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Approaches to Teaching Baraka's Dutchman (Approaches to Teaching World Literature #153)
by Matthew CalihmanFirst performed in 1964, Amiri Baraka's play about a charged encounter between a black man and a white woman still has the power to shock. The play, steeped in the racial issues of its time, continues to speak to racial violence and inequality today.This volume offers strategies for guiding students through this short but challenging text. Part 1, "Materials," provides resources for biographical information, critical and literary backgrounds, and the play's early production history. The essays of part 2, "Approaches," address viewing and staging Dutchman theatrically in class. They help instructors ground the play artistically in the black arts movement, the beat generation, the theater of the absurd, pop music, and the blues. Background on civil rights, black power movements, the history of slavery, and Jim Crow laws helps contextualize the play politically and historically.
Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare's English History Plays (Approaches to Teaching World Literature #145)
by Laurie EllinghausenShakespeare's history plays make up nearly a third of his corpus and feature iconic characters like Falstaff, the young Prince Hal, and Richard III--as well as unforgettable scenes like the storming of Harfleur. But these plays also present challenges for teachers, who need to help students understand shifting dynastic feuds, manifold concepts of political power, and early modern ideas of the body politic, kingship, and nationhood.Part 1 of this volume, "Materials," introduces instructors to the many editions of the plays, the wealth of contextual and critical writings available, and other resources. Part 2, "Approaches," contains essays on topics as various as masculinity and gender, using the plays in the composition classroom, and teaching the plays through Shakespeare's own sources, film, television, and the Web. The essays help instructors teach works that are poetically and emotionally rich as well as fascinating in how they depict Shakespeare's vision of his nation's past and present.
Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (Approaches to Teaching World Literature #174)
by Joseph M. OrtizBy the time they encounter Romeo and Juliet in the classroom, many students have already been exposed to various, and sometimes incongruous, manifestations of Shakespeare's work. This volume makes a virtue of students' familiarity with the preconceptions, anachronisms, and appropriations that shape experiences of the work, finding innovative pedagogical possibilities in the play's adaptations and in new technologies that spark students' creative responses.The essays cover a wide area of concerns, such as marriage, gender, queer perspectives, and girlhood, and contributors embrace different ways of understanding the play, such as through dance, editing, and acting. The final essays focus on decolonizing the text by foregrounding both the role of race and economic inequality in the play and the remarkable confluence of Romeo and Juliet and Hispanic culture.
Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew (Approaches to Teaching World Literature #123)
by Margaret Dupuis and Grace TiffanyThe impetus for this Approaches to Teaching volume on The Taming of the Shrew grew from the editors' desire to discover why a play notorious for its controversial exploration of conflicts between men and women and the challenges of marriage is enduringly popular in the classroom, in the performing arts, and in scholarship. The result is a volume that offers practical advice to teachers on editions and teaching resources in part 1, "Materials," while illuminating how the play's subtle and complex arguments regarding not just marriage but a host of other subjects--modes of early modern education, the uses of clever rhetoric, intergenerational and class politics, the power of theater--are being brought to life in college classrooms. The essays in part 2, "Approaches," are written by English and theater instructors who have taught in a variety of academic settings and cover topics including early modern homilies and music, Hollywood versions of The Taming of the Shrew, and student performances.
Approaches to Teaching the Plays of August Wilson (Approaches to Teaching World Literature #140)
by Sandra G. Shannon and Sandra L. RichardsThe award-winning playwright August Wilson used drama as a medium to write a history of twentieth-century America through the perspectives of its black citizenry. In the plays of his Pittsburgh Cycle, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Fences and The Piano Lesson, Wilson mixes African spirituality with the realism of the American theater and puts African American storytelling and performance practices in dialogue with canonical writers like Aristotle and Shakespeare. As they portray black Americans living through migration, industrialization, and war, Wilson's plays explore the relation between a unified black consciousness and America's collective identity.In part 1 of this volume, "Materials," the editors survey sources on Wilson's biography, teachable texts of Wilson's plays, useful secondary readings, and compelling audiovisual and Web resources. The essays in part 2, "Approaches," look at a diverse set of issues in Wilson's work, including the importance of blues and jazz, intertextual connections to other playwrights, race in performance, Yoruban spirituality, and the role of women in the plays.
Approaches to Teaching the Works of John Dryden (Approaches to Teaching World Literature #126)
by The Modern Language AssociationWhich John Dryden should be brought into the twenty-first-century college classroom? The rehabilitator of the ancients? The first of the moderns? The ambivalent laureate? The sidelined convert to Rome? The literary theorist? The translator? The playwright? The poet? This volume in the MLA series Approaches to Teaching World Literature addresses the tensions, contradictions, and versatility of a writer who, in the words of Samuel Johnson, "found [English poetry] brick, and left it marble," who was, in the words of Walter Scott, "one of the greatest of our masters."Part 1, "Materials," offers a guide to the teaching editions of Dryden's work and a discussion of the background resources, from biographies and literary criticism to social, cultural, political, and art histories. In part 2, "Approaches," essays describe different pedagogical entries into Dryden and his time. These approaches cover subjects as various as genre, adaptation, literary rivalry, musical setting, and political and religious poetry in classroom situations that range from the traditional survey to learning through performance.
Appropriate/An Octoroon: Plays
by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins<p>A double-volume containing two astonishing breakout plays from one of the theatre's most exciting and provocative young writers. <p>In Appropriate, strained familial dynamics collide with a tense undercurrent of socio-political realities when the Lafayettes gather at a former plantation home to sift through the belongings of their deceased patriarch. An Octoroon is an audacious investigation of theatre and identity, wherein an old play gives way to a startlingly original piece. <p>Also includes the short play I Promise Never Again to Write Plays About Asians...</p>
Appropriations of Irish Drama in Modern Korean Nationalist Theatre (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
by Hunam YunThis book investigates the translation field as a hybrid space for the competing claims between the colonisers and the colonised. By tracing the process of the importation and appropriation of Irish drama in colonial Korea, this study shows how the intervention of the competing agents – both the colonisers and the colonised – formulates the strategies of representation or empowerment in the rival claims of the translation field. This exploration will be of great interest to students and scholars of theatre and performance studies, translation studies, and Asian studies.
Approximate Bodies: Gender and Power in Early Modern Drama and Anatomy
by Maurizio CalbiThe early modern period was an age of anatomical exploration and revelation, with new discoveries capturing the imagination not only of scientists but also of playwrights and poets. Approximate Bodies examines, in fascinating detail, the changing representation of the body in early modern drama and in the period's anatomical and gynaecological treatises. Maurizio Calbi focuses on the unstable representation of both masculinity and femininity in Renaissance texts such as The Duchess of Malfi, The Changeling and a variety of Shakespeare plays. Drawing on theorists including Foucault, Derrida and Lacan, these close textual readings examine the effects of social, psychic and cultural influences on early modern images of the body. Calbi identifies the ways in which political, social, racial and sexual power structures effect the construction of the body in dramatic and anatomical texts. Calbi's analysis displays how images such as the deformed body of the outsider, the effeminate body of the desiring male and the disfigured body parts of the desiring female indicate an unstable, incomplete conception of the body in the Renaissance. Compelling and impeccably researched, this is a sophisticated account of the fantasies and anxieties that play a role in constructing the early modern body. Approximate Bodies makes a major contribution to the field of early modern studies and to debates around the body.
April Fools' Week
by Gaby FeBlandMeet the many generations of the great Dinostein Pranksters! In this family, April Fools' lasts a whole week. It's a tradition that dates back to the Jurassic Period. But little Joelle maybe the best prankster yet!
April in Paris: Theatricality, Modernism, and Politics at the 1925 Art Deco Expo
by Irena MakarykAttracting over fifteen million visitors, the 1925 Paris Expo had an ambitious goal to create a new modernist style which would reflect the great scientific, industrial, and technological advances that produced a new spirit known as "modern." In April in Paris, author Irena R. Makaryk explores the theatre arts’ vital cultural and political impact at this celebrated international exhibition. Drawing extensively from unexplored archival documents from France, Austria, and North America, April in Paris is the first major study to focus on theatre arts at the 1925 Paris Expo and the audacious Soviet contributions to this fair. Turning a spotlight on the uses and representations of theatricalized spaces, Makaryk analyses their political challenge at a time when relations between the West and the USSR were rife with tension. Copiously illustrated with beautiful colour and black and white illustrations, this book elucidates the complex role of the international fair as a catalyst for spirited cultural debate and for aesthetic change.
Aquatopia: Climate Interventions (Critical Climate Studies)
by May Joseph Sofia VarinoAquatopia documents Harmattan Theater’s ecological interventions and traces its engagements with water-bound landscapes, colonial histories, climate change, and public space across New York City, Venice, Amsterdam, Lisbon, and Cochin. The volume uses Harmattan’s site-specific performances as a point of departure to consider climate change and rising sea levels as geographical, ecological, and urban phenomena. Instead of a collection of flat, static surfaces, the Aquatopia atlas is animated by a disorienting, anti-mapping strategy, producing a deterritorialized, nomadic, fluid atlas unfolding in real time as an archive of climate change in multidimensional, active space. The book is designed for pedagogical access, with interludes that consolidate the learning outcomes of the experimental theory animating each site-specific performance. Accompanied by close descriptions of five performances and supplemented by digital documentation available online, this volume intervenes in discussions on climate change, urbanism, and postcolonization/decolonialization, and contributes to interdisciplinary studies of ecology and environmental politics, postcolonial/decolonial theories and practices, performance studies and aesthetics, in particular public art, and performance as research.
The Arab in Israeli Drama and Theatre (Contemporary Theatre Studies #Vol. 26)
by Dan UrianWhat is Israeli theatre? Is it only a Hebrew theatre staged in Israel? Are performances by Arab Israelis working in an Arabic theatre framework not part of the repertoire of Israeli theatre? Do they perhaps belong to the Palestinian theatre? What are the "borders" of Palestinian theatre? Are not theatrical works created in East Jerusalem by Arab Israeli playwrights and actors, and staged on occasion before Jewish Israeli audiences, part of a dialogue between Palestinian and Israeli cultures? Does "theatre" only include works staged under that title? These and other similarly absorbing questions arise in Dan Urian's wide-ranging and detailed study of the image of the Arab in Israeli drama and theatre. By the use of extensive examples to show how theatre, politics and personal perceptions intertwine, the author presents us with a model which can be used as a basis for the further discussion and study of similar social and artistic phenomena in other cultures in relation to their theatre and drama.
Arabs, Politics, and Performance (ISSN)
by Samer Al-Saber Roaa Ali George PotterThis book is a ground-breaking collection on contemporary Arab theatre.Through three sections discussing occupation and resistance, diaspora, migration, and refugees, and nationalism and belonging, this study provides nuanced responses to the contested points of intersection between Arab culture and the West, as well as many of the major concerns within contemporary Arab theatre. The collection draws together scholars from the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and the United States who write about Arab theatre and the representation of Arabs on European and American stages. It introduces concerns in contemporary Arab theatre, the regions in which Arab theatre is performed, and the issues with representations of Arabs onstage.This volume will be of great significance for those interested in expanding the range of global, postcolonial, African, Asian, or diasporic theatre that they study, teach, or stage.
The Arbitration: The Epitrepontes of Menander (Routledge Revivals)
by Gilbert MurrayGilbert Murray translated and made available to modern readers The Epitrepontes of Menander or The Arbitration for the first time in 1945. The Arbitration is among the most frequently quoted and most famous of Menander’s plays and – being less farcical than others - belongs to his mature style. With an interesting and informative introduction, this translation will be of value to any student of Classics and Ancient Greek drama.
Arcadia: A Play
by Tom StoppardThis play takes readers back and forth between the 19th and 20th centuries. Set in a large country house in Derbyshire, a cast of characters from each century play out their respective dramas.
Archaeologies of Presence
by Michael Shanks Gabriella Giannachi Nick KayeArchaeologies of Presence is a brilliant exploration of how the performance of presence can be understood through the relationships between performance theory and archaeological thinking. Drawing together carefully commissioned contributions by leading international scholars and artists, this radical new work poses a number of essential questions: What are the principle signifiers of theatrical presence? How is presence achieved through theatrical performance? What makes a memory come alive and live again? How is presence connected with identity? Is presence synonymous with 'being in the moment'? What is the nature of the ‘co-presence’ of audience and performer? Where does performance practice end and its documentation begin? Co-edited by performance specialists Gabriella Giannachi and Nick Kaye, and archaeologist Michael Shanks, Archaeologies of Presence represents an innovative and rewarding feat of interdisciplinary scholarship.
Archaeology of the Political Unconscious: Theater and Opera in East Berlin, 1967–1977 (ISSN)
by Jennifer WilliamsThis book investigates the aesthetic and political dialectics of East Berlin to argue how its theater and opera stages incited artists to act out, fuel, and resist the troubled construction of political legitimacy.This volume investigates three case studies of how leading East Berlin stages excavated fragmentary materials from Weimar dramatist Bertolt Brecht’s oeuvre and repurposed them for their post‑fascist society: Uta Birnbaum’s 1967 Man Equals Man at the Berliner Ensemble, Joachim Herz’s 1977 Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at the Komische Oper, and Heiner Muller’s own productions of his trailblazing plays. In each instance, reused theatrical artifacts dialectically expressed the contradictions inherent in East German political legitimacy, at once amplifying and critiquing it. Illuminated by original archival research and translations of letters and artistic ephemera published in English for the first time, and engaging with alternative East German feminist epistemologies, this book’s critical investigation of culture and political legitimacy in the shadow of Germany’s fascist past resonates beyond the Iron Curtain into the twenty‑first century. Its final chapter examines how performative artifacts influence the process of political legitimation in more recent history, ranging from Checkpoint Charlie tourism to the January 6, 2021 US insurrection.This study will be of great interest to students and scholars in theater and performance studies, art history, musicology, German studies, anthropology, and political science.
The Archbishop's Ceiling
by Arthur MillerA masterful mix of art, sex, and politics behind the Iron Curtain, by America's greatest dramatist In an unnamed Eastern European capital, four writers gather in what was once an archbishop's palace. There is Adrian, a successful American author struggling with questions about a novel he has set in the city, and Marcus, a once-imprisoned radical who has become a darling of the current regime. Finally, there is Sigmund, perhaps the country's greatest living writer, who refuses to compromise his artistic integrity to appease the regime. Between them all is Maya, a poet and actress who has been a mistress and muse to each man. The ornately decorated ceiling above them may or may not be bugged, and the group carefully watches their words as they discuss the play's central dilemma - should Sigmund stay and resist the oppressive state, or should he defect and pursue his art in freedom? Their conversation poses crucial questions about mass surveillance, morality, and the authenticity of art, and remains as relevant today as it was during the height of the Cold War.
Architecture, Actor and Audience (Theatre Concepts)
by Iain MackintoshUnderstanding the theatre space on both the practical and theoretical level is becoming increasingly important to people working in drama, in whatever capacity. Theatre architecture is one of the most vital ingredients of the theatrical experience and one of the least discussed or understood. In Architecture, Actor and Audience Mackintosh explores the contribution the design of a theatre can make to the theatrical experience, and examines the failings of many modern theatres which despite vigorous defence from the architectural establishment remain unpopular with both audiences and theatre people. A fascinating and provocative book.
The Architecture of Story: A Technical Guide for the Dramatic Writer (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)
by Will DunneWhile successful plays tend to share certain storytelling elements, there is no single blueprint for how a play should be constructed. Instead, seasoned playwrights know how to select the right elements for their needs and organize them in a structure that best supports their particular story. Through his workshops and book The Dramatic Writer's Companion, Will Dunne has helped thousands of writers develop successful scripts. Now, in The Architecture of Story, he helps writers master the building blocks of dramatic storytelling by analyzing a trio of award-winning contemporary American plays: Doubt: A Parable by John Patrick Shanley, Topdog/Underdog by Suzan-Lori Parks, and The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl. Dismantling the stories and examining key components from a technical perspective enables writers to approach their own work with an informed understanding of dramatic architecture. Each self-contained chapter focuses on one storytelling component, ranging from "Title" and "Main Event" to "Emotional Environment" and "Crisis Decision." Dunne explores each component in detail, demonstrating how it has been successfully handled in each play and comparing and contrasting techniques. The chapters conclude with questions to help writers evaluate and improve their own scripts. The result is a nonlinear reference guide that lets writers work at their own pace and choose the topics that interest them as they develop new scripts. This flexible, interactive structure is designed to meet the needs of writers at all stages of writing and at all levels of experience.
The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas
by Diana TaylorIn The Archive and the Repertoire preeminent performance studies scholar Diana Taylor provides a new understanding of the vital role of performance in the Americas. From plays to official events to grassroots protests, performance, she argues, must be taken seriously as a means of storing and transmitting knowledge. Taylor reveals how the repertoire of embodied memory--conveyed in gestures, the spoken word, movement, dance, song, and other performances--offers alternative perspectives to those derived from the written archive and is particularly useful to a reconsideration of historical processes of transnational contact. The Archive and the Repertoire invites a remapping of the Americas based on traditions of embodied practice. Examining various genres of performance including demonstrations by the children of the disappeared in Argentina, the Peruvian theatre group Yuyachkani, and televised astrological readings by Univision personality Walter Mercado, Taylor explores how the archive and the repertoire work together to make political claims, transmit traumatic memory, and forge a new sense of cultural identity. Through her consideration of performances such as Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gmez-Pea's show Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit . . . , Taylor illuminates how scenarios of discovery and conquest haunt the Americas, trapping even those who attempt to dismantle them. Meditating on events like those of September 11, 2001 and media representations of them, she examines both the crucial role of performance in contemporary culture and her own role as witness to and participant in hemispheric dramas. The Archive and the Repertoire is a compelling demonstration of the many ways that the study of performance enables a deeper understanding of the past and present, of ourselves and others.
Arden: A Study of His Plays (Routledge Revivals)
by Albert HuntJohn Arden was one of the major playwrights to have emerged during the 1950s, yet his work has arguably been misunderstood. In this book, first published in 1974, Albert Hunt’s primary concern is to relate the plays written by John Arden alone, as well as those written in collaboration with Margaretta D’Arcy, both to Arden’s whole concept of theatre, and to his social and political attitudes. The book begins with a biographical introduction, followed by a play-by-play study of Arden’s work and a survey of the impact of his plays in performance, alongside fascinating images. Celebrating the work and life of the playwright, this timely reissue will be of particular value to students of theatre studies as well as professional actors with an interest in John Arden’s plays and theatrical ideologies.
Are We Pears Yet?
by Miranda PaulTwo seeds can't wait to be pears, but growing takes time and patience in this funny and informative picture book from Miranda Paul, the author of Water is Water."When will we be pears?" —"After we find soil." "Hooray! We are going to be pears! Are we pears yet?" —"No! Just be patient and wait."Written entirely in dialogue and staged as a play, Are We Pears Yet? is a clever and hilarious informational picture book that will make you look at growth cycles and fruit trees in a whole new way. Carin Berger's artfully composed collaged stage sets will delight and amaze you.
Ariane Mnouchkine (Routledge Performance Practitioners)
by Judith MillerOver the last forty years, French director Ariane Mnouchkine and her theater collective, Le Théâtre du Soleil, have devised a form of research and creation that is both engaged with contemporary history and committed to reinvigorating theater by focusing on the actor. Now revised and reissued, this volume combines: ● an overview of Mnouchkine’s life, work and theatrical influences ● an exploration of her key ideas on theater and the creative process ● analysis of key productions, including her early and groundbreaking environmental political piece, 1789, and the later Asian-inspired play penned by Hélène Cixous, Drums on the Dam. ● practical exercises, including tips on mask work. As a first step toward critical understanding, and as an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners offer unbeatable value for today’s student.