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Books > Arts & Architecture > Performing arts > Theatre, drama
Dance, USA, Mexico, Dance festival, Japanese, cultural studies, heritage, Butoh
Shakespeare and Emotional Expression offers an exciting new way of considering emotional transactions in Shakespearean drama. The book is significant in its scope and originality as it uses the innovative medium of colour terms and references to interrogate the early modern emotional register. By examining contextual and cultural influences, this work explores the impact these influences have on the relationship between colour and emotion and argues for the importance of considering chromatic references as a means to uncover emotional significances. Using a broad range of documents, it offers a wider understanding of affective expression in the early modern period through a detailed examination of several dramatic works. Although colour meanings fluctuate, by paying particular attention to contextual clues and the historically specific cultural situations of Shakespeare's plays, this book uncovers emotional significances that are not always apparent to modern audiences and readers. Through its examination of the nexus between the history of emotions and the social and cultural uses of colour in early modern drama, Shakespeare and Emotional Expression adds to our understanding of the expressive and affective possibilities in Shakespearean drama.
Gertrude Stein's dramatic texts rely on the absence of many landmarks of traditional theatre, but absence is a very difficult thing to stage. Iconoclastic directors and production teams - including Virgil Thomson, the Living Theatre, the Judson Poets Theatre, the Santa Fe Opera, the Glimmerglass Opera, the Wooster Group, Robert Wilson, Anne Bogart, Frank Galati and Heiner Goebbels - have ardently roamed Stein's spare dramatic 'landscapes', but even these convention-defying artists had to fill some of her absences in order to bring the texts to life on stage. Inevitably contemporary culture infiltrates Stein's pristine topography via these extra-textual additions, transforming it in ways virtually unimaginable when the reader encounters the text on the printed page. It is only by mapping the intersections of written text, performance text, and context, that one can gain a full appreciation of what Stein's dramatic writing has meant at various historical moments, how she herself has been imagined, and how her writing has transformed the landscape of the American alternative theatre.
This collection focuses primarily on Irish playwrights and their works, both in text and on stage during the latter half of the twentieth century. The central figure is Samuel Beckett, whom the contributors use as a springboard to discuss contemporary playwrights such as Brian Friel, Frank McGuinness, Marina Carr, and Conor McPherson, amongst others.
This volume investigates performance cultures as rich and dynamic environments of knowledge practice through which distinctive epistemologies are continuously (re)generated, cultivated, and celebrated. Epistemologies are dynamic formations of rules, tools, and procedures not only for understanding but also for doing knowledges. This volume deals in particular with epistemological challenges posed by practices and processes of interweaving performance cultures. These challenges arise in artistic and academic contexts because of hierarchies between epistemologies. European colonialism worked determinedly, violently, and often with devastating effects on instituting and sustaining a hegemony of modern Euro-American rules of knowing in many parts of the world. Therefore, Interweaving Epistemologies critically interrogates the (im)possibilities of interweaving epistemologies in artistic and academic contexts today. Writing from diverse geographical locations and knowledge cultures, the book's contributors-philosophers, political scientists as well as practitioners and scholars of theater, performance, and dance-investigate prevailing forms of epistemic ignorance and violence. They introduce key concepts and theories that enable critique of unequal power relations between epistemologies. Moreover, contributions explore historical cases of interweaving epistemologies and examine innovative present-day methods of working across and through epistemological divides in non-hegemonic, sustainable, creative, and critical ways. Ideal for practitioners, students and researchers of theater, performance, and dance as well as of philosophy and history (of science), Interweaving Epistemologies emphasizes the urgent need to acknowledge, study and promote epistemological plurality and diversity in practices of performance making as well as in scholarship on theater and performance around the globe today.
This volume considers prewar theatre in Hitler's Germany, a previously neglected subject in theatre history. An extended introduction sets the theatre scene of 1933 and charts the major theatre regulations and organizations formed that year. The initial essay examines the unified folk community used to achieve power and served by purged and revived German art. Plays that achieved great success in Nazi Germany--"Die endlose Strasse" by Sigmund Graff and six works by Eberhard Wolfgang Moller--are considered. In essays devoted to specific theatres, the work examines how Reinhardt's Grosses Schauspielhaus fared under the Nazis and how the regional Detmold Stadttheater was obliged to observe the new politicized aesthetics. The famous and privileged actor Werner Krauss is the subject of an essay on artistic responsibility, while a chapter on three famed directors--Grundgens, Fehling, and Hilpert--shows how artists maneuvered for artistic freedom. The Propaganda Ministry's first national festival in Dresden in 1934 is covered. The final two essays look at minority theatre--Jewish theatre in the anti-Semitic Third Reich and, as a postscript to the volume, theatre in the Nazi concentration camps.
Style for Actors is an award-winning handbook and the definitive guide to roles in historical drama. Anyone who has ever struggled with capes, fans, swords, doublets and crinolines should make this third edition their constant companion. The past is a foreign country, and this outstanding book is concerned with exploring it from the actor's point of view. Specific guides to each major period give readers a clear map to discover a range from Greek, Elizabethan, Restoration and Georgian theatre to more contemporary stylings, including Futurism, Surrealism and Postmodernism. New material in this edition covers Commedia dell'arte and non-Western forms of theatre, theatrical fusion and developments in musicals and Shakespeare. The book's references, images, resource lists and examples have all been updated to support today's diverse performers. Robert Barton takes great care to present the actor with the roles and genres that will most commonly confront them. Containing a huge resource of nearly 150 exercises, suggestions for scene study and applications not only for theatrical performance but also for stylistic challenges in the reader's own offstage life, this book is an invaluable resource for students and practitioners of acting and drama.
A sophisticated analysis of how the intersection of technique, memory, and imagination inform performance, Crossing Cultural Borders Through the Actor's Work redirects the intercultural debate by focusing exclusively on the actor at work. Alongside the perspectives of other prominent intercultural actors, this study draws from original interviews with Ang Gey Pin (formerly with the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards) and Roberta Carreri (Odin Teatret). By illuminating the hidden creative processes usually unavailable to outsiders - the actor's apprenticeship, training, character development, and rehearsals - Nascimento both reveals how assumptions based on race or ethnicity are misguiding, trouble definitions of intra- and intercultural practices, and details how performance analyses and claims of appropriation fail to consider the permanent transformation of the actor's identity that cultural transmission and embodiment represent.
This book is a complete improv curriculum program divided into twenty class-length workshops. Each workshop contains carefully selected exercises designed to help students focus on one aspect of a character's personality. Students learn how to create characters from their own imaginations through the use of solo and ensemble pantomime, physicalization, vocal techniques, props and more. Gestures, facial expressions, voice and body language are studied in isolation. Many ensemble sketches are included, along with a final improv sketch with enough "roles" for all members of a large class. Also includes class syllabus and guidelines, character outline sheet to duplicate, character examples, and a recommended reading list. Sample workshops include: Improvisation, Character Development, Physicalization, Vocal Techniques, Pantomime, Entrances and Exits, Gibberish, Animals, Fantasy, Conflict, Commedia dell'Arte. Final: Wedding Improv.
This work is a timely contribution to the debates surrounding feminism, theatre and performance. The excellent, cross-generational mix of theatre scholars and practitioners engaging in lively, cutting-edge debates on critical topics make this essential reading for students and scholars in Theatre and Performance Studies as well as Gender Studies.
Fifty Key Figures in Latinx and Latin American Theatre is a critical introduction to the most influential and innovative theatre practitioners in the Americas, all of whom have been pioneers in changing the field. The chosen artists work through political, racial, gender, class, and geographical divides to expand our understanding of Latin American and Latinx theatre while at the same time offering a space to discuss contested nationalities and histories. Each entry considers the artist's or collective's body of work in its historical, cultural, and political context and provides a brief biography and suggestions for further reading. The volume covers artists from the present day to the 1960s-the emergence of a modern theatre that was concerned with Latinx and Latin American themes distancing themselves from an European approach. A deep and enriching resource for the classroom and individual study, this is the first book that any student of Latinx and Latin American theatre should read.
This revised third edition of The Male Dancer updates and enlarges a seminal book that has established itself as the definitive study of the performance of masculinities in twentieth century modernist and contemporary choreography. In this authoritative and lively study, Ramsay Burt presents close readings of dance works from key moments of social and political change in the norms around gender and sexuality. The book's argument that prejudices against male dancers are rooted in our ideas about the male body and behaviour has been extended to take into account recent interdisciplinary discussions about whiteness, intersectionality, disability studies, and female masculinities. As well as analysing works by canonical figures like Nijinsky, Graham, Cunningham, and Bausch, it also examines the work of lesser-known figures like Michio Ito and Eleo Pomare, as well as choreographers who have recently emerged internationally like Germaine Acogny and Trajal Harrell. The Male Dancer has proven to be essential reading for anyone interested in dance and the cultural representation of gender. By reflecting on the latest studies in theory, performance, and practice, Burt has thoroughly updated this important book to include dance works from the last ten years and has renewed its timeliness for the 2020s.
First published in 2007, "Oklahoma!": The Making of an American Musical tells the full story of the beloved Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. Author Tim Carter examines archival materials, manuscripts, and journalism, and the lofty aspirations and mythmaking that surrounded the musical from its very inception. The book made for a watershed moment in the study of the American musical: the first well-researched, serious musical analysis of this landmark show by a musicologist, it was also one of the first biographies of a musical, transforming a field that had previously tended to orient itself around creators rather than creations. In this new and fully revised edition, Carter draws further on recently released sources, including the Rouben Mamoulian Papers at the Library of Congress, with additional correspondence, contracts, and even new versions of the working script used - and annotated - throughout the show's rehearsal process. Carter also focuses on the key players and concepts behind the musical, including the original play on which it was based (Lynn Riggs's Green Grow the Lilacs) and the Theatre Guild's Theresa Helburn and Lawrence Langner, who fatefully brought Rodgers and Hammerstein together for their first collaboration. The crucial new perspectives these revisions and additions provide make this edition of Carter's seminal work a compulsory purchase for all teachers, students, and lovers of musical theater.
This is the first book to explore how actors play real people. How do you capture Hitler, Mugabe, or a serial killer? How do you portray living monarchs or political leaders? Is it possible to embody a genius like Mozart, Woolf or Darwin? What are the pressures of performing an icon like Marlene Dietrich? Bringing together original conversations with award-winning actors, the line-up includes Jeremy Irons, Dame Eileen Atkins, David Morrissey, Henry Goodman, and Sir Ian McKellen.
Focusing specifically on solo making and performing, this unique and exciting text allows the experts to speak for themselves. In interviews with Misri Dey, six recognised solo performers working across a range of performance genres - including theatre, dance, live and performance art, site-specific performance, music video and film - provide insightful and practical strategies for creative making and performing processes. Interviewees include Bryony Kimmings, Tim Etchells, Bobby Baker, Mike Pearson, Wendy Houstoun and Nigel Charnock. Engaging and accessible, this is an invaluable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Theatre, Performance and Acting, scholars, lecturers and performance practitioners. It will also appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students of Women's Studies, Creative Writing and the Visual Arts.
This book explores the changing representation on the early modern stage of the built environment of London. It covers a period in which the city underwent rapid growth to become the country's first metropolis, and it examines how the urban environment becomes part of the frame of reference of the drama that is set there.
"Directors and the New Musical Drama" offers a fresh perspective on the dramatic shifts in musical theatre in the 1980s and 90s. Miranda Lundskaer-Nielsen explores the cultural differences between British and American musicals, examines their critical reception, and demonstrates the crucial role of British and American directors in developing musical dramas that have initiated change in the parameters of this popular art form. Starting with the provocative idea of the "British Invasion," this volume includes analysis of groundbreaking musicals such as "Sunday in the Park with George," "Les Miserables" and "Jelly's Last Jam, " as well as interviews with leading musical theatre writers, directors and producers.
The end result of a forty-year avocation, this unique dictionary presents information about scenographic practitioners from ancient Greece through the nineteenth century in those countries with major theatre traditions. Although occasional volumes have dealt with individual theatrical painters, few theatrical encyclopedias even attempt international coverage. The text is an alphabetical listing of all the artists who participated in stage design and scene painting. Considerable effort has gone into the correlation between the scenic painters and their work outside the theatre. Many scene painters achieved substantial careers in other artistic callings; their stature imparts appropriate luster to the lonely role of the scenic artist. The bibliography details the 435 sources documenting the known vitae and samples the recorded activity of the artists. An appendix presents a listing of the artists by country of their major theatrical effort in chronological order of their flourish dates. By providing access to information about graphic solutions used in past periods of theatrical production, this book can assist the scenographic artist solve current design problems. It belongs in all theatrical library collections. Many scene painters achieved substantial careers in other artistic callings; their stature imparts appropriate luster to the lonely role of the scenic artist. The bibliography details the 435 sources documenting the known vitae and samples the recorded activity of the artists. An appendix presents a listing of the artists by country of their major theatrical effort in chronological order of their flourish dates. By providing access to information about graphic solutions used in past periods of theatrical production, this book can assist the scenographic artist solve current design problems. It belongs in all theatrical library collections.
Show Boat: Performing Race in an American Musical tells the full
story of the making and remaking of the most important musical in
Broadway history. Drawing on exhaustive archival research and
including much new information from early draft scripts and scores,
this book reveals how Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern created
Show Boat in the crucible of the Jazz Age to fit the talents of the
show's original 1927 cast. After showing how major figures such as
Paul Robeson and Helen Morgan defined the content of the show, the
book goes on to detail how Show Boat was altered by later
directors, choreographers, and performers up to the end of the
twentieth century. All the major New York productions are covered,
as are five important London productions and four Hollywood
versions.
Focusing on examples from medieval theatre, women's suffrage campaigns, and the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony, this is the first book to offer a critical overview of pageant as a dramatic form. By enacting highly selective historical episodes, pageants manipulate audiences' sense of the past. Through iconic music, affecting images, and vernacular forms, pageants express and, in turn, shape religious, civic, or political allegiances. Freely appropriating elements of history plays, patriotic celebrations, opera, and film, pageants create spectacles of sensory overload. Impressive recent scholarship recognizes pageants as public history, but this is the first authoritative account of the origins, characteristics, and techniques of pageants as a theatrical idiom. Performed in sporting arenas, the open air, or purpose-built theatres, these paratheatrical events express identity through what Erika Fischer-Lichte calls "the re-theatricalization of theatre." Pageants are intimately connected with power-they either assert and celebrate it or seek and demand it. Medieval religious pageants were so popular and powerful that they were suppressed and extinguished. The vogue for pageantry that swept through the English-speaking world in the decade before WWI was closely tied to the expansion of the franchise. Many early twentieth century pageants celebrated localities; others subversively advocated for women's suffrage. First performed in 1909, Cicely Hamilton's A Pageant of Great Women depicted historical personages from the near and distant past as well as allegorical figures such as Justice and Prejudice. Today, the Olympic Games mandate an opening ceremony that "details the country's history, culture, and overall importance for the global community." London delivered just such a pageant in 2012. This book features a wide-ranging introduction that maps the cultural evolution of this enduring theatrical form and covers popular and readily accessible pageants from medieval England, the early twentieth century, and our own day.
With Grotowski, After Grotowski is a unique and invaluable insight into the workings of one of theatre's true pioneers, presented by his closest collaborator. This book charts the development of Grotowski's dramatic research through a decade of conversations with his apprentice, Thomas Richards. Tuscany's 'Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards' is the enduring legacy of a master teacher, director and theorist, and home to much of Grotowski's most significant work. Interviewed by leading scholars, and offering his own intimate accounts, Richards gives a vivid and detailed view of the Workcenter's evolution, providing:
Since the 1920s, an endless flow of studies has analyzed the political systems of fascism, theseizure of power, the nature of the regimes, the atrocities committed, and, finally, the wars waged against other countries. However, much less attention has been paid to the strategies of persuasion employed by the regimes to win over the masses for their cause. Among these, fascist propaganda has traditionally been seen as the key means of influencing public opinion. Only recently has the "fascination with Fascism" become a topic of enquiry that has also formed the guiding interest of this volume: it offers, for the first time, a comparative analysis of the forms and functions of theater in countries governed by fascist or para-fascist regimes. By examining a wide spectrum of theatrical manifestations in a number of States with a varying degree of fascistization, these studies establish some of the similarities and differences between the theatrical cultures of several cultures in the interwar period.
This is a timely contribution to the debates regarding future
possibilities for feminism, theater, and performance. An excellent,
cross-generational mix of theater scholars (Sue-Ellen Case, Dee
Heddon, Meenakshi Ponnuswami, Janelle Reinelt, Joanne Tompkins) and
practitioners (Anna Furse, Leslie Hill and Helen Paris, SuAndi)
engage in lively, cutting-edge critical debates on topics that
include citizenship, autobiography, cultural heritage and politcal
agency as circulating in contemporary feminism and
performance.
Child labor greatly contributed to the cultural and economic success of the British Victorian theatrical industry. This book highlights the complexities of the battle for child labor laws, the arguments for the needs of the theatre industry, and the weight of opposition that confronted any attempt to control employers. |
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