"Devising in Process" examines the creative processes of eight theatre companies making devising-based performances.
Companies covered include:
- The People Show
- Station House Opera
- Shunt
- The Red Room
- Faulty Optic Theatre of Animation
- theatre O
- Gecko
- Third Angel
Authors were granted unusual access to the rehearsal room, enabling them to provide unique insights into how ideas evolve and develop, how strategies and methods are applied and how roles and relationships are structured. Covering a broad range of styles, the collection explores physical theatre, political theatre, puppetry, live art, new writing and performance with new technology.
Accessibly framed, the book includes a comprehensive introduction which highlights similarities and differences in approach, examines the impact of economic and cultural factors and explores how definitions of devised theatre are changing and developing. This eye-opening collection will be important reading for students and practitioners interested in exploring 21st century devising processes.

This book argues that US theatre in the 20th century embraced the theories and practices of internationalism as a way to realize a better world and as part of the strategic reform of the theatre into a national expression. Live performance, theatre internationalists argued, could represent and reflect the nation like no other endeavour.

British-born David Niven began his acting career in 1935, appearing in movie classics that have stood the test of time. Immensely popular with moviemakers and fans alike, Niven's urbane wittiness and charm enamored him to them throughout his long career. After grieving the death of his young first wife and left to raise two small children, he developed his career and won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1958. He later attained success as a writer. This reference is a definitive guide to David Niven's fascinating career. The book begins with a short biography that summarizes his life and provides a context for his work. The following chapters are each devoted to Niven's work in a particular medium, such as film, stage, radio, and television. Each chapter includes entries for Niven's performances, which provide full production information, plot synopses, review excerpts, and commentary. Other portions of the book offer information on material written by Niven, his various awards, and an annotated bibliography of works about him.

The theatre is an essential art form that is forever evolving. A well-written play can make us laugh, cry, cringe, or reflect. It can confirm what we already know, or it can introduce us to new worlds. It can relax us, or incite us to action. Writing for the Stage - A Playwright's Handbook is a step-by-step guide to dramatic writing. Drawing on proven methods and professional insights, this book explores the mechanics of playwriting and the skills needed to create a compelling story. It aims to help readers understand the art and craft of writing for the stage and avoid some of the pitfalls. Topics covered include defining a play; starting points; the importance of structure; the first draft and rewrites; placing the work and negotiating rehearsals and, finally, the playwright in a devising context.

Disability and Music Performance examines discriminatory social practices in music conservatoria, orchestras, music festivals and music competitions, which limit disabled people's access to music performance at a professional level. Of particular interest are the disabling barriers that musicians with an intellectual, physical, sensory or neurological disability-or an acquired brain injury-encounter in the world of Western classical music, both as students and as professional performers. This book collects data in the form of semi-structured interviews and video and audio recordings to explore the voice, concerns and suggestions expressed by musicians with disabilities. It examines their perceptions of both inclusive and discriminatory practices in music institutions as well as the representation of, and audio-visual recordings by, key musical figures with disabilities. Its findings aim to contribute to the wellbeing of musicians with impairments by challenging disabling social practices that see them as inferior. This publication offers performers, teachers and researchers new perspectives for exploring some of the most common social dynamics in encounters between normative audiences, musicians and music critics, and musicians with disabilities. It invites the reader to recognise disability as a rightful identity category in music performance and to dismantle the disabling barriers that limit the participation of disabled people in music-making.

This book brings together experts across disciplines to examine the connection between digital technologies and human movement, and to consider the creative and artistic possibilities of technologized human motion.

"Broadway and Corporate Capitalism "examines two overlapping and, in many ways, symbiotic phenomena of early 20th century America--the emergence of the Professional-Managerial Class within American corporate capitalism and the evolution of Broadway. Michael Schwartz shows how the class movements moved--literally and figuratively--to the rhythm of noisy, frenetic farces, highly charged business and sports melodramas, and exuberant musicals. This book brings to life the representative plays, playwrights, actors, critics, and audiences from one of the liveliest periods of Broadway.

"Theatre, Intimacy and Engagement "unravels politics from theatre in order to propose a new means to politicize performance. The last human venue is the location where the sense of one's aliveness, ethical associations, and collective potential is kickstarted through the shock of theatrical affects. Performance analyses ranging from child actors, animals and objects to reflections on the innovative theatre work of Societas Raffaello Sanzio, Forced Entertainment and Goat Island combine to offer a radical critique of performance studies: the first social science of appearance.

This wide-ranging guide introduces (or reintroduces) readers to movie musicals past and present, enabling them to experience the development of this uniquely American art form-and discover films they'll love. This comprehensive guide covers movie musicals from their introduction with the 1927 film The Jazz Singer through 2015 releases. In all, it describes 125 movies, opening up the world of this popular form of entertainment to preteens, teens, and adults alike. An introduction explains the advent of movie musicals; then, in keeping with the book's historical approach, films are presented by decade and year with overviews of advances during particular periods. In this way, the reader not only learns about individual films but can see the big picture of how movie musicals developed and changed over time. For each film covered, the guide offers basic facts-studio, director, songwriters, actors, etc.-as well as a brief plot synopsis. Each entry also offers an explanation of why the movie is noteworthy, how popular it was or wasn't, and the influence the film might have had on later musicals. Sidebars offering brief biographies of important artists appear throughout the book. Shows how the genre developed over time, from the 1920s to the present Shares fascinating insights about musicals with which the reader is already familiar Offers information on many lesser-known musicals Helps readers find film musicals that are similar to those they know and like Introduces important performers, directors, and songwriters Includes photographic stills from famous movie musicals

"Unsettling Space" investigates contestations over spatiality in one culturally composite nation, Australia, where contemporary theater stages competing cultural and political agendas through space and place. The book is shaped by three specific representations of space: monuments, contaminated places, and borders. Covering a wide range of plays, and offering a highly original theoretical framework for analyzing drama, this study will have wide appeal for issues of space, spatiality and territory in all forms of theater, in all nations.

This collection investigates dramatic and performative renderings of 'America' as an exilic place particularly focusing on issues of language, space and identity. It looks at ways in which immigrants and outsiders are embodied in American theatre practice and explores ways in which 'America' is staged and dramatized by immigrants and foreigners.

More than one hundred years after Futurism exploded onto the European stage with its unique brand of art and literature, there is a need to reassess the whole movement, from its Italian roots to its international ramifications. In wide-ranging essays based on fresh research, the contributors to this collection examine both the original context and the cultural legacy of Futurism. Chapters touch on topics such as Futurism and Fascism, the geopolitics of Futurism, the Futurist woman, and translating Futurist texts. A large portion of the book is devoted to the practical aspects of performing Futurist theatrical ideas in the twenty-first century.

Because of its close link with stage performance, the theory of drama is of interest not only to practitioners (playwrights, dramaturges, performers) but also to the general reader and the play-goer. Modern Theories of Drama provides a crucial resource for students of drama and theatre studies. The landmark excerpts for this anthology illustrate how dramatically the idea of drama has altered in the last 150 years.

London's West End has a rich and unique collection of theatres, ranging in date from early the early 19th century to the end of the 20th;more than fifty are located within an area of two square miles. This book celebrates the working buildings at the heart of the British theatrical industry. Focusing on the theatres in the West End, it looks at their architecture and history as well as examining what it is that constitutes a West End Theatre. The exquisite photographs in the book lead the reader on a tour - taking in the front -of -house areas, the auditoria and the backstage spaces - of some of London's most famous theatres. From the Palladium to the Lyceum, it offers glimpses of those areas not normally seen by the public, Such as rehearsal spaces, dressing rooms, backstage areas and even a Royal reception room. In doing so, it enters the private realms of the theatre technicians and actors, and brings to light the theatre's hidden world.

Centering on the British kitchen sink realism movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s, specifically its documentation of the built environment's influence on class consciousness, this book highlights the settings of a variety of novels, plays, and films, turning to archival research to offer new ways of thinking about how spatial representation in cultural production sustains or intervenes in the process of social stratification. As a movement that used gritty, documentary-style depictions of space to highlight the complexities of working-class life, the period's texts chronicled shifts in the social and topographic landscape while advancing new articulations of citizenship in response to the failures of post-war reconstruction. By exploring the impact of space on class, this book addresses the contention that critical discourse has overlooked the way the built environment informs class identity.

The Hedgerow Theatre was created by Jasper Deeter in 1923 in a rural Pennsylvania community devoted to the Arts and Crafts movement. Deeter, who had achieved some success in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, abandoned the commercial stage and assembled a company dedicated to true repertory and to theater as a 'way of life.' It was an audacious experiment, but over the next thirty years Hedgerow prospered and became America's most successful repertory company. While it is popularly known for some of its famous alumnae, including Ann Harding and Richard Basehart, Hedgerow's genuine legacy is a living library of over 200 productions created by Deeter's idealistic, but determined, pursuit of "truth and beauty" in the theatre.

This is the first book to explore the relationship between experimental theatre and performance making in France. Reflecting the recent return to aesthetics and politics in French theory, it focuses on how a variety of theatre and performance practitioners use their art work to contest reality as it is currently configured in France.

This encyclopedic reference to the American movie musical identifies and describes the musicals and the artists who made them. Film entries range from the legendary "The" "Jazz" "Singer" in 1927 to "Fantasia" "2000." Artists ranging from Gene Kelly to Elvis Presley, Busby Berkeley, and John Travolta are included, as are musicians as varied as Irving Berlin, Paul Williams, and the Beatles. Entries also detail animated musicals, studios, perettas, rock documentaries, sequels and remakes, and dance movies.

As a reference work or as a book for browsing, this encyclopedia serves as a valuable companion to "Stage It with Music: An Encyclopedic Guide to the American Musical Theatre" (Greenwood, 1993) and will appeal to film scholars and fans alike. Information is cross referenced throughout. A chronological list of musicals and an appendix of Academy Award-winning musicals are included.

Vince has provided a useful and, for the most part, usable reference work. His introduction should be required reading for anyone approaching medieval theater. "Choice"

Scholars increasingly see medieval theatre as a complex and vital performance medium related more closely to political, religious, and social life than to literature as we know it. Reflecting the current interest in performance, "A Companion to the Medieval Theatre" presents 250 alphabetically arranged entries offering a panoramic view of European and British theatrical productions between the years 900 and 1550. The volume features 30 essays contributed by an international group of specialists and includes many shorter entries as well as systematic cross-referencing, a chronology, a bibliography, and a full complement of indexes.

Major entries focus on the theatres of the principal linguistic areas (the British Isles, France, Germany, Iberia, Italy, Scandinavia, the Low Countries, and Eastern Europe), and on dramatic forms and genres such as liturgical drama, Passion and saint plays, morality plays, folk drama, and Humanist drama. Other articles examine costume, acting, pageantry, and music, and explore the theatrical dimension of courtly entertainment, the dance, and the tournament. Short entries supply information on over one hundred playwrights, directors, actors and antiquarians whose contributions to the theatre have been documented. This informative guide brings new depth to our appreciation of the richness and color of medieval public entertainments and the symbolism and pageantry that were a part of daily life in the Middle Ages. Designed to appeal to general reader, this volume is also an attractive choice for libraries serving students and scholars of theatre history, English and European literatures, medieval history, cultural history, drama, and performance.

This work offers a timely alternative to theater criticism's neglect of the intensely spatial character of theatrical performance by showing that early modern audiences were highly aware of the spatial aspects of the stage. Jacobean dramatists used stage space to explore the spatial transformations of early modern society--social mobility, wandering populations, rural enclosure, sea travel, localized empirical thought.

The English courtly masque was a lavish multi-dimensional entertainment which flourished during the reigns of the first two Stuarts. It involves some of the greatest artists of early 17th-century England. Although it has received considerable attenton from literary scholars, this is the first study of its music. By combining documentary, textual, and musical evidence, Peter Walls builds up a picture of the form and function of music in the masque, from the ascension of James I until the beginning of the civil war.

Theatre of Real People offers fresh perspectives on the current fascination with putting people on stage who present aspects of their own lives and who are not usually trained actors. After providing a history of this mode of performance, and theoretical frameworks for its analysis, the book focuses on work developed by seminal practitioners at Berlin's Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) production house. It invites the reader to explore the HAU's innovative approach to Theatre of Real People, authenticity and cultural diversity during the period of Matthias Lilienthal's leadership (2003-12). Garde and Mumford also elucidate how Theatre of Real People can create and destabilise a sense of the authentic, and suggest how Authenticity-Effects can present new ways of perceiving diverse and unfamiliar people. Through a detailed analysis of key HAU productions such as Lilienthal's brainchild X-Apartments, Mobile Academy's Blackmarket, and Rimini Protokoll's 100% City, the book explores both the artistic agenda of an important European theatre institution, and a crucial aspect of contemporary theatre's social engagement.

Documentary theatre is a form of theatre created from the verbatim use of interviews, photographs and historical proceedings. This book brings together essays, interviews and performance texts, many published here for the first time, which describe and analyse documentary theatre around the world: both its history and its proliferation since 9/11.

Consisting of six studies that present hermeneutical analyses of Wagnerian dramas, this book discusses Wagner's mature single dramas from Hollander to Parsifal with reference to the concept of Romantic irony and the basic theoretical orientation of post-structuralism. Wagner is best known as a composer of mythological works, but these music-dramas contain basic problems that essentially contradict what is regarded as their mythological or legendary nature. They all self-referentially play out certain critical processes. Focusing on the very issue of interpretation, this work asks how Wagner's dramas use their legendary or mythological raw material in a specifically 19th-century Romantic way to create meaning. It is argued that by means of Romantic irony, internal self-reflection or self-consciousness, each work deconstructs its own mythological or legendary nature. Musicologists with an interest in Wagner's works, and literary scholars who are interested in interdisciplinary applications of literary-critical theory, will appreciate this unique application of literary, theoretical, and critical concepts to the understanding of his music-dramas. This work will also appeal to scholars of German literature and of German cultural history. It discusses Wagner's single dramas from Hollander to Parsifal.