- Table View
- List View
Stuart Academic Drama: An Edition of Three University Plays (Routledge Library Editions: Renaissance Drama)
by David L. RussellAlthough not much is known about the three Stuart plays in this edition, which was first published in 1987, we can ascribe them to one of the English universities, and each is indicative of a distinctly different influence on the Renaissance academic drama. Heteroclitanomalonomia is part of a minor subgenre referred to as the academic play. It demonstrates the predominance of language or rhetoric studies in the period and its very subject is of purely academic interest. Gigantomachia displays the continuing interest of the Renaissance in classical mythology. And A Christmas Messe follows a more homely tradition, a farcical personification of the mundane. This title will be of interest to students of English Literature, Drama and Performance.
Stuart Women Playwrights, 1613–1713
by Pilar Cuder-DominguezIn the field of seventeenth-century English drama, women participated not only as spectators or readers, but more and more as patronesses, as playwrights, and later on as actresses and even as managers. This study examines English women writers' tragedies and tragicomedies in the seventeenth century, specifically between 1613 and 1713, which represent the publication dates of the first original tragedy (Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedy of Mariam) and the last one (Anne Finch's Aristomenes) written by a Stuart woman playwright. Through this one-hundred year period, major changes in dramatic form and ideology are traced in women's tragedies and tragicomedies. In examining the whole of the century from a gender perspective, this project breaks away from conventional approaches to the subject, which tend to establish an unbridgeable gap between the early Stuart period and the Restoration. All in all, this study represents a major overhaul of current theories of the evolution of English drama as well as offering an unprecedented reconstruction of the genealogy of seventeenth-century English women playwrights.
Student Agency in Devised Theatre Education: Creating Collaborative Theatre in Virtual and In-Person Classrooms (Routledge Research in Arts Education)
by Mike PobleteThis monograph argues that implementing devised theatre as a learning praxis has a unique potential to cultivate student agency in the twenty-first century classroom. It offers actionable guidance for drama instructors by providing a new arts education methodology that emphasizes the role of student-led dramaturgy. Based on quantitative and qualitative analyses of survey results, group interviews, and field observations from the facilitation of two original pieces of digital devised theatre created by Pacific Islander and Asian-American public high school students on Oʻahu, the author documents the crucial roles of constructive and resisting student agency in a devised theatre classroom. This book then departs from established research in suggesting that passivity serves a crucial role in allowing students to assert agency nonconfrontationally, which has considerable implications for peripatetic learners. It also investigates the role of student agency in online theatre education, which, along with expected challenges, was found to produce unique benefits, such as real-time documented performance feedback and accessible asynchronous teacher guidance. Further, a new form of student agency is identified, one exclusive to online learning environments, where students assert themselves by discussing technological challenges such as slow Wi-Fi, camera malfunctions, or other pragmatic concerns. Finally, this book makes a case that the success of these projects with Pacific Islander and Asian-American students suggests that although devising comes from a White Eurocentric tradition, it can provide an effective learning strategy for students from a wide variety of backgrounds.As global discourse continues to push toward reform that would allow populations around the world increased agency over their lives, this volume makes a unique contribution to the critical conversation around student agency in education today and will appeal to scholars and researchers across arts education, and theatre and performance studies.
Studies in the Textual Tradition of Terence
by John N. GrantThe textual tradition of the Latin dramatist Publius Terentius Afer (second century BC) is unusually rich and complex. Over six hundred manuscripts containing some or all of Terence's six comedies have survived, but only one codex and three small fragments date from antiquity. All the rest were copied in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance when Terence was very popular. Recently scholars have been devoting considerable study to the role of his works and the commentaries on them in the cultural and intellectual development of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. However, little attention has been given to an examination and re-examination of the manuscripts in order to determine which are the most useful for establishing a reliable text of the plays. In this study John N. Grant examines afresh the manuscript tradition of the comedies, looking in particular at a branch of the medieval manuscripts which has been neglected in the past. He establishes the primacy of one manuscript, the value of which has hitherto been disputed, and points out the importance of others which have been known but have been neglected by past editors of Terence. In addition, through a careful study of the cycle of illustrations that appear in some medieval manuscripts he brings under scrutiny the history of the transmission of the text in late antiquity. He shows that, contrary to the generally held view, the date of the original cycle of illustrations from which those in the medieval manuscripts are derived cannot be used to provide a chronological keystone for the lost ancient manuscripts which were the ancestors of the surviving witnesses. An appendix with a selection of readings from over 150 manuscripts will be of value to those interested in investigating further the relationships among the extant manuscripts. This study lays the foundation for a new edition of the plays of Terence.
Study and Revise for GCSE: The History Boys
by Sue Bennett Dave StockwinExam Board: AQA, WJEC, WJEC EduqasLevel: GCSE (9-1)Subject: English literatureFirst teaching: September 2015First exams: Summer 2017Enable students to achieve their best grade in GCSE English Literature with this year-round course companion; designed to instil in-depth textual understanding as students read, analyse and revise The History Boys throughout the course.This Study and Revise guide:- Increases students' knowledge of The History Boys as they progress through the detailed commentary and contextual information written by experienced teachers and examiners- Develops understanding of plot, characterisation, themes and language, equipping students with a rich bank of textual examples to enhance their exam responses- Builds critical and analytical skills through challenging, thought-provoking questions that encourage students to form their own personal responses to the text- Helps students maximise their exam potential using clear explanations of the Assessment Objectives, annotated sample student answers and tips for reaching the next grade- Improves students' extended writing techniques through targeted advice on planning and structuring a successful essay- Provides opportunities for students to review their learning and identify their revision needs with knowledge-based questions at the end of each chapter
Studying European Theatre Audiences: The STEP City Study (Audience Research)
by Joshua Edelman Attila Szabó Hedi-Liis Toome Marline Lisette Wilders Antine ZijlstraThis book reports on one of the largest co-ordinated efforts to survey the theatrical audience experience: the City Study of the Project on European Theatre Systems, which conducted over 7000 surveys and dozens of interviews and focus groups with audience members from four mid-sized cities across Europe.This study aimed to capture the details of how audiences perceive and value theatre, and resulted in a data set which, while imperfect, has no precedent in scale and comparability for theatre studies. Based on this very large data set, the authors were able to create a portrait of varied segments of European theatrical audiences, its experiences, and how it values theatre, that is more detailed and incisive than any previously available. The question is not just who comes to theatre, but why, and how those experiences are valuable to them. This book’s key contribution, however, is methodological that offers a detailed and unsparing examination of the City Study’s working methods: their underlying theory, their strengths and weaknesses, and which survey and interview techniques were more successful in bringing out useful information.This makes this book essential reading for those interested in studying theatre’s place in society, but also for artists, policy makers, and arts professionals who want to make and share work with an understanding of their audience’s engagement with it.
Studying Shakespeare: A Practical Introduction
by Katherine Armstrong Graham AtkinThis book is a concise single volume guide to studying Shakespeare, covering practical as well as theoretical issues. The text deals with the major topics on a chapter-by-chapter basis, starting with why we study Shakespeare, through Shakespeare and multimedia, to a final chapter on Shakespeare and Theory. Current trends and recent developments in Shakespearean studies are also discussed, with an emphasis on the contextualisation of Shakespeare, historical appropriations of his work and the debate concerning his place in the literary canon. Extensive reference is made to a variety of developing media, e.g. film, audio cassette, video, CD-Rom and global digital networks, bringing the study of Shakespeare into the twentieth century.
Stunning and Other Plays
by David Adjmi"Nearly everything about David Adjmi's Stunning has an original ring to it, from the setting . . . to the brassy bleat of the dialogue." -Time Out New YorkThis volume of distinctive work includes Stunning, set in an insular Syrian Jewish community, where a teenage bride's world is disrupted by her intellectual African American housekeeper; Evildoers, about the collapse of two privileged couples; and Elective Affinities, a post-9/11 monologue.David Adjmi's work has been produced at Lincoln Center Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, and the Royal Court in London. He has received numerous commissions and is the recipient of a 2009 Kesselring Fellowship and a Bush Artist Fellowship.
Stunts of Late Nineteenth-Century New York: Aestheticised Precarity, Endangered Liveness
by Kirstin SmithStunts of Late Nineteenth- Century New York: Aestheticised Precarity, Endangered Liveness examines the emergence of stunts in the media, politics, sport and art of New York at the turn of the twentieth century. This book investigates stunts in sport, media and politics, demonstrating how these risky performances tapped into anxieties and fantasies concerning work, freedom, gendered/ raced/ classed bodies and the commodifi cation of human life. Its case studies examine bridge jumping, extreme walking contests, stunt journalists such as Nellie Bly, and cycling feats including Annie Londonderry’s round- the- world venture. Supported by extensive archival research and Performance Studies theorisations of precarity, liveness and surrogation, Smith theorises an under- examined form which is still prevalent in art, politics and commerce, to show what stunts reveal about value, risk and human life. Suitable for scholars and practitioners across a range of subjects, from Performance Studies to gender studies, to media studies, Stunts of Late Nineteenth- Century New York explores how stunts turned everyday precarity into a spectacle.
Stupid Fucking Bird
by Aaron Posner Anton ChekovAn aspiring young director rampages against the art created by his mother's generation. A nubile young actress wrestles with an aging Hollywood star for the affections of a renowned novelist. And everyone discovers just how disappointing love, art, and growing up can be. In this irreverent, contemporary, and very funny remix of Chekhov's The Seagull, Aaron Posner stages a timeless battle between young and old, past and present, in search of the true meaning of it all. Original songs composed by James Sugg draw the famously subtextual inner thoughts of Chekhov's characters explicitly to the surface. <p><p>STUPID FUCKING BIRD will tickle, tantalize, and incite you to consider how art, love, and revolution fuel your own pursuit of happiness.
Style: An Approach To Appreciating Theatre
by E. Bert WallaceStyle: An Approach to Appreciating Theatre offers brief, readable chapters about the basics of theatre as a starting point for discussion, and provides new adaptations of classic plays that are both accessible to students learning about theatre and fit for production. In this text, style is the word used to describe the various ways in which theatre is done in real space and time by humans in the physical presence of other humans. The book uses style, the "liveness" of theatre that makes it distinct from literature or history, as a lens to see how playwrights, directors, designers, and actors bring scripts to life on stage. Rather than focusing on theatre history or literary script analysis, it emphasizes actual theatrical production through examples and explores playscripts illustrating four theatrical styles: Realism, Theatricalism, Expressionism, and Classicism. Susan Glaspells Realistic play Trifles is presented as written, while The Insect Play by the Brothers apek, The Hairy Ape by Eugene ONeill, and Antigone by Sophocles are original, full-length adaptions. Style: An Approach to Appreciating Theatre is the perfect resource for students of Theatre Appreciation, Introduction to Theatre, Theatrical Design, and Stagecraft courses.
Style For Actors: A Handbook for Moving Beyond Realism
by Robert Barton"Style is a journey from tourist to native. It is living in the world of the play, not just visiting it." - from Chapter One Anyone who has ever struggled with capes, fans, swords, doublets and crinolines should make Style for Actors 2nd Edition their constant companion. Robert Barton has completely updated his award winning handbook for the 21st century with contemporary references and up-to-date illustrations. This is the definitive guide to roles in historical drama. The past is a foreign country, and this outstanding book is concerned with exploring it from the actor’s point of view. Specific guides range from Greek, Elizabethan, Restoration and Georgian theatre to more contemporary stylings, including Futurism, Surrealism and Postmodernism. Barton takes great care to present the actor with the roles and genres that will most commonly confront them. His analysis moves from entire genres to specific scenes and characters. A huge resource of nearly 150 practical exercises helps a newfound understanding of style to make the leap from page to performance.
Style for Actors: A Handbook for Moving Beyond Realism
by Robert BartonStyle for Actors is an award-winning handbook and the definitive guide to roles in historical drama. Anyone who has ever struggled with capes, fans, swords, doublets and crinolines should make this third edition their constant companion. The past is a foreign country, and this outstanding book is concerned with exploring it from the actor's point of view. Specific guides to each major period give readers a clear map to discover a range from Greek, Elizabethan, Restoration and Georgian theatre to more contemporary stylings, including Futurism, Surrealism and Postmodernism. New material in this edition covers Commedia dell'arte and non-Western forms of theatre, theatrical fusion and developments in musicals and Shakespeare. The book’s references, images, resource lists and examples have all been updated to support today's diverse performers. Robert Barton takes great care to present the actor with the roles and genres that will most commonly confront them. Containing a huge resource of nearly 150 exercises, suggestions for scene study and applications not only for theatrical performance but also for stylistic challenges in the reader’s own offstage life, this book is an invaluable resource for students and practitioners of acting and drama.
The Subject of Tragedy: Identity and Difference in Renaissance Drama (Routledge Revivals)
by Catherine BelseyFirst published in 1985, The Subject of Tragedy takes the drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the starting point for an analysis of the differential identities of man and woman. Catherine Belsey charts, in a range of fictional and non-fictional texts, the production in the Renaissance of a meaning for subjectivity that is identifiably modern. The subject of liberal humanism – self-determining, free origin of language, choice and action – is highlighted as the product of a specific period in which man was the subject to which woman was related.
Subject to Change
by Jules E. TascaFirst produced at the Pheasant Run Playhouse in Chicago, with Phyllis Diller featured as Madeline Basset, the action takes place in a two story residence in suburban New York. The play concerns the two Bassett sisters, Gertrude is prudish, capable and hardworking, says only "Oh, fudge", when she's upset. Madeline is completely dependent on her sloppy, fat cunning, and sounds like a plumber who has lost his number four wrench the perfect role for Phyllis Diller? When Gertrude decides to marry, leaving Madeline to fend for herself, the situation becomes traumatic. In an attempt to break up Gertrude's romance, Madeline runs the gamut, making obscene telephone calls to the bridegroom's 80 year old lush of a mother; outrageously insulting the groom to be, sneaking off to New York to trip on LSD, and finally sneaking back home to live in the attic and sulk. When all efforts fail, she feigns a stroke.
Subjects of Advice: Drama and Counsel from More to Shakespeare
by Ivan LupiIn Subjects of Advice, Ivan Lupić uncovers the rich interconnectedness of dramatic art and the culture of counsel in the early modern period. While counsel was an important form of practical knowledge, with concrete political consequences, it was also an ingrained cultural habit, a feature of obligatory mental, moral, and political hygiene. To be a Renaissance subject, Lupić claims, one had to reckon with the advice of others. Lupić examines this reckoning in a variety of sixteenth-century dramatic contexts. The result is an original account of the foundational role that counsel played in the development of Renaissance drama.Lupić begins by considering the figure of Thomas More, whose influential argument about counsel as a form of performance in Utopia set the agenda for the entire century. Resisting linear narratives and recovering, instead, the simultaneity of radically different kinds of dramatic experience, he shows the vitality of later dramatic engagements with More's legacy through an analysis of the moral interlude staged within Sir Thomas More, a play possibly coauthored by Shakespeare. More also helps explain the complex use of counsel in Senecan drama, from the neo-Latin plays of George Buchanan, discussed in connection with Buchanan's political writings, to the historical tragedies of the mid-sixteenth century.If tyranny and exemplarity are the keywords for early Elizabethan drama of counsel, for the plays of Christopher Marlowe it is friendship. Lupić considers Marlowe's interest in friendship and counsel, most notably in Edward II, alongside earlier dramatic treatments, thus exposing the pervasive fantasy of the ideal counselor as another self. Subjects of Advice concludes by placing King Lear in relation to its dramatic sources to demonstrate Shakespeare's deliberate dispersal of counsel throughout his play. Counsel's customary link to plain and fearless speech becomes in Shakespeare's hands a powerful instrument of poetic and dramatic expression.
Subscribe Now!
by Danny Newman"Buy it, borrow it, steal it, but get your hands on it! If you follow Danny's advice on how to sell tickets, you won't have an unsold seat in the house all season long!"--Ralph Black, American Symphony League
Subscription Theater: Democracy and Drama in Britain and Ireland, 1880-1939 (Material Texts)
by Matthew FranksSubscription Theater asks why turn-of-the-century British and Irish citizens spent so much time, money, and effort adding their names to subscription lists. Shining a spotlight on private play-producing clubs, public repertory theaters, amateur drama groups, and theatrical magazines, Matthew Franks locates subscription theaters in a vast constellation of civic subscription initiatives, ranging from voluntary schools and workers' hospitals to soldiers' memorials and Diamond Jubilee funds. Across these enterprises, Franks argues, subscribers created their own spaces for performing social roles from which they had long been excluded. Whether by undermining the authority of the Lord Chamberlain's Examiner of Plays and London's commercial theater producers, or by extending rights to disenfranchised women and property-less men, a diverse cast of subscribers including typists, plumbers, and maids acted as political representatives for their fellow citizens, both inside the theater and far beyond it. Citizens prized a "democratic" or "representative" subscription list as an end in itself, and such lists set the stage for the eventual public subsidy of subscription endeavors.Subscription Theater points to the importance of printed ephemera such as programs, tickets, and prospectuses in questioning any assumption that theatrical collectivity is confined to the live performance event. Drawing on new media as well as old, Franks uses a database of over 23,000 stage productions to reveal that subscribers introduced nearly a third of the plays that were most frequently revived between 1890 and the mid-twentieth century, as well as nearly half of all new translations, and they were instrumental in staging the work of such writers as Shaw and Ibsen, whose plays featured subscription lists as a plot point or prop. Although subscribers often are blamed for being a conservative force in theater, Franks demonstrates that they have been responsible for how we value audience and repertoire today, and their history offers a new account of the relationship between ephemera, drama, and democracy.
The Substance of Fire and Other Plays
by Jon Robin BaitzA frank examination of the controlling forces behind a nearly bankrupt private school for boys in South Africa, The Film Society introduced a young playwright with an extraordinarily mature grasp of people, language and society.Baitz's recent works have fulfilled his early promise and enhanced his reputation. <P><P>In The Substance of Fire (1991), a fiercely intellectual New York publisher struggles with his children for control of his business, and with the relentless pride which has made him previous to love. In The End of the Day (1992), an expatriate British doctor adapts to America by abandoning his ideals and succumbing to the twin lures of status and crime.About the Author: Jon Robin Baitz is the author of Three Hotels, The Film Society, Other Desert Cities, The End of the Day, and The Substance of Fire, which he adapted into a major motion picture. He was the showrunner on ABC's Brothers & Sisters. He also wrote the screenplay for the upcoming film Stonewall directed by Roland Emmerich. He lives in New York.
Suburban Motel
by George F. WalkerSix plays, united only by the fact that they take place in one and the same suburban motel room: Problem Child, Criminal Genius, Risk Everything, Adult Entertainment, Featuring Loretta, and The End of Civilization. Transients, lovers, the haunted, the hunted, the desperate, the dumb, each "strut and fret their hour upon the stage and then are heard of no more.
Suburbia (new version)
by Eric Bogosian"Bogosian's script retains the playwright-performer's trademark vitriol and hammer wit."--Time OutThis new version of Eric Bogosian's best-selling play, set in a convenience store parking lot, premiered last season Off Broadway. His rewrites--for a world seeped in cell phones, hip-hop, and a new political context--render the piece "an American anyplace where everything, yet nothing, has changed" (The New York Times).Eric Bogosian's plays and solo shows include Talk Radio (Pulitzer Prize finalist); Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll; Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead; and Drinking in America. He has received three OBIE awards and has toured throughout the country.
Subversions
by Erika Block Gabriele Griffin Julie WilkinsonFirst Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Successions
by Michaela Di CesareAfter the unexpected death of their parents, two second-generation Italian Canadian brothers must come together to decide whether to hold on to the family home, which is full of secrets and hoarded junk, or save what’s left of their strained relationship. When Anthony, an uptight lawyer running for office, arrives with his former actor-turned-campaign-manager wife Cristina, they’re set on signing away the house and everything that comes with it. But Enzo, a disorganized plumber, and his pregnant girlfriend Nat have other plans. The pleasantries quickly turn to tense deliberations that unearth dramatically differing views of the group’s past experiences and present values. This clever family dramedy takes a close look at issues that affect modern second-generation immigrant families in Canada—class differences, antiquated old-world beliefs, and a crumbling Canadian dream.
Such Creatures
by Judith ThompsonTwo characters and two monologues, tied together across time and place, their stories a candid pursuit of hope and empathy, even in the face of an unbelievably cruel world. Judith Thompson's Such Creatures portrays her raw style of storytelling and showcases her incessant quest to understand the dark, neglected, and troubling corners of society. Both unbelievably cruel and unbelievably human, Such Creatures is an awe-inspiring portrayal of the breadth of the human spirit.
Suddenly the Storm: A play
by Paul SlabolepszyA smouldering dark comedy that suddenly leads to startling revelations, rage and recrimination. Combative, volatile, constantly on the verge of exploding, Dwayne and Shanell Combrink are two halves of a white South African working-class couple, living an uneasy truce as they struggle with the day-to-day trials of scraping together a living and dreaming competing dreams. But beneath Dwayne's angry, violent exterior lies the heartbreak that governs his attitude to life. Dwayne is a man in mourning. Shanell believes his current level of despair was sparked by the death of his childhood friend and recent work partner, Jonas, but the source of his mourning and anger lies much further back. When the elegant and self-contained Namhla Gumede, born on 16 June 1976, arrives on their doorstep seeking answers to questions that have remained buried for 40 years, Dwayne and Shanell finally find out the truth. What starts as a smouldering dark comedy suddenly turns into a roller-coaster ride of startling revelations, rage and recrimination, before the storm finally breaks.