Acting techniques Books

Book SynopsisGoethe uses light in a symbolic way in his mysterious tale. Although he presents his concepts in a very metaphorical manner, it seems as if the events that he depicts have a poetic quality. However, it is based on a rather scientific background as Nicholas Boyle has suggested. Furthermore, this book takes the newest findings from quantum physics into account. In this context, Arthur Zajonc and David Seamon argue that we enter into a new era of thinking. This book also presents dramaturgical ideas to inspire and encourage creative theatre people to realize the hidden meanings of the fairytale in a cost effective way. Die Analyse des Originaltextes basiert auf der Idee, dass Goethe die heilende beziehungsweise transformierende Wirkung von Licht auf menschliches Bewusstsein beschreibt. Damals war er seiner Zeit weit voraus, doch heute zeigt sich vor dem Hintergrund aktueller Forschung, dass es sich bei dem Text um vielmehr als nur ein Märchen handelt. Ist es gar ein verschlüsseltes naturwissenschaftliches Dokument, wie es Nicholas Boyle postuliert? Neueste Entdeckungen im Bereich der Physik werden zunehmend mit Goethes Weg der Wissenschaften assoziiert, wie es Arthur Zajonc und David Seamon beschreiben. Die moderne Physik sieht sich mit rätselhaften Fragen konfrontiert, die mit bisherigen Denkmodellen nicht mehr zu erklären sind. Die ebenfalls in diesem Buch enthaltenen dramaturgischen Anregungen für die kreative Umsetzung von Goethes Märchen sind vornehmlich als Ideenfundus für Theaterpädagogen zu verstehen. Hier kann mit einfachsten Mitteln lebendiges und fesselndes Erzähltheater gestaltet werden.

Read more less

Book SynopsisFilming Shakespeare, from Metatheatre to Metacinema is the first book-length study of Shakespeare film adaptations concerned with metacinematic criticism. The volume offers a thoroughly researched and extensive survey of reflexivity in Shakespeare on screen, providing the reader with comprehensive and easily readable case studies of major and obscure productions from silent era to the present day. Topics include the ontology of the photographic image, the silent era, cinema as death, Hollywood, counter-cinema, ideology, film genre, and theatrical vs. cinematic illusion. Considering Shakespeare criticism as well as film theory and history, the essays are aimed at students, teachers, scholars, and enthusiasts of Shakespeare and film.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThere is an old phenomenon in theatre arts: Education! And there is a new tendency: theatre arts for the very young! The relationship to education is clear, but what about the profit for the arts? The world of children as a horizon of experiences? The role of music as a dramaturgical element? Is it needed to divide the performance in actors and spectators? Is there a special age for a successful reception? How much should theatre artists be confronted with the physical and psychological development of children? It seems that Theatre for Early Years is a work in progress. There are more and more examples on the stages of the world: In Europe, in the States, in Australia. A variety of different perspectives are included in this research in performing arts from birth to three. The authors are reflecting their work, their observations, their directorship – to discover a new audience, to accompany the new generation in aesthetics, to make the signs of the time transparent. And maybe the development of Theatre for Early Years is a new challenge to renew the language of theatre, to establish an art of simplicity for the complexity of theatre.Table of ContentsContents: Wolfgang Schneider: Theatre for Early Years? Questions about Qualifications – Gerd Taube: First steps. Aesthetic peculiarities of the «Theatre for Early Years» – Carlos Herans: Why «Theatre for Early Years»? Memories and highlights of artistic experiences – Ana Lúcia Goulart de Faria/Sandra Regina Simonis Richter: Education meets theatre. Pedagogical remarks about the role of arts in early childhood – Geesche Wartemann: Wechselspiele - Playing with interplay. Staging the theatrical structure, and the fragility of the ground rules, in «Theatre for Early Years» – Ute Pinkert: Starting all over again? Changing ways of perception through theatre - not only for young children – János Novák: The joy of re-discovering the world. ‘Communitas’ and streaming in the performances made for babies – Wolfgang Schneider: The category of simplicity and the complexity of the theatre. Art education requirements, neurobiological justification and cultural policy considerations for the dramatic arts beginning with earliest childhood – Dan Höjer: Big drama for small spectators. Unga Klara’s Swedish experiment – Charlotte Fallon/Michel van Loo: Babies and theatre. Notes about the imagination on stage – Agnès Desfosses: Little ones and adults, alive and aware. Theatre brings together – Stephan Rabl: Surprise. Creating «Theatre for Early Years» between everything and nothing – Ivica Šimić: «Dance and movement is a natural choice of language». The art of making theatre art for small children – Cate Fowler: Installation theatre. Creating a performance space for babies and toddlers – Megan Alrutz: Visionaries wanted! Theatre for very young audiences in the United States – Gabi dan Droste: Distinguished theatre for young children. About the European network Small Size – Roberto Frabetti: Does theatre for children exist? An unlikely model – Myrto Dimitriadou: Theatre and children are beautiful and ‘ding dong’ … Artistic processes in theatre work for the smallest of the small (A letter to the editor) – Melanie Florschütz/Barbara Kölling: The discovery of the small child as a spectator. The performer Melanie Florschütz and the director Barbara Kölling in a discussion on «Theatre for Early Years» – Jo Belloli: Unearthing the potential. Exploring «Theatre for Early Years» in the UK – Sarah Argent/Kevin Lewis: «I was struck by the difference in age between us, but by the similarity in hairstyles». Journeying out of the blue.

Read more less

Book SynopsisKrzysztof Warlikowski’s work stands among the most remarkable phenomena in post-1989 European theater. This book joins Warlikowski’s theater with the dynamic changes in Polish society following 1989, using strategies borrowed from psychoanalysis, theater anthropology, performance studies, and cultural poetics. This book is not only about an artist of the theater, but above all about the theater production as an object of the audience’s desire, an object evoking fascination, revulsion, aversion, and opposition. This is why the performances are analyzed as a series of flash-points, constellations with powerful affective impacts. It focuses on fragments of social rituals, material objects with major potential to spark audience emotions, and gestures of violence. The piecemeal narrative serves to cull out aspects of Warlikowski’s performances that could be read as symptoms of social drama.Table of ContentsContents: Krzysztof Warlikowski – Theater – Social Drama – Liminality – Polish Transformation after 1989 – Revulsion – Affects – Psychoanalysis – Trauma – Melancholy – Cultural Gender – Violence – Forgiveness.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis unique edition is the result of the second International Theatre for Young Audiences Research Network (ITYARN) conference that was held in Malmoe, Sweden, in May 2011 as part of the XVIIth ASSITEJ World Congress and Festival. In fifteen essays that are illustrative of the wide variety as well as of the many opportunities for research in TYA, this book covers six continents, includes quantitative, qualitative, ethnographic/action, and historiographical methods, and highlights critical theory, philosophical discourse, play analysis, and other approaches. The essays deal with a broad range of issues, including representation, cultural contexts, questions of identity, race-, class-, and gender theory, notions of child and childhood, aesthetics, and the influence of media and dominant ideologies. ITYARN aims to further research in the field of theatre for young audiences to contextualize and theorize the lively artistic products for children and youth globally. It is the research network of ASSITEJ, the International Association of Theatre for Children and Youth, which co-produced this publication.Table of ContentsContents: Manon van de Water: Foreword – Beth Juncker: What’s the Meaning? The Relations between Professional Theatre Performances and Children’s Cultural Life – Tülin Saglam: TYA as Ideological Production in Turkey – Roger L. Bedard: Cultural Hegemony and Theatre for Young Audiences: Looking Beyond the «Normal» – Pamela Arnold Udoka: Conceptualization of Child and Childhood in Nigerian Theatre: A Dwindling Phenomenon? – Tristan V. Jacobs: The Virtual Puppet in the Machinima Movement: Discovering Virtual Puppetry in the 3D Performance Space of Video Games – Michelle Solberg: Quiet Dissent: Citizen Activism and the Kodomo Gekijō Movement in 1960 - 70s Japan – Erika Hughes: Defining the Child: Taboos of Fear and Age Appropriateness in Youth Holocaust Drama – Finegan Kruckemeyer: The Taboo of Sadness: Why Are We Scared to Let Children Be Scared? – J. Andrew Wiginton: Príncipe y Príncipe: Made in México – Enza Giannone: Searching for America in Laurie Brooks’s Triangle and Cynthia Mercati’s Faces of Freedom – Roxanne Schroeder-Arce/Chris McCoy: The Chicken or the Egg: Latino/as in Theatre for Young Audiences, Cyclical Challenge in Higher Education in the United States – David Broster: TYA-UK Developments - Reflections through a Looking Glass – Iva Gruić: Educational Value in the Theatre for Young Audiences and Its Relation to the Attitudes of the Educational Community – YiRen Tsai: A Reflection of the Child and Childhood in Taiwanese TYA through the Winning Plays of The Taipei Children’s Arts Festival – Merete Elnan: The Notion of Children: How Can the Idea of Childhood, of Children as Spectators, and of Understanding Influence Theatre for Young Audiences? – Faith Gabrielle Guss: Destabilizing Perception and Generating Meaning Seeking? Modeling TYA on the Dramaturgy of Children’s Imaginative Play-Drama.

Read more less

Book SynopsisWhat’s the role played by the invisible in our lives? At what level can it be perceived when explored in theatre-making? Having as its focus the acting processes carried out by Peter Brook and his actors, this book examines many aspects of their practical work – from actor training seen as "poiesis" to the production of the "present moment" – and in doing so, it tries to recognize the nuances and subtle qualities generated by the invisible produced by them. However, the core of this investigation is that of trying to capture the invisible not as a vague sensation but in its dynamic and powerful manifestation.Table of ContentsInvisible – Acting – Theatre – Experience – Liminarity – Peter Brook

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book presents a new approach to early English theatre by exposing a genuine relationship between monastic performances and theatricality. It argues that modern theatre was reinvented in Anglo-Saxon monasteries by monks who were required to transform themselves by disciplining their bodies and performing complex religious acts. After extensively surveying the monastic and liturgical sources of theatre the author reconstructs the XII-century staging of the Anglo-Norman «Ordo representacionis Ade» and demonstrates the fundamental incongruity between the ancient and Christian performativity. On a more personal note he concludes with comments on references to the monastic rule in «Performer», a programmatic text by Jerzy Grotowski.Trade Review«[...] dem Autor [ist] ein inspirierendes, reich bebildertes Buch gelungen, dessen Übersetzung sich gelohnt hat und das von einem breiten Wissen des Verfassers zeugt.» (Jörg Sonntag, H-Soz-Kult Nov. 2017)BR> Vollständige Rezension hier lesenTable of ContentsCaedmon – Monk as performer – Anglo-Saxon liturgy – Regularis Concordia – Monasticism – Body performances – Church and theatre – Medieval theatre – Transubstantiation – Mass – Christian performing arts – Performativity – Quem quaeritis – Ordo Representacionis Ade – Jerzy Grotowski

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe discourse on Physiognomy had an important influence and impact on European theatrical culture at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. The book discusses the debate about the scientific nature of Physiognomy. Starting from the concept that Physiognomy refers to particular signs on the face, it looks for evidence of a knowledge and awareness of this pseudo-scientific theory. The author researches among various acting manuals and theatrical works in English, German, French and Italian. She points out that Physiognomy makes an appearance in many different guises. In the so-called «physiognomical portraits», for instance, where we find animated discussions on the passions to be displayed, and also direct references to Johann Caspar Lavater and his science.Table of ContentsPhysiognomy – Pathognomy – Johann Caspar Lavater – Acting manuals – Display of passions – Inner beauty-outer beauty – Facial expression – Signs in the face – Tableaux vivants – Character description

Read more less

Book SynopsisTheorists in the humanities and social sciences are increasingly aware of the need to account for the dynamic role played by spatial factors in nearly every domain of human experience. Theatre, as an art form that is utterly dependent on its own spatiality, has a major contribution to make to contemporary debates about space and place. In this book, academics from Australian departments of theatre and performance studies are joined by others from anthropology, cultural and environmental studies as well as site-based performance makers, in order to explore the nexus between place and performance in practices ranging from mainstream theatre and site-specific performance to political demonstrations, rituals of commemoration and social display. While the places and performances they describe are necessarily local, the issues raised are not peculiar to Australia and will resonate with people in many countries where incoming settlers have displaced indigenous populations, where large-scale migration has unsettled resident populations, where atrocities have been committed (in peacetime as well as war) and people have somehow to find ways to live in places marked by the memory of trauma. The book ends with a theoretical afterword by anthropologist Lowell Lewis, proposing some important refinements to ongoing critical discourse about space and place.

Read more less