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Playwrights in Rehearsal: The Seduction of Company
by Susan Letzler ColePlaywrights in Rehearsal is an inside look at the writer's role in the creative process of bringing his or her words to life on stage. Susan Letzler Cole, granted rare access to some of the major playwrights of our time, recounts her participation in rehearsal with Arthur Miller, Sam Shepard, Tony Kushner and Suzan-Lori Parks, and others.
The Theatre of Richard Maxwell and the New York City Players (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
by Sarah GormanThe theatre of Richard Maxwell and the New York City Players has received significant international recognition over the past ten years. The company has received three OBIEs, for House (1999), Drummer Wanted (2002) and Good Samaritans (2005). Maxwell received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2010 and has been commissioned by venues in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Ireland. Although his productions generate a plethora of reviews, there is a deficit of material providing a critical and sustained engagement with his work. The aim of this book is to provide a critical survey of Maxwell’s work since 1992, including his early participation in Cook County Theater Department. Touching upon the acting, production and rehearsal processes of NYC Player’s work, and Maxwell's representations of space, community, race, and gender, this volume provides scholars with an important overview of a key figure in contemporary drama.
Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now
by Mark SteynThe glorious tradition of the Broadway musical from Irving Berlin to Jerome Kern and Rodgers and Hammerstein to Stephen Sondheim. And then . . . Cats and Les Miz. Mark Steyn's Broadway Babies Say Goodnight is a sharp-eyed view of the whole span of Broadway musical history, seven decades of brilliant achievements the best of which are among the finest works American artists have made. Show Boat, Oklahoma!, Carousel, Gypsy, and more. In an energetic blend of musical history, analysis, and backstage chat, Mark Steyn shows us the genius behind the 'simple' musical, and asks hard questions about the British invasion of Broadway and the future of the form. In this delicious book he gives us geniuses and monsters, hits and atomic bombs, and the wonderful stories that prove show business is a business which -- as the song goes --there's no business like.
In the Company of Actors: Reflections on the Craft of Acting (Stage And Costume Ser.)
by Carole ZuckerIn the Company of Actors is a wonderful ensemble of entertaining and illuminating discussions with sixteen of the most celebrated and prestigious actors in contemporary theatre, film and television. The impressive list of actors includes: Eileen Atkins, Alan Bates, Simon Callow, Judi Dench, Brenda Fricker, Nigel Hawthorne, Jane Lapotaire, Janet McTeer, Ian Richardson, Miranda Richardson, Stephen Rea, Fiona Shaw, Anthony Sher, Janet Suzman, David Suchet, and Penelope Wilton. Carole Zucker covers a wide range of topics including the actors' main childhood influences, their actor training, early acting experience, preparation for roles and sound advice for coping with actors' problems such as creative differences with other actors or directors.
How Good is David Mamet, Anyway?: Writings on Theater--and Why It Matters
by John HeilpernFirst Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Auditioning On Camera: An Actor's Guide
by Joseph HackerTo win a screen role, an actor must learn to contend with an on-camera audition. Understanding how to make the crucial adjustments to one’s craft that this kind of audition requires is vital to the career of any screen actor. Auditioning On Camera sets out the key elements of a successful on-camera audition and explains how to put them into practice. Joseph Hacker draws on 35 years of acting experience to guide the reader through the screen auditioning process with an engaging and undaunting approach. Key elements examined include: textual analysis knowing where to look dealing with nerves on-camera interviews using the environment retaining the camera’s focus The book also features point-by-point chapter summaries, as well as a glossary of acting and technical terms, and is a comprehensive and enlightening resource for screen actors of all levels.
Traversing Tradition: Celebrating Dance in India (Celebrating Dance in Asia and the Pacific)
by Urmimala Sarkar Munsi Stephanie BurridgeDance occupies a prestigious place in Indian performing arts, yet it curiously, to a large extent, has remained outside the arena of academic discourse. This book documents and celebrates the emergence of contemporary dance practice in India. Incorporating a multidisciplinary approach, it includes contributions from scholars, writers and commentators as well as short essays and interviews with Indian artists and performers; the latter add personal perspectives and insights to the broad themes discussed. Young Indian dance artists are courageously charting out new trajectories in dance, diverging from the time-worn paths of tradition. The classical forms of Bharatnatyam, Kathak, Odissi and Manipuri, to name a few, are rich resources for choreographers exploring contemporary dance. This volume speaks about their struggles of working within and outside tradition as they grapple with national and international audience expectations as well as their own values and sense of identity. The artists represented here continue to question the uneasy relationship that exists between the insular world of dance and outside reality. Simultaneously, they are actively creating new dance languages that are both articulate in a performative context and demand examination by researchers and critics.
Daring to Play: A Brecht Companion
by Manfred WekwerthTranslated into English for the first time, Daring To Play: A Brecht Companion is the study of Bertolt Brecht’s theatre by Manfred Wekwerth, Brecht’s co-director and former director of the Berliner Ensemble. Wekwerth aims to challenge prevailing myths and misconceptions of Brecht’s theatre, instead providing a refreshing and accessible approach to his plays and theatrical craft. The book is rich in information, examples and anecdotal detail from first-hand acquaintance with Brecht and rehearsal with the Berliner Ensemble. Wekwerth provides a detailed practical understanding of how theatre operates with a clear perspective on the interface between politics and art. Warm and engaging, whilst also being provocative and challenging, Daring to Play displays the continued vitality of Brecht’s true approach to theatre makers today.
The Routledge Companion to Actors' Shakespeare (Routledge Companions)
by John Russell BrownThe Routledge Companion to Actors’ Shakespeare is a window onto how today’s actors contribute to the continuing life and relevance of Shakespeare’s plays. The process of acting is notoriously hard to document, but this volume reaches behind famous performances to examine the actors’ craft, their development and how they engage with playtexts. Each chapter relies upon privilieged access to its subject to offer an unparalleled insight into contemporary practice. This volume explores the techniques, interpretive approaches and performance styles of the following actors: Simon Russell Beale, Sinead Cusack, Judi Dench, Kate Duchene, Colm Feore, Mariah Gale, John Harrell, Greg Hicks, Rory Kinnear, Kevin Kline, Adrian Lester, Marcelo Magni, Ian McKellen, Patrice Naiambana, Vanessa Redgrave, Piotr Semak, Anthony Sher, Jonathan Slinger, Kate Valk, Harriet Walter This twin volume to The Routledge Companion to Directors’ Shakespeare is an essential work for both actors and students of Shakespeare.
Playwriting Across The Curriculum
by Claire Stoneman Caroline JesterFirst Published in 2012. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Maria Irene Fornes (Routledge Modern and Contemporary Dramatists)
by Scott T. CummingsMaria Irene Fornes is the most influential female American dramatist of the 20th century. That is the argument of this important new study, the first to assess Fornes's complete body of work. Scott T. Cummings considers comic sketches, opera libretti and unpublished pieces, as well as her best-known plays, in order to trace the evolution of her dramaturgy from the whimsical Off-Off Broadway plays of the 1960s to the sober, meditative work of the 1990s. The book also reflects on her practice as an inspirational teacher of playwriting and the primary director of her own plays. Drawing on the latest scholarship and his own personal research and interviews with Fornes over two decades, Cummings examines Fornes's unique significance and outlines strategies for understanding her fragmentary, enigmatic, highly demanding theater.
Being a Director: A Life in Theatre
by Di TrevisDi Trevis is a world-renowned director, whose work with Britain’s National Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company, and directing productions worldwide, has deeply informed her knowledge of the director’s craft. In Being a Director, she draws on a wealth of first-hand experience to present an immersive, engaging and vital insight into the role of a director. The book elegantly blends the personal and the pedagogical, illustrating how the parameters of Time, Space and Motion are essential when creating a successful production. Throughout, the author explores and recycles her own formative life experiences in order to demonstrate that who you are is as integral to being a director as what you do.
The Green Table: The Labanotation Score, Text, Photographs, and Music
by Ann Hutchinson Guest* Score, photographs, and production details of one of this century's best-loved ballets * Includes rare archival material * Packaged with audio CD This work brings together the complete dance score of The Green Table--one of the most famous ballets of the 20th century--in Labanotation, along with music notation for the piano accompaniment and a complete recording of the accompaniment on CD. It also includes several essays about the work and its genesis, and many historic production photographs. This book is an important item for all colleges with dance programs to own in their libraries and for scholars interested in the study of contemporary dance.
Feminism and Theatre
by Sue-Ellen CaseThis classic study is both an introduction to, and an overview of, the relationship between feminism and theatre.
Nineteenth-Century Theatre and the Imperial Encounter (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
by Marty GouldIn this study, Gould argues that it was in the imperial capital’s theatrical venues that the public was put into contact with the places and peoples of empire. Plays and similar forms of spectacle offered Victorian audiences the illusion of unmediated access to the imperial periphery; separated from the action by only the thin shadow of the proscenium arch, theatrical audiences observed cross-cultural contact in action. But without narrative direction of the sort found in novels and travelogues, theatregoers were left to their own interpretive devices, making imperial drama both a powerful and yet uncertain site for the transmission of official imperial ideologies. Nineteenth-century playwrights fed the public’s interest in Britain’s Empire by producing a wide variety of plays set in colonial locales: India, Australia, and—to a lesser extent—Africa. These plays recreated the battles that consolidated Britain’s hold on overseas territories, dramatically depicted western humanitarian intervention in indigenous cultural practices, celebrated images of imperial supremacy, and occasionally criticized the sexual and material excesses that accompanied the processes of empire-building. An active participant in the real-world drama of empire, the Victorian theatre produced popular images that reflected, interrogated, and reinforced imperial policy. Indeed, it was largely through plays and spectacles that the British public vicariously encountered the sights and sounds of the distant imperial periphery. Empire as it was seen on stage was empire as it was popularly known: the repetitions of character types, plot scenarios, and thematic concerns helped forge an idea of empire that, though largely imaginary, entertained, informed, and molded the theatre-going British public.
Ecocriticism and Early Modern English Literature: Green Pastures (Routledge Studies In Renaissance Literature And Culture Ser. #16)
by Todd A. BorlikIn this timely new study, Borlik reveals the surprisingly rich potential for the emergent "green" criticism to yield fresh insights into early modern English literature. Deftly avoiding the anachronistic casting of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century authors as modern environmentalists, he argues that environmental issues, such as nature’s personhood, deforestation, energy use, air quality, climate change, and animal sentience, are formative concerns in many early modern texts. The readings infuse a new urgency in familiar works by Shakespeare, Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, Ralegh, Jonson, Donne, and Milton. At the same time, the book forecasts how ecocriticism will bolster the reputation of less canonical authors like Drayton, Wroth, Bruno, Gascoigne, and Cavendish. Its chapters trace provocative affinities between topics such as Pythagorean ecology and the Gaia hypothesis, Ovidian tropes and green phenomenology, the disenchantment of Nature and the Little Ice Age, and early modern pastoral poetry and modern environmental ethics. It also examines the ecological onus of Renaissance poetics, while showcasing how the Elizabethans’ sense of a sophisticated interplay between nature and art can provide a precedent for ecocriticism’s current understanding of the relationship between nature and culture as "mutually constructive." Situating plays and poems alongside an eclectic array of secondary sources, including herbals, forestry laws, husbandry manuals, almanacs, and philosophical treatises on politics and ethics, Borlik demonstrates that Elizabethan and Jacobean authors were very much aware of, and concerned about, the impact of human beings on their natural surroundings.
Who Killed Shakespeare: What's Happened to English Since the Radical Sixties
by Patrick BrantlingerFirst published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Transcending Boundaries: My Dancing Life (Choreography And Dance Studies #Vol. 22)
by Donald McKayle"First Published in 2002, Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company."
Towards a Poor Theatre (Eyre Methuen Dramabooks Ser.)
by Jerzy GrotowskiOriginally published in 1968, Jerzy Grotowski's groundbreaking book is available once again. As a record of Grotowski's theatrical experiments, this book is an invaluable resource to students and theater practioners alike.
Theatre Sound
by John A. LeonardTheatre Sound includes a brief history of the use of sound in the theatre, discussions of musicals, sound effects, and the recording studio, and even an introduction to the physics and math of sound design. A bibliography and online reference section make this the new essential work for students of theatre and practicing sound designers.
The Rainbow of Desire: The Boal Method of Theatre and Therapy
by Augusto BoalRainbow of Desire is a handbook of exercises with a difference. It is Augusto Boal's bold and brilliant statement about the therapeutic ability of theatre to liberate individuals and change lives. Now translated into English and comprehensively updated from the French, Rainbow of Desire sets out the techniques which help us `see' for the first time the oppressions we have internalised. Boal, a Brazilian theatre director, writer and politician, has been confronting oppression in various forms for over thirty years. His belief that theatre is a means to create the future has inspired hundreds of groups all over the world to use his techniques in a multitude of settings. This, his latest work, includes such exercises as: * The Cops in the Head and their anti-bodies * The screen image * The image of the future we are afraid of * Image and counter-image ....and many more. Rainbow of Desire will make fascinating reading for those already familiar with Boal's work and is also completely accessible to anyone new to Theatre of the Oppressed techniques.
The New York Times Theater Reviews 1997-1998
by C. S. SmithFirst published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
The Modern Monologue: Women
by Michael Earley Philippa KeilFirst published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
The Contemporary Monologue: Women
by Michael EarleyFirst published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Stanislavski and the Actor: The Method of Physical Action (Performance Bks.)
by Jean BenedettiFirst published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.