Stars and Silhouettes traces the history of the cameo as it emerged in twentieth-century cinema. Although the cameo has existed in film culture for over a century, Joceline Andersen explains that this role cannot be strictly defined because it exists as a constellation of interactions between duration and recognition, dependent on who is watching and when. Even audiences of the twenty-first century who are inundated by the lives of movie stars and habituated to images of their personal friends on screens continue to find cameos surprising and engaging. Cameos reveal the links between our obsession with celebrity and our desire to participate in the powerful cultural industries within contemporary society. Chapter 1 begins with the cameo's precedents in visual culture and the portrait in particular-from the Vitagraph executives in the 1910s to the emergence of actors as movie stars shortly after. Chapter 2 explores the fan-centric desire for behind-the-scenes visions of Hollywood that accounted for the success of cameo-laden, Hollywood-set films that autocratic studios used to make their glamorous line-up of stars as visible as possible. Chapter 3 traces the development of the cameo in comedy, where cameos began to show not only glimpses of celebrities at their best but also of celebrities at their worst. Chapter 4 examines how the television guest spot became an important way for stars and studios to market both their films and stars from other media in trades that reflected an increasingly integrated mediascape. In Chapter 5, Andersen examines auteur cameos and the cameo as a sign of authorship. Director cameos reaffirm the fan's interest in the film not just as a stage for actors but as a forum for the visibility of the director. Cameos create a participatory space for viewers, where recognizing those singled out among extras and small roles allows fans to demonstrate their knowledge. Stars and Silhouettes belongs on the shelf of every scholar, student, and reader interested in film history and star studies.

The superhero permeates popular culture from comic books to film and television to internet memes, merchandise, and street art. Toxic Masculinity asks what kind of men these heroes are and if they are worthy of the unbalanced amount of attention. Contributors to the volume investigate how the (super)hero in popular culture conveys messages about heroism and masculinity, considering the social implications of this narrative within a cultural (re)production of dominant, hegemonic values and the possibility of subaltern ideas, norms, and values to be imagined within that (re)production. Divided into three sections, the volume takes an interdisciplinary approach, positioning the impact of hypermasculinity on toxic masculinity and the vilification of "other" identities through such mediums as film, TV, and print comic book literature. The first part, "Understanding Super Men", analyzes hegemonic masculinity and the spectrum of hypermasculinity through comics, television, and film, while the second part, "The Monstrous Other", focuses on queer identity and femininity in these same mediums. The final section, "Strategies of Resistance", offers criticism and solutions to the existing lack of diversity through targeted studies on the performance of gender. Ultimately, the volume identifies the ways in which superhero narratives have promulgated and glorified toxic masculinity and offers alternative strategies to consider how characters can resist the hegemonic model and productively demonstrate new masculinities. With contributions by Daniel J. Connell, Esther De Dauw, Craig Haslop, Drew Murphy, Richard Reynolds, Janne Salminen, Karen Sugrue, and James C. Taylor.

Fred Rogers was an international celebrity. He was a pioneer in children's television, an advocate for families, and a multimedia artist and performer. He wrote the television scripts and music, performed puppetry, sang, hosted, and directed Mister Rogers' Neighborhood for more than thirty years. In his almost nine-hundred episodes, Rogers pursued dramatic topics: divorce, death, war, sibling rivalry, disabilities, racism. Rogers' direct, slow, gentle, and empathic approach is supported by his superior emotional strength, his intellectual and creative courage, and his joyful spiritual confidence. The Green Mister Rogers: Environmentalism in "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" centers on the show's environmentalism, primarily expressed through his themed week "Caring for the Environment," produced in 1990 in coordination with the twentieth anniversary of Earth Day. Unfolding against a trash catastrophe in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, Rogers advances an environmentalism for children that secures children in their family homes while extending their perspective to faraway places, from the local recycling center to Florida's coral reef. Rogers depicts animal wisdom and uses puppets to voice anxiety and hope and shows an interconnected world where each part of creation is valued, and love is circulated in networks of care. Ultimately, Rogers cultivates a practical wisdom that provides a way for children to confront the environmental crisis through action and hope and, in doing so, develop into adults who possess greater care for the environment and a capacious imagination for solving the ecological problems we face.

This book offers an innovative account of how audiences and actors emotionally interacted in the English theatre during the middle decades of the eighteenth century, a period bookended by two of its stars: David Garrick and Sarah Siddons. Drawing upon recent scholarship on the history of emotions, it uses practice theory to challenge the view that emotional interactions between actors and audiences were governed by empathy. It carefully works through how actors communicated emotions through their voices, faces and gestures, how audiences appraised these performances, and mobilised and regulated their own emotional responses. Crucially, this book reveals how theatre spaces mediated the emotional practices of audiences and actors alike. It examines how their public and frequently political interactions were enabled by these spaces.

With an exclusive focus on text-based theatre-making, Inside the Rehearsal Room is both an instructional and conceptual examination of the rehearsal process. Drawing on professional practice and underpinned by theory, this book moves through each stage of rehearsals, considering the inter-connectivity between the actor, director, designers and the backstage team, and how the cumulative effect of the weeks in rehearsal influences the final production. The text also includes: - Auto-ethnographic and fully ethno-graphic case study approaches to different rehearsal rooms - Interviews with directors, actors, designers and actor trainers - A consideration of the ethics of the rehearsal room and material selected for production - Practical exercises on how to creatively read a text from an acting and directing perspective Informed by over 20 years of directing experience in the UK and Europe, Robert Marsden's book offers a practical guide that ultimately demystifies the rehearsal process and challenges how the rehearsal room should be run in the twenty-first century.