Amazing & Extraordinary Facts: Shakespeare is a fascinating collection of surprising revelations, quirky characters and other fascinating pieces of trivia from the world of the great English bard. From the stories behind his well-known plays and poems, through the actors and theatres that have entertained his works, to his legacy in popular culture and beyond, an intriguing and unusual history of his life and times is revealed. Drawing back the curtains on this iconic English character, there is something here for every enthusiast to relish. This authoritative and absorbing book is published to coincide with the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare's death on 23rd April 2016.

An international arts organisation and network engaging with music, dance, theatre and visual art, Phakama creates adventurous, site-responsive performances with large groups of people from diverse backgrounds. With contributions from participants, artists, academics and cultural commentators from India, Ireland, South Africa, the UK and USA, this book features case studies, interviews and articles covering two decades of practice. At the heart of the book is a selection of carefully explained and beautifully illustrated exercises which will enable Phakama's methodology to be used by organisations and practitioners working with young people internationally. Phakama is a Xhosa and Zulu word for stand up, arise, empower yourself. With a focus on collaborative, non-hierarchical performance making, Phakama invites cultural sharing and critical engagement with the world we live in. As well as engaging with political and critical concerns about contemporary theatre and performance, the book offers unique approaches to devising theatre, applied and social theatre, intercultural performance practices and pedagogic models of collaboration and cultural leadership.

With the paranormal becoming so mainstream in the last decade between television, books, and movies, is the craze actually brand new? Before there was the entertainment industry that we know of today, plays and musicals were one of the primary forms of expression and reflections of society's beliefs of their time. This book will cover an analysis of the belief in the supernatural throughout the course of humanity's existence and showing that in a way, the paranormal has always been normal. Using elements of theatre as the research vehicle, as well as establishing the relationship between acting and the unknown, this book examines the rich relationship between theatre and the paranormal. Finally, this book will challenge the reader to consider the possibility of using theatre as a method for researching and investigating the paranormal. Readers will be asked to consider what would happen if investigators and "ghost hunters" took on the role of an actor and the haunted location becomes a performance space, thus welcoming communication and activity from the other side.

Operatic works by Italian composers of the nineteenth century have undergone countless transformations since their premieres, shifting shape in response to a variety of new geographic, temporal, technological, and performative contexts. These enduring works by Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi, Puccini, and their contemporaries have myriad stories to tell. Fashions and Legacies reconstructs a selection of these stories, exploring ways in which operatic works have been reshaped and revived throughout the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries. While focusing on how these works have been altered, the thirteen contributors in this book also respond to fundamental questions: how has this music retained - or sacrificed - its powerful messages in the face of deconstruction and recontextualization over time and place? What happens to these operas once they have escaped control of their authors? The contributions of singers, stage directors, conductors, and other theatrical personalities stand front and center of the volume.

Directing with the Michael Chekhov Technique explores the collaborative process between a play's director and the entire production team, making the journey of a production process cohesive using the Michael Chekhov Technique. No other technique provides the tools for both actor and director to communicate as clearly as does Michael Chekhov. Directing with the Michael Chekhov Technique is the first book to apply the insights of this celebrated technique to the realities of directing a theatrical production. The book chronicles the journey of a play, from conception through production, through the eyes of the director. Drawn from the author's rehearsal journals, logs and notes from each performance, the reader is shown how to arrive at a concept, create a concept statement and manage the realization of the play, utilizing specific techniques from Michael Chekhov to solve problems of acting and design. As with all books in the Theatre Arts Workbook series, Directing with the Michael Chekhov Technique will include online video exercises, "Teaching Tip" boxes which streamline the book for teachers, and a useful Further Reading section. Directing with the Michael Chekhov Technique is the perfect guide to the production process for any director.

This practical handbook is invaluable for anyone performing, teaching, studying or simply wanting a new way to enjoy Shakespeare. It provides an outline of Meisner's work and legacy, a discussion of that legacy in the light of the enduring global popularity of Shakespeare, and a wealth of practical exercises drawn from Meisner's techniques. Shakespeare writes about the truth in human relationships and human hearts. Sanford Meisner's work unlocks truthful acting. They would seem a perfect match. Yet, following Meisner's note to his actors that 'text is your greatest enemy', Shakespeare and Meisner are often considered 'strange bedfellows'. The rhetorical complexity of Shakespeare's text can often be perceived as rules an actor must learn in order to perform Shakespeare 'properly'. Meisner's main rule is that 'you can't say ouch until you've been pinched': in other words, an actor must genuinely feel something in order to react in a performance which is alive to the moment. This book explores how actors can use Meisner's tools of 'acting is reacting' to discover the infinite freedom within the apparent constraints of Shakespeare's text.

Verdi's operas - composed between 1839 and 1893 - portray a striking diversity of female protagonists: warrior women and peacemakers, virgins and courtesans, princesses and slaves, witches and gypsies, mothers and daughters, erring and idealised wives, and, last of all, a feisty quartet of Tudor townswomen in Verdi's final opera, Falstaff. Yet what meanings did the impassioned crises and dilemmas of these characters hold for the nineteenth-century female spectator, especially during such a turbulent span in the history of the Italian peninsula? How was opera shaped by society - and was society similarly influenced by opera? Contextualising Verdi's female roles within aspects of women's social, cultural and political history, Susan Rutherford explores the interface between the reality of the spectators' lives and the imaginary of the fictional world before them on the operatic stage.

A Humorous Synopsis of the Great Operas. Stranded Stories from the Operas is aimed at the serious opera lover who, in addition to possessing a good knowledge of the subject, has a sense of humour. No author, until now, has dared challenge the esoteric world of opera by relating these stories in a humorous way: opera is far too serious a subject to be made fun of Times have changed. In this collection you will find the plots of both The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro told by Figaro himself in his own inimitable style; Samson and Dalilah and Salome retold in appropriate biblical prose; Shakespearian opera is represented by Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet while Wagner lovers, after reading Die Meistersinger, Tristan and Isolde and Parsifal, may want to check their Kobbe. What really happened at the Polka saloon that night is told by Nick the barman in Minnie get your gun while Turandot's baffling riddles have been updated to reflect the advances made in education since those ancient times. Finally, if the reader gets as much pleasure from these stories as the author had in writing them and the illustrator in designing them then the time and trouble spent were well worth the effort.

With the globalization of business, American snack maker Boltz Foods is expanding into world markets and a naive American businessman who's never traveled abroad is selected to lead the way. Pursued by a Japanese competitor bent on sabotage, this comic adventure weaves in and out of different time- zones through a Japanese resort, Russian sauna, French restaurant, German barbershop, Westminster Abbey, Spanish bullring and the Tower of Babel. Going Global is a slapstick portrait of a clueless American caught up in a whirlwind of wacky multi-cultural gaffes, who at the end, finds there's no place like home."

This fully revised and updated edition of the hugely successful London Theatres features ten additional theatres, including the Victoria Palace Theatre, the Sondheim Theatre, the Bridge Theatre and the Noel Coward Theatre. London is the undisputed theatre capital of the world. From world-famous musicals to West End shows, from cutting-edge plays to Shakespeare in its original staging, from outdoor performance to intimate fringe theatre, the range and quality are unsurpassed. Leading drama critic Michael Coveney invites you on a tour of more than 50 theatres that make the London stage what it is. With stories of the architecture, the people and the productions which have defined each one, alongside sumptuous photographs by Peter Dazeley of the auditoriums, public and backstage areas, this illustrated overview of London's theatres is a book like no other. A must for fans of the stage! Praise for the first edition: 'This coffee table whopper ... dazzles' Spectator 'London Theatres ... will surely feature on any theatre buff's present list' Sightlines New chapters included in the second edition: Victoria Palace Theatre; The Bridge Theatre; Menier Chocolate Factory; Hampstead Theatre; Sondheim Theatre (formerly Queen's Theatre); Harold Pinter Theatre, Noel Coward Theatre; Aldwych Theatre; Garrick Theatre; Vaudeville Theatre; Phoenix Theatre

Nadezhda Ptushkina's plays reflect her keen interest in constructing multidimensional characters that reflect the myriad ways people are affected by today's turbulent world. Often writing strong female roles, she does not shy away from exploring the sometimes tragic implications that lie behind her comical, almost farcical scenes. Ptushkina questions the nature of love, and explores the boundaries between the spiritual and the base, the constructive and the destructive, that lie within every human being. Conflict between the sexes constitutes the core of Ptushkina's plays, in which she warns the audience against confusing sex and love. Ptushkina rejects any notion that men and women are the same, seeing gender differences rather than personality differences as the main source of tension between men and women. Her plays thus dwell on this 'battle of the sexes' and the resulting lack of respect for women that she sees in today's Russia.In this new translation, western readers have a chance to discover why Ptushkina's work holds such wide appeal in the Russian theatre.

This book details the Irish socialistic tracks pursued by Bernard Shaw and Sean O'Casey, mostly after 1916, that were arguably impacted by the executed James Connolly. The historical context is carefully unearthed, stretching from its 1894 roots via W. B. Yeats' dream of Shaw as a menacing, yet grinning sewing machine, to Shaw's and O'Casey's 1928 masterworks. In the process, Shaw's War Issues for Irishmen, Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress, The Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman, Saint Joan, The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, and O'Casey's The Story of the Irish Citizen Army, The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, The Plough and the Stars, and The Silver Tassie are reconsidered, revealing previously undiscovered textures to the masterworks. All of which provides a rethinking, a reconsideration of Ireland's great drama of the 1920s, as well as furthering the knowledge of Shaw, O'Casey, and Connolly.

The past two decades have witnessed the emergence of a lively Portuguese-language theatre festival circuit, where Brazilian, Portuguese, and Lusophone African artists come together and jointly negotiate the cultural dynamics of an emerging transnational community grounded in a common language and shared colonial histories. Christina S. McMahon trains a sharp ethnographic eye on African performances staged at these festivals, revealing how festival productions and their aftermath can generate new perspectives on race and gender, colonial trauma, and the economics of cultural globalization. Featuring in-depth analysis of performances and artist interviews from Cape Verde, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique - countries with vibrant theatre practices and vexed colonial pasts - the book reveals how international festivals can be valuable platforms for new intercultural dialogues and diplomatic possibilities. Recasting Transnationalism through Performance offers a fresh look at the role of theatre in navigating new postcolonial realities.

Few American phenomena are more evocative of time, place, and culture than the drive-in theater. From its origins in the Great Depression, through its peak in the 1950s and 1960s and ultimately its slow demise in the 1980s, the drive-in holds a unique place in the country's collective past. Michigan's drive-ins were a reflection of this time and place, ranging from tiny rural 200-car "ozoners" to sprawling 2,500-car behemoths that were masterpieces of showmanship, boasting not only movies and food, but playgrounds, pony rides, merry-go-rounds, and even roving window washers.

The turning point of Madame Bovary, which Flaubert memorably set at the opera, is only the most famous example of a surprisingly long tradition, one common to a range of French literary styles and sub-genres. In the first book-length study of that tradition to appear in English, Cormac Newark examines representations of operatic performance from Balzac's La Comedie humaine to Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu, by way of (among others) Dumas pere's Le Comte de Monte-Cristo and Leroux's Le Fantome de l'Opera. Attentive to textual and musical detail alike in the works, the study also delves deep into their reception contexts. The result is a compelling cultural-historical account: of changing ways of making sense of operatic experience from the 1820s to the 1920s, and of a perennial writerly fascination with the recording of that experience.