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Certain Fragments: Texts and Writings on Performance
by Tim EtchellsWhat is the relationship between performance and play? Between performance and technology? Between performance and death? Certain Fragments is an extraordinary exploration of what lies at the heart of contemporary theatre. Written by the artistic director of Forced Entertainment, acknowledged to be Britains most brilliant experimental theatre company (Guardian), Certain Fragments investigates the processes of devising performance, the role of writing in an interdisciplinary theatre, and the influence of the city on contemporary art practice. Tim Etchells unique and provocative voice shifts from intimate anecdote to critical analysis and back again. And as in his theatre-making so in his book: with Certain Fragments Etchells disrupts traditional notions of creative, academic, and intellectual work. The book is an exciting and radical fusion of story-telling and criticism. It also makes available, for the first time, four seminal Forced Entertainment texts by Etchells.
Cerulean Blue
by Drew Hayden TaylorCerulean Blue is a comedic play about a struggling blues band invited to participate in a benefit concert for a First Nation community in conflict with governmental authorities. Upon arriving, the band discovers the entire lineup of musical acts has cancelled and they're left trapped behind barricades. Complicating the matter, there is conflict within the band and the sudden appearance of an old girlfriend makes the event even more perilous. This play is an homage to fast-moving farces while also addressing Aboriginal issues. Cerulean Blue deals with relationships, perceptions, politics, and what to do when you discover you've been dating your first cousin. Add a few spoonfuls of original blues music, and you've got a fun-filled evening. The play was written for a large ensemble cast, which makes it ideal for musical theatre departments in high schools and colleges - every student can play a part. An original musical score by Andrew Clemens will be available for download from Talonbooks.com. Cast of ten women and ten men.
Cet instant où, soudainement, tu ressens le bonheur
by Hitomi IidaUne longue lettre d'amour à mon âme sœur qui me regarde avec nostalgie par-delà le temps et l’espace
Chaim's Love Song
by Marvin ChernoffDramatic comedy / 3m, 4f / Unit set / Chaim Shotsky, a retired mailman in Brooklyn, is an American Tevye who tells his life story to Kelly Burke from Iowa. His exotic tale is rich with vitality. His friends include a philosophical baker, a Holocaust survivor with many secrets, his son and daughter, a matchmaker to end all matchmakers, movie star pigeons and a host of Israelis. Chaim's story, a love song for life, is one of innocence, tragedy, struggle, humor, humanity and ultimately triumph.
The Challenge of World Theatre History
by Steve TillisThe future of theatre history studies requires consideration of theatre as a global phenomenon. The Challenge of World Theatre History offers the first full-scale argument for abandoning an obsolete and parochial Eurocentric approach to theatre history in favor of a more global perspective. This book exposes the fallacies that reinforce the conventional approach and defends the global perspective against possible objections. It moves beyond the conventional nation-based geography of theatre in favor of a regional geography and develops a new way to demarcate the periods of theatre history. Finally, the book outlines a history that recognizes the often-connected developments in theatre across Eurasia and around the world. It makes the case that world theatre history is necessary not only for itself, but for the powerful comparative and contextual insights it offers to all theatre scholars and students, whatever their special areas of interest.
Champagne Charlie and Pretty Jemima: Variety Theater in the Nineteenth Century (Music in American Life #441)
by Gillian M RodgerIn this rich, imaginative survey of variety musical theater, Gillian M. Rodger masterfully chronicles the social history and class dynamics of the robust, nineteenth-century American theatrical phenomenon that gave way to twentieth-century entertainment forms such as vaudeville and comedy on radio and television. Fresh, bawdy, and unabashedly aimed at the working class, variety honed in on its audience's fascinations, emerging in the 1840s as a vehicle to accentuate class divisions and stoke curiosity about gender and sexuality. Cross-dressing acts were a regular feature of these entertainments, and Rodger profiles key male impersonators Annie Hindle and Ella Wesner while examining how both gender and sexuality gave shape to variety. By the last two decades of the nineteenth century, variety theater developed into a platform for ideas about race and whiteness. As some in the working class moved up into the middling classes, they took their affinity for variety with them, transforming and broadening middle-class values. Champagne Charlie and Pretty Jemima places the saloon keepers, managers, male impersonators, minstrels, acrobats, singers, and dancers of the variety era within economic and social contexts by examining the business models of variety shows and their primarily white, working-class urban audiences. Rodger traces the transformation of variety from sexualized entertainment to more family-friendly fare, a domestication that mirrored efforts to regulate the industry, as well as the adoption of aspects of middle-class culture and values by the shows' performers, managers, and consumers.
A Chance to Shine: Independent Reading 18 (Reading Champion #457)
by Jill AtkinsLily hates her athletics training but wants to please her parents, though she'll never be as good as her brother, Abe. One day she spots an audition poster at school and discovers her chance to shine lies on the stage, not on the athletics track ... This first colour chapter book is a perfectly levelled, accessible text for Key stage 2 readers aged 10-11 or in year 6. Reading Champion offers independent reading books for children to practise and reinforce their developing reading skills.Fantastic, original stories are accompanied by engaging artwork and activities to provoke deeper response and encourage writing. Each book has been carefully graded so that it can be matched to a child's reading ability, encouraging reading for pleasure.The Key Stage 2 Reading Champion Books are suggested for use as follows:Independent Reading 11: start of Year 3 or age 7+Independent Reading 12: end of Year 3 or age 7+Independent Reading 13: start of Year 4 or age 8+Independent Reading 14: end of Year 4 or age 8+Independent Reading 15: start of Year 5 or age 9+Independent Reading 16: end of Year 5 or age 9+Independent Reading 17: start of Year 6 or age 10+Independent Reading 18: end of Year 6 or age 10+
The Changeling: Revised Edition (New Mermaids)
by Thomas Middleton William Rowley Michael Neill“The next good mood I find my father in, I'll get him quite discarded” <p><p> With these chillingly offhand words, Beatrice-Joanna, the spoilt daughter of a powerful nobleman, plots to get rid of the family servant who has crossed her once too often. The Changeling's vivid tale of sexual appetite, repulsion, betrayal and lunacy remains one of the most compelling tragedies of the 17th century. Exposing the vexed relationship between servants and masters, setting notions of `change' against the revelation of psychological 'secrets' as ways of explaining human behaviour, and exploring the idea of love as a `tame madness', the play reveals the terrifying consequences of ungoverned sexual appetite and betrayal. Featuring the full and modernized play text, this revised edition includes incisive commentary notes which explain the nuances of the play's vibrant, colloquial language and demonstrate its sly delight in the characters' conscious and unconscious wordplay. Michael Neill's illuminating introduction provides a firm grounding in the play's socio-political context, demonstrates how careful close-reading can expand your enjoyment of the play, explains the play's violent linkage of comic and tragic plots and gives theatrical life to the text via a discussion of its stage history, with a particular emphasis on the most interesting recent productions. <p><p> The New Mermaids plays offer: · Modernized versions of the play text edited to the highest textual standards · Fully annotated student editions with obscure words explained and critical, contextual and staging insight provided on each page · Full Introductions analyzing context, themes, author background and stage history
Changes Of Heart
by MariveauxMarivaux's fabulous Harlequin pursues his country love Silvia to the palace, where the lovelorn Prince holds her against her will. Flaminia, an intriguer at court, attempts to reroute the affections of both Silvia and Harlequin, whose take no prisoners belligerence is softened and transformed. None expect such huge and costly changes of heart and, at the end of a hilarious day full of wonderment, they and others at court are wounded and ennobled by love.
Changing Destiny
by Ben OkriA bold new adaptation of the 4,000-year-old Egyptian poem about Warrior King Sinuhe that captures the essence of civilization and the complexities of immigration, from the Booker Prize–winning author.Forced to flee Egypt, Sinuhe is captured as a prisoner of war by the foreign Kingdom of Retenu. Stripped of status and tormented by memories, Sinuhe will need great force of will to survive as a stranger in an unknown land. But can he transcend the mysterious powers of Egypt and the tribulations of exile?With two actors incarnating a multitude of characters, Ben Okri&’s play recreates one of the world&’s first known stories, a timeless tale about the strength of the human spirit.
The Changing Room: Sex, Drag and Theatre (Gender in Performance)
by Laurence SenelickThe answers to these questions - and much, much more - are to be found in The Changing Room , which traces the origins and variations of theatrical cross-dressing through the ages and across cultures. It examines: * tribal rituals and shamanic practices in the Balkans and Chinese-Tibet * the gender-bending elements of Greek and early Christian religion * the homosexual appeal of the boy actor on the traditional stage of China, Japan and England * the origins of the dame comedian, the principal boy, the glamour drag artiste and the male impersonator * artists such as David Bowie, Boy George, Charles Ludlam, Dame Edna Everage, Lily Savage, Candy Darling, Julian Clary and the New York Dolls. Lavishly illustrated with unusual and rare pictures, this is the first ever cross-cultural study of theatrical transvestism. It is a must for anyone interested in cross-dressing, theatre, and gender.
Changing Styles in Shakespeare
by Ralph BerryFirst published in 1981. Each of Shakespeare's plays is in a continuous state of development in performance. This book examines major changes whilst focusing on six plays in detail: Coriolanus, Measure for Measure, Troilus and Cressida, Henry V, Hamlet and Twelfth Night. Changing Styles in Shakespeare looks at representative and key productions to trace the evolution of each play on today's stage, illustrating how production changes relate to a changed perception of the play, and thus to shifts in social attitudes. It singles out the salient features of many productions, paying special attention to reviews and prompt books.
Changing the Performance: A Companion Guide to Arts, Business and Civic Engagement
by Julia RowntreeA result of many years of research and practice, Changing the Performance is a book about the arts and about business, and the interplay between the two. Julia Rowntree gives a fascinating account of her experiences forging the business sponsorship campaign at the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT). Raising intriguing questions, this book proposes that fundraising for the arts is much more than simply a function for generating income. It fulfils an ancient social role of connection across levels of power, expertise, culture, gender and generation. Rowntree describes why these dynamics are vital to society's ability to adapt. Changing the Performance is an inspiring manual for arts practitioners concerned with the relationship between business, the arts and wider society, and particularly those engaged in fundraising.
Chaos Imagined: Literature, Art, Science
by Martin MeiselThe stories we tell in our attempt to make sense of the world—our myths and religion, literature and philosophy, science and art—are the comforting vehicles we use to transmit ideas of order. But beneath the quest for order lies the uneasy dread of fundamental disorder. True chaos is hard to imagine and even harder to represent. In this book, Martin Meisel considers the long effort to conjure, depict, and rationalize extreme disorder, with all the passion, excitement, and compromises the act provokes.Meisel builds a rough history from major social, psychological, and cosmological turning points in the imagining of chaos. He uses examples from literature, philosophy, painting, graphic art, science, linguistics, music, and film, particularly exploring the remarkable shift in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from conceiving of chaos as disruptive to celebrating its liberating and energizing potential. Discussions of Sophocles, Plato, Lucretius, Calderon, Milton, Haydn, Blake, Faraday, Chekhov, Faulkner, Wells, and Beckett, among others, are matched with incisive readings of art by Brueghel, Rubens, Goya, Turner, Dix, Dada, and the futurists. Meisel addresses the revolution in mapping energy and entropy and the manifold effect of thermodynamics. He then uses this chaotic frame to elaborate on purpose, mortality, meaning, and mind.
Chaps!
by Jahnna Beecham5m, 1f -- Musical Comedy \ Unit Set \ Whoa, Brittania! Panic at the BBC! The year is 1944, America's favorite singing cowboy Tex Riley and his troupe are late for a special broadcast at the BBC in London. Out of desperation, Mabel, their tour manager, and Miles, the frantic young producer, grab whomever they can -- a snobby announcer, an amiable sound man, a passing soap opera actor -- slap them into costume, hand them scripts (after all, it's radio!) and shove them in front of the studio audience. The resulting performance is one England will never forget. Also available in a special holiday version, Chaps! A Jingle Jangle Christmas. \ "...Combine Monty Python and Tex Ritter, and you get a bloody funny singing buckaroo!" -- Herald News, Klamath Falls, OR
Chaps! A Jingle Jangle Christmas
by Jahnna Beecham5m, 2f \ Holiday Musical Comedy \ All Groups -- Unit Set \ Whoa, Brittania! Panic at the BBC! It's Christmas Eve, 1944. America's favorite singing cowboy Tex Riley and his troupe are late for a special holiday broadcast at the BBC. Out of desperation, Mabel, their tour manager, and Miles, the frantic young producer, grab whomever they can -- a snobby announcer, an amiable soundman, a passing soap opera actor -- slap them into costume, hand them scripts (after all, it's radio!) and shove them in front of the studio audience. The resulting performance is one England will never forget full of Christmas songs and quirky cowboy tunes. This is the holiday version of Chaps! \ "...Combine Monty Python and Tex Ritter, and you get a bloody funny singing buckaroo!" -- Herald News , Klamath Falls, OR
Character: The Art of Role and Cast Design for Page, Stage, and Screen
by Robert MckeeThe long-awaited third volume of Robert McKee&’s trilogy on the art of fiction. Following up his perennially bestselling writers' guide Story and his inspiring exploration of the art of verbal action in Dialogue, the most sought-after expert in the storytelling brings his insights to the creation of compelling characters and the design of their casts. CHARACTER explores the design of a character universe: The dimensionality, complexity and arcing of a protagonist, the invention of orbiting major characters, all encircled by a cast of service and supporting roles.
Character and the Individual Personality in English Renaissance Drama: Tragedy, History, Tragicomedy (G - Reference, Information And Interdisciplinary Subjects Ser.)
by John E. CurranCharacter and the Individual Personality in English Renaissance Drama: Tragedy, History, Tragicomedy studies instantiations of the individualistic character in drama, Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean, and some of the Renaissance ideas allowing for and informing them. Setting aside such fraught questions as the history of Renaissance subjectivity and individualism on the one hand and Shakespearean exceptionalism on the other, we can find that in some plays, by a range of different authors and collaborators, a conception has been evidenced of who a particular person is, and has been used to drive the action. This evidence can take into account a number of internal and external factors that might differentiate a person, and can do so drawing on the intellectual context in a number of ways. Ideas with potential to emphasize the special over the general in envisioning the person might come from training in dialectic (thesis vs hypothesis) or in rhetoric (ethopoeia), from psychological frameworks (casuistry, humor theory, and their interpenetration), or from historiography (exemplarity). But though they depicted what we would call personality only intermittently, and with assumptions different from our own about personhood, dramatists sometimes made a priority of representing the workings of a specific mind: the patterns of thought and feeling that set a person off as that person and define that person singularly rather than categorically. Some individualistic characters can be shown to emerge where we do not expect, such as with Fletcherian personae like Amintor, Arbaces, and Montaigne of The Honest Man’s Fortune; some are drawn by playwrights often uninterested in character, such as Chapman’s Bussy D’Ambois, Jonson’s Cicero, and Ford’s Perkin Warbeck; and some appear in being constructed differently from others by the same author, as when Webster’s Bosola is set in contrast to Flamineo, and Marlowe’s Faustus is set against Barabas. But Shakespearean characters are also examined for the particular manner in which each troubles the categorical and exhibits a personality: Othello, Good Duke Humphrey, and Marc Antony. Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
Character and the Supernatural in Shakespeare and Achebe (Routledge Studies in Speculative Fiction)
by Kenneth UsongoThrough mainly a New Historicist critical approach, this book explores how Shakespeare and Achebe employ supernatural devices such as prophecies, dreams, gods/goddesses, beliefs, and divinations to create complex characters. Even though these features indicate the preponderance of the belief in the supernatural by some people of the Elizabethan, Jacobean, and traditional Igbo societies, Shakespeare and Achebe primarily use the supernatural to represent the states of mind of their protagonists. Both writers appropriate supernatural features to mirror tragic flaws such as ambition, arrogance, impulsiveness, and fear that contribute to the downfall of Macbeth, Lear, Okonkwo, and Ezeulu. We relate to some of these characters because they project our inner minds, principal drives that may be hidden within us. Therefore, Shakespeare and Achebe’s preoccupation with the supernatural adds subtlety to their characterization and enhances their readability by situating their art beyond time, place, or particularity.
Character Costume Figure Drawing: Step-by-Step Drawing Methods for Theatre Costume Designers
by Tan HuaixiangCharacter Costume Figure Drawing is an essential guide that will improve your drawing skills and costume renderings. Step-by-step visuals illustrate the how-tos of drawing body parts, costumes, accessories, faces, children, and different character archetypes, such as maternal, elderly, sassy, sexy, and evil. By focusing on the foundations of drawing bodies, including body proportion, bone structure, body masses, facial expressions, and appendages, this guide shows you how to develop sketches from stick figures to full-blown characters. The third edition features a new chapter, Digital Mixed Media Costume Rendering. This chapter introduces the basic usages of Photoshop tools to enhance and improve costume designs, in order to provide easy delivery design ideas to the director and design team, provide easy changes and alterations during the design process, virtually apply actual fabric swatches over costume sketches, and help visualize lighting effects.
Character, Scene, and Story: New Tools from the Dramatic Writer's Companion (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)
by Will DunneWill Dunne first brought the workshop experience down to the desk level with The Dramatic Writer’s Companion, offering practical exercises to help playwrights and screenwriters work through the problems that arise in developing their scripts. Now writers looking to further enhance their storytelling process can turn to Character, Scene, and Story. Featuring forty-two new workshop-tested exercises, this sequel to The Dramatic Writer’s Companion allows writers to dig deeper into their scripts by fleshing out images, exploring characters from an emotional perspective, tapping the power of color and sense memory to trigger ideas, and trying other visceral techniques. The guide also includes a troubleshooting section to help tackle problem scenes. Writers with scripts already in progress will find they can think deeper about their characters and stories. And those who are just beginning to write will find the guidance they need to discover their best starting point. The guide is filled with hundreds of examples, many of which have been developed as both plays and films. Character, Scene, and Story is fully aligned with the new edition of The Dramatic Writer’s Companion, with cross-references between related exercises so that writers have the option to explore a given topic in more depth. While both guides can stand alone, together they give writers more than one hundred tools to develop more vivid characters and craft stronger scripts.
Character Sketch: A Drawing Course for Costume Designers
by Helen Q HuangCharacter Sketch outlines a theory of costume rendering that explores how a designer conceptualizes and creates a character on the page. Beginning with how to develop a sense of character through active, gestural poses, this book explores and explains the process of drawing and painting from rough sketch to finished rendering. Helen Q. Huang 黄其智, an award-winning costume designer for more than 25 years, breaks down her process, from understanding body proportions and active poses to applying research and color concepts to renderings. Her step-by-step watercolor painting techniques cover mixing skin tones, blending colors, and applying paint in different methods for a variety of fabric textures and patterns. Showcasing how to capture a character on the page, Character Sketch is a must-read for any costume designer looking to communicate their artistic vision.
Charles Dickens and the Form of the Novel: Fiction and Narrative in Dickens' Work (Routledge Library Editions: The Nineteenth-Century Novel #8)
by Graham DaldryFirst published in 1987. While there have been commentaries on his humour, his seriousness, his social concerns, and other specific aspects of his work such accounts have only tended to divide our understanding of the novels, to lead us to see them as failures of artistic unity. In this book the author seeks to address this question of unity and find a terminology that can treat language, plot and representation of reality as a coherent imaginative effort. This thesis is worked out in detail with reference to several of the novels, and represents a challenging re-evaluation Dickens’ achievement as a novelist. This book will be if interest to student of literature.
Charles Dickens and the Great Theatre of the World
by Simon CallowAcclaimed actor and writer Simon Callow offers a fresh perspective on one of the greatest novelists in the English language, Charles Dickens, in this lively, colorful biography. Dickens was one of the first true celebrity authors. Thousands of fans in Britain and America eagerly awaited each new installment of his stories and flocked to see him on his legendary speaking tours. Not only did he create an incredible cast of characters on the page, but he was also a dazzling mimic and storyteller, and he wrote, stage-managed, and acted in plays for the public. Throughout his life, from his childhood performances in pubs to his legendarily powerful reading tours, Dickens was fanatical about the stage. Callow reveals Dickens's genius on and off the page and offers a compelling insight into a life that was driven as much by performance and showmanship as by literature.
Charles Ludlam Lives!: Charles Busch, Bradford Louryk, Taylor Mac, and the Queer Legacy of the Ridiculous Theatrical Company
by Sean EdgecombPlaywright, actor and director Charles Ludlam (1943–1987) helped to galvanize the Ridiculous style of theater in New York City starting in the 1960s. Decades after his death, his place in the chronicle of American theater has remained constant, but his influence has changed. Although his Ridiculous Theatrical Company shut its doors, the Ludlamesque Ridiculous has continued to thrive and remain a groundbreaking genre, maintaining its relevance and potency by metamorphosing along with changes in the LGBTQ community. Author Sean F. Edgecomb focuses on the neo-Ridiculous artists Charles Busch, Bradford Louryk, and Taylor Mac to trace the connections between Ludlam’s legacy and their performances, using alternative queer models such as kinetic kinship, lateral historiography, and a new approach to camp. Charles Ludlam Lives! demonstrates that the queer legacy of Ludlam is one of distinct transformation—one where artists can reject faithful interpretations in order to move in new interpretive directions.