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The Ways of the Word: Episodes in Verbal Attention
by Garrett StewartIn The Ways of the Word, Garrett Stewart steps aside from theory to focus on the sheer pleasure of attentive reading and the excitement of recognizing the play of syllables and words upon which the best literary writing is founded. Emerging out of teaching creative writing and a broader effort to convene writers and critics, Stewart's "episodes in verbal attention" track the means to meaning through the byways of literary wording.Through close engagement with literary passages and poetic instances whose imaginative demands are their own reward, Stewart gathers exhibits from dozens of authors: from Dickinson, Dickens, and DeLillo to Whitman, Woolf, and Colson Whitehead. In the process, idiom, tense, etymology, and other elements of expressive language and its phonetic wordplay are estranged and heard anew. The Ways of the Word fluidly and intuitively reveals a verbal alchemy that is as riveting as it is elusive and mysterious.
Ways of the World: Theater and Cosmopolitanism in the Restoration and Beyond
by Laura J. RosenthalWays of the World explores cosmopolitanism as it emerged during the Restoration and the role theater played in both memorializing and satirizing its implications and consequences. Rooted in the Stuart ambition to raise the status of England through two crucial investments—global traffic, including the slave trade, and cultural sophistication—this intensified global orientation led to the creation of global mercantile networks and to the rise of an urban British elite who drank Ethiopian coffee out of Asian porcelain at Ottoman-inspired coffeehouses. Restoration drama exposed cosmopolitanism's most embarrassing and troubling aspects, with such writers as Joseph Addison, Aphra Behn, John Dryden, and William Wycherley dramatizing the emotional and ethical dilemmas that imperial and commercial expansion brought to light.Altering standard narratives about Restoration drama, Laura J. Rosenthal shows how the reinvention of theater in this period—including technical innovations and the introduction of female performers—helped make possible performances that held the actions of the nation up for scrutiny, simultaneously indulging and ridiculing the violence and exploitation being perpetuated. In doing so, Ways of the World reveals an otherwise elusive consistency between Restoration genres (comedy, tragedy, heroic plays, and tragicomedy), disrupts conventional understandings of the rise and reception of early capitalism, and offers a fresh perspective on theatrical culture in the context of the shifting political realities of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain.
We Are Not These Hands
by Sheila CallaghanComedy / 1m, 2f / Simple Set Ever since their school blew up, Moth and Belly have taken to stalking an illegal internet café in the hopes o/ f one day being allowed in. They take particular interest in Leather, a skittish older man doing research in the café. Leather is a self-proclaimed "freelance scholar" from a foreign land with a sketchy past and a sticky secret. Leather begins to fall head over heals in love with Moth... but what about Belly? This play explores the effects of rampant capitalism on a country that is ill-prepared for it. "Bold and engaging, We Are Not These Hands is as fun as it is engaging...Rich in detail and full of humor and pathos." - Oakland Tribune "Swaggering eccentricity...Callaghan takes a lavish mud bath in a broken language...Ripe apocalyptic slang; at its best, it's racy and unrefined, the kind of stuff you might imagine kids in the back alleys of a decaying world might sling around." - The Washington Post "The gap between rich and poor yawns so wide it aches in Sheila Callaghan's We Are Not These Hands, but much of the ache is from laughter. Hands is a comically engaging, subversively penetrating look at the human cost of unbridled capitalism on both sides of the river...the anger of the play's social vision is partly concealed by its copious humor, emerging more forcefully after it's over...Hands bristles with bright, comic originality, particularly in depicting the limitations of its people." - San Francisco Chronicle
We Can't Be Friends: A True Story
by Cyndy EtlerThe companion to The Dead Inside, "[An] unnerving and heartrending memoir" (Publishers Weekly) This is the story of my return to high school. This is the true story of how I didn't die. High school sucks for a lot of people. High school extra sucks when you believe, deep in your soul, that every kid in the school is out to get you. I wasn't popular before I got locked up in Straight Inc., the notorious "tough love" program for troubled teens. So it's not like I was walking around thinking everyone liked me. But when you're psychologically beaten for sixteen months, you start to absorb the lessons. The lessons in Straight were: You are evil. Your peers are evil. Everything is evil except Straight, Inc. Before long, you're a true believer. And when you're finally released, sent back into the world, you crave safety. Crave being back in the warehouse. And if you can't be there, you'd rather be dead.
We Danced All Night: My Life Behind the Scenes with Alan Jay Lerner
by Doris ShapiroMrs. Shapiro's 14 years as an assistant to Alan Jay Lerner, from before "My Fair Lady" to "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever."
We the Family
by George F. WalkerWe the Family brings us three plays on family and education: Parents' Night documents a teacher's response to an overbearing father; The Bigger Issue examines teacher-student violence; We the Family follows the ripple effects of a culturally diverse wedding.George F. Walker is one of Canada's most prolific and popular playwrights.
A Weaver-Poet and the Plague: Labor, Poverty, and the Household in Shakespeare’s London (Cultural Inquiries in English Literature, 1400–1700 #3)
by Scott OldenburgWilliam Muggins, an impoverished but highly literate weaver-poet, lived and wrote in London at the turn of the seventeenth century, when few of his contemporaries could even read. A Weaver-Poet and the Plague’s microhistorical approach uses Muggins’s life and writing, in which he articulates a radical vision of a commonwealth founded on labor and mutual aid, as a gateway into a broader narrative about London’s "middling sort" during the plague of 1603.In debt, in prison, and at odds with his livery company, Muggins was forced to move his family from the central London neighborhood called the Poultry to the far poorer and more densely populated parish of St. Olave’s in Southwark. It was here, confined to his home as that parish was devastated by the plague, that Muggins wrote his minor epic, London’s Mourning Garment, in 1603. The poem laments the loss of life and the suffering brought on by the plague but also reflects on the social and economic woes of the city, from the pains of motherhood and childrearing to anxieties about poverty, insurmountable debt, and a system that had failed London’s most vulnerable. Part literary criticism, part microhistory, this book reconstructs Muggins’s household, his reading, his professional and social networks, and his proximity to a culture of radical religion in Southwark.Featuring an appendix with a complete version of London’s Mourning Garment, this volume presents a street-level view of seventeenth-century London that gives agency and voice to a class that is often portrayed as passive and voiceless.
A Weaver-Poet and the Plague: Labor, Poverty, and the Household in Shakespeare’s London (Cultural Inquiries in English Literature, 1400–1700)
by Scott OldenburgWilliam Muggins, an impoverished but highly literate weaver-poet, lived and wrote in London at the turn of the seventeenth century, when few of his contemporaries could even read. A Weaver-Poet and the Plague’s microhistorical approach uses Muggins’s life and writing, in which he articulates a radical vision of a commonwealth founded on labor and mutual aid, as a gateway into a broader narrative about London’s “middling sort” during the plague of 1603.In debt, in prison, and at odds with his livery company, Muggins was forced to move his family from the central London neighborhood called the Poultry to the far poorer and more densely populated parish of St. Olave’s in Southwark. It was here, confined to his home as that parish was devastated by the plague, that Muggins wrote his minor epic, London’s Mourning Garment, in 1603. The poem laments the loss of life and the suffering brought on by the plague but also reflects on the social and economic woes of the city, from the pains of motherhood and childrearing to anxieties about poverty, insurmountable debt, and a system that had failed London’s most vulnerable. Part literary criticism, part microhistory, this book reconstructs Muggins’s household, his reading, his professional and social networks, and his proximity to a culture of radical religion in Southwark.Featuring an appendix with a complete version of London’s Mourning Garment, this volume presents a street-level view of seventeenth-century London that gives agency and voice to a class that is often portrayed as passive and voiceless.
Weavers of Dreams, Unite!: Actors' Unionism in Early Twentieth-Century America
by Sean P. HolmesPublished to coincide with the centenary of the founding of the Actors' Equity Association in 1913, Weavers of Dreams, Unite! explores the history of actors' unionism in the United States from the late nineteenth century to the onset of the Great Depression. Drawing upon hitherto untapped archival resources in New York and Los Angeles, Sean P. Holmes documents how American stage actors used trade unionism to construct for themselves an occupational identity that foregrounded both their artistry and their respectability. In the process, he paints a vivid picture of life on the theatrical shop floor in an era in which economic, cultural, and technological changes were transforming the nature of acting as work. The engaging study offers important insights into the nature of cultural production in the early twentieth century, the role of class in the construction of cultural hierarchy, and the special problems that unionization posed for workers in the commercial entertainment industry.
Weber and Fields: Their Tribulations, Triumphs, and Their Associates (New York Classics)
by Felix IsmanJoe Weber and Lew Fields were the dominant musical comedy team at the turn of the last century. They created classic comedic characters and routines and formed their own theatrical troupe, running a theater in New York for many years where they produced successful revues that combined music, dance, and song. So famous were they in their time that they inspired a full-length biography by a major publisher.Weber and Fields follows the duo from their childhood on New York's rough-and-tumble Lower East Side to the creation of their best-known characters, the Dutch knockabout comedians Mike and Myer, and continues with the opening of their own theater in 1896 (with landmark productions through 1904) to their reunion in 1912. This new edition brings an out-of-print classic to a new generation of theater loves. A new introduction by Ken Bloom carries the story through the rest of their careers, showing how Weber and Fields set the stage for comic duos that followed, including Mutt and Jeff of comic book fame, Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Rowan and Martin, and countless others.
Wedding Belles
by Alan Bailey5f / Comedy / Exterior Four garden-club ladies meet a young girl who has come to their little Texas town to marry an infantryman before he ships off for World War II. The women impulsively decide to throw the girl an elaborate wedding, and their lives and friendships are thrown into turmoil as they race to accomplish the nuptials in one frenzied afternoon. "Delightful! ... Funny and folksy ... The ladies light up the stage!" - Dallas Morning News
The Wedekind Cabaret
by Eric BentleyTranslated and adapted by Eric Bentley / Music by Arnold Black, William Bolcom, Lucas Mason, and Peter Winkler / Flexible casting, 1m., 1f. or expanded to more actors as needed /Musical Revue / A first draft of this entertainment was produced at The Ballroom in New York City in 1994, starring Alvin Epstein and directed by Isaiah Sheffer. Howard Kissel, Daily News, commented: "Bentley's pungent translations of Wedekind's lyrics have been set deftly by three composers, Arnold Black, William Bolcom and Peter Winkler... Tingle Tangle [as the work was then called] is well performed and invariably fascinating." For the Wedekind renaissance of the 21st century Eric Bentley has re-arranged the material and added to it. The piece now consists of two cabaret programs which could be performed together in one long evening or separately. The first program is framed by two Bentley ballads telling the stories of Spring's Awakening and The First Lulu, respectively. Within that frame is a varied series of Wedekind songs and spoken poems. The second program is framed by two Wedekind short stories, neither of them ever before presented on an American (or any other) stage. Within this second frame come poems and songs in which we meet another Wedekind, a wild poet who also had a tender, even elegiac side. The two-part show ends with a song by Eric Bentley and Arnold Black which celebrates, not Wedekind the rebel, but Wedekind the artist.
The Wednesday Wars
by Gary D. SchmidtIn this Newbery Honor-winning novel, Gary D. Schmidt offers an unforgettable antihero. The Wednesday Wars is a wonderfully witty and compelling story about a teenage boy’s mishaps and adventures over the course of the 1967–68 school year in Long Island, New York.<P><P> Meet Holling Hoodhood, a seventh-grader at Camillo Junior High, who must spend Wednesday afternoons with his teacher, Mrs. Baker, while the rest of the class has religious instruction. Mrs. Baker doesn’t like Holling—he’s sure of it. Why else would she make him read the plays of William Shakespeare outside class? But everyone has bigger things to worry about, like Vietnam. His father wants Holling and his sister to be on their best behavior: the success of his business depends on it. But how can Holling stay out of trouble when he has so much to contend with? A bully demanding cream puffs; angry rats; and a baseball hero signing autographs the very same night Holling has to appear in a play in yellow tights! As fate sneaks up on him again and again, Holling finds Motivation—the Big M—in the most unexpected places and musters up the courage to embrace his destiny, in spite of himself.
Welfare and the Well-Being of Children
by Janet M. CurrieAn analysis of eight of the largest US welfare programmes affecting children. These programmes include Aid to Families with Dependent Children, the Food Stamp Program. Medicaid, housing assistance, supplemental feeding programmes such as WIC and School Lunch, Head Start and the Earned Income Tax Credit. Despite the fact that these programmes were designed to serve children, most discussion of welfare reforms focuses on the incentives that the welfare system creates for parents. This analysis represents an evaluation of the evidence regarding the effects of welfare programmes on the children themselves. Programmes such as Medicaid and Head Start have a larger effect on measures of child well-being than cash transfer programs such as AFDC. This suggests an economic rationale for the recent trend towards providing a larger proportion of assistance in-kind.
Welfarewell
by Cat DelaneyDramatic Comedy / Characters: 1m, 7f, Larger Cast Possibilities /Simple Set Winner of the 2009 Samuel French Canadian Playwriting Competition Esmerelda Quipp is 80, still of sound mind, but her body is beginning to "come unglued", as she puts it. Having spent her working life as an actress, age pushing her gradually out of the business, she now faces the fact that her meagre government pension is insufficient to support her, even with her minimal needs. When she is arrested for attempting to bury her dead cat in her landlord's yard, she finds that there is some sense of community, not to mention free room and board, within the prison system. She devises a plan to get herself sent back to jail; she robs a bank. But a well-meaning public defender gets the charges against her dropped. Esmerelda Quipp is undeterred! Using money she gets from returning stolen wine bottles to a recycling depot, she buys a toy gun at the local dollar store, and commits armed robbery. Knowing that she will be convicted because she will plead guilty, she assumes that she can spend the rest of her days living free, hanging out with other women, and being fed decently in a women's prison. But the system that has failed her also wants to forgive her because of her age and general health, and the public defender wants to use an insanity plea to get her off. How will Esmerelda convince the legal system she should be incarcerated, literally, for life?
Well
by Lisa KronThe acclaimed writer and performer Lisa Kron's newest work is all about her mom. It explores the dynamics of health, family and community with the story of her mother's extraordinary ability to heal a changing neighborhood, despite her inability to heal herself. In this solo show with other people in it, Kron asks the provocative question: Are we responsible for our own illness? But the answers she gets are much more complicated than she bargained for when the play spins dangerously out of control into riotously funny and unexpected territory.Lisa Kron has received numerous honors, including several OBIE Awards, the Cal Arts/Alpert Award, the Bessie Award and the GLAAD Media Award. Ms. Kron lives in New York City and Los Angeles.
The Well-Dressed Puppet: A Guide to Creating Puppet Costumes
by Cheralyn LambethCostumes are an integral part of any performance, adding believability, conveying setting, or establishing the tone, a fact that is no less true when your performer is a puppet! The only book of its kind, The Well-Dressed Puppet will show you how to create costumes and accessories tailored specifically for your puppet that will enhance any performance. Gone are the days of ill-fitting store-bought clothing that restrict the movement and use of your puppet. Author Cheralyn Lambeth walks you through every step of the costume-making process with detailed lists of the necessary materials, equipment, and patterns required to create a costume from scratch. She also shares multiple tips and information on how to modify off-the-rack clothing to fit any puppet. Suitable for both beginners and more advanced costumers, The Well-Dressed Puppet demonstrates basic sewing and construction techniques while still providing advanced projects for customers who have already mastered those skills.
Wendy Wasserstein: A Casebook (Casebooks on Modern Dramatists #Vol. 26)
by Claudia BarnettWendy Wasserstein: A Casebook contains in-depth discussions of the playwright's major works, including her recent play 1 An American Daughter. Wasserstein's plays and essays are explored within diverse traditions, including Jewish storytelling, women's writing, and classical comedy. Critical perspectives include feminist, Bakhtinian, and actor/director. Comparisons with other playwrights, such as Rachel Crothers, Caryl Churchill, and Anton Chekhov, provide context and understanding. An interview with the playwright and an annotated bibliography are included.
Wendy Wasserstein
by Jill DolanPlaywright Wendy Wasserstein (1950–2006), author of The Heidi Chronicles, wrote topical, humorous plays addressing relationships among women and their families, taking the temperature of social moments from the 1960s onward to debate women’s rightful place in their professional and personal lives. The playwright’s popular plays continue to be produced on Broadway and in regional theaters around the country and the world. Wasserstein’s emergence as a popular dramatist in the 1970s paralleled the emergence of the second-wave feminist movement in the United States, a cultural context reflected in the themes of her plays. Yet while some of her comedies and witty dramas were wildly successful, packing theaters and winning awards, feminists of the era often felt that the plays did not go far enough. Wendy Wasserstein provides a critical introduction and a feminist reappraisal of the significant plays of one of the most famous contemporary American women playwrights. Following a biographical introduction, chapters address each of her important plays, situating Wasserstein’s work in the history of the US feminist movement and in a historical moment in which women artists continue to struggle for recognition.
„Wer wird nicht einen Klopstock loben?“: Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstocks poetische Innovationen und ihre produktive Rezeption (Abhandlungen zur Literaturwissenschaft)
by Alexander Nebrig Lutz HagestedtFriedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724–1803) war in der Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts die zentrale Figur der deutschen Poesie. Er revolutionierte Theorie und Praxis des Verses, wertete die Position von Schriftstellerinnen und Schriftstellern im Literaturbetrieb auf, schrieb das wichtigste Epos des 18. Jahrhunderts und ist mit seinen Oden und Gedichten für Lyrikerinnen und Lyriker weiterhin mustergültig und stilbildend. Die 26 richtungsweisenden Beiträge der internationalen Quedlinburger Konferenz, die im 300. Jubiläumsjahr Klopstocks erscheinen, diskutieren die innovative Leistung dieser Dichterpersönlichkeit sowie die facettenreiche und vielseitige Rezeption seiner Werke.
We're Gonna Die
by Young Jean Lee"Sly, weird, and thoroughly winning . . . Bracing, funny, and, yes, consoling."--The New York Times"Young Jean Lee will give you whiplash. Her ability to stake out aesthetic territory and then abruptly abandon it makes her unpredictable; her tendency to excel at each new genre makes her terrifying. In the enormously touching cabaret-style We're Gonna Die, Lee jettisons everything that has armored this au courant young playwright against the world. . . . Lee purchases our hearts with her bravery's own coin."--Time Out New YorkInspired by her personal experiences with despair and loneliness, the Obie Award-winning playwright-provocateur and her band Future Wife create a life-affirming show that anyone can perform, about the one thing everyone has in common: we're all gonna die. Each book includes a CD of all six songs and eight monologues performed by David Byrne, Laurie Anderson, Adam Horowitz, and others.Young Jean Lee has been hailed as "one of the best experimental playwrights in America" by Time Out New York. She has written and directed nine shows in New York with Young Jean Lee's Theater Company and toured her work to over twenty cities around the world. Her other plays include The Shipment, Lear, and Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven. Awards include two Obies, the Festival Prize of the Zuercher Theater Spektakel, a Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Doris Duke Artist Award.
West African Popular Theatre (Drama And Performance Studies)
by John Collins Alain Ricard Karin Barber"... a ground-breaking contribution to the field of African literature... " --Research in African Literatures"Anyone with the slightest interest in West African cultures, performance or theatre should immediately rush out and buy this book." --Leeds African Studies Bulletin"A seminal contribution to the fields of performance studies, cultural studies, and popular culture. " --Margaret Drewal"A fine book. The play texts are treasures." --Richard BaumanAfrican popular culture is an arena where the tensions and transformations of colonial and post-colonial society are played out, offering us a glimpse of the view from below in Africa. This book offers a comparative overview of the history, social context, and style of three major West African popular theatre genres: the concert party of Ghana, the concert party of Togo, and the traveling popular theatre of western Nigeria.
West End Women: Women and the London Stage 1918 - 1962 (Gender in Performance)
by Maggie GaleMaggie Gale's West End Women uncovers groundbreaking material about women playwrights and the staging of their performances between the years 1918 and 1962. It documents a dynamic era of social and theatrical history, analysing the transformations that occurred in the theatre and the lives of British women in relation to specific plays of the period. Focusing on the work of playwrights such as Dodie Smith, Clemence Dane, Gordon Daviot and Bridget Boland, Maggie Gale examines the cultural and political context within which they enjoyed commercial success and great notoriety.
West Side Story: The Jets, the Sharks, and the Making of a Classic (Turner Classic Movies)
by Richard BarriosA captivating, richly illustrated full account of the making of the ground-breaking movie classic West Side Story (1961).A major hit on Broadway, on film West Side Story became immortal-a movie different from anything that had come before, but this cinematic victory came at a price. In this engrossing volume, film historian Richard Barrios recounts how the drama and rivalries seen onscreen played out to equal intensity behind-the-scenes, while still achieving extraordinary artistic feats.The making and impact of West Side Story has so far been recounted only in vestiges. In the pages of this book, the backstage tale comes to life along with insight on what has made the film a favorite across six decades: its brilliant use of dance as staged by erstwhile co-director Jerome Robbins; a meaningful story, as set to Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim's soundtrack; the performances of a youthful ensemble cast featuring Natalie Wood, Rita Moreno, George Chakiris, and more; a film with Shakespearean roots (Romeo and Juliet) that is simultaneously timeless and current. West Side Story was a triumph that appeared to be very much of its time; over the years it has shown itself to be eternal.