiona Whelpton was born in London on in 1957 and now lives in Nottingham. As a youngster Fiona wanted to become a professional musician, but she couldn't because it caused her too much stress - something that her condition dictates she must avoid. Instead she became interested in writing and read English Literature and Media at Nottingham Trent University. She is an accomplished poet having had an anthology of sketch work and poetry called 'Patchwork Windows' published with the 'Lost Artists' group. In 2004 Fiona received the Snowden award which will allow her to pursue her dream of being a top journalist, she is currently working on several projects including a film version of 'The Cycle Path'.

You can learn from "Notes Compared With Charles" why you'll want to pursue sitting in an opera house for four evenings to experience the Wagner Ring of four operas.If you already know the value of experiencing the Ring operas, you can buy "Notes Compared With Charles" for someone who will be a first-timer.There is no other live performance like Wagner's Ring cycle: no stage play, no other opera, no rock concert, no IMAX film, no tour through a theme park, no home entertainment center sensory flood.The Wagner Ring is a profoundly complex work on its face and can become even more interesting depending on who is interpreting what Wagner wrote. As long as individuals approach the Ring with their own senses, it can remain a mighty portrait of passionate characters, available for identification, empathy and awe, regardless of the production.Buy this companion book to go with the Ring stories that you'll find inside the opera program describing the saga in full.

Think about it. Think what you could achieve without women in your life. If all the time you spent on them, you spent on yourself. Think how much money you could save. Think how much aggravation you could avoid. Journeying over from the West Indies to England, Ferdy, Lennie, Dennis and Bernie are all eager to make successes of themselves and take full advantage of what they think The Big Life has to offer. So they pledge to abstain from women for three years. But Mary, Kathy, Zuleika and Sybil have other ideas. They know that man cannot live by bread alone! Will the men stick with their idea of The Big Life, or will Cupid have the final say? The Big Life is a brand new musical, a wonderfully upbeat story of unrequited love and a great comedy all rolled into one.

The official tie-in to Broadway's hit musical Waitress, featuring the recipes for 3 dozen of the show's most evocative and delicious pies. In the cult classic movie-turned-Broadway production, the eternally optimistic protagonist of Waitress expresses her hopes, dreams, fears, and frustrations through the whimsically named pies she bakes each morning. Sugar, Butter, Flour celebrates this art of baking from the heart, with foolproof and flavorful pies for seduction, pies for mending a broken heart, pies for celebrating new beginnings and pies for all the little milestones that come afterwards. Taking its inspiration from the iconic mile-high pies of the diner case, Sugar, Butter, Flour offers an array of showstopping pies, each with a twist that puts it over the top; from rum-spiked cookie crusts to hidden layers of passion fruit preserves, these are familiar favorites with hidden depths. The ideal gift for anyone who has ever eaten her feelings or baked away the blues, Sugar, Butter, Flour proves there's a perfect pie for every occasion - and that everything looks better with pie.

For Ethan Mordden, the closing night of the hit musical, "42nd St." sounded the death knell of the art form of the Broadway musical. After that, big orchestras, real voices, recognizable books and intelligent lyrics went out the window in favor of cats, helicopters, yodeling Frenchmen, and the roof of the Paris Opera. Mordden takes us through the aftermath of the days of the great Broadway musical. From the long-running "Cats" to "Miss Saigon," "Phantom," and "Les Miserables," to gems like "The Producers," he is unsparing in his look at the remains of the day. Not content to scold the shows' creators, Mordden takes on the critics, too, splaying their bodies across the Great White Way like Sweeney Todd giving a close shave. Once more, it's "curtain going up," but Mordden is not applauding.

As one of the most beloved and beguiling genres of entertainment, the film musical wears its style ostentatiously. The genre allows for hyperbolic expression, extravagant sonic and visual dA (c)cor, and extremely stylized forms of movement and performance. By staging a glittering spectacle, by releasing a current of lush sentiment, by unveiling a world of elegance and romance, the film musical woos us with patterns, textures, finesse and sensory display. In this book, author Lloyd Whitesell asks what, exactly, makes film musicals so glamorous. As he argues, glamour projects an aura of ethereality or sophistication by way of suave deportment, sensuous textures, elevated styles, and aesthetically refined effects. Glamour, in other words, is what unites "Cheek to Cheek" from Top Hat and the title song from Beauty and the Beast, each a sonic evocation of luxury, sparkle, grace, and finesse. Whitesell redirects our attention from visual cues like sequins and evening gloves to explore how glamour resides in the sonic. Discussing dozens of musical numbers, analyzing ingenious orchestration, and appraising the distinctive styles of favorite musical stars, Whitesell illuminates fundamental traits of the genre, its aesthetic strategies, and cultural ambitions.

'Musical arts in Africa: theory, practice and education' is the collabrative result of 31 African music scholars who draw on the multidisciplinary perspectives of musicology, compositions, performing practice, ethnomusicology and education.

In the 1960s, the Broadway musical underwent a revolution. What was once a form of entertainment characterized by sentimental standards, such as Camelot and Hello, Dolly! became one of brilliant and bittersweet masterpieces, such as Cabaret and Fiddler on the Roof. In Open a New Window, Mordden continues his history of the Broadway musical with the decade that bridged the gap between the fanciful shows of the fifties, such as Call Me, Madam, and the sophisticated fare of the seventies, including A Little Night Music and Follies. Here in brilliant detail are the decade and the people that transformed the Broadway musical--from the writer who knows it best.

Voice and Speech for Musical Theatre is the first book to combine traditional actor vocal training with musical theatre training, offering support and guidance for performers seeking to train their spoken voice specifically for singing and performing in musical theatre. Performers in musical theatre are working harder than ever. The shifting and extreme nature of the modern musical theatre repertoire requires performers capable of mastering musicianship, singing and dancing while at the same time providing convincing and clear performances as actors. Voice and Speech for Musical Theatre will help train musical theatre performers in the longer modes of voice needed to create convincing and moving performances. Ideal for the triple-threat performer, Voice and Speech for Musical Theatre features exercises for performers, tips for teachers and online video resources, allowing for a focused and outcome-oriented training of vocal techniques for musical theatre performers.

Rarely is a book about the theatre as entertaining and informative as Stephen Citron's new guidebook to the creation of the musical. Filled with anecdotes, practical advice, and sparkling comments from the biggest Broadway insiders, The Musical from the Inside Out examines this major theatrical form from the creator's point of view. Mr. Citron takes the reader through basic training and onto finding and securing material, writing the libretto, adding the songs, auditioning the players, workshopping, rehearsals, previews, and the excitement of opening night. He reveals the secrets of success as well as some of the common pitfalls of failure. "There's never been a book like this," wrote a columnist from London's West End. Mr. Citron's bounty of information comes from his own vast experience; from interviews with well-known directors, producers, lyricists, composers, librettists, stage managers, and scenic artists; and from such luminaries as Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Jerry Herman, Hal Prince, Jerome Robbins, Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick, John Kander, and Fred Ebb. The Musical From the Inside Out is an adventure for musical fans and required reading for professionals or amateurs involved in creating a musical.

From Trial by Jury to The Pirates of Penzance: the complete librettos of all fourteen Gilbert and Sullivan operas.

Gilbert's verses for Sullivan's music are the most fastidiously turned and inventively rhymed in all lyric comedy. As the Savoy Operas enter their second century on a swell of renewed popularity, Gilbert's reputation as the supreme wordsmith of light opera remains secure.

Complete and authentic, these are the librettos on which modern performances and recordings are based. Scattered among the songs are over seventy of the amusing, quirky pictures Gilbert drew to illustrate them. A chronology prepared for this edition sketches the authors' lives and careers. This is a book that no lover of Gilbert and Sullivan, musical comedy, or indeed the English theater will want to be without.

'My mam's always saying, the best thing to do with new things is just chuck yourself in at the deep end.' Liam is fifteen and he's just signed up for Bev Road Baths' first ever synchronised swimming team. It's for his best mate Caz really. She needs to get a team together to win the annual Project Prize at school. She tries every year. She always loses. But Liam's an optimist, he's determined to help. There's just one problem. Liam can't swim... A one-man musical comedy by award-winning duo Tom Wells and Matthew Robins, Drip was first seen as part of the Back to Ours programme for Hull UK City of Culture 2017. The play subsequently toured the UK in 2018, including runs at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and the Bush Theatre, London, in a production by Boundless Theatre and Script Club. This edition includes Matthew Robins' original sheet music.

Drawing equally from Viennese operetta, Parisian cabaret, vaudeville, and Tin Pan Alley, the American musical theatre has thrived in an unprecedented variety of forms and styles as our truest hybrid art. From "Show Boat" and "Oklahoma!" to "West Side Story, Fiddler on the Roof," and "A Chorus Line," the musical has attracted our finest actors, composers, writers, directors, and choreographers. The greats and near-greats are finally brought together in this essential reference guide to over 2,000 personalities, productions, and songs of the musical theatre in both New York and London from the late nineteenth century right up to "Sweeney Todd" and "Evita." Scholars, professionals, critics, and devoted fans alike will find a wealth of fascinating information on the backgrounds, plots, casts, scores, and credits of the leading musicals; biographies of their artists; and complete lists of Broadway, off-Broadway, and London productions, long runs, and awards. With a complete bibliography and discography.

As the first decade of the twenty-first century has made brutally clear, the very definitions of war and the enemy have changed almost beyond recognition. Threats to security are now as likely to come from armed propagandists, popular militias, or mercenary organizations as they are from conventional armies backed by nation-states. In this timely book, national security expert Max G. Manwaring explores a little-understood actor on the stage of irregular warfare - the gang.Since the end of the Cold War, some one hundred insurgencies or irregular wars have erupted throughout the world. Gangs have figured prominently in more than half of those conflicts, yet these and other nonstate actors have received little focused attention from scholars or analysts. This book fills that void. Employing a case study approach, and believing that shadows from the past often portend the future, Manwaring begins with a careful consideration of the writings of V. I. Lenin. He then scrutinizes the Piqueteros in Argentina, gangs in Colombia, private armies in Mexico, Hugo Chavez's use of popular militias in Venezuela, and the looming threat of Al Qaeda in Western Europe. As conventional warfare is increasingly eclipsed by these irregular and ""uncomfortable"" wars, Manwaring boldly diagnoses the problem and recommends solutions that policymakers should heed.

Today, most remember ""California Girl"" Lillian Frances Smith (1871-1930) as Annie Oakley's chief competitor in the small world of the Wild West shows' female shooters. But the two women were quite different: Oakley's conservative ""prairie beauty"" persona clashed with Smith's tendency to wear flashy clothes and keep company with the cowboys and American Indians she performed with. This lively first biography chronicles the Wild West showbiz life that Smith led and explores the talents that made her a star. Drawing on family records, press accounts, interviews, and numerous other sources, historian Julia Bricklin peels away the myths that enshroud Smith's fifty-year career. Known as ""The California Huntress"" before she was ten years old, Smith was a professional sharpshooter by the time she reached her teens, shooting targets from the back of a galloping horse in Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West. Not only did Cody offer $10,000 to anyone who could beat her, but he gave her top billing, setting the stage for her rivalry with Annie Oakley. Being the best female sharpshooter in the United States was not enough, however, to differentiate Lillian Smith from Oakley and a growing number of ladylike cowgirls. So Smith reinvented herself as ""Princess Wenona,"" a Sioux with a violent and romantic past. Performing with Cody and other showmen such as Pawnee Bill and the Miller brothers, Smith led a tumultuous private life, eventually taking up the shield of a forged Indian persona. The morals of the time encouraged public criticism of Smith's lack of Victorian femininity, and the press's tendency to play up her rivalry with Oakley eventually overshadowed Smith's own legacy. In the end, as author Julia Bricklin shows, Smith cared more about living her life on her own terms than about her public image. Unlike her competitors who shot to make a living, Lillian Smith lived to shoot.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints adopted the vocal and theatrical traditions of American musical theater as important theological tenets. As Church membership grew, leaders saw how the genre could help define the faith and wove musical theater into many aspects of Mormon life. Jake Johnson merges the study of belonging in America with scholarship on voice and popular music to explore the surprising yet profound link between two quintessentially American institutions. Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Mormons gravitated toward musicals as a common platform for transmitting political and theological ideas. Johnson sees Mormons using musical theater as a medium for theology of voice--a religious practice that suggests how vicariously voicing another person can bring one closer to godliness. This sounding, Johnson suggests, created new opportunities for living. Voice and the musical theater tradition provided a site for Mormons to negotiate their way into middle-class respectability. At the same time, musical theater became a unique expressive tool of Mormon culture.

"Welfare State International are brilliant at making an audience of strangers into a community" (Guardian)

Since its foundation by John Fox in 1968, Welfare State International has developed a unique form of celebratory theatre that reaches popular audiences through remarkable combinations of archetypal and contemporary imagery. This handbook is a guide to the basic techniques of the company's work - the making of processions; large scale puppets and sculptures; fixed structures; fire and ice technology; shadow puppets; processional theatre and dance music - set in a context that explains the thinking behind the work, and describes some past Welfare State International events. This is first and foremost a practical book rather than an academic treatise.

They stand at the apex of the great age of songwriting, the creators of the classic Broadway musicals Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music, whose songs have never lost their popularity or emotional power. Even before they joined forces, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II had written dozens of Broadway shows, but together they pioneered a new art form: the serious musical play. Their songs and dance numbers served to advance the drama and reveal character, a sharp break from the past and the template on which all future musicals would be built. Though different in personality and often emotionally distant from each other, Rodgers and Hammerstein presented an unbroken front to the world and forged much more than a songwriting team; their partnership was also one of the most profitable and powerful entertainment businesses of their era. They were cultural powerhouses whose work came to define postwar America on stage, screen, television, and radio. But they also had their failures and flops, and more than once they feared they had lost their touch. Todd S. Purdum's portrait of these two men, their creative process, and their groundbreaking innovations will captivate lovers of musical theater, lovers of the classic American songbook, and lovers in general. He shows that what Rodgers and Hammerstein wrought was truly something wonderful.

From West Side Story in 1957 to Road Show in 2008, the musicals of Stephen Sondheim and his collaborators have challenged the conventions of American musical theater and expanded the possibilities of what musical plays can do, how they work, and what they mean. Sondheim's brilliant array of work, including such musicals as Company, Follies, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, and Into the Woods, has established him as the preeminent composer/lyricist of his, if not all, time. Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical places Sondheim's work in two contexts: the exhaustion of the musical play and the postmodernism that, by the 1960s, deeply influenced all the American arts. Sondheim's musicals are central to the transition from the Rodgers and Hammerstein-style musical that had dominated Broadway stages for twenty years to a new postmodern musical. This new style reclaimed many of the self-aware, performative techniques of the 1930s musical comedy to develop its themes of the breakdown of narrative knowledge and the fragmentation of identity. In his most recent work, Sondheim, who was famously mentored by Oscar Hammerstein II, stretches toward a twenty-first-century musical that seeks to break out of the self-referring web of language. Stephen Sondheim and the Reinvention of the American Musical offers close readings of all of Sondheim's musicals and finds in them critiques of the operation of power, questioning of conventional systems of knowledge, and explorations of contemporary identity.

A megamusical is an epic, dramatic show featuring recurring melodies in a sung-through score; huge, impressive sets; and grand ideas. These qualities are accompanied by intensive marketing campaigns, unprecedented international financial success, and a marked disjunction between critical reaction and audience reception. Audiences adore megamusicals; they flock to see them when they open, and return again and again, helping long-lived shows to become semi-permanent tourist attractions. Yet generally speaking, critics either dismiss megamusicals as superficial entertainment, or rail against them as offensively simple-minded money-making scams. This audience/critic division lies at the heart of The Megamusical.

Jessica Sternfeld s long-awaited study of some of the most popular megamusicals is an important contribution to knowledge of American musical culture. Sternfeld discusses the history of the megamusical, examining both its internal, performative qualities and its external, market reception to reveal why it is so popular. She concentrates on Lloyd Webber's Cats and The Phantom of the Opera, the two longest-running musicals on Broadway, and Schoenberg and Boublil s Les Miserables, the most popular and internationally successful piece of music theater of all time. Each of these musicals receives in-depth treatment, including an examination of how they were created and received, as well as an analysis of their scores and staging. She also interprets several other megamusicals of the 1980s and 1990s, with an eye toward their competition and influence on other musical theater genres."

Turnaround Creek, outback Australia, Boxing Day, 1945. The dust and inertia settle on the town as Harold Slocum of Slocum's Travelling Tent Show becomes stranded in the town, emotions run high and the sedentary life of the town is distributed into wakefulness by the remembrance of an illicit affair. In this bittersweet musical, new life is breathed into the town with both humour and sensitivity. This is a lyrical story of rejuvenation and self-acceptance by acclaimed authors Nick Enright and Terence Clarke. (5 male, 7 female).

An accessible and engaging second workbook on musical theatre, presenting students with the next steps for extending their skills in acting, dancing and singing. Filled with imaginative practical and theoretical exercises, this workbook reveals the anatomy of musical theatre and offers inspiration, challenges and companionship along the path to successful performance. In so doing, it enables students to structure their time and hone their abilities, so that they can achieve their full potential in what is seen as an exciting but intimidating field. Through this interactive approach, students are challenged to take responsibility for their own learning and development, by closely examining the acting, singing and choreographic demands of musical theatre. This is an ideal text for undergraduate students on musical theatre degree programmes, and general theatre and performance programmes where optional modules on Musical Theatre are offered. In addition, this resource is well suited to students taking accredited and non-accredited Diploma courses in musical theatre.