- Table View
- List View
Theater Kid: A Broadway Memoir
by Jeffrey SellerA coming-of-age tale from one of the most successful American producers of our time, Jeffrey Seller, who is the only producer to have mounted two Pulitzer Prize–winning musicals—Hamilton and Rent. Before he was producing the musical hits of our generation, Jeffrey was just a kid coming to terms with his adoption, trying to understand his sexuality, and determined to escape his dysfunctional household in a poor neighborhood just outside Detroit. We see him find his voice through musical theater and move to New York, where he is determined to shed his past and make a name for himself on Broadway. But moving to the big city is never easy—especially not at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis—and Jeffrey learns to survive and thrive in the colorful and cutthroat world of commercial theatre. From his early days as an office assistant, to meeting Jonathan Larson and experiencing the triumph and tragedy of Rent, to working with Lin-Manuel Miranda on In the Heights and Hamilton, Jeffrey completely pulls back the curtain on the joyous and gut-wrenching process of making new musicals, finding new audiences, and winning a Tony Award—all the while finding himself. Told with Jeffrey&’s candid and captivating voice, Theater Kid is a gripping memoir about fighting through a hardscrabble childhood to make art on one&’s own terms, chasing a dream against many odds, and finding acceptance and community.
Theater Planning: Facilities for Performing Arts and Live Entertainment
by Gene LeitermannThis book introduces the concepts of theater planning, and provides a detailed guide to the process and the technical requirements particular to theater buildings. Part I is a guide to the concepts and practices of architecture and construction, as applied to performing arts buildings. Part II is a guide to the design of performing arts buildings, with detailed descriptions of the unique requirements of these buildings. Each concept is illustrated with line drawings and examples from the author’s extensive professional practice. This book is written for students in Theatre Planning courses, along with working practitioners.
Theater after Film
by Martin HarriesA study of the impact of film and mass culture on drama after World War II. In Theater after Film, Martin Harries argues that after 1945, as cinema became omnipresent in popular culture, theater had to respond to cinema’s hegemony. Theater couldn’t break that hegemony, but it could provide a zone of contestation. Theater made film’s domination of the cultural field visible through hyperbole, refusal, and other strategies, thereby unsettling its power. Postwar theatrical experiment, Harries shows, often channeled and represented film’s mass cultural force, while knowing that it could never possess that force. Throughout the book, Harries brings critical theory into contact with theories of performance. Although Theater after Film treats the theatrical work of many figures, its central focus falls on Tennessee Williams, Samuel Beckett, and Adrienne Kennedy. Discussions of these dramatists consider their ways of addressing spectators, the politics of race between film and theater, and the place of the theatrical apparatus. Readings of these central figures in twentieth-century theater exemplify the book’s historical engagement with the media surround that drama confronted. This confrontation, Harries shows, was central to the development of some of the most continually compelling postwar drama.
Theater and Cultural Politics for a New World: An Anthology
by Chinua ThelwellTheater and Cultural Politics for a New World presents a radical re-examination of the ways in which demographic shifts will impact theater and performance culture in the twenty-first century. Editor Chinua Thelwell brings together the revealing insights of artists, scholars, and organizers to produce a unique intersectional conversation about the transformative potential of theater. Opening with a case study of the New WORLD Theater and moving on to a fascinating range of essays, the book looks at five main themes: Changing demographics Future aesthetics Making institutional space Critical multiculturalism Polyculturalism
Theater and World: The Problematics of Shakespeare's History (Routledge Revivals)
by Jonathan HartFirst published in 1992, Theater and World is a detailed exploration of Shakespeare’s representation of history and how it affects the relation between theatre and world. The book focuses primarily on the Second Tetralogy (Richard II, Henry IV Part I, Henry IV Part II, and Henry V) and includes a wealth of analysis and interpretation of the plays. In doing so, it explores a wide range of topics, including the relation between literary and theatrical representations and the world; the nature of illusion and reality; genre; the connection between history and fiction (especially plays); historiography and literary criticism or theory; poetry and philosophy; and irony, both rhetorical and philosophical. Theater and World continues to have lasting relevance for anyone with an interest in Shakespeare’s words and his representation of history in particular.
Theater auf der Suche nach dem Anderen und dem Unbekannten: Metaphern und (Be-)Deutungen theatraler Forschung
by Maria MilbertForschendes Theater, theatrale Feldforschung, performative Forschung – solche Begriffe prägen inzwischen das Theater einschließlich der Theaterpädagogik. Sie stehen dafür, im Rahmen von Gruppenprozessen mit den Mitteln des Theaters zu forschen. Was aber bedeutet hier ‚Forschung‘? In Praxis und Analysen finden sich unterschiedliche, meist in Metaphern ausgedrückte Verständnisse. Die Studie analysiert daher sprachliche Bilder theatralen Forschens mit systematischer Metaphernanalyse, und zwar anhand von Interviews mit Forschenden aus der Theaterkunst, -pädagogik und dem Darstellenden Spiel sowie anhand künstlerischer Theorien. Dabei wird deutlich, dass theatrale Forschung stets eine Auseinandersetzung mit dem Verhältnis von Wissenschaft und Kunst impliziert. Zudem steht sie in einem Spannungsfeld zwischen dem Anderen und dem Unbekannten: Forschende suchen nach neuen Strategien und Erkenntnissen, gehen aber gleichzeitig davon aus, dass ihre Forschung nie abgeschlossen werden kann. Sie zielt auch auf das Nichtwissen, auf individuelle Erfahrung und unrealisierbare Wünsche – auf das Andere.
Theater for Beginners
by Richard MaxwellRichard Maxwell, the downtown writer and director with a deadpan aesthetic and an ever-innovative body of work, has written a quasi-study guide to the art of making theater according to his "affecting affectless technique" (New York Times...) This illuminating volume will provide students and artists with a deeper understanding of Maxwell's work, aesthetic philosophy, and process for creating theater.
Theater of Cruelty
by Ian BurumaIan Buruma is fascinated, he writes, "by what makes the human species behave atrociously." In Theater of Cruelty the acclaimed author of The Wages of Guilt and Year Zero: A History of 1945 once again turns to World War II to explore that question--to the Nazi occupation of Paris, the Allied bombing of German cities, the international controversies over Anne Frank's diaries, Japan's militarist intellectuals and its kamikaze pilots. One way that people respond to power and cruelty, Buruma argues, is through art, and the art that most interests him reveals the dark impulses beneath the veneer of civilized behavior. This is what draws him to German and Japanese artists such as Max Beckmann, George Grosz, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Mishima Yukio, and Yokoo Tadanori, as well as to filmmakers such as Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Kurosawa Kiyoshi, and Hans-Jürgen Syberberg. All were affected by fascism and its terrible consequences; all "looked into the abyss and made art of what they saw."Whether he is writing in this wide-ranging collection about war, artists, or film--or about David Bowie's music, R. Crumb's drawings, the Palestinians of the West Bank, or Asian theme parks--Ian Buruma brings sympathetic historical insight and shrewd aesthetic judgment to understanding the diverse ways that people deal with violence and cruelty in life and in art.Theater of Cruelty includes eight pages of color and black & white images.
Theater of the Mind: Imagination, Aesthetics, and American Radio Drama
by Neil VermaFor generations, fans and critics have characterized classic American radio drama as a "theater of the mind. " This book unpacks that characterization by recasting the radio play as an aesthetic object within its unique historical context. In Theater of the Mind, Neil Verma applies an array of critical methods to more than six thousand recordings to produce a vivid new account of radio drama from the Depression to the Cold War. In this sweeping exploration of dramatic conventions, Verma investigates legendary dramas by the likes of Norman Corwin, Lucille Fletcher, and Wyllis Cooper on key programs ranging from The Columbia Workshop, The Mercury Theater on the Air, and Cavalcade of America to Lights Out!, Suspense, and Dragnet to reveal how these programs promoted and evolved a series of models of the imagination. With close readings of individual sound effects and charts of broad trends among formats, Verma not only gives us a new account of the most flourishing form of genre fiction in the mid-twentieth century but also presents a powerful case for the central place of the aesthetics of sound in the history of modern experience.
Theater of the Mind: Imagination, Aesthetics, and American Radio Drama
by Neil VermaFor generations, fans and critics have characterized classic American radio drama as a “theater of the mind.” This book unpacks that characterization by recasting the radio play as an aesthetic object within its unique historical context. In Theater of the Mind, Neil Verma applies an array of critical methods to more than six thousand recordings to produce a vivid new account of radio drama from the Depression to the Cold War.In this sweeping exploration of dramatic conventions, Verma investigates legendary dramas by the likes of Norman Corwin, Lucille Fletcher, and Wyllis Cooper on key programs ranging from The Columbia Workshop, The Mercury Theater on the Air, and Cavalcade of America to Lights Out!, Suspense, and Dragnet to reveal how these programs promoted and evolved a series of models of the imagination.With close readings of individual sound effects and charts of broad trends among formats, Verma not only gives us a new account of the most flourishing form of genre fiction in the mid-twentieth century but also presents a powerful case for the central place of the aesthetics of sound in the history of modern experience.
Theater of the People
by David Kawalko RoselliGreek drama has been subject to ongoing textual and historical interpretation, but surprisingly little scholarship has examined the people who composed the theater audiences in Athens. Typically, scholars have presupposed an audience of Athenian male citizens viewing dramas created exclusively for themselves-a model that reduces theater to little more than a medium for propaganda. Women's theater attendance remains controversial, and little attention has been paid to the social class and ethnicity of the spectators. Whose theater was it? Producing the first book-length work on the subject, David Kawalko Roselli draws on archaeological and epigraphic evidence, economic and social history, performance studies, and ancient stories about the theater to offer a wide-ranging study that addresses the contested authority of audiences and their historical constitution. Space, money, the rise of the theater industry, and broader social forces emerge as key factors in this analysis. In repopulating audiences with foreigners, slaves, women, and the poor, this book challenges the basis of orthodox interpretations of Greek drama and places the politically and socially marginal at the heart of the theater. Featuring an analysis of the audiences of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Menander, Theater of the People brings to life perhaps the most powerful influence on the most prominent dramatic poets of their day.
Theater of the Void: Plasticity, Hauntology, and Nuclear Blast (Signale: Modern German Letters, Cultures, and Thought)
by Teresa KovacsTheater of the Void explores contemporary German theater in the aftermath of the technology of the atomic bomb. Informed by threats of total annihilation—whether through nuclear technology or, more recently, global warming—German-language theater since the late 1970s encounters the void not as empty space or nothingness but as the possibility of radical transformation. Theater of the Void investigates theatrical forms that transform fundamental categories of time, space, and causality in light of the ontological and epistemological shifts of the nuclear age. Teresa Kovacs focuses on four directors and playwrights whose works offer insights into the theater of the void: Heiner Müller, Elfriede Jelinek, Christoph Schlingensief, and René Pollesch. Kovacs shows that contemporary German theater has not turned away from the sciences after Hiroshima and Nagasaki but has remained entangled with scientific thinking about quantum physics, biology, and the environment. Investigating these entanglements, Theater of the Void finds in the works of these German theater-makers a grammar of the void that speaks to the possibilities of a transformed theater in the Anthropocene.
Theater of the World: The Maps that Made History
by Thomas Reinertsen BergA beautifully illustrated full-color history of mapmaking across centuries-- a must-read for history buffs and armchair travelers. Theater of the World offers a fascinating history of mapmaking, using the visual representation of the world through time to tell a new story about world history and the men who made it. Thomas Reinertsen Berg takes us all the way from the mysterious symbols of the Stone Age to Google Earth, exploring how the ability to envision what the world looked like developed hand in hand with worldwide exploration. Along the way, we meet visionary geographers and heroic explorers along with other unknown heroes of the map-making world, both ancient and modern. And the stunning visual material allows us to witness the extraordinary breadth of this history with our own eye
Theater: A Crash Course
by Rob GrahamHere's a ticket to instant sophistication for anyone who delves into this loving celebration of theater art, past and present, scripted in a lighthearted but highly instructive voice. Whisked on a world tour, readers have a box seat at events ranging from ancient ritual plays and classic Greek tragedy/comedy through medieval, Elizabethan, Jacobean, Restoration, Mystic, Realist, and Expressionist works. Traditions as diverse as Islamic, Russian, American, French, Irish, African, Scandinavian, Japanese, Chinese, and many others are outlined, taking in every continent and numerous cultures through the ages. Rob Graham is both a senior lecturer on theater and head of film and television studies at Brunel University in England.
Theater: Participatory Performance And The Making Of Meaning
by Scott MagelssenAt an ecopark in Mexico, tourists pretend to be illegal migrants, braving inhospitable terrain and the U. S. Border Patrol as they attempt to cross the border. At a living history museum in Indiana, daytime visitors return after dark to play fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad. In the Mojave Desert, the U. S. Army simulates entire provinces of Iraq and Afghanistan, complete with bustling villages, insurgents, and Arabic-speaking townspeople, to train soldiers for deployment to the Middle East. At a nursing home, trainees put on fogged glasses and earplugs, thick bands around their finger joints, and sandbag harnesses to simulate the effects of aging and to gain empathy for their patients. These immersive environments in which spectator-participants engage in simulations of various kinds—or “simming”—are the subject of Scott Magelssen’s book. His book lays out the ways in which simming can provide efficacy and promote social change through affective, embodied testimony. Using methodology from theater history and performance studies (particularly as these fields intersect with cultural studies, communication, history, popular culture, and American studies), Magelssen explores the ways these representational practices produce, reify, or contest cultural and societal perceptions of identity.
Theatercontrolling: Trends, Herausforderungen und Perspektiven aus Theorie und Praxis
by Tom Koch Petra Schneidewind Bettina ReinhartDas Führen von Theatern und Orchestern ist heute möglicherweise so komplex wie nie zuvor. Die Auswirkungen von Corona-Krise, Inflation, Fachkräftemangel, Nachhaltigkeitsbestrebungen und viele weitere Faktoren stellen die Bühnenbetriebe vor enorme Herausforderungen. Das Controlling mit der zentralen Funktion der Zielsteuerung muss sich diesen Herausforderungen nicht nur reaktiv stellen, sondern neue, auch kreative und zukunftsweisende Lösungen finden. Es gilt, sich proaktiv auf die Herausforderungen der Zukunft einzustellen und strategisch zu positionieren. Anlässlich des zehnjährigen Bestehens des „Forum Theatercontrolling“ greifen Autor*innen aus Theorie und Praxis aktuelle Themen auf, anhand derer sie die Handlungsfelder und Potenziale für ein zukunftsorientiertes Theatercontrolling diskutieren. Dazu gehören neben an Bedeutung gewinnenden Aufgabenfeldern wie Nachhaltigkeits-, Risiko-, Personal- oder Marketingcontrolling auch methodische Fragen wie Agilität oder Digitalisierung im Controlling. Nicht zuletzt werden personelle Themen wie die strategische Rolle von Controller*innen, Generationenwechsel und Nachwuchskräfte oder lebenslanges Lernen behandelt.
Theaters of Anatomy: Students, Teachers, and Traditions of Dissection in Renaissance Venice
by Cynthia KlestinecOf enduring historical and contemporary interest, the anatomy theater is where students of the human body learn to isolate structures in decaying remains, scrutinize their parts, and assess their importance. Taking a new look at the history of anatomy, Cynthia Klestinec places public dissections alongside private ones to show how the anatomical theater was both a space of philosophical learning, which contributed to a deeper scientific analysis of the body, and a place where students learned to behave, not with ghoulish curiosity, but rather in a civil manner toward their teachers, their peers, and the corpse. Klestinec argues that the drama of public dissection in the Renaissance (which on occasion included musical accompaniment) served as a ploy to attract students to anatomical study by way of anatomy’s philosophical dimensions rather than its empirical offerings. While these venues have been the focus of much scholarship, the private traditions of anatomy comprise a neglected and crucial element of anatomical inquiry. Klestinec shows that in public anatomies, amid an increasingly diverse audience—including students and professors, fishmongers and shoemakers—anatomists emphasized the conceptual framework of natural philosophy, whereas private lessons afforded novel visual experiences where students learned about dissection, observed anatomical particulars, considered surgical interventions, and eventually speculated on the mechanical properties of physiological functions. Theaters of Anatomy focuses on the post-Vesalian era, the often-overlooked period in the history of anatomy after the famed Andreas Vesalius left the University of Padua. Drawing on the letters and testimony of Padua's medical students, Klestinec charts a new history of anatomy in the Renaissance, one that characterizes the role of the anatomy theater and reconsiders the pedagogical debates and educational structure behind human dissection.
Theaters of Pardoning (Corpus Juris: The Humanities in Politics and Law)
by Bernadette MeylerFrom Gerald Ford's preemptive pardon of Richard Nixon and Donald Trump's claims that as president he could pardon himself to the posthumous royal pardon of Alan Turing, the power of the pardon has a powerful hold on the political and cultural imagination. In Theaters of Pardoning, Bernadette Meyler traces the roots of contemporary understandings of pardoning to tragicomic "theaters of pardoning" in the drama and politics of seventeenth-century England. Shifts in how pardoning was represented on the stage and discussed in political tracts and in Parliament reflected the transition from a more monarchical and judgment-focused form of the concept to an increasingly parliamentary and legislative vision of sovereignty.Meyler shows that on the English stage, individual pardons of revenge subtly transformed into more sweeping pardons of revolution, from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, where a series of final pardons interrupts what might otherwise have been a cycle of revenge, to later works like John Ford's The Laws of Candy and Philip Massinger's The Bondman, in which the exercise of mercy prevents the overturn of the state itself. In the political arena, the pardon as a right of kingship evolved into a legal concept, culminating in the idea of a general amnesty, the "Act of Oblivion," for actions taken during the English Civil War. Reconceiving pardoning as law-giving effectively displaced sovereignty from king to legislature, a shift that continues to attract suspicion about the exercise of pardoning. Only by breaking the connection between pardoning and sovereignty that was cemented in seventeenth-century England, Meyler concludes, can we reinvigorate the pardon as a democratic practice.
Theatre
by David MametIf theatre were a religion, explains David Mamet in his opening chapter, "many of the observations and suggestions in this book might be heretical." As always, Mamet delivers on his promise: in Theatre, the acclaimed author of Glengarry Glen Ross and Speed the Plow calls for nothing less than the death of the director and the end of acting theory. For Mamet, either actors are good or they are non-actors, and good actors generally work best without the interference of a director, however well-intentioned. Issue plays, political correctness, method actors, impossible directions, Stanislavksy, and elitists all fall under Mamet's critical gaze. To students, teachers, and directors who crave a blast of fresh air in a world that can be insular and fearful of change, Theatre throws down a gauntlet that challenges everyone to do better, including Mamet himself.
Theatre & Change in South Africa (Contemporary Theatre Studies #Vol. 12.)
by Anne Fuchs Geoffrey DavisFirst Published in 1997. Can South African theatre continue to maintain its autonomy and exercise its critical role? Can one rethink form and find new content? Can a concept of post-protest theatre be developed? How might theatre contribute to post-apartheid soceity? These are just of the questions addressed in this book. The real and present difficulties South Africian theatre is facing, as well as possible future orientations, are clearly shown, at one of the most complex moments of political transition in the history of the South African society. The authors include contributions from playwrights, actors, visual artists, poets, directors, administrators, critics and theatre academics. Their comments and thoughts portray the active process of reflection and reappraisal, redefining their artistic and political aims, searching for new and vital theatrical forms.
Theatre & Stage Photography: A Guide to Capturing Images of Theatre, Dance, Opera, and Other Performance Events
by William KenyonDocumenting theatrical and stage events under the often dramatic lighting designed for the production provides a number of specific photographic challenges, and is unlike most every other branch of photography. Theatre & Stage Photography provides an overview of basic photography as it applies to "available-light" situations, and will move both basic and experienced photographers through the process of accurately capturing both the production process and the resultant performance. The book is accompanied by additional web content found at stagephoto.org, including tutorials, author blog, a photo gallery, and more resources.
Theatre (Brief Edition), 9th Edition
by Robert CohenThis lively introduction to theatre offers equal measures of appreciation of theatrical arts and descriptions of the collaborative theatrical crafts. The author's enthusiasm for and knowledge of the current theatre, highlighted by contemporary production shots from around the world, put the students in the front row.
Theatre Across Oceans: Mediators of Transatlantic Exchange, 1890–1925 (Transnational Theatre Histories)
by Nic LeonhardtTheatre Across Oceans: Mediators Of Transatlantic Exchange allows the reader to enter and understand the infrastructural 'backstage area' of global cultural mobility during the years between 1890 and 1925. Located within the research fields of global history and theory, the geographical focus of the book is a transatlantic one, based on the active exchange in this phase between North and South America and Europe. Emanating from a rich body of archival material, the study argues that this exchange was essentially facilitated and controlled by professional theatrical mediators (agents, brokers), who have not been sufficiently researched within theatre or historical studies. The low visibility of mediators in the scientific research is in diametrical contrast to the enormous power that they possessed in the period dealt with in this book.
Theatre After Empire
by Harvey Young Megan E. GeignerEmphasizing the resilience of theatre arts in the midst of significant political change, Theatre After Empire spotlights the emergence of new performance styles in the wake of collapsed political systems. Centering on theatrical works from the late nineteenth century to the present, twelve original essays written by prominent theatre scholars showcase the development of new work after social revolutions, independence campaigns, the overthrow of monarchies, and world wars. Global in scope, this book features performances occurring across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. The essays attend to a range of live events—theatre, dance, and performance art—that stage subaltern experiences and reveal societies in the midst of cultural, political, and geographic transition. This collection is an engaging resource for students and scholars of theatre and performance; world history; and those interested in postcolonialism, multiculturalism, and transnationalism.
Theatre After Empire
by Harvey YoungEmphasizing the resilience of theatre arts in the midst of significant political change, Theatre After Empire spotlights the emergence of new performance styles in the wake of collapsed political systems.Centering on theatrical works from the late nineteenth century to the present, twelve original essays written by prominent theatre scholars showcase the development of new work after social revolutions, independence campaigns, the overthrow of monarchies, and world wars. Global in scope, this book features performances occurring across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. The essays attend to a range of live events—theatre, dance, and performance art—that stage subaltern experiences and reveal societies in the midst of cultural, political, and geographic transition.This collection is an engaging resource for students and scholars of theatre and performance; world history; and those interested in postcolonialism, multiculturalism, and transnationalism.The Introduction ("Framing Latine Theatre and Performance") of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.