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Theatre
Short History of English Renaissance Drama, A
In her sparkling new book, Helen Hackett explores the historical contexts of English Renaissance drama by situating it in the wider history of ideas. She traces the origins of Renaissance theatre in communal religious drama, civic pageantry and court entertainment and vividly describes the playing conditions of Elizabethan and Jacobean playhouses.
Agamemnon in Performance 458 BC to AD 2004
Contributors to this interdisciplinary collection of eighteen essays on its performance history include classical scholars, theatre historians, and experts in English and comparative literature. All Greek and Latin has been translated; the book is generously illustrated, and supplemented with the useful research aid of a chronological appendix of performances.
Broadway and Beyond: Commercial Theatre Considered
That theatre is a business remains a truth often ignored by theatre insiders and consumers of the performing arts alike. The essays in Theatre Symposium, Volume 22 explore theatre as a commercial enterprise both historically and as a continuing part of the creation, production, and presentation of contemporary live performance.
Classical Greek Theatre : New Views of an Old Subject
Many dogmas regarding Greek theatre were established by researchers who lacked experience in the mounting of theatrical productions. In his wide-ranging and provocative study, Clifford Ashby, a theatre historian trained in the practical processes of play production as well as the methods of historical research, takes advantage of his understanding of technical elements to approach his ancient subject from a new perspective
Documentary Trial Plays in Contemporary American Theater
In this first book-length critical study of contemporary American documentary theater, Jacqueline O'Connor examines in depth ten such plays, all written and staged since 1970, and considers the role of the genre in re-creating and revising narratives of significant conflicts in contemporary history.
Doomed by Hope : Essays on Arab Theatre
Doomed by Hope is a beautifully presented collection of essays by writers and artists which traces the history of contemporary Arab theatre and its relationship to social change. With contributors from Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Kuwait and Yemen, this book includes both academic discussions and personal narratives, alongside a number of specially commissioned portraits of contemporary Arab theatre artists.
Enchanted Evenings : The Broadway Musical From 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber
This new second edition of Enchanted Evenings offers theater lovers an illuminating behind-the-scenes tour of some of America's best loved, most admired, and most enduring musicals. Readers will find such all-time favorites as Show Boat, Carousel, Kiss Me, Kate, Guys and Dolls, My Fair Lady, West Side Story, Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, and Phantom of the Opera.
Great Shakespeareans
This major project offers an unprecedented scholarly analysis of the contribution made by the most important Shakespearean critics, editors, actors and directors as well as novelists, poets, composers, and thinkers from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.ÃÂ Great Shakespeareans will be an essential resource for students and scholars in Shakespeare studies.
Greek Tragedy : Suffering Under the Sun
This is an invaluable introduction to ancient Greek tragedy which discusses every surviving play in detail and provides all the background information necessary for understanding the context and content of the plays.
Outdoor Performance
Outdoor drama takes many forms: ancient Greek theatre, open-air performances of Shakespeare at summer festivals, and re-enactments of landmark historical events. The essays gathered in 'Outdoor Performance, 'Volume 17 of the annual journal Theatre Symposium, address outdoor theatre's many manifestations, including the historical and non-traditional.
Performance in Greek and Roman Theatre
Drawing on insights from various disciplines (philology, archaeology, art) as well as from performance and reception studies, this volume shows how a heightened awareness of performance can enhance our appreciation of Greek and Roman theatre.
Reaching Athens : Community, Democracy and Other Mythologies in Adaptations of Greek Tragedy
Why do revivals and adaptations of Greek tragedy still abound in European national theatres, fringe stages and international festivals in the twenty-first century? Taking as its starting point the concepts of myth developed by Jean-Luc Nancy and Roland Barthes and the notion of the 'classical' outlined by Salvatore Settis, this book analyses discourses around community, democracy, origin and Western identity in stage adaptations of Greek tragedy on contemporary European stages.
Ritual, Religion, and Theatre
Volume 21 of Theatre Symposium presents essays that explore the intricate and vital relationships between theatre, religion, and ritual. Whether or not theatre arose from ritual and/or religion, from prehistory to the present there have been clear and vital connections among the three. Ritual, Religion, and Theatre, volume 21 of the annual journal Theatre Symposium, presents a series of essays that explore the intricate and vital relationships that exist, historically and today, between these various modes of expression and performance.
Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, and Musicals
Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, and Musicals shows how American culture has changed over the twentieth century, from the Roaring Twenties (The Wild Party) to the cultural chaos of the'50s (Grease) and the sexual revolution of the'60s (Hair) and'70s (Rocky Horror), to the rebirth of the art form in the'90s (Bat Boy), and up to the present, exploring where we've been and where we might be heading.
Shakespeare and I
Following the ethos and ambition of the Shakespeare NOW! series, and harnessing the energy, challenge and vigour of the'minigraph'form, Shakespeare and I is a provocative appeal and manifesto for a more personal form of criticism.
Stages of Life : Indian Theatre Autobiographies
Four autobiographies of early twentieth-century actors and playwrights are presented in English translation, with substantive chapters on the Parsi theatre and strategies for reading autobiography in the Indian context.
The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama
This condensed anthology reproduces close to a dozen plays from Xiaomei Chen's well-received original collection, along with her critical introduction to the historical, cultural, and aesthetic evolution of twentieth-century Chinese spoken drama.
The Great White Way : Race and the Broadway Musical
Broadway musicals are one of America's most beloved art forms and play to millions of people each year. But what do these shows, which are often thought to be just frothy entertainment, really have to say about our country and who we are as a nation?The Great White Way is the first book to reveal the racial politics, content, and subtexts that have haunted musicals for almost one hundred years from Show Boat (1927) to The Scottsboro Boys (2011).
The Legacy of Opera : Reading Music Theatre As Experience and Performance
The Legacy of Opera: Reading Music Theatre as Experience and Performance is the first volume in a series of books compiled by the Music Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research.
The Local Meets the Global in Performance
The volume offers a range of critical viewpoints from which to evaluate the interrelationality of the local and the global, such as philosophical cosmopolitanism, post-colonialism, feminism, class, ethnicity, gender and the experience of the diasporic or exilic artist.
The Methuen Drama Dictionary of the Theatre
The Methuen Drama Dictionary of the Theatre is an essential reference tool and companion for anyone interested in the theatre and theatre-going. Containing over 2500 entries it covers the international spectrum of theatre with particular emphasis on the UK and USA.
The Prop's The Thing: Stage Properties Reconsidered
The essays in “Theatre Symposium: Volume 18” approach the subject of stage props from many angles, and include examinations of props in contemporary and historical productions, explorations of the cultural significance of specific props, and arguments about the nature of the prop itself. The contributors illuminate many aspects of this largely ignored yet crucial part of the theatre. Kyna Hamill looks at props as a means to mark social status.
The Richard Rodgers Reader
Richard Rodgers was one of America's most prolific and best-loved composers. A world without'My Funny Valentine,''The Lady is a Tramp,''Blue Moon,'and'Bewitched,'to name just a few of the songs he wrote with Lorenz Hart, is scarcely imaginable, and the musicals he wrote with his second collaborator, Oscar Hammerstein--Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music--continue to enchant and entertain audiences. Arranged in four sections, Rodgers and Hart (1929-1943), Rodgers and Hammerstein (1943-1960), Rodgers After Hammerstein (1960-1979), and The Composer Speaks (1939-1971),
The Sound of Broadway Music : A Book of Orchestrators and Orchestrations
Broadway's top orchestrators - Robert Russell Bennett, Don Walker, Philip J. Lang, Jonathan Tunick - are names well known to musical theatre fans, but few people understand precisely what the orchestrator does. The Sound of Broadway Music is the first book ever written about these unsung stars of the Broadway musical whose work is so vital to each show's success. The book examines the careers of Broadway's major orchestrators and follows the song as it travels from the composer's piano to the orchestra pit.
The Theater Will Rock : A History of the Rock Musical, From Hair to Hedwig
The tumultuous decade of the 1960s in America gave birth to many new ideas and forms of expression, among them the rock musical. An unlikely offspring of the performing arts, the rock musical appeared when two highly distinctive and American art forms joined onstage in New York City. The Theater Will Rock explores the history of the rock musical, which has since evolved to become one of the most important cultural influences on American musical theater and a major cultural export.
The Theatricality of Greek Tragedy : Playing Space and Chorus
Ancient Greek tragedy has been an inspiration to Western culture, but the way it was first performed has long remained in question. In The Theatricality of Greek Tragedy, Graham Ley provides an illuminating discussion of key issues relating to the use of the playing space and the nature of the chorus, offering a distinctive impression of the performance of Greek tragedy in the fifth century BCE.
Theater Careers : A Realistic Guide
Theater Careers is designed to empower aspiring theater professionals to make savvy, informed decisions through a concise overview of how to prepare for and find work in the theater business. Tim Donahue and Jim Patterson offer well-researched information on various professions, salary ranges, educational and experience requirements, and other facets certain to enlighten students contemplating a theater career, as well as inform counselors, teachers, and parents of available opportunities and the demands of each path.
Theatre Noise : The Sound of Performance
This book is a timely contribution to the emerging field of the aurality of theatre and looks in particular at the interrogation and problematisation of theatre sound(s). Both approaches are represented in the idea of ‘noise' which we understand both as a concrete sonic entity and a metaphor or theoretical (sometimes even ideological) thrust. Theatre provides a unique habitat for noise.
Tragedy in Athens : Performance Space and Theatrical Meaning
This book examines the performance of Greek tragedy in the classical Athenian theatre. Whilst post structuralist criticism of Greek tragedy has tended to focus on the literary text, the analysis of stagecraft and the theatre has been markedly conservative in its methodology. David Wiles corrects that balance, exploring the performance of tragedy as a spatial practice specific to Athenian culture, at once religious and political. Athenian conceptions of space were quite unlike those of the modern world.
Tragic Modernities
Under the microscope of recent scholarship the universality of Greek tragedy has started to fade, as particularities of Athenian culture have come into focus. Miriam Leonard contests the idea of the death of tragedy and argues powerfully for the continued vitality and viability of Greek tragic theater in the central debates of contemporary culture.