Performing Architectures offers a coherent introduction to the fields of performance and contemporary architecture, exploring the significance of architecture for performance theory and theatre and performance practice. It maps the diverse relations that exist between these disciplines and demonstrates how their aims, concerns and practices overlap through shared interests in space, action and event. Through a wide range of international examples and contributions from scholars and practitioners, it offers readers an analytical survey of current practices and equips them with the tools for analyzing site-specific and immersive theatre and performance. The essays in this volume, contributed by leading theorists and practitioners from both disciplines, focus on three key sites of encounter: * Projects: examines recent trends in architecture for performance; * Practices: looks at cross-currents in artistic practice, including spatial dramaturgies, performance architectonics and performative architectures; and * Pedagogies: considers the uses of performance in architectural education and architecture in teaching performance. The volume provides an essential introduction to the ways in which performance and architecture, as socio-spatial processes and as things made or constructed, operate as generating, shaping and steering forces in understanding and performing the other.

'Stand. Breathe. Look. Try to empty my mind. Somehow, for some reason, I have been brought to this place to tell this story, now. So tell it. That's all.' When Lin-Manuel Miranda's groundbreaking musical Hamilton opened in London's West End in December 2017, it was as huge a hit as it had been in its original production off- and on Broadway. Lauded by critics and audiences alike, the show would go on to win a record-equalling seven Olivier Awards - including Best Actor in a Musical for Giles Terera, for his portrayal of Aaron Burr. For Terera, though, his journey as Burr had begun more than a year earlier, with his first audition in New York, and continuing through extensive research and preparation, intense rehearsals, previews and finally opening night itself. Throughout this time he kept a journal, recording his experiences of the production and his process of creating his award-winning performance. This book, Hamilton and Me, is that journal. It offers an honest, intimate and thrilling look at everything involved in opening a once-in-a-generation production - the triumphs, breakthroughs and doubts, the camaraderie of the rehearsal room and the moments of quiet backstage contemplation - as well as a fascinating, in-depth exploration of now-iconic songs and moments from the musical, as seen from the inside. It is also deeply personal, as Terera reflects on experiences from his own life that he drew on to help shape his acclaimed portrayal. Illustrated with dozens of colour photographs, many of which are shared here for the first time, and featuring an exclusive Foreword by Lin-Manuel Miranda, this book is an essential read for all fans of Hamilton - offering fresh, first-hand insights into the music and characters they love and know so well - as well as for aspiring and current performers, students, and anyone who wants to discover what it really felt like to be in the room where it happened. Hamilton and Me was featured as Book of Week on BBC Radio 4 in August 2021.

The Simpsons is banned in Burma because "the show has too much yellow." In South Park, Stan's dog is voiced by George Clooney. Scrooge McDuck is the world's richest fictional character. In Family Guy, Meg's heart is in her head. Betty Boop was a dog in her first appearance. James Avery voiced Shredder in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He also played Uncle Phil in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Ukraine's government believes Spongebob SquarePants is "a real threat to children." The Road Runner Show was created to mock the absurd violence in Tom and Jerry. Bugs Bunny isn't a rabbit. In Scooby-Doo, Shaggy's real name is Norville. Mister Freeze's backstory was created in Batman: The Animated Series and was then incorporated into the comics. Simpsons toys are banned in Iran. Fans can't decide whether Avatar: The Last Airbender is an anime or not. Four actors died while working on the show Spider-Man.

The Films of Jess Franco looks at the work of Jesus ""Jess"" Franco (1930-2013), one of the most prolific and madly inventive filmmakers in the history of cinema. He is best known as the director of jazzy, erotically charged horror movies featuring mad scientists, lesbian vampires, and women in prison, but he also dabbled in a multitude of genres from comedy to science fiction to pornography. Although he built his career in the ghetto of low-budget exploitation cinema, he managed to create a body of work that is deeply personal, frequently political, and surprisingly poetic. Editors Antonio Lazaro-Reboll and Ian Olney have assembled a team of scholars to examine Franco's offbeat films, which command an international cult following and have developed a more mainstream audience in recent years. Arguing that his multifaceted, paradoxical cinema cannot be pinned down by any one single approach, this edited volume features twelve original essays on Franco's movies written from a variety of different perspectives. This collection does not avoid the methodologies most commonly used in the past to analyze Franco's work-auteur criticism, genre criticism, and cult film criticism-yet it does show how Franco's films complicate these critical approaches. The contributors open up fresh avenues for academic inquiry by considering his oeuvre from a range of viewpoints, including transnational film studies, cinephilia studies, and star studies. The Films of Jess Franco seeks to address the scholarly neglect of this legendary cult director and to broaden the conversation around the director's work in ways that will be of interest to fans and academics alike.

This is the first full-length book to provide an introduction to badhai performances throughout South Asia, examining their characteristics and relationships to differing contexts in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. Badhai's repertoires of songs, dances, prayers, and comic repartee are performed by socially marginalised hijra, khwaja sira, and trans communities. They commemorate weddings, births and other celebratory heteronormative events. The form is improvisational and responds to particular contexts, but also moves across borders, including those of nation, religion, genre, and identity. This collaboratively authored book draws from anthropology, theatre and performance studies, music and sound studies, ethnomusicology, queer and transgender studies, and sustained ethnographic fieldwork to examine badhai's place-based dynamics, transcultural features, and communications across the hijrascape. This vital study explores the form's changing status and analyses these performances' layered, scalar, and sensorial practices, to extend ways of understanding hijra-khwaja sira-trans performance.

This wide-ranging volume explores the technical and physical aspects of voice as a craft, questioning its definitions, its historical presence, training practices and its publications. Drawing on a wealth of experience, Jane Boston presents a selection of readings that demonstrate and contextualize some of the defining moments of voice throughout history. This clear and accessible text examines the relationship between voice and aesthetics and poetics, against the backdrop of class, race and gender politics, demonstrating how vocal training has been and still is inevitably connected to such issues. Underpinned by theory, voice practitioner accounts, and cultural and historical contextualization, this comprehensive resource will be invaluable for practitioners, researchers and students of voice studies, physical theatre and theatre history.

Delinquent presenters, controversial executive pay-offs, the Jimmy Savile scandal...The BBC is one of the most successful broadcasters in the world, but its programme triumphs are often accompanied by management crises and high-profile resignations.One of the most respected figures in the broadcasting industry, Roger Mosey has taken senior roles at the BBC for more than twenty years, including as editor of Radio 4's Today programme, head of television news and director of the London 2012 Olympic coverage.Now, in Getting Out Alive, Mosey reveals the hidden underbelly of the BBC, lifting the lid on the angry tirades from politicians and spin doctors, the swirling accusations of bias from left and right alike, and the perils of provoking Margaret Thatcher.Along the way, this remarkable memoir charts the pleasures and pitfalls of life at the top of an organisation that is variously held up as a treasured British institution and cast down as a lumbering, out-of-control behemoth.Engaging, candid and very funny, Getting Out Alive is a true insider account of how the BBC works, why it succeeds and where it falls down.

The School Story: Young Adult Narratives in the Age of Neoliberalism examines the work of contemporary writers, filmmakers, and critics who, reflecting on the realm of school experience, help to shape dominant ideas of school. The creations discussed are mostly stories for children and young adults. David Aitchison looks at serious novels for teens including Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak and Faiza Guene's Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow, the light-hearted, middle-grade fiction of Andrew Clements and Tommy Greenwald, and Malala Yousafzai's autobiography for young readers, I Am Malala. He also responds to stories that take young people as their primary subjects in such novels as Sapphire's Push and films including Battle Royale and Cooties. Though ranging widely in their accounts of young life, such stories betray a mounting sense of crisis in education around the world, especially in terms of equity (the extent to which students from diverse backgrounds have fair chances of receiving quality education) and empowerment (the extent to which diverse students are encouraged to gain strength, confidence, and selfhood as learners). Drawing particular attention to the influence of neoliberal initiatives on school experience, this book considers what it means when learning and success are measured more and more by entrepreneurship, competitive individualism, and marketplace gains. Attentive to the ways in which power structures, institutional routines, school spaces, and social relations operate in the contemporary school story, The School Story offers provocative insights into a genre that speaks profoundly to the increasingly precarious position of education in the twenty-first century.