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Lessons from Shakespeare’s Classroom: Empowering Learning Through Drama and Rhetoric (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
by Robin LithgowThis volume explores the relationship between the emphasis on performance in Elizabethan humanist education and the flourishing of literary brilliance around the turn of the sixteenth century. This study asks us what lessons we can learn today from Shakespeare’s Latin grammar school. What were the cognitive benefits of an education so deeply rooted in what Demosthenes and Quintilian called "actio"—acting? Because of the vast difference between educational practice then and now, we have not often followed one essential thread: the focus on performance. This study examines the connections relevant to the education offered in schools today. This book will be of great interest to teachers, scholars, and administrators in performing arts and education.
Lessons in Creativity from Musical Theatre Characters
by James C. Kaufman Dana P. RoweLessons in Creativity from Musical Theatre Characters marries art and science with a new and exciting collaboration between one of the world’s leading creativity scholars and an internationally renowned musical theatre composer. This book will help readers tap into their creativity and unleash their own creative potential as they start their careers. Blending cutting-edge research, juicy anecdotes, lived experience, hands-on activities, and gentle advice, authors James C. Kaufman and Dana P. Rowe take readers on a journey to explore and enhance their own creativity. Each chapter addresses a key aspect of creativity, from how to overcome blocks to understanding one’s personal strengths all through the lens of Musical Theatre characters along with insights from those within the industry. Kaufman and Rowe shatter creativity myths (such as the tormented artist or having one big break) that may be harming the reader’s potential growth. Probing questions, fun quizzes, and engaging exercises will help the reader reflect on the material and develop strategies for their next step. All throughout, the readers can learn from the tales of Sweeney Todd, Maria Von Trapp, Alexander Hamilton, Christine Daaé, and countless others to inspire their own creativity. This book is ideal for aspiring theatre professionals, students of performing arts, and theatre and creativity scholars.
L’eterno istante in cui mi sono sentita felice
by Hitomi IidaUna lettera d'amore per la mia anima gemella capace di guardare con occhi nostalgici oltre il tempo e lo spazio.
Let's Go to The Grand!: 100 Years of Entertainment at London's Grand Theatre
by Sheila M.F. Johnston"A fascinating history of a wonderful old theatre." - Hume Cronyn In September of 1901 London’s New Grand Opera House flung open its doors. Boasting a beautiful interior design, and with the most modern stage equipment available, the theatre was large enough to accommodate over 1,700 patrons and the largest touring shows of the time. With impresario Ambrose J. Small at the helm, a new era in theatrical entertainment began. Throughout the next hundred years, the Grand Theatre hosted everything from stock companies to minstrel shows, from vaudeville to star-studded productions. The celebrated amateur theatre company, London Little Theatre, made The Grand its home for decades. As Canadian theatre came into its own in the 1970s, The Grand embraced professional theatre status. Throughout all these changes The Grand has remained London’s "Grand Old Lady of Richmond Street." Legendary performers from the past, including the Marks Brothers, Anna Pavlova and John Gielgud have graced its vast stage, as have such contemporary stage stars as Hume Cronyn, William Hutt and Martha Henry. This extensively researched book, lavishly illustrated, lovingly documents the life of The Grand. Theatre stories from every decade of The Grand’s colourful life abound throughout. To read this book is to come to know London’s Grand Theatre in all its architectural splendour and its legacy in Canadian theatre history.
Let's Murder Marsha
by Monk FerrisA happy housewife named Marsha, hopelessly addicted to reading murder mysteries overhears her loving husband discussing her upcoming birthday surprise with an interior decorator. To her ears, though, it sounds like they are planning to murder her! With the assistance of her next door neighbor she tries to turn the tables on them with a poisoned potion. When her own mother shows up for her birthday a day early, Marsha thinks she is in on the diabolical scheme. When her maid's date, a policeman, shows up to take the maid out, Marsha think he is on to her poisoning attempt. Well, finally, just when you would think all this would be cleared up, Marsha's intended victims discover what she has supposed, and decide to teach her a lesson by actually pretending to be murderers. This is a terrific show for family audiences who like their comedy broad and fast and nonstop.
Let's Run Away
by Daniel MacIvorPeter is putting on a show. He’s a bit stressed. In the show, he will read from a manuscript. It’s a large manuscript, but don’t worry, he’s only going to read the parts about him, and there aren’t many. It’s a memoir written by someone who abandoned him twice—once as a baby and once when he was a young man of thirteen. This person has figured prominently in Peter’s life for over fifty years now, but judging by the memoir, he has not figured so much in theirs. So perhaps it’s going to be a very short show? Again, don’t worry, Peter has other skills which he will share. And if Peter can keep his cool, and if the people who work at the theatre can help him set everything up, and if the audience can just give him a little bit of their time and their attention and their silence, maybe he can tell everyone something about who we really are and who we are to others and who we might be to ourselves when we’re alone. And maybe that can make it all a little bit easier.
Letter To D'Alembert And Writings For The Theater (The Collected Writings of Rousseau Volume #10)
by Jean-Jacques Rousseau Christopher Kelly Charles Butterworth Allan BloomIn 1758, Jean Le Rond d'Alembert proposed the public establishment of a theater in Geneva--and Jean-Jacques Rousseau vigorously objected. Their exchange, collected in volume ten of this acclaimed series, offers a classic debate over the political importance of the arts. As these two leading figures of the Enlightenment argue about censorship, popular versus high culture, and the proper role of women in society, their dispute signals a declaration of war that divided the Enlightenment into contending factions. These two thinkers confront the contentious issues surrounding public support for the arts through d'Alembert's original proposal, Rousseau's attack, and the first English translation of d'Alembert's response as well as correspondence relating to the exchange. The volume also contains Rousseau's own writings for the theater, including plays and libretti for operas, most of which have never been translated into English. Among them, Le Devin du village was the most popular French opera of the eighteenth century while his late work Pygmalion is a profound meditation on the relation between an artist and his creation. This volume offers English readers a unique opportunity to appreciate Rousseau's writings for the theater as well as his attack on the theater as a public institution.
Letters from Backstage: The Adventures of a Touring Stage Actor
by Jason Alexander Michael KostroffEver wonder what it's like to be a real working actor? Wonder no more! Michael Kostroff is here to reveal, in hilarious detail, just what it's like to travel with the road companies of The Producers and Les Miserables. His firsthand account of the exciting, funny, and sometimes bizarre highlights of his journey includes working at a temp job when his agent calls to say, "You got the part!"; singing on a revolving stage while lugging a dead body; seeing ghosts in haunted theaters; and much more. Along the way, anecdotes about nailing an audition, keeping a performance fresh, and getting along with fellow cast members give useful tips for working actors. Anyone who wants to know what a life in the theater is really like needs this intimate and unforgettable narrative.
The Letters of Cole Porter
by Cole PorterThe first comprehensive collection of the letters of one of the most successful American songwriters of the twentieth century From Anything Goes to Kiss Me, Kate, Cole Porter left a lasting legacy of iconic songs including "You're the Top," "Love For Sale," and "Night and Day." Yet, alongside his professional success, Porter led an eclectic personal life which featured exuberant parties, scandalous affairs, and chronic health problems. This extensive collection of letters (most of which are published here for the first time) dates from the first decade of the twentieth century to the early 1960s and features correspondence with stars such as Irving Berlin, Ethel Merman, and Orson Welles, as well as his friends and lovers. Cliff Eisen and Dominic McHugh complement these letters with lively commentaries that draw together the loose threads of Porter&’s life and highlight the distinctions between Porter&’s public and private existence. This book reveals surprising insights into his attitudes toward Hollywood and Broadway, and toward money, love, and dazzling success.
La leyenda de Pirosmani: ---
by Valerián MarkárovDrama histórico, acontecimientos que se tuvieron lugar en la región de Tiflis del Imperio ruso a finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX. Con motivo del centenario de la muerte del gran pintor Nikó Pirosmani.
Liars, Thieves and Other Sinners on the Bench
by Jo Carson"Haunting and funny, full of folk wisdom and unfl inching honesty."--Publishers Weekly, on the work of Jo Carson"She is a quintessential community artist with a true ear for the way people talk and what they really mean to say. Her work has inspired innumerable young artists to take up work with their own communities."--Linda Frye Burnham, Community Arts Network"Human experience is varied and astonishing," notes Jo Carson, "and this is a taste." A uniquely American writer and performer, Carson has spent fifteen years working with peoples' stories in communities across the country, crafting more than thirty plays from the oral histories she has collected. In performance, these works have illuminated and invigorated the communities in which they were forged, as the people see themselves onstage in a new light. This book collects Carson's favorite excerpts from the plays--stories that range from the homespun to the extraordinary and together create a portrait of America in an amazing diversity and authenticity of voices. They are slices of life, passed beyond the circle of family and neighbors.Jo Carson is a writer and performer living in John City, Tennessee. She has published award-winning plays, short stories, children's books, essays, poems, and other work, and for years was a commentator on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. Her play Whispering to Horses and solo show If God Came Down . . . premiered at Seven Stages Theatre in Atlanta, and her book of monologues and dialogues, Stories I Ain't Told Nobody Yet, made Booklist's editor's choice and the American Library Association's recommended list.
Liberal Lives and Activist Repertoires: Political Performance and Victorian Social Reform
by Tracy C. DavisThis ambitious study traces the strategies of human rights activists to show how world-changing reform movements were shaped by women and men from modest backgrounds who were deeply attuned to the power of performance. Tracy C. Davis explores nineteenth-century reform campaigns through the pioneering work of a family of activists – prominent anti-slavery lecturer George Thompson, his daughter Amelia (the first female theatre and music critic for a British daily newspaper) and her husband, the political organizer Frederick Chesson. Engaging in some of the most important social struggles of the late Georgian and Victorian periods – including abolition, enfranchisement, and anti-genocide - this book reveals how two generations' insights into performance consolidated into activist tactics that persist today. Characterised by a skilful deployment of performance theory alongside deep and wide-ranging historical knowledge, this ground-breaking work demonstrates what 'dramaturgy' can teach us about 'history'.
The Liberation-Bearers
by AeschylusThis classic trilogy by the great tragedian deals with the bloody history of the House of Atreus. Grand in style, rich in diction and dramatic dialogue, the plays embody Aeschylus' concerns with the destiny and fate of both individuals and the state, all played out under the watchful eye of the gods.
Lidless
by Frances Ya-Chu CowhigLidless is a work of extraordinary intelligence and finely-balanced sensibility. It marries the implacable logic of a Greek tragedy with an all-too-modern setting. It's been fifteen years since Guantanamo, fifteen years since Bashir last saw his U.S. Army interrogator, Alice. Bashir is now dying of a disease of the liver, an organ that he believes is the home of the soul. He tracks down Alice in Texas and demands that she donate half her liver as restitution for the damage wrought during her interrogations. But Alice doesn't remember Bashir; a PTSD pill trial she participated in while in the army has left her without any memory of her time there. It is only when her inquisitive fourteen-year-old daughter begins her own investigation that the fragile peace of mind that Alice's drug-induced oblivion enabled begins to falter. Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's powerful drama asks important and difficult questions: is guilt a necessary form of moral reckoning, or is it an obstacle to be overcome? Will the price of national political amnesia be paid only by the next generation - the daughters and sons who were never there? Although politically engaged and topical, the play's significance is further-reaching and taps into timeless questions. Lidless portrays the inevitable consequences of moral crimes, in spite of the lapse of time and the oblivion of the perpetrators. Guilt inexorably engenders retribution with a horrible symmetry, so comeuppance is exacted upon what is held most dear. Within a modern and politically-charged setting, Lidless has a tight plot of cyclical, interfamilial violence and inevitable, if blindly executed, vengeance.
Lie, Cheat, And Genuflect
by Jane Milmore Billy Van ZandtComedy / 4m, 4f / Interior / The Buckle brothers, Billy and Tom, are in big trouble: Tom's infallible eye for slow horses has drained away all of Billy's savings and he has borrowed from loan shark Pizza Face Petrillo, who now wants his money back or else! There's plenty of money in grandfather Buckle's will, but these two black sheep are pretty sure they'll never see any of that. What else to do but dress Billy up as a nun and have him pose as their cousin who is to inherit the entire fortune? Involve a stuffy young lawyer, a hard drinking, man hungry housekeeper and a trio of beautiful young women, and you have the recipe for a laugh packed farce of twists, turns, puns and pratfalls as Tom strives mightily to compensate for Billy's "habitual" errors.
Life and Arias of María Callas
by Lázaro Droznes Pablo BarrantesLife and arias from María Callas María Callas was probably the greatest soprano of "bel canto". Her life, filled with many ups and downs, can only be compared to the lives of the tragic heroines she used to represent in her scenes. Her trajectory largely exceeded the theatre lyric limits when she became a diva that attracted the interest of the masses, and an international "jet set" star. The play, narrated in first-person by the Diva, portrays the main instances of her tumultuous life, alternated with her most famous arias, which serve to illustrate and foreshadow her tragic fate.
Life Before Stratford: The Memoirs of Amelia Hall
by Diane Mew Amelia HallBy the time Amelia Hall died suddenly in December 1984 she had become one of Canada’s most respected and well-loved actresses. In this book she has left an incomparable record of her early years in the professional theatre in Canada. In particular, these memoirs chronicle the history of the Canadian Repertory Theatre of Ottawa, one of the first professional repertory theatres in Canada. Under Amelia Hall’s direction in the late forties and early fifties, the CRT gave a start to the careers of such notable Canadian actors as Christopher Plummer, Eric House, William Hutt, Ted Follows and William Shatner. In these days of long-running corporate subsidized extravaganzas, it is instructive to read of the struggles and accomplishments of these pioneers of theatre in Canada, performing weekly repertory on a shoestring budget, with few facilities adn minuscule salaries. Yet it was these enthusiasts who provided the basis for the flowering of the Canadian theatrical scene in the 1960s and 1970s. It is appropriate that these memoirs should culminate in Amelia Hall’s portrayal of the Lady Anne in Richard III opposite Alec Guinness at the first Stratford Festival in 1953, making her the first Canadian and the first woman to speak on the Stratford stage. This book is lavishly illustrated with photographs from Amelia Hall’s personal collection, now housed at the National Archives of Canada.
The Life Fantastic: A Novel in Three Acts
by Liza KetchumAs seen in the Publishers Weekly African-American Titles for Young Readers feature! Will Teresa Find Fame But Lose Her Soul? It's 1913 and vaudeville is America's most popular form of entertainment. Thousands of theaters across the country host vaudeville troupes. In Brattleboro, Vermont, fifteen-year-old Teresa LeClair--who has a "voice like a nightingale"--remembers the thrill of singing onstage as a child. But her parents have given up life on the road, and her father has decided that Teresa, blessed with perfect pitch, should drop out of school and work in the tuning rooms of the organ factory. Determined to escape the life her father wants for her, Teresa wins an amateur singing contest in Brattleboro's opera house and steals away on the night train to New York. She hopes to become a star on Broadway's "Great White Way," but has no idea of the challenges that lie ahead. There she runs into Pietro Jones and his father, talented African American dancers. Teresa and Pietro become competitors as well as unlikely friends. At a time when young black men could be lynched for simply looking at a white girl, Pietro understands, better than Teresa, the danger of their relationship. Teresa's quest to find her voice onstage and in her life, far from the support of her family, takes place against a complex racial backdrop of American history.
A Life in Acting: The Actor's Guide to Creative and Career Longevity
by Lisa MulcahyA Life in Acting is a practical guide for aspiring and established theater actors looking to make a consistent living doing meaningful, creative work on the stage. Author Lisa Mulcahy communicates her advice through a series of interviews and "war stories" that will have you taking notes and laughing until your sides hurt. The sage advice of veteran performers and an entertaining writing style make this a terrific tool to build career longevity. The veteran thespians who give advice are and sustain themselves as artists and professionals through the sage advice of veteran performers who have already done it and continue to do so. Each industry veteran who contributes to these pages is renowned for their talent, is vastly respected by their peers, and has worked consistently in the theater for decades. Actors will learn how some of the industry's most successful and longest-surviving members have developed invaluable traits that have kept them in show business, including: Recognizing personal strengths Developing versatility Marketing oneself effectively Earning a paycheck Pursuing the most valuable opportunities Choosing the right kind of training Finding a mentor Making important connections Dealing with success and failure And much moreA Life in Acting is a must-read for career stage actors. It is a book that will serve as the ultimate guide that can be referenced again and again. Learn how the best actors in the business have made their built a life on the stage, and how you can too!
Life Is a Dream (Dover Thrift Editions: Plays)
by Pedro Calderón de la BarcaConsidered one of the outstanding Spanish dramas of all time, this 17th-century allegory explores the mysteries of human destiny, the illusory nature of existence, and the struggle between predestination and free will. On the basic plot structure of king's suspicions of his son's role in an impending revolution, the playwright builds a dramatic edifice of theatricality, rich in symbolism and metaphor, expressed in magnificent poetry. This edition presents an excellent new English translation, with an informative introduction and footnotes.
Life Is a Dream
by Gregary Racz Pedro Calderon de la BarcaThe masterwork of Spain's preeminent dramatist--now in a new verse translation Life Is a Dream is a work many hold to be the supreme example of Spanish Golden Age drama. Imbued with highly poetic language and humanist ideals, it is an allegory that considers contending themes of free will and predestination, illusion and reality, played out against the backdrop of court intrigue and the restoration of personal honor. In the mountainous barrens of Poland, the rightful heir to the kingdom has been imprisoned since birth in an attempt by his father to thwart fate. Meanwhile, a noblewoman arrives to seek revenge against the man who deceived and forsook her love for the prospect of becoming king of Poland. Richly symbolic and metaphorical, Life Is a Dream explores the deepest mysteries of human experience.
Life Is a Dream/La Vida es Sueño: A Dual-Language Book (Dover Dual Language Spanish)
by Pedro Calderon de la BarcaThe most famous of all Calderon's varied and romantic dramas, this seventeenth-century masterpiece by the great Spanish playwright explores the conflict between free will and predestination as it focuses on the life of Segismundo, a Polish prince imprisoned at birth by his father, the King. The monarch's heartless action, precipitated by astrologers who predict the boy will one day usurp the throne, paves the way for a series of events that turn the son against the father and lead to rebellion. Years later, following a revolution and the peasants' seizure of power, the grim prophecy uttered at the Prince's birth threatens to become a painful reality. For this edition, Stanley Appelbaum has written an informative introduction and an excellent new literal translation that appears on pages facing the Spanish original. A valuable text for students of Spanish language and literature, this volume will delight any reader interested in classics from Spain's Golden Age of drama.
Life Is Like a Musical: How to Live, Love, and Lead Like a Star
by Tim FederleA Self-Help Guide--with Jazz Hands! Life is Like a Musical features 50 wry, witty tips on getting ahead in life and love--all learned in the showbiz trenches. "Hilarious, wise, and one-of-a-kind. This book is so damn brilliant I'm surprised it didn't already exist." -- Sarah Knight, bestselling author of The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck Before Tim Federle became a bestselling author and a Broadway playwright, he worked as a back-up dancer at the Super Bowl, a polar bear at Radio City, and a card-carrying chorus boy on Broadway. Life is Life a Musical features 50 tips learned backstage, onstage, and in between gigs, with chapters such as "Dance Like Everyone's Watching" and "Save the Drama for the Stage." This charming and clever guide will appeal to all ages and inspire readers to step into the lead role of their own life, even if they're not a recovering theater major.