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Costume in Motion: A Guide to Collaboration for Costume Design and Choreography
by Shura PollatsekCostume in Motion is a guide to all stages of the collaboration process between costume designers and choreographers, documenting a wide range of approaches to the creation of a dance piece. Featuring interviews with a diverse selection of over 40 choreographers and designers, in-depth case studies of works by leading dance companies, and stunning original photography, the book explores the particular challenges and creative opportunities of designing for the body in motion. Filled with examples of successful collaborations in contemporary and modern dance, as well as a wide range of other styles, Costume in Motion provides costume designers and choreographers with a greater understanding of the field from the other’s perspective. The book is designed to be part of the curriculum for an undergraduate or graduate level course in costume design or choreography, and it can also be an enriching read for artists at any stage of their careers wishing to hone their collaboration skills in dance.
Costume in the Comedies of Aristophanes
by Gwendolyn Compton-EngleThis book offers an interpretation of the handling of costume in the plays of the fifth-century comic poet Aristophanes. Drawing on both textual and material evidence from the fourth- and fifth-century Greek world, it examines three layers of costume: the bodysuit worn by the actors, the characters' clothes, and the additional layering of disguise. A chapter is also devoted to the inventive costumes of the comic chorus. Going beyond describing what costumes looked like, the book focuses instead on the dynamics of costume as it is manipulated by characters in the performance of plays. The book argues that costume is used competitively, as characters handle each other's costumes and poets vie for status using costume. This argument is informed by performance studies and by analyses of gender and the body.
Costumers at Work: The Collaborative Creativity, Emotional Labour, and Technical Skill of Costume Creation (Studies in Costume as Scenographic Practice and Technical Craft)
by Madeline TaylorCostumers at Work: The Collaborative Creativity, Emotional Labour, and Technical Skill of Costume Creation explores the various forms of work carried out in the costume workshop by the myriads of skilled professionals who transform ideas and sketches into the wearable costumes seen on stage.Costume work, as collective, collaborative, and material labour produced by a predominantly female workforce, has been long overlooked by the performance industry and those who study it. This book exposes the inherent tensions between theatre’s strict hierarchies and collaborative ideology and how these inform the structures negotiated day to day by costumers as they carry out their work. Through close attention to their work, the book establishes costumers’ work as collaborative and complex, a creative and emotional labour that contributes to enhanced storytelling, actor performance, and audience experience. Using extensive ethnographic observation conducted over 14 months at three professional theatre costume workshops around Australia, combined with extant interviews and research from across the globe, Costumers at Work provides explicit theories and guidance about the behaviours, skills, and communication modes that make costume collaboration more effective and enjoyable.This book is written for costume researchers, practitioners, and students of theatrical costume design and construction, along with theatre scholars broadly.
Costuming the Shakespearean Stage: Visual Codes of Representation in Early Modern Theatre and Culture (Studies In Performance And Early Modern Drama Ser.)
by Robert I. LublinAlthough scholars have long considered the material conditions surrounding the production of early modern drama, until now, no book-length examination has sought to explain what was worn on the period's stages and, more importantly, how articles of apparel were understood when seen by contemporary audiences. Robert Lublin's new study considers royal proclamations, religious writings, paintings, woodcuts, plays, historical accounts, sermons, and legal documents to investigate what Shakespearean actors actually wore in production and what cultural information those costumes conveyed. Four of the chapters of Costuming the Shakespearean Stage address 'categories of seeing': visually based semiotic systems according to which costumes constructed and conveyed information on the early modern stage. The four categories include gender, social station, nationality, and religion. The fifth chapter examines one play, Thomas Middleton's A Game at Chess, to show how costumes signified across the categories of seeing to establish a play's distinctive semiotics and visual aesthetic.
Così Vicino Al Cielo, Così Lontano Dal Paradiso
by Ronyfer Roberto CiampiDi fronte alla disperazione di raggiungere la libertà e i sogni infranti, migliaia di cubani decidono di abbandonare la loro terra natale con qualunque mezzo.Daniel segue le orme di suo padre. Dopo aver perso tutto, decide di andare in esilio in Canada.Per la prima volta nella sua vita, ormai vecchio, malato e stanco scopre l'amore. È grazie a Lorena, un infermiera non più giovanissima che Daniel ritrova la speranza e la fede perduta. Sarà lei, con un soffio, a ridargli la vita e la gioia.Nel tramonto della vita il destino ha in serbo per lui una sorpresa. Un miracolo o una semplice coincidenza del destino?
Count Dracula (Tiller)
by Bram StokerMystery Comedy / 7m, 2f / This is a witty version of the story of a suave vampire whose passion is sinking teeth into the throats of young women. There are many surprising but uncomplicated stage effects including mysterious disappearances, secret panels, howling wolves and bats that fly over the audience. Magically, Dracula vanishes in full view of the spectators.
Country House: Polish Theatre Archive
by Stanislav I. Witkiewicz D. GerouldCountry House, a ''comedy with corpses,'' is a wicked subversion of all those realistic psychological dramas of jealousy, adultery, murder and suicide that ask to be taken seriously. Witkacy's send-up assumes the form of a ghost story full of surprises, in the course of which an entire family of four is gleefully dispatched to the other world. When it was first performed in 1923 in Torun, Country House was judged unsuitable for the general public because it derided moral, social and dramatic convention. Three years later, as directed by the playwright himself in Lwów, the drama proved an unexpected success with audiences (although it only ran for four nights) and ever since has been among Witkacy's most frequently performed works. Today we can appreciate Country House not only as a systematic demolition of stage realism, but also as an anxious probing of the elusive boundaries between life and death, exposing the ''dark places'' of the human psyche that make us laugh nervously.
Courageous
by Michael HealeyA play in two acts, Healey introduces two sets of characters. In the first, a lawyer and his partner seek a civil ceremony, but are stopped when the officiant won’t perform a homosexual marriage because tenets of his religious beliefs won’t allow it. But tensions only mount when they learn that the officiant himself is openly gay. In the second act, a young couple decide to marry to secure a family for their unborn child, despite their poor financial situation. Facing eviction, the husband—a young Aboriginal man—meets his new neighbour, a refugee from Somalia, and they become fast friends. As the young couple finds happiness, prosperity, and friendship, their competing civil rights tears that friendship apart.Nominated for the 2010 Governor General's Literary Award for Drama
Courtesans and Cuckolds: A Glossary of Renaissance Dramatic Bawdy (Routledge Library Editions: Renaissance Drama)
by James T. HenkeThis title, first published in 1979, is a glossary of the bawdy vocabulary that was used in Renaissance Drama. One of the primary functions of this gloss of literary bawdy is to interpret imaginative uses of the language rather than simply record the generally accepted uses and meanings, with its principal task to make the dialogue of the plays more intelligible to the reader. With examples of bawdy language used in the works of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and John Webster amongst many others, this title will be of great interest to students of literature and performance studies.
Cousin Betty
by Honoré De BalzacLa Cousine Bette (French pronunciation: [la kuzin bɛt], Cousin Bette) is an 1846 novel by French author Honoré de Balzac. Set in mid-19th century Paris, it tells the story of an unmarried middle-aged woman who plots the destruction of her extended family. Bette works with Valérie Marneffe, an unhappily married young lady, to seduce and torment a series of men. One of these is Baron Hector Hulot, husband to Bette's cousin Adeline. He sacrifices his family's fortune and good name to please Valérie, who leaves him for a tradesman named Crevel. The book is part of the Scènes de la vie parisienne section of Balzac's novel sequence La Comédie humaine ("The Human Comedy").
Cousin Pons
by Honoré De BalzacMild, harmless and ugly to behold, the impoverished Pons is an ageing musician whose brief fame has fallen to nothing. Living a placid Parisian life as a bachelor in a shared apartment with his friend Schmucke, he maintains only two passions: a devotion to fine dining in the company of wealthy but disdainful relatives, and a dedication to the collection of antiques. When these relatives become aware of the true value of his art collection, however, their sneering contempt for the parasitic Pons rapidly falls away as they struggle to obtain a piece of the weakening man's inheritance. Taking its place in the Human Comedy as a companion to Cousin Bette, the darkly humorous Cousin Pons is among of the last and greatest of Balzac's novels concerning French urban society: a cynical, pessimistic but never despairing consideration of human nature.
Cousins
by Athol FugardIn this remarkable memoir, Athol Fugard, author of The Road to Mecca, A Lesson From Aloes, Master Harold...and the boys, Valley Song and numerous other works for the stage, paints a moving study of his early years in South Africa. Cousins focuses on Fugard's relationship with his two cousins and their impact, which led the author to a lifelong pursuit of a writing career.
Coward the Dramatist: Morals and Manners (Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries)
by Roger KojeckyDiscussions of Coward’s achievement in the theatre between 1920 and 1966 have tended to stay with the colourful biography. The more analytical literary approach adopted here places Coward’s success in its wider theatrical context, making the connections with the work of other dramatists. He developed his technique according to what worked with theatre audiences. Taking up the well-made play, he brought in a more colloquial dialogue, explored, for instance, the morality and psychology of marriage and free love, and frequently exploited the dramatic possibilities of characters grouped into two camps. The book considers both the ‘pleasant’ and ‘unpleasant’ plays (to use the Shavian terms), and the episodic patriotic plays. It Includes Coward’s ambivalent approach to the ‘theatre of war’ in the 20th century. (123)
Crafting Short Screenplays That Connect
by Claudia Hunter JohnsonCrafting Short Screenplays That Connect, Sixth Edition, stands alone among screenwriting books by emphasizing that human connection, though often overlooked, is as essential to writing effective screenplays as conflict.Award-winning writer and director Claudia Hunter Johnson teaches you the all-important basics of dramatic technique and guides you through the challenging craft of writing short screenplays with carefully focused exercises of increasing length and complexity. In completing these exercises and applying Johnson’s techniques and insights to your own work, you will learn how to think more deeply about the screenwriter’s purpose, craft effective patterns of human change, and strengthen your storytelling skills. This 25th Anniversary Edition features 11 short screenplays, including Academy Award winning Barry Jenkins’ (Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk) luminous short film, My Josephine (now in the Criterion Collection), and an accompanying companion website that features the completed films and additional screenplay examples. The book has also been updated and expanded to include more excerpts from leading films and TV series as well as collaboration exercises and invaluable guidance about giving and receiving effective feedback.This ground-breaking book will show you how to advance and deepen your screenwriting skills, increasing your ability to write richer, more resonant short screenplays that will connect with your audience. It remains an absolute must have resource for students of screenwriting.
Crafts And Creative Media In Therapy
by Carol Crellin Tubbs Margaret DrakeEngagement in crafts and other creative activities is making a comeback as an established method in the occupational therapy rehabilitation process. With the profession promoting a return to purposeful activity and “occupation” as key components of treatment, the Fourth Edition of Crafts and Creative Media in Therapy will continue to be a leading resource.
Cranford
by Elizabeth Cleghorn GaskellA portrait of the residents of an English country town in the mid nineteenth century, Cranford relates the adventures of Miss Matty and Miss Deborah, two middle-aged spinster sisters striving to live with dignity in reduced circumstances. Through a series of vignettes, Elizabeth Gaskell portrays a community governed by old-fashioned habits and dominated by friendships between women. Her wry account of rural life is undercut, however, by tragedy in its depiction of such troubling events as Matty's bankruptcy, the violent death of Captain Brown or the unwitting cruelty of Peter Jenkyns. Written with acute observation, Cranford is by turns affectionate, moving and darkly satirical.
Crawl, Fade to White
by Sheila CallaghanComedy / 2m, 3f / Simple Set A scream is heard throughout the stratosphere. It is the voice of the lamp. Louise is selling this expensive family heirloom to keep her daughter April in school and cease her more sordid "consultant" profession. April rushes home with lover in tow to halt the proceedings and save the lamp, but it has been intercepted by a quiet and bizarre middle-aged couple with a haunting secret. Attempts to reclaim the lamp are made, as a misplaced father slowly fades to white in the background. "...A gutsy writer with a gift for creating vivid images rooted in the emotional life of her characters." - The New York Times "...Troubled and precocious college dropout April is described to her mother, Louise, as 'stunningly brilliant' - a line that fits her creator, Sheila Callaghan. The odd characters populating Crawl, Fade to White frantically eat dirt and twist menacingly. Audiences trying to process this engagingly quirky new play might find themselves gaping 'like they're watching the cosmos disrobe.'" - Time Out New York
Crazy and a Half
by D. R. AndersenSix comedies / 2m, 2f, to play 12 characters / Interiors / Six insanely hilarious and touching short plays take a sly look at therapists, patients and the way love drives everyone just a little over the edge. The first three, collectively called New York Crazy, deal with two therapists fighting for the only hour left in their shrink's day, a divorced couple struggling over custody of their dog Harry, and a shy Mafia wife demanding, with gun in hand, that her therapist make her happy. California Crazy shifts to the west coast for three equally funny sessions: an annoyed psychiatrist tries to end therapy with a burnt out rock star who can only sleep soundly during his weekly sessions; a wacky young woman teaches a stuffy head doctor a thing or two about love; and a married couple with intergalactic problems seeks treatment with a husband and wife team of marriage counselors who are on the verge of divorce themselves. Whether performed individually or as a two act, full length entertainment, the laughter will be therapeutic.
Creating A Role
by Constantin StanislavskiCreating a Roleis the culmination of Stanislavski's masterful trilogy on the art of acting. An Actor Preparesfocused on the inner training of an actor's imagination. Building a Characterdetailed how the actor's body and voice could be tuned for the great roles he might fill. This third volume examines the development of a character from the viewpoint of three widely contrasting plays: Griboyedov's Woe from Wit, Shakespeare's Othello, and Gogol's The Inspector General. Building on the first two books, Stanislavski demonstrates how a fully realized character is born in three stages: "studying it; establishing the life of the role; putting it into physical form."Tracing the actor's process from the first reading to production, he explores how to approach roles from inside and outside simultaneously. He shows how to recount the story in actor's terms, how to create an inner life that will give substance to the author's words, and how to search into one's own experiences to connect with the character's situation. Finally, he speaks of the physical expression of the character in gestures, sounds, intonation, and speech. Throughout, a picture of a real artist at work emerges, sometimes failing, but always seeking truthful answers.
Creating A Role (Bloomsbury Revelations Ser.)
by Constantin StanislavskiCreating a Roleis the culmination of Stanislavski's masterful trilogy on the art of acting. An Actor Prepares focused on the inner training of an actor's imagination. Building a Characterdetailed how the actor's body and voice could be tuned for the great roles he might fill. This third volume examines the development of a character from the viewpoint of three widely contrasting plays: Griboyedov's Woe from Wit, Shakespeare's Othello, and Gogol's The Inspector General. Building on the first two books, Stanislavski demonstrates how a fully realized character is born in three stages: "studying it; establishing the life of the role; putting it into physical form."Tracing the actor's process from the first reading to production, he explores how to approach roles from inside and outside simultaneously. He shows how to recount the story in actor's terms, how to create an inner life that will give substance to the author's words, and how to search into one's own experiences to connect with the character's situation. Finally, he speaks of the physical expression of the character in gestures, sounds, intonation, and speech. Throughout, a picture of a real artist at work emerges, sometimes failing, but always seeking truthful answers.
Creating Costumes for Devised Theatre
by Kyla KazuschykCreating Costumes for Devised Theatre combines perspectives from a variety of theatre practitioners to guide artists through the journey of creating costumes for devised work. Devised theatre can take a number of different forms, and it can be a challenge for the costume department to plan, organize, and assemble things for performers to wear while the entire shape of the piece is constantly changing. This book provides practical resources to guide the theatre artist through the journey of designing costumes as the characters are created. It addresses a wide range of questions, including how to adapt traditional methods of costume design to non-traditional practices, how to effectively collaborate with a team, and how to adapt costume technology practices to meet the needs of devising. Stories and photographs from performers, designers, technicians, directors, writers, educators, students, and activists working in the realm of devised theatre around the world are contextualized through the author's own involvement in unscripted, partially scripted, and otherwise dynamic drama, dance, and physical theatre to offer tangible solutions to streamline costume design and construction processes. This book is an invaluable guide for both experienced and novice costume designers, costume technicians, students, teachers, directors, managers, and theatre artists who exist in the spaces where all these roles overlap.
Creating Solo Performance
by Luke Dixon Sean BrunoCreating Solo Performance is an innovative toolbox of exercises and challenges focused on providing you – the performer – with engaging and inspiring ways to explore and develop your idea both on the page and in the performance space. The creation of a solo show may be the most rewarding, liberating and stressful challenge you will take on in your career. This book acts as your silent collaborator as you develop your performance, by helpfully arranging exercises under the following headings: Beginnings Creating character Generating material Using your performance space Technology Endings Collaboration Exercises can be explored in sequence, at random or according to your specific needs and interests as a performer. By enabling you to create a bespoke formula that best applies to your specific subject, area of interest, style and discipline, this book will become an indispensable resource as you produce your solo show.
Creating Unforgettable Characters: A Practical Guide to Character Development in Films, TV Series, Advertisements, Novels & Short Stories
by Linda SegerFrom a longtime script consultant, “a vital aid to all writers, novelists, and screenwriters . . . invaluable” (Gale Anne Hurd, producer, The Walking Dead and Aliens).In this book, Linda Seger, author of Making a Good Script Great, shows how to create strong, multidimensional characters in fiction, covering everything from research to character block. She introduces concepts designed to stimulate the creative process, combining them with practical techniques and exercises. She also offers specific advice on creating nonfiction and fantasy characters, and case studies of such classics as Ordinary People and the sitcom Cheers.Addressing topics from backstory development to character psychology to avoiding stereotypes, Creating Unforgettable Characters is an excellent resource for writers in any genre or creative field. Interviews with successful professional writers complete this essential volume.
Creating Verbatim Theatre from Oral Histories (Practicing Oral History)
by Clare SummerskillOffering a roadmap for practicing verbatim theatre (plays created from oral histories), this book outlines theatre processes through the lens of oral history and draws upon oral history scholarship to bring best practices from that discipline to theatre practitioners. This book opens with an overview of oral history and verbatim theatre, considering the ways in which existing oral history debates can inform verbatim theatre processes and highlights necessary ethical considerations within each field, which are especially prevalent when working with narrators from marginalised communities. It provides a step-by-step guide to creating plays from interviews and contains practical guidance for determining the scope of a theatre project: identifying narrators and conducting interviews, developing a script from excerpts of interview transcripts and outlining a variety of ways to create verbatim theatre productions. By bringing together this explicit discussion of oral history in relationship to theatre based on personal testimonies, the reader gains insight into each field and the close relationship between the two. Supported by international case studies that cover a wide range of working methods and productions, including The Laramie Project and Parramatta Girls, this is the perfect guide for oral historians producing dramatic representations of the material they have sourced through interviews, and for writers creating professional theatre productions, community projects or student plays.