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The Politics and Poetics of Contemporary English Tragedy
by Sean CarneyThe Politics and Poetics of Contemporary English Tragedy is a detailed study of the idea of the tragic in the political plays of David Hare, Howard Barker, Edward Bond, Caryl Churchill, Mark Ravenhill, Sarah Kane, and Jez Butterworth. Through an in-depth analysis of over sixty of their works, Sean Carney argues that their dramatic exploration of tragic experience is an integral part of their ongoing politics. This approach allows for a comprehensive rather than selective study of both the politics and poetics of their work.Carney's attention to the tragic enables him to find a common discourse among the canonical English playwrights of an older generation and representatives of the nineties generation, challenging the idea that there is a sharp generational break between these groups. Finally, Carney demonstrates that tragic experience is often denied by the social discourse of Englishness, and that these playwrights make a crucial critical intervention by dramatizing the tragic.
The Politics and Reception of Rabindranath Tagore's Drama: The Bard on the Stage (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
by Arnab Bhattacharya Mala RenganathanThis is the first volume to focus specifically on Rabindranath Tagore’s dramatic literature, visiting translations and adaptations of Tagore’s drama, and cross-cultural encounters in his works. As Asia’s first Nobel Laureate, Tagore’s highly original plays occupy a central position in the Indian theatrescape. Tagore experimented with dance, music, dance drama, and plays, exploring concepts of environment, education, gender and women, postcolonial encounters, romantic idealism, and universality. Tagore’s drama plays a generous host to experimentations with new performance modes, like the writing and staging of an all-women play on stage for the first time, or the use of cross-cultural styles such as Manipuri dance, Thai craft in stage design, or the Baul singing styles. This book is an exciting re-exploration of Tagore’s plays, visiting issues such as his contribution to Indian drama, drama and environment, feminist readings, postcolonial engagements, cross-cultural encounters, drama as performance, translational and adaptation modes, the non-translated or the non-translatable Tagore drama, Tagore drama in the 21st century, and Indian film. The volume serves as a wide-ranging and up-to-date resource on the criticism of Tagore drama, and will appeal to a range of Theatre and Performance scholars as well as those interested in Indian theatre, literature, and film.
The Politics of American Actor Training (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
by Ellen Margolis Lissa Tyler RenaudThis book addresses the historical, social, colonial, and administrative contexts that determine today's U.S. actor training, as well as matters of identity politics, access, and marginalization as they emerge in classrooms and rehearsal halls. It considers persistent, questioning voices about our nation’s acting training as it stands, thereby contributing to the national dialogue the diverse perspectives and proposals needed to keep American actor training dynamic and germane, both within the U.S. and abroad. Prominent academics and artists view actor training through a political, cultural or ethical lens, tackling fraught topics about power as it plays out in acting curricula and classrooms. The essays in this volume offer a survey of trends in thinking on actor training and investigate the way American theatre expresses our national identity through the globalization of arts education policy and in the politics of our curriculum decisions.
The Politics of Dialogic Imagination: Power and Popular Culture in Early Modern Japan (Chicago Studies in Practices of Meaning)
by Katsuya HiranoIna"The Politics of Dialogic Imagination," Katsuya Hirano seeks to understand why, with its seemingly unrivaled power, the Tokugawa shogunate of early modern Japan tried so hard to regulate the ostensibly unimportant popular culture of Edo (present-day Tokyo)OCoincluding fashion, leisure activities, prints, and theater. He does so by examining the works of writers and artists who depicted and celebrated the culture of play and pleasure associated with EdoOCOs street entertainers, vagrants, actors, and prostitutes, whom Tokugawa authorities condemned to be detrimental to public mores, social order, and political economy. Hirano uncovers a logic of politics within EdoOCOs cultural works that was extremely potent in exposing contradictions between the formal structure of the Tokugawa world and its rapidly changing realities. He goes on to look at the effects of this logic, examining policies enacted during the next eraOCothe Meiji periodOCothat mark a drastic reconfiguration of power and a new politics toward ordinary people under modernizing Japan. Deftly navigating JapanOCOs history and culture, a"The Politics of Dialogic Imagination"provides a sophisticated account of a country in the process of radical transformationOCoand of the intensely creative culture that came out of it. "
The Politics of Identity in Irish Drama: W.B. Yeats, Augusta Gregory and J.M. Synge (Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory)
by George CusackThis study examines the early dramatic works of Yeats, Synge, and Gregory in the context of late colonial Ireland’s unique socio-political landscape. By contextualizing each author’s work within the artistic and political discourses of their time, Cusack demonstrates the complex negotiation of nationalism, class, and gender identities undertaken by these three authors in the years leading up to Ireland’s revolution against England. Furthermore, by focusing on plays written by each author in the context of the ongoing debates over Irish national identity that were taking place throughout Irish public life in this period, Cusack examines in more depth than previous studies the ways Yeats, Gregory, and Synge adapted conventional dramatic and linguistic forms to accommodate the conflicting claims of Irish nationalism. In so doing, he demonstrates the contribution these authors made not only to the development of Irish nationalism but also to modern and postcolonial literature as we understand them today.
The Politics of Interweaving Performance Cultures: Beyond Postcolonialism (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies #33)
by Erika Fischer-Lichte Torsten Jost Saskya Iris JainThis book provides a timely intervention in the fields of performance studies and theatre history, and to larger issues of global cultural exchange. The authors offer a provocative argument for rethinking the scholarly assessment of how diverse performative cultures interact, how they are interwoven, and how they are dependent upon each other. While the term ‘intercultural theatre’ as a concept points back to postcolonialism and its contradictions, The Politics of Interweaving Performance Cultures explores global developments in the performing arts that cannot adequately be explained and understood using postcolonial theory. The authors challenge the dichotomy ‘the West and the rest’ – where Western cultures are ‘universal’ and non-Western cultures are ‘particular’ – as well as ideas of national culture and cultural ownership. This volume uses international case studies to explore the politics of globalization, looking at new paternalistic forms of exchange and the new inequalities emerging from it. These case studies are guided by the principle that processes of interweaving performance cultures are, in fact, political processes. The authors explore the inextricability of the aesthetic and the political, whereby aesthetics cannot be perceived as opposite to the political; rather, the aesthetic is the political. Helen Gilbert’s essay ‘Let the Games Begin: Pageants, Protests, Indigeneity (1968–2010)’won the 2015 Marlis Thiersch Prize for best essay from the Australasian Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies Association.
The Politics of Musical Time: Expanding Songs and Shrinking Markets in Bengali Devotional Performance
by Eben GravesHow do the temporal features of sacred music affect social life in South Asia? Due to new time constraints in commercial contexts, devotional musicians in Bengal have adapted longstanding features of musical time linked with religious practice to promote their own musical careers.The Politics of Musical Time traces a lineage of singers performing a Hindu devotional song known as kīrtan in the Bengal region of India over the past century to demonstrate the shifting meanings and practices of devotional performance. Focusing on padābalī kīrtan, a type of devotional sung poetry that uses long-duration forms and combines song and storytelling, Eben Graves examines how expressions of religious affect and political belonging linked with the genre become strained in contemporary, shortened performance time frames. To illustrate the political economy of performance in South Asia, Graves also explores how religious performances and texts interact with issues of nationalism, gender, and economic exchange.Combining ethnography, history, and performance analysis, including videos from the author's fieldwork, The Politics of Musical Time reveals how ideas about the sacred and the modern have been expressed and contested through features of musical time found in devotional performance.
The Politics of New Media Theatre: Life®™ (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies #Vol. 6)
by Gabriella GiannachiThe first book in the field to explore the links between theories of globalization and surveillance, bipower and biopolitics, performance and theatre, computer arts and politics, "The Politics of New Media Theatre" is an investigation into the political role played by the new media theatre. Gabriella Giannachi explores how new media arts constitute themselves as a radical political movement, and presents an analysis of both the role of virtuality in radical performance and politics in virtual and mixed reality practices. This outstanding new work offers an analysis of leading political, philosophical and artistic texts and artworks, and represents a milestone for anyone interested in new technologies, theatre and politics.
The Politics of Parody: A Literary History of Caricature, 1760–1830 (The Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century Culture and History)
by David Francis TaylorThis engaging study explores how the works of Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, and others were taken up by caricaturists as a means of helping the eighteenth-century British public make sense of political issues, outrages, and personalities. The first in-depth exploration of the relationship between literature and visual satire in this period, David Taylor&’s book explores how great texts, seen through the lens of visual parody, shape how we understand the political world. It offers a fascinating, novel approach to literary history.
The Politics of Paul Robeson's Othello (Margaret Walker Alexander Series in African American Studies)
by Lindsey R. SwindallLindsey R. Swindall examines the historical and political context of acclaimed African American actor Paul Robeson’s three portrayals of Shakespeare’s Othello in the United Kingdom and the United States. These performances took place in London in 1930, on Broadway in 1943, and in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1959. All three of the productions, when considered together, provide an intriguing glimpse into Robeson’s artistry as well as his political activism. The Politics of Paul Robeson’s Othello maintains that Robeson’s development into a politically minded artist explicates the broader issue of the role of the African American artist in times of crisis. Robeson (1898–1976) fervently believed that political engagement was an inherent component of the role of the artist in society, and his performances demonstrate this conviction. In the 1930 production, audiences and critics alike confronted the question: Should a Black actor play Othello in an otherwise all-white cast? In the 1943 production on Broadway, Robeson consciously used the role as a form for questioning theater segregation both onstage and in the seats. In 1959, after he had become well known for his leftist views and sympathies with Communism, his performance in a major Stratford-upon-Avon production called into question whether audiences could accept onstage an African American who held radical—and increasingly unpopular—political views. Swindall thoughtfully uses Robeson’s Othello performances as a collective lens to analyze the actor and activist’s political and intellectual development.
The Politics of Performance: Radical Theatre as Cultural Intervention
by Baz KershawThe Politics of Performance^ addresses fundamental questions about the social and political purposes of performance through an investigation into post-war alternative and community theatre. It proposes a theory of performace as ideological transaction, cultural intervention and community action, which is used to illuminate the potential social and political effects of radical performance practice. It raises issues about the nature of alternative theatre as a movement and the aesthetics of its styles of production, especially in relation to progressive counter-cultural formations. It analyses in detail the work of key practitioners in socially engaged theatre during four decades, setting each in the context of social, political and cultural history and focusing particularly on how they used that context to enhance the potential efficacy of their productions. The book is thus a detailed analysis of oppositional theatre as radical cultural practice in its various efforts to subvert the status quo. Its purpose is to raise the profile of these approaches to performance by proposing, and demonstrating how they may have had a significant impact on social and political history.
The Politics of Rape: Sexual Atrocity, Propaganda Wars, and the Restoration Stage
by Jennifer L. AireyThe Politics of Rape: Sexual Atrocity, Propaganda Wars, and the Restoration Stage is the first full-length study to examine representations of sexual violence on the Restoration stage. By reading theatrical depictions of sexual violence alongside political tracts, propaganda pamphlets, and circulating broadsides, this study argues that authors used dramatic representations of rape to respond to and engage with late-century upheavals in British political culture. Beginning with an examination of rape scenes in English Civil War propaganda, The Politics of Rape argues that Roundhead authors described acts of rape and atrocity to demonize their enemies, the Irish, the Catholics, and the Cavaliers. After the Restoration, propagandists and playwrights on each side of every political conflict would follow suit, altering the rhetoric of sexual violence in response to each new moment of political upheaval: The Restoration of Charles II, the Second and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars, the Popish Plot, the Exclusion Crisis, the Glorious Revolution, and the accession of William and Mary. The study offers an intensive look at British propaganda culture, gathering together a wealth of understudied pamphlet texts, and identifying a series of stock figures that recur throughout the century: The demonic Irishman, sexually violent villain of the 1641 Irish Rebellion tracts; the debauched Cavalier, the secretly Catholic royalist rapist; the poisonous Catholic bride, the malignant consort who encourages the rapes of Protestant women; the cannibal father, the evil patriarch who rapes his daughters-in-laws before ingesting his own sons as a symbol of monarchical overreach; and the ravished monarch, the male rape victim whose sexual violation protests his political disenfranchisement. The study also traces the appearance of these figures on the British stage, examining well-known works by Dryden, Rochester, Behn, Lee, and Shadwell, alongside lesser-known plays by Orrery, Howard, Settle, Crowne, Ravenscroft, Pix, Cibber, and Brady. The Politics of Rape thus offers a new method for understanding of the geo-political implications of theatrical sexual violence. Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
The Politics of Rape: Sexual Atrocity, Propaganda Wars, and the Restoration Stage
by Jennifer L. AireyThe Politics of Rape: Sexual Atrocity, Propaganda Wars, and the Restoration Stage is the first full-length study to examine representations of sexual violence on the Restoration stage. By reading theatrical depictions of sexual violence alongside political tracts, propaganda pamphlets, and circulating broadsides, this study argues that authors used dramatic representations of rape to respond to and engage with late-century upheavals in British political culture. Beginning with an examination of rape scenes in English Civil War propaganda, The Politics of Rape argues that Roundhead authors described acts of rape and atrocity to demonize their enemies, the Irish, the Catholics, and the Cavaliers. After the Restoration, propagandists and playwrights on each side of every political conflict would follow suit, altering the rhetoric of sexual violence in response to each new moment of political upheaval: The Restoration of Charles II, the Second and Third Anglo-Dutch Wars, the Popish Plot, the Exclusion Crisis, the Glorious Revolution, and the accession of William and Mary. The study offers an intensive look at British propaganda culture, gathering together a wealth of understudied pamphlet texts, and identifying a series of stock figures that recur throughout the century: The demonic Irishman, sexually violent villain of the 1641 Irish Rebellion tracts; the debauched Cavalier, the secretly Catholic royalist rapist; the poisonous Catholic bride, the malignant consort who encourages the rapes of Protestant women; the cannibal father, the evil patriarch who rapes his daughters-in-laws before ingesting his own sons as a symbol of monarchical overreach; and the ravished monarch, the male rape victim whose sexual violation protests his political disenfranchisement. The study also traces the appearance of these figures on the British stage, examining well-known works by Dryden, Rochester, Behn, Lee, and Shadwell, alongside lesser-known plays by Orrery, Howard, Settle, Crowne, Ravenscroft, Pix, Cibber, and Brady. The Politics of Rape thus offers a new method for understanding of the geo-political implications of theatrical sexual violence. Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
The Politics of Tragicomedy: Shakespeare and After (Routledge Library Editions: Study of Shakespeare)
by Jonathan Hope Gordon McMullanThe Politics of Tragicomedy: Shakespeare and After offers a series of sophisticated and powerful readings of tragicomedy from Shakespeare’s late plays to the drama of the Interregnum. Rejecting both the customary chronological span bounded by the years 1603-42 (which presumes dramatic activity stopped with the closing of the theatres) and the negative critical attitudes that have dogged the study of tragicomedy, the essays in this collection examine a series of issues central to the possibility of a politics for the genre. Individual essays offer important contributions to continuing debates over the role of the drama in the years preceding the Civil War, the colonial contexts of The Tempest, the political character of Jonson’s late plays, and the agency of women as public and theatre actors. The introduction presents a strong challenge to previous definitions of tragicomedy in the English context, and the collection as a whole is characterized by its rejection of absolutist strategies for reading tragicomedy. This collection will prove essential reading for all with an interest in the politics of Renaissance drama; for specialists in the work of Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Jonson; for those interested in genre and dramatic forms; and for historians of early Stuart England.
The Pop Musical: Sweat, Tears, and Tarnished Utopias (Short Cuts)
by Professor Alberto MiraAfter Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley’s iron grip on the movie musical began to slip in the face of pop’s cultural dominance, many believed that the musical genre entered a terminal decline and finally wore itself out by the 1980s. Though the industrial model of the musical was disrupted by the emergence of pop, the Hollywood musical has not gone extinct. Many Hollywood productions from the 1960s to the present have revisited the forms and conventions of the classic musical—except instead of drawing from showtunes and jazz standards, they employ the styles and iconography of pop.Alberto Mira offers a new account of how pop music revolutionized the Hollywood musical. He shows that while the Hollywood system ceased producing large-scale traditional musicals, different pop strains—disco, rock ’n’ roll, doo-wop, glam, and hip-hop—renewed the genre, giving it a new life. While the classical musical presented a world light on conflict, defined by theatricality and where effortless talent can shine through, the introduction of pop spurred musicals to address contemporary social and political conditions. Mira traces the emergence of a new set of themes—such as the painful hard work depicted in Dirty Dancing (1987); the double-edged fandom of Velvet Goldmine (1998); and the racial politics of Dreamgirls (2006)—to explore why the Hollywood musical has found renewed relevance.
The Popular Culture of Shakespeare, Spenser and Jonson (Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture #Vol. 2)
by Mary Ellen LambBreaking new ground by considering productions of popular culture from above, rather than from below, this book draws on theorists of cultural studies, such as Pierre Bourdieu, Roger Chartier and John Fiske to synthesize work from disparate fields and present new readings of well-known literary works. Using the literature of Shakespeare, Spenser and Jonson, Mary Ellen Lamb investigates the social narratives of several social groups – an urban, middling group; an elite at the court of James; and an aristocratic faction from the countryside. She states that under the pressure of increasing economic stratification, these social fractions created cultural identities to distinguish themselves from each other – particularly from lower status groups. Focusing on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream and Merry Wives of Windsor, Spenser's Faerie Queene, and Jonson's Masque of Oberon, she explores the ways in which early modern literature formed a particularly productive site of contest for deep social changes, and how these changes in turn, played a large role in shaping some of the most well-known works of the period.
The Pot of Gold and Other Plays
by PlautusOne of the supreme comic writers of the Roman world, Plautus (c.254-184 BC), skilfully adapted classic Greek comic models to the manners and customs of his day. This collection features a varied selection of his finest plays, from the light-hearted comedy Pseudolus, in which the lovesick Calidorus and his slave try to liberate his lover from her pimp, to the more subversive The Prisoners, which raises serious questions about the role of slavery. Also included are The Brothers Menaechmus, which formed the prototype for Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, and The Pot of Gold, whose old miser Euclio is a glorious study in avarice. Throughout, Plautus breathes new, brilliant life into classic comic types - including deceitful twins, scheming slaves, bitter old men and swaggering soldiers - creating an entertaining critique of Roman life and values.
The Potting Shed: A Play
by Graham GreeneFrom the British novelist, this Tony Award–winning drama of family secrets delivers &“brilliantly effective . . . enormously provocative . . . theatrical suspense&” (New York Post). The Callifer family has assembled in the English country home of Wild Grove where its patriarch—a once-renowned rationalist and man of letters—nears death. Arriving unexpectedly to pay his respects is his son, James, a pariah among the Callifers, who finds a dark veil still drawn over his mysterious childhood. It was decades ago, when James was fourteen, that something happened to him in the garden shed, a black hole in his memories. For everyone else, it&’s an unforgettable source of unease—and for some, unforgiveable. To discover the truth, James seeks out his ostracized uncle, an alcoholic priest with nothing left to lose. What unfolds makes for &“some of the most moving, forceful and compelling theatre since Eugene O&’Neill&” (The Harvard Crimson). Graham Greene&’s Tony Award–winning work for the stage made its Broadway debut in 1957 and was hailed by the New York Times as &“an original drama that probes deep into the spirit and casts a spell.&”
The Power and the Glory
by John Updike Graham GreeneSeventy-five years ago, Graham Greene published The Power and the Glory, a moralist thriller that traces a line of influence back to Dostoyevsky and forward to Cormac McCarthy. Named one of the 100 best novels of the twentieth century by Time magazine, it stands today as his masterpiece. <p><p>Mexico, the late 1930s: A paramilitary group has outlawed the Catholic Church and is executing its clergy. Now the last priest is on the run, fleeing not just an unshakable police lieutenant but also his own wavering morals. As he scraps his way toward salvation, haunted by an affair from his past, the nameless “whiskey priest” is pulled between the bottle and the Bible, tempted to renounce his religion yet unable to ignore the higher calling he’s chosen. Timeless and unforgettable, The Power and the Glory is a stunning portrait of both physical and spiritual survival by a master dramatist of the human soul.
The Power of Darkness: A Drama in Five Acts (Dover Thrift Editions)
by Leo TolstoyBest known today as the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Count Leo Tolstoy also is acknowledged as a skilled playwright. His five-act drama The Power of Darkness offers a cold and unsparing look at Russian peasant life that illustrates the costs of pursuing personal desires rather than the dictates of morality. The grimly realistic tragedy is based on a real incident, centering on a peasant's confession to a party of wedding guests of his participation in a series of horrific crimes that range from adultery and murder to infanticide. Tolstoy's moving portrait of a class enslaved by poverty and ignorance was written in 1886, but its performance was suppressed by Russian authorities until 1902. A 1904 version, performed in New York in Yiddish, marked the first successful production of a play by Tolstoy in the United States.
The Preaching Fox: Elements of Festive Subversion in the Plays of the Wakefield Master (Studies in Medieval History and Culture #32)
by Warren E. EdminsterFirst published in 2005. Volumes in the Medieval History and Culture series include studies on individual works and authors of Latin and vernacular literatures, historical personalities and events, theological and philosophical issues, and new critical approaches to medieval literature and culture. Momentous changes have occurred in Medieval Studies in the past thirty years, in teaching as well as in scholarship. The Medieval History and Culture series enhances research in the held by providing an outlet for monographs by scholars in the early stages of their careers on all topics related to the broad scope of Medieval Studies, while at the same time pointing to and highlighting new directions that will shape and define scholarly discourse in the future. This volume is a collection of Wakefield Master’s festive plays. Characters threaten the audience with comic bravado, engage in mocking tomfoolery, and parody any number of sacred forms; it is behavior unexpected by modern students of the drama, especially from what we assume was a serious and religious medieval past, and it is unlike what we find in the other mystery cycles.
The Pregnancy Surprise (Ready for Baby!)
by Caroline AndersonPregnant? Impossible! But somehow it’s true.Maisie McDowell is about to become a single mom-with no knowledge of how she got that way...Dr. James Sutherland’s patients usually suspectedthey were pregnant, but Maisie seemed honestlybewildered by the news. Luckily James is also Maisie’sneighbor, and able to offer her support...and more.But after all Maisie has been through, how can he puthimself first and tell her that all he wants is to marryher and be a father to her unborn child...?
The Pregnant Bride (Expecting!)
by Catherine SpencerGetting jilted at the altar was bad enough, but falling for the sympathetic stranger at her honeymoon hotel was much worse! Jenna Sinclair didn't regret it, though; one passion-filled night with Edmund Delaney proved she'd never truly loved her ex-fiancé.But when Jenna told Edmund she was pregnant, he was far from dismayed. It seemed he had his own agenda, and marriage to Jenna was just what he needed.... Why?
The Presence of the Actor
by Joseph ChaikinChaikin, who directed the celebrated Open Theater in the '60s, kindled an emphasis on communal playmaking whose impact is still evident today. This conversational review of his efforts details his methods and reveals the struggles involved in the creation of some of the most exciting theatre of our time.