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Designs on Film: A Century of Hollywood Art Direction
by Cathy Whitlock“[Designs on Film] traces the art of building pretend worlds. Starting back in the pre-talkie years, and moving through Hollywood’s golden age and the epic-crazy ‘60s, right up to contemporary Hollywood, the book is packed with insider tidbits about the wildly inventive—and improvisational—business of movie-making.” — Wall Street Journal“Whitlock makes a major contribution to movie literature by saluting undersung production designers, set decorators and art directors.” — Los Angeles Times“An amazing glimpse into art direction.” — The New Yorker“This lush book of pictures and drawings showcases big-screen glamour over the decades, from the opulence of Cleopatra to the more modern majesty of Batman. — Entertainment Weekly“A compendium of images celebrating iconic interiors and architecture….[Whitlock] sifted through decades of archival photographs to assemble this rare glimpse into the world of Hollywood art direction and set design. ” — Dwell
Desire After Dark: Contemporary Queer Cultures and Occultly Marvelous Media
by Andrew J. OwensSince the 1960s, the occult in film and television has responded to and reflected society's crises surrounding gender and sexuality.In Desire After Dark, Andrew J. Owens explores media where figures such as vampires and witches make use of their supernatural knowledge in order to queer what otherwise appears to be a normative world. Beginning with the global sexual revolutions of the '60s and moving decade by decade through "Euro-sleaze" cinema and theatrical hardcore pornography, the HIV/AIDS crisis, the popularity of New Age religions and witchcraft, and finally the increasingly explicit sexualization of American cable television, Owens contends that occult media has risen to prominence during the past 60 years as a way of exposing and working through cultural crises about queerness. Through the use of historiography and textual analyses of media from Bewitched to The Hunger, Owens reveals that the various players in occult media have always been well aware that non-normative sexuality constitutes the heart of horror's enduring appeal. By investigating vampirism, witchcraft, and other manifestations of the supernatural in media, Desire After Dark confirms how the queer has been integral to the evolution of the horror genre and its persistent popularity as both a subcultural and mainstream media form.
Desire Unlimited
by Paul Julian SmithIn the last decade, Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar has grown from critical darling of the film circuit scene to mainstream success. Frequently comic, often deadly serious, always visually glorious, his recent films range from the Academy Award-winning drama Talk to Her to the 2011 horror film The Skin I Live In. Though they are ambitious and varied in style, each is a distinctive innovation on the themes that have defined his work. Desire Unlimited is the classic film-by-film assessment of Almodóvar's oeuvre, now updated to include his most recent work. Still the only study of its kind in English, it vigorously confirms its original argument that beneath Almodóvar's genius for comedy and visual pleasure lies a filmmaker whose work deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness.From the Hardcover edition.
Desires for Reality: Radicalism and Revolution in Western European Film
by Benjamin HalliganAs with many aspects of European cultural life, film was galvanized and transformed by the revolutionary fervor of 1968. This groundbreaking study provides a full account of the era's cinematic crises, innovations, and provocations, as well as the social and aesthetic contexts in which they appeared. The author mounts a genuinely fresh analysis of a contested period in which everything from the avant-garde experiments of Godard, Pasolini, Schroeter, and Fassbinder to the "low" cinematic genres of horror, pornography, and the Western reflected the cultural upheaval of youth in revolt-a cinema for the barricades.
Desnudo
by Jomari GoysoJomari Goyso, el renombrado artista de televisión, estilista de las estrellas y una de las personalidades más influyentes de Univision, narra su historia por primera vez, sin filtros, pero con un tono de honestidad y transparencia. El conocido estilista, experto en imagen y comentarías de belleza y moda, y presentador de TV, Jomari Goyso, abre su alma en el libro Desnudo, a través del cual cuenta su historia, desde sus orígenes en una sencilla granja de La Rioja, España, hasta su ascenso como una de las más influyentes voces de la moda en la televisión hispana, y todo lo que hubo en el medio. Reconocido por sus firmes opiniones respecto de la moda de las estrellas, así como por su estrecha relación con la comunidad hispana, Jomari ha capturado la atención del público, realizando trabajado con artistas como Penélope Cruz, Salma Hayek, Kim Kardashian, las hermanas Kendall y Kylie Jenner, Morgan Freeman, Naomi Campbell, Kristen Bell, Kate del Castillo y una larga lista de otros rostros famosos. Su libro autobiográfico es una exploración de los miedos y complejos que han acompañado su vida y cómo ha aprendido a vencerlos. Con candidez y transparencia, Jomari habla de su vida en la granja, de su amada abuela Rosalía, de las fuertes expectativas de su padre con respecto al futuro de su hijo, así como de sus problemas de sobrepeso y su alma herida por el bullying, sus fuertes problema de autoestima y sus fallidos intentos de suicidio. Igualmente revela sus primeros días en Madrid y muchos otros capítulos de su vida que le permitieron ir reconociendo su talento y marcaron su camino, dirigiéndolo así a la carrera que lo convertiría a la larga en una reconocida personalidad entre la comunidad latina de los Estados Unidos. Jomari habla de Dios y de fe; de despedidas duras y de encuentros providenciales; de la contradicción de ser estilista de grandes estrellas y tener que dormir en un tejado. Si algo desnuda Jomari es la cruda realidad de un estilo de vida basado en las apariencias, del cual él también fue víctima, pero de forma más importante, desnuda también el anhelo del alma de ser apreciado y amado, y revela uno de sus mayores descubrimientos al codearse con los famosos de Hollywood por un lado, y la gente de todos los días en los callejones de Los Ángeles: el secreto de la verdadera belleza. Este libro invita a los lectores a encontrar el significado de la belleza a través de frases y reflexiones en la que Jomari expresa que la belleza interior supera a la belleza exterior. XX
Desperately Seeking Something: A Memoir About Movies, Mothers, and Material Girls
by Susan SeidelmanThe funny and insightful first-person story of the trailblazing movie director of the 80s and 90s whose fearless punk drama, “Smithereens” became the first American indie film to compete at Cannes, and smash hit "Desperately Seeking Susan" led to a four-decade career in film. Starting out in the mid-70s, a time when few women were directing movies, Susan was determined to become a filmmaker. She longed to tell stories about the unrepresented characters she wanted to see on screen: unconventional women in unusual circumstances, needing to express themselves and maintain their autonomy. Her genre-blending films reflect a passion for classic Hollywood storytelling, mixed with a playful New Wave spirit, informed by her years living in downtown NYC. Seidelman continued to shape American pop culture well into the nineties, directing the pilot of the iconic TV series “Sex And The City,” focusing her sharp lens on the changing place of women in American society and helping to fundamentally reshape our self-image in ways that are still felt today.BOOK DETAILS:Raised in the safe cocoon of 1960s suburbia, Susan Seidelman wasn’t a misfit, an oddball, or an outlier. She was a “good-girl” with a little bit of “bad” hidden inside. A restless teenager, she dreamed of escape and reinvention, a theme that would play out in her films as well as in her own life. Because she loved stories, a high school guidance counselor suggested she become a librarian, but she had her sights set further afield. In 1973, she left the Philly suburbs, enrolled at NYU’s burgeoning graduate film school and moved to NYC’s Lower East Side. There, she found herself in the right place at the right time. New York City was falling apart, but out of that chaos came a burst of creative energy whose effects are still felt in American pop culture today. Downtown became a vibrant playground where film, music, performance and graffiti art cross-pollinated and where Seidelman chronicled the lives of the colorful misfits, oddballs, dreamers and schemers she met there.It’s all in DESPERATELY SEEKING SOMETHING. Seidelman not only has a keen perspective on the times she’s lived through -- from her Twiggy-obsessed girlhood, through the Women’s Lib movement of the early 70s, the punk scene of the late 70s, Madonna-mania of the 80s, to the dot-com “greed is good” 90s, and beyond--she tells great stories.
Destabilising Masculinism: Men’s Friendships and Social Change
by Brittany RalphThis book explores how two generations of relatively privileged Australian men have navigated the complex terrain of same-gender friendship across their lives, to offer both empirically unique and theoretically significant insights into the mechanics of social change in masculinities. Applying a feminist poststructuralist lens to data from in-depth interviews with 14 pairs of fathers and sons, it details how masculinist discourses of emotion and intimacy have governed the participants’ friendship practices at three chronological timepoints: fathers’ early lives and later lives, and sons’ early lives. A clear but complicated shift emerges, such that the commitment to stoicism and self-reliance dominant in the fathers’ early lives has given way to a growing embrace of intimacy and emotional expression within their and their son's contemporary same-gender friendships. Engaging with key debates in the field of critical studies on men and masculinities (CSMM), this book offers an alternative to the conceptualisation of this positive change as either representative of a holistic disintegration of hegemonic structures, or a superficial behavioural shift that is largely inconsequential to the gender order. Rather, it illustrates that the increasing influence of feminist, queer-inclusion and therapeutic discourse has destabilised masculinism in the context of men’s friendships, offering men an alternative subject position that allows care, expressiveness and intimacy. This book will be of interest to scholars in Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Masculinity Studies.
Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical
by Kelly KesslerA critical survey of Hollywood film musicals from the 1960s to the present. This book examines how, in the post-studio system era, cultural, industrial and stylistic circumstances transformed this once happy-go-lucky genre into one both fluid and cynical enough to embrace the likes of Rocky Horror and pave the way for Cannibal! and Moulin Rouge!.
Destination Disneyland Resort with Disabilities: Guidebook and Planner
by Sue Buchholz Edna Wooldridge&“While the focus is how to maneuver Disneyland, the larger message is about maneuvering life—and not leaving anyone behind. This is one beautiful book.&” —Judith Sherven, PhD and Jim Sniechowski, PhD, bestselling authors of Living Your Love Every Day Destination Disneyland Resort with Disabilities is a guidebook that will assist people with disabilities to enjoy their experience to the fullest at Disneyland Resort. Families of children who have disabilities, adults who have disabilities, caregivers, travel agents, and tour guides will all benefit from the information in this guidebook. This is the only Disneyland Resort book written on this topic. This book includes planning your trip ahead of time, detailed packing lists with special needs in mind, traveling to California, places to stay, transportation around the Anaheim area, Disney amenities, special needs accommodations for every attraction, and a special section for families with children who have autism or sensory processing disorders. &“Thanks for writing such a great book. You have done an excellent job! The details are amazing. Congratulations on a great resource! I learned many things I did not know.&” —Sandy Silveria, proprietor, We&’re Outta Here Travel
Destination London: German-Speaking Emigrés and British Cinema, 1925-1950 (Film Europa #6)
by Tim Bergfelder Christian CargnelliThe legacy of emigrés in the British film industry, from the silent film era until after the Second World War, has been largely neglected in the scholarly literature. Destination London is the first book to redress this imbalance. Focusing on areas such as exile, genre, technological transfer, professional training and education, cross-cultural exchange and representation, it begins by mapping the reasons for this neglect before examining the contributions made to British cinema by emigré directors, actors, screenwriters, cinematographers, set designers, and composers. It goes on to assess the cultural and economic contexts of transnational industry collaborations in the 1920s, artistic cosmopolitanism in the 1930s, and anti-Nazi propaganda in the 1940s.
Destined for Greatness: Passions, Dreams, and Aspirations in a College Music Town
by Michael RamirezPursuing the dream of a musical vocation—particularly in rock music—is typically regarded as an adolescent pipedream. Music is marked as an appropriate leisure activity, but one that should be discarded upon entering adulthood. How then do many men and women aspire to forge careers in music upon entering adulthood? In Destined for Greatness, sociologist Michael Ramirez examines the lives of forty-eight independent rock musicians who seek out such non-normative choices in a college town renowned for its music scene. He explores the rich life course trajectories of women and men to explore the extent to which pathways are structured to allow some, but not all, individuals to fashion careers in music worlds. Ramirez suggests a more nuanced understanding of factors that enable the pursuit of musical livelihoods well into adulthood.
Destino: Londres (Serie Yes, we dance #Volumen 2)
by Esther Sanz¡Acompaña a Martina, Sofía, Liu y Violeta en esta nueva aventura en el corazón de Londres! Martina y sus amigas viajan hasta la capital inglesa para participar en el maratón de baile que va a celebrarse en el Hyde Park. El grupo que salga ganador de esta competición será el que aparecerá en el nuevo videoclip del grupo del momento, los BB Brothers. No será nada fácil, pero las chicas lo tienen claro... ¡Están dispuestas a darlo todo!
Destructive Sublime: World War II in American Film and Media (War Culture)
by Tanine AllisonThe American popular imagination has long portrayed World War II as the “good war,” fought by the “greatest generation” for the sake of freedom and democracy. Yet, combat films and other war media complicate this conventional view by indulging in explosive displays of spectacular violence. Combat sequences, Tanine Allison argues, construct a counter-narrative of World War II by reminding viewers of the war’s harsh brutality.Destructive Sublime traces a new aesthetic history of the World War II combat genre by looking back at it through the lens of contemporary video games like Call of Duty. Allison locates some of video games’ glorification of violence, disruptive audiovisual style, and bodily sensation in even the most canonical and seemingly conservative films of the genre. In a series of case studies spanning more than seventy years—from wartime documentaries like The Battle of San Pietro to fictional reenactments like The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan to combat video games like Medal of Honor—this book reveals how the genre’s aesthetic forms reflect (and influence) how American culture conceives of war, nation, and representation itself.
Detecting the South in Fiction, Film, and Television (Southern Literary Studies)
by Scott Romine Megan Abbott Jacob Agner Ace Atkins R. Bruce Brasell Phoebe Bronstein Gina Caison Claire Cothren James A. Crank Dominiqua Dickey Leigh Anne Duck Greg Herren Bob Hodges Suzanne Leonard Sarah Leventer Kristopher Mecholsky Yajaira M. Padilla Jacqueline Pinkowitz Harriet Pollack Riche Richardson Zackary Vernon Randall WilhelmDetecting the South in Fiction, Film, & Television, edited by Deborah E. Barker and Theresa Starkey, examines the often-overlooked and undervalued impact of the U.S. South on the origins and development of the detective genre and film noir. This wide-ranging collection engages with ongoing discussions about genre, gender, social justice, critical race theory, popular culture, cinema, and mass media. Focusing on the South, these essays uncover three frequently interrelated themes: the acknowledgment of race as it relates to slavery, segregation, and discrimination; the role of land as a source of income, an ecologically threatened space, or a place of seclusion; and the continued presence of the southern gothic in recurring elements such as dilapidated plantation houses, swamps, family secrets, and the occult. Twenty-two critical essays probe how southern detective narratives intersect with popular genre forms such as neo-noir, hard-boiled fiction, the dark thriller, suburban noir, amateur sleuths, journalist detectives, and television police procedurals. Alongside essays by scholars, Detecting the South in Fiction, Film, and Television presents pieces by authors of detective and crime fiction, including Megan Abbott and Ace Atkins, who address the extent to which the South and its artistic traditions influenced their own works. By considering the diversity of authors and characters associated with the genre, this accessible collection provides an overdue examination of the historical, political, and aesthetic contexts out of which the southern detective narrative emerged and continues to evolve.
Detecting Women: Gender and the Hollywood Detective Film
by Philippa GatesFinalist for the 2012 Edgar Award in the Best Critical/Biographical Category presented by the Mystery Writers of AmericaIn this extensive and authoritative study of over 300 films, Philippa Gates explores the "woman detective" figure from her pre-cinematic origins in nineteenth century detective fiction through her many incarnations throughout the history of Hollywood cinema. Through the lens of theories of gender, genre, and stardom and engaging with the critical concepts of performativity, masquerade, and feminism, Detecting Women analyzes constructions of the female investigator in the detective genre and focuses on the evolution of her representation from 1929 to today. While a popular assumption is that images of women have become increasingly positive over this period, Gates argues that the most progressive and feminist models of the female detective exist in mainstream film's more peripheral products such as 1930's B-picture and 1970's Blaxploitation films. Offering revisions and new insights into peripheral forms of mainstream film, Gates explores this space that allows a fantasy of resolution of social anxieties about crime and, more interestingly, gender, in the 20th and early 21st centuries. The author's innovative, engaging, and capacious approach to this important figure within feminist film history breaks new ground in the field of gender and film studies.
The Detective's Companion in Crime Fiction: A Study in Sidekicks (Crime Files)
by Lucy Andrew Samuel SaundersThis book aims to establish the position of the sidekick character in the crime and detective fiction literary genres. It re-evaluates the traditional view that the sidekick character in these genres is often overlooked as having a small, generic or singular role—either to act as the foil to the detective in order to accentuate their own abilities at solving crimes, or else to simply tell the story to the reader. Instead, essays in the collection explore the representations and functions of the detective’s sidekick across a range of forms and subgenres of crime fiction. By incorporating forms such as children’s detective fiction, comics and graphic novels and film and television alongside the more traditional fare of novels and short stories, this book aims to break down the boundaries that sometimes exist between these forms, using the sidekick as a defining thread to link them together into a wider conceptual argument that covers a broad range of crime narratives.
Detoxing Masculinity in Anglophone Literature and Culture: In Search of Good Men
by Sara Martín M. Isabel SantaulàriaThis edited volume rethinks Masculinity Studies by breaking away from the notion of the perpetual crisis of masculinity. It argues that not enough has been done to distinguish patriarchy from masculinity and proposes to detox masculinity by offering a collection of positive representations of men in fictional and non-fictional texts. The editors show how ideas of hegemonic and toxic masculinity have been too fixed on the exploration of dominance and subservience, and too little on the men (and the male characters in fiction) who behave following other ethical, personal and socially accepted patterns. Bringing together research from different periods and genres, this collection provides broad, multidisciplinary insights into alternative representations of masculinity.
Detroit: Ragtime and the Jazz Age
by Jon MilanDetroit has always been at the forefront of American popular music development, and the ragtime years and jazz age are no exception. The city's long history of diversity has served the region well, providing a fertile environment for creating and nurturing some of America's most distinctly indigenous music. With a focus on the people and places that made Detroit a major contributor to America's rich musical heritage, Detroit: Ragtime and the Jazz Age provides a unique photo journal of a period stretching from the Civil War to the diminishing years of the big bands in the early 1940s.
Detroit Opera House (Images of America)
by Marianne Weldon Michael HauserThe theater known today as the Detroit Opera House has been an integral part of the city's culture and history as well as the live entertainment industry. Its existence has been threatened in the past, but it has survived wars, the Great Depression, civil unrest, economic meltdowns, the abandonment of downtown, and, most recently, a pandemic. Generations of patrons have fond, vivid memories of attending films, stage presentations, or events with family and friends as it transitioned from the Broadway Capitol to the Paramount to the Grand Circus to the Detroit Opera House. The reason for building these "temples of amusement" was to literally transport a guest into another world, and the Detroit Opera House has valiantly fulfilled that task. What began as an idea by David DiChiera, founder of Michigan Opera Theatre, the owner and operator of today's Detroit Opera House, blossomed into a magnificent performing arts center with its formal opening in 1996.
Deutsche Kino-Wochenschau und der wirtschaftliche Aufschwung in West und Ost: Audiovisuelle Gestaltung und Vermittlungsstrategie in Fallanalysen (1950-1965)
by Sigrun LehnertIn der Zeit des wirtschaftlichen Aufschwungs Deutschlands nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg waren die Wochenschauen im Vorprogramm jeder Kinovorstellung eine bedeutende Informationsquelle. Mit eindrucksvollen Bildern auf einer großen Leinwand – begleitet von gesprochenem Kommentar, Musik und Geräusch – gaben sie Orientierung und prägten die Erinnerung. In zahlreichen dokumentarischen Film- und Fernsehformaten werden bis heute einzelne Bilder oder kurze Sequenzen aus der Kino-Wochenschau als historische Belege, als Illustrationen oder zur Dramatisierung verwendet. Die außergewöhnlichen Prinzipien der Informationsvermittlung kommen dabei jedoch nicht mehr zur Geltung. Um das Publikum zu erreichen, war damals eine Mischung aus informativen Berichten und unterhaltenden Beiträgen unerlässlich. Die in diesem Buch vorgenommenen Fallanalysen spiegeln elementare Themenbereiche der Zeit des wirtschaftlichen Aufschwungs beider deutscher Staaten (1950-1965) wider. Neben den Prinzipien der audiovisuellen Gestaltung wird auch die zentrale Vermittlungsstrategie herausgearbeitet. Transmediale und transnationale Aspekte, die hierbei eine Rolle spielen, weisen die Wochenschau als Teil eines (internationalen) Mediensystems aus.
Deutschsprachige Kinder- und Jugendliteratur im Medienverbund 1900-1945 (Studien zu Kinder- und Jugendliteratur und -medien #3)
by Petra Josting Marlene Antonia Illies Matthias Preis Annemarie WeberMit der Erforschung der deutschsprachigen Kinder- und Jugendliteratur und ihrer Medienverbünde im Zeitraum von 1900 bis 1945 sowie der Erfassung sämtlicher Daten in einem Onlineportal zur Recherche und visuellen Analyse liegt ein innovativer Beitrag zur Geschichtsschreibung der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur vor. Die Einleitung gibt Auskunft über Aufnahmekriterien, zentrale Quellen, theoretische Rahmungen sowie das Spektrum der eruierten Medienverbünde. Teil I versammelt drei Überblicksartikel zu den Medien Hörfunk, Film und Theater für Kinder und Jugendliche sowie einen Beitrag zur Konzeption und Entwicklung des Onlineportals. Im zweiten Teil werden 18 ausgewählte Medienverbünde vorgestellt, sortiert in die Kategorien Pioniere erobern die neuen Medien – Bühnenkinder wandern zum Rundfunk und/oder Film – Märchen im Film und Rundfunk – Klassiker in allen Medien – Schulgeschichten im Theater, Buch und auf der Leinwand – Verbrechen und Skandalöses auf der Leinwand – Politisches erobert Buch und Film.
Developer's Digital Media Reference: New Tools, New Methods
by Curtis Poole Janette BradleyDesigned for media professionals working across a broad range of formats, Developer's Digital Media Reference is an excellent reference guide for those keeping pace with this dynamic industry. As "convergence" between the World Wide Web, multimedia, and television production communities continues, there is an increased demand for professionals to familiarize themselves with the many new delivery contexts, including hybrid DVD (where digital video content and computer data live on the same disc), interactive TV, and streaming media. Developer's Digital Media Reference covers essential technologies such as SVG (scalable vector graphics), SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language, a markup language for creating animations on the web), MPEG-4 (compression standard for streaming audio/video), and Dynamic Web Applications. In addition to serving as a quick-look-up guide, this text is organized to explain today's major media: server-based architectures, disc-based architectures, distribution architectures, and merging/shared architectures. Each topic is discussed in terms of the technological background-evolution, current tools, and production tips and techniques.
Developing Digital Short Films
by Sherri SheridanThe film market is shifting toward traditional desktop technology to create productions. . . digitally. Unlike traditional film production, though, digital films require producers to employ a different pre-production process. Developing Digital Short Films explores how unique character and set designs, bluescreen ideas, special effects, and simple 2D character animation techniques can be used as narrative devices for telling stories. Part One focuses on generating visual ideas that are ideal for digital production and creating a short film script. Part Two focuses on the visual pre-production of a short film and the issues that go through a filmmaker's mind as they struggle with how best to present their stories; this includes topics like 101 camera shots, frame composition, developing a visual look and feel, color maps, and creating storyboards and animatics. Part Three explores the different production environments of DV, 2D and 3D, and how they shape the telling of stories based upon the technological strengths of each style.
Developing Story Ideas: The Power and Purpose of Storytelling
by Michael RabigerThe vast majority of screenplay and writing books that focus on story development have little to say about the initial concept that inspired the piece. Developing Story Ideas: The Power and Purpose of Storytelling, Third Edition provides writers with ideational tools and resources to generate a wide variety of stories in a broad range of forms. Celebrated filmmaker and author Michael Rabiger demonstrates how to observe situations and themes in the writer's own life experience, and use these as the basis for original storytelling. This new edition has been updated with chapters on adaptation, improvisation, and cast collaboration's roles in story construction, as well as a companion website featuring further projects, class assignments, instructor resources, and more. Gain the practical tools and resources you need to spark your creativity and generate a wide variety of stories in a broad range of forms, including screenplays, documentaries, novels, short stories, and plays Through hands-on, step-by-step exercises and group and individual assignments, learn to use situations and themes from your own life experience, dreams, myth, and the news as the basis for character-driven storytelling; harness methods of screenplay format, dialogue, plot structure, and character development that will allow your stories to reach their fullest potential
The Development of African Drama (Routledge Revivals)
by Michael EthertonOriginally published in 1982, this book explores concepts such as ‘traditional performance’ and African theatre’. It analyses the links between drama and ritual, and drama and music and diagnoses the confusions in our thought. The reader is reminded that drama is never merely the printed word, but that its existence as literature and in performance is necessarily different. The analysis shows that literature tends to replace performance; and drama, removed from the popular domain, becomes elitist. The book’s richness lies in the constantly stimulating analysis of ‘art’ theatre, as exemplified in protest plays, in African adaptations and transpositions of such classical subjects as the Bacchae and Everyman, in plays on African history, on colonialism and neo-colonialism. The final chapters argue that the form of African drama needs to evolve as the content does.