Other performing arts Books

Book SynopsisAn insider's look at the power of comedy to effect social changeFrom Trevor Noah's The Daily Show and Hasan Minhaj's Patriot Act, to Issa Rae's Insecure and Corey Ryan Forrester's Twitter feed, today's multi-platform comedy refuses to shy away from the social issues that define our time.As more comedians lean into social justice activism, they help reshape the entertainment industry and offer creative, dynamic avenues for social change. The Revolution Will Be Hilarious offers a compelling insider's look at how comedy and social justice activists are working together in a revolutionary media moment. Caty Borum invites readers into an expanding, enterprising arena of participatory culture and politics through in-depth interviews with comedians, social justice leaders, and Hollywood players. Their insights shed light on questions such as: What role does comedy play in helping communities engage the public with challenging social issues? HoTrade ReviewCaty Borum shows us why she is the leading expert in the field of comedy & social justice. The Revolution Will Be Hilarious is essential reading for all the creative deviants out there who wish to engage with comedy as a form of artistic resistance. -- Josh Church, producer of Bros and George Carlin’s American Dream, Apatow ProductionsCaty Borum's analysis of the intersection of activism and humor highlights how much comedy plays a role in shaping the way we think and shaping the way we see the world as it is. This book also beautifully illustrates how humor can help us shape the world into what we hope it could be. There is no one more qualified to take us on such a journey than Caty Borum. -- Roy Wood Jr., Comedian, Correspondent, The Daily ShowArguing that humor is a fuel that powers positive change, Borum shows up- close how comedians turn communities of laughter into communities of action. A fun read and full of insight, this book is essential for anyone interested in the business of comedy and the power of grassroots politics. -- Nick Marx and Matt Sienkiewicz, authors of That's Not Funny: How the Right Makes Comedy Work for ThemThe book that comedy and social justice never knew it needed! The revelations, stories, and ideas presented are inspirational. A must-read for anyone who is interested in the intersection of entertainment and culture. -- Deniese Davis, founder/CEO, Reform Media Group; co-executive producer, Insecure; producer, A Black Lady Sketch ShowIn response to years of clear social upheaval in the United States, from renewed fights for social justice to new threats of authoritarianism, a new, diverse set of comedy voices are using humor in their activism. Caty Borum chronicles this phenomenon in her entertaining book The Revolution Will Be Hilarious. * Foreword Reviews *An important addition to support multidisciplinary research in the social sciences and fine arts, with a wide appeal for those interested in the role of activist comedy on emerging social media platforms. * Library Journal *The Revolution Will Be Hilarious shows how much media can emerge, converge, and use comedy as an effective tool for bringing about lasting change. -- Brian Boone * Vulture *It is clear from reading The Revolution Will Be Hilarious that Borum cares quite deeply about the power of civic organizations to drive social and political change and that her active, engaged scholarship is helping to promote a revolution that is both funny and impactful....Borum shows us just what can happen when comedians and activists work together to promote social change. * International Journal of Communication *

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Book SynopsisHow gallows humor can bolster us to confront global warmingWe've all seen the headlines: oceans rising, historic heat waves, mass extinctions, climate refugees. It feels overwhelming, like nothing can make a difference in combating this ongoing global catastrophe. How can we mobilize to save the world when we feel this depressed? Stay Cool enjoins us to laugh our way forward. Human beings have used comedy to cope with difficult realities since the beginning of recorded timethe more dismal the news, the darker the humor. Using this rich tradition of dark comedy to investigate climate change, Aaron Sachs makes the case that gallows humor, a mainstay of African Americans and Jews facing extraordinary oppression, can cultivate endurance, persistence, and solidarity in the face of calamity. Sachs surveys the macabre tradition of laughing during great suffering, from the Black Plague to the San Francisco earthquake of 1906and offers some of the earliest examples of superlative dark comedy. HTrade ReviewSachs is like the Stephen Colbert of scholars—wicked funny and smart, dead serious, and utterly friendly and accessible, all while explaining why it’s so urgent to have a good laugh as we deal with the climate crisis. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry. * Jenny Price, author of Stop Saving the Planet! An Environmentalist Manifesto *Punchy, clarifying, and invigorating. Even while maintaining a happily irreverent tone, Stay Cool explores a deep question: how the environmental movement might learn from previous social movements that kept up their catalytic energy rather than succumb to despondency and defeatism. It is a book perfectly attuned to the challenges of our moment. * Scott Saul, author of Becoming Richard Pryor *Aaron Sachs’ insights burn hot. While ever careful not to minimize our current straits, he guides us toward a sustainable way to think about, well, sustainability. Gallows humor, self-deprecation, the trickster’s ploys—all have served to inoculate those considered without history from the forces of history. Stay Cool recognizes the importance of remembering that within our frail humanity is the possibility of being better, and that one good way to start addressing our climate needs is to learn to laugh at our fallibility, if only so that we are prepared for the not-so-funny work ahead. * Jonathan Holloway, President, Rutgers University, and author of The Cause of Freedom: A Concise History of African Americans *Aaron Sachs’s central message in Stay Cool is if you want to survive catastrophe—whether one brought on by people or nature—don’t be alarmist, and definitely don’t be earnest and moralistic. Be funny. * Cindy Ott, author of Pumpkin: The Curious History of an American Icon *Feeling in the depths of despair about the future of our planet? As someone who can relate to getting the ‘climate blues,’ I encourage others in the planetary doldrums to read this book! Sachs will challenge your ideas about what climate change activism might look like—and will do so in ways that may lighten your mood at the same time. * Rachel Bezner Kerr, Cornell University, member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change *Declaring that the sanctimonious tones of environmentalists have a demotivating impact, this book muses on how humor might be more effective. It meditates on the role of morale in social movements, noting places where oppressed people turned despondency into determination and defiance, shifting their perspectives toward humor and hope amid despair. Stay Cool encourages a fresh, creative approach to addressing one of the biggest challenges of the time—climate change. * Foreword Reviews *Entertaining and informative. Sachs goes beyond citing papers that back up his thesis. He references many other publications, podcasts, and humorists, almost everything we need to know as the waters rise up before us, and the land behind us burns away, when what we’ll need is a damn good laugh. If it’s too late for that, well then, the joke will be on us. -- JoeAnn Hart * EcoLit Book Review *

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Book SynopsisTHE FIRST EXAMINATION OF STAND-UP COMEDY THROUGH THE LENS OF FOLKLOREIn A Vulgar Art Ian Brodie uses a folkloristic approach to stand-up comedy, leveraging the discipline''s central method of studying interpersonal, artistic communication and performance. Because stand-up comedy is a rather broad category, people who study it often begin by relating it to something they recognize such as literature or theatre, and analyze it accordingly. A Vulgar Art begins with a more fundamental observation: someone is standing in front of a group of people, talking to them directly, and trying to make them laugh. So this book takes the moment of performance as its focus and shows that stand-up comedy is a collaborative act between the comedian and the audience.Although the form of talk on the stage resembles talk among friends and intimates in social settings, stand-up comedy remains a profession. As such, it requires performance outside of the comedian''s own community to gain larger and larger aud

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Book SynopsisOn December 22, 1953, Mort Sahl took the stage at San Francisco's hungry i and changed comedy forever. Before him, standup was about everything but hard news and politics. In his wake, a new generation of smart comics emerged. Here, for the first time, is the whole story of Mort Sahl, America's iconoclastic father of modern standup comedy.

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Book SynopsisThis is a book of encounters. Part memoir, part essay, and partly a guide to maximizing your capacity for fulfillment and expression, The Poetry of Everyday Life taps into the artistic side of what we often take for granted: the stories we tell, the people we love, the metaphors used by scientists, even our sex lives. A folklorist, writer, and cultural activist, Steve Zeitlin explores how poems serve us in daily life and how they are used in times of personal and national crisis. In the first book to bring together the perspectives of folklore and creative writing, Zeitlin explores meaning and experience, covering topics ranging from poetry in the life cycle to the contemporary uses of ancient myths. This convergence of poetry and folklore, he suggests, gives birth to something new: a new way of seeing ourselves, and a new way of being in the world. Written with humor and insight, the book introduces readers to the many eccentric and visionary characters Zeitlin has meTrade ReviewFor the folklorist, the book is of considerable interest because it shows us how one prominent public-sector folklorist approaches his material in a manner that is somewhat distinctive. * Journal of American Folklore *The Poetry of Everyday Life reads like a conversation Zeitlin has had with the many people he has met in fieldwork, with his friends, family, ping-pong partners, and scholars who inform his thinking. Likewise, we find ourselves in conversation with poets, scholars, community members, his family, and others, all of whom are equal participants. The book prompts me to question my own language in writing this review when really, how do I review a book that made me think differently, that brought me to tears, and that changed how I teach? I could offer a poem, but I'll end with a pitch: buy this book. * Journal of Folklore Research *

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Book SynopsisCan a subject be sovereign in a hegemony? Can creativity be reined in by forces of empire? Studying closely the oral narrations and writings of four Indian authors in colonial India, The Audacious Raconteur argues that even the most hegemonic circumstances cannot suppress audacious raconteurs: skilled storytellers who fashion narrative spaces that allow themselves to remain sovereign and beyond subjugation. By drawing attention to the vigorous orality, maverick use of photography, literary ventriloquism, and bilingualism in the narratives of these raconteurs, Leela Prasad shows how the ideological bulwark of colonialismformed by concepts of colonial modernity, history, science, and native knowledgeis dismantled. Audacious raconteurs wrest back meanings of religion, culture, and history that are closer to their lived understandings. The figure of the audacious raconteur does not only hover in an archive but suffuses everyday life. Underlying these ideas, Prasad''Trade Review[A] charming retelling of Hanuman's visit to Lanka[...] her insightful studies of her four subjects at times suggest to me a more complex and equivocal relationship with colonial ideology and its hegemonic language. * Journal of the American Oriental Society *Table of ContentsIntroduction: "That Acre of Ground" 1. The Ruse of Colonial Modernity: Anna Liberata de Souza 2. The History of the English Empire as a Fall: P. V. Ramaswami Raju 3. The Subjective Scientific Method: M. N. Venkataswami 4. The Irony of the "Native Scholar": S. M. Natesa Sastri Conclusion: The Sovereign Self

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Book SynopsisWhat happens when one of Germany’s most important writers, himself a Muslim, immerses himself in the world of Christian art? In this book, Navid Kermani is awestruck by a religion full of sacrifice and lamentation, love and wonder, the irrational and the unfathomable, the deeply human and the divine – a Christianity that today’s Christians rarely speak of so earnestly, boldly and enthusiastically. With the open-minded curiosity of a non-believer – or rather a believer in another faith – Kermani engages with Christian art in its great richness and diversity. The result is an enchanting reflection which reinvests in Christianity both its spectacular beauty and its terror. Kermani struggles with the cross, falls in love at the sight of Mary, experiences the Orthodox Mass and appreciates the greatness of St Francis. He teaches us to see the questions of our present-day lives in the pictures of old masters such as Botticelli, Caravaggio and Rembrandt – not with lectures on art history or theology, but with an intelligent eye for the essential details and the underlying relations to seemingly remote worlds, to literature and to mystical Islam. Kermani’s poetic school of seeing draws us in as we are carried along by his unique perspective on Christianity, rekindling our interest in great art at the same time. We are captivated by his unique and brilliant Islamic reading of the West.Trade Review"A work of genius" Ian Sansom, The Guardian"This truly is one of the best books I've read in years: funny, outrageous, touching, intimate, glorious."Nicola Barker, The Guardian Best Books of 2017"Navid Kermani has written one of the funniest, most perceptive, outrageous and engaging books about art, life and faith that I have ever read… It’s wonderful. It’s cathartic. It's transformative."The Spectator"An astonishing, deeply sympathetic, constantly surprising meditation on Christianity from one of the greatest Muslim writers and thinkers in the Western world. Kermani writes perceptively about individual works of art and particular places, about the New Testament, and about the rich traditions of Christian theology and practice. Still more important, he articulates a vision of Islamic–Christian friendship that is, in our vexed world, a human gift of rare importance." Stephen Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University"In this beautifully written book, Navid Kermani performs something which, if not unprecedented, is still highly unusual, as he considers Christianity from the distance of a different faith. He does not claim any superiority here, quite the opposite. Unencumbered by the need to accept or reject, he explores the Christian faith with an alert interest and consuming curiosity. Through his keen gaze, coupled with a profound knowledge of theology and art history, Kermani captivates readers with the marvels of artworks that they might otherwise never really notice. The anglophone world needs and deserves this gem of a book."Daniel Boyarin, University of California, Berkeley "In this book Navid Kermani draws on his unique perspectives as a Muslim intellectual to offer thoughtful reflections on the complex divine ideas underlying Christian art and the deep parallels that can be drawn between it and other traditions, including mystical Islam. As an outside observer of Christianity, Kermani reminds us that the great faith traditions have more in common than they have difference and how, at the end of the day, we all pay tribute to the same divine spirit. May more Muslim and Christian thinkers alike be inspired by his deep reflectiveness and willingness to engage across faith traditions."Ambassador Akbar Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, American University, Washington, DC "When I lived in Deir Mar Musa, Paolo Dall’Oglio would sometimes press a “very important” book on me to read. I am sure that Wonder Beyond Belief is one of these books. It encourages debate and impresses the reader with the need for communication and respect for other people’s beliefs."Emma Loosley, University of Exeter "Superbly written with occasional suprises, this book is hard to put down"Premier Christianity ‘Kermani holds in fine balance his reverence and irreverence, his sense of the holy, his outrage at the outrageous… His “wonder” at art in the Christian – mainly Catholic – tradition is expansive, responsive, humane and imaginative. Sometimes it is also very funny. His curiosity as both a scholar and an art lover is prodigious and infectious… His very openness means that looking at Christianity and its art through his eyes can be moving, entertaining, illuminating, uncomfortable and very rewarding.’Art and Christianity“Many Christians, and especially many Catholics, will learn a great deal not just about the Islamic point of view, but about what they think of as their own true faith... This is a book which ought not to be missed by anyone concerned with issues in the modern world.”Irish Catholic

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Book SynopsisNarratives produce the ties that bind us. They create community, eliminate contingency and anchor us in being. And yet in our contemporary information society, where everything has become arbitrary and random, storytelling becomes storyselling and narratives lose their binding force. Whereas narratives create community, storytelling brings forth only a fleeting community – the community of consumers. No amount of storytelling could recreate the fire around which humans gather to tell each other stories. That fire has long since burnt out. It has been replaced by the digital screen, which separates people rather than bringing them together. Through storytelling, capitalism appropriates narrative: stories sell. They are no longer a medium of shared experience. The inflation of storytelling betrays a need to cope with contingency, but storytelling is unable to transform the information society back into a stable narrative community. Rather, storytelling as storyselling is a pathological phenomenon of our age. Byung-Chul Han, one of the most perceptive cultural theorists of contemporary society, dissects this crisis with exceptional insight and flair.Table of ContentsPreface From Narration to InformationThe Poverty of ExperienceThe Narrated LifeBare LifeThe Disenchantment of the WorldFrom Shocks to LikesTheory as NarrativeNarration as HealingNarrative CommunityStoryselling Notes

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Book SynopsisDudley Riggs didn’t have to run away from home to join the circus. Home was the circus. Son of the acclaimed aerial flyers Riggs and Riggs, he made his circus debut as a polar prince parading in a wagon pulled by a polar bear. At the age of five, he graduated to a risqué vaudeville act during the circus off- season; at eight, he outgrew his cutes (and his child stardom) and joined his high-flying parents on the trapeze. Eventually he had to learn to “fly funny” because he grew too tall to fly straight. In one way or another, Riggs has been flying ever since.The rest, as they say, is history. And what a story it is. In Flying Funny, Riggs shares many highs and lows while describing circus life and the evolution of America’s popular entertainment during the twentieth century. From his early life in circus and vaudeville to his creation of the Brave New Workshop, we see how his show business experience and instincts helped him create in Minneapolis what became the “next wave” in American entertainment—improvisation. As a young man, Riggs lost everything in a tornado, got an education on the fly, and sailed with the All American circus to post–war Japan. On a slow boat home and restless about his future, he developed the idea of Word Jazz—creating a script on stage as it is being performed—and shortly after he opened the Instant Theater in New York. Later, he moved to Minneapolis where he founded the Brave New Workshop, launching the careers of comic greats such as Penn and Teller, The Flying Karamazov Brothers, Louie Anderson, Peter Tolan, Pat Proft, Nancy Steen, Liz Winstead, Al Franken and many others. Today, the Brave New Workshop thrives as the longest running improvisational theater in America. From flying funny on the trapeze to theater without a net, Dudley Riggs’s story is filled with hearty laughs and eyebrow-raising insights. With a wry sense of humor and infectious warmth, he shares the exhilaration of flying whether through the air or on the stage.Trade Review"Dudley Riggs not only brought comedy to thousands of people, he paved and provided a safe environment for artists to stretch the boundaries beyond the norm. He made people think, but mostly he made them laugh their asses off. He’s an American institution, a Minnesota treasure, and my earliest mentor and friend. If you love show biz, comedy, the circus, or just want to laugh your ass off, you’ll get his book Flying Funny!"—Louie Anderson"The great Dudley Riggs is a titan of comedy. There was no laughter west of the Mississippi before him. He let us perform at his theater when we were just getting started, so we owe him a blurb. So buy this book."—Penn & Teller"It’s a lucky person who finds their wings in order to fly in this life. Dudley Riggs had the good fortune of being born on the high wire with no other option but to fly. And fly he did! Life without a net is a brave and honorable journey, and Dudley shares exactly this in his story. One can equate Riggs’s big-top lifestyle to their own everyday circus and perhaps find some wings of their own."—Mo Collins"Always wanted to run away with the circus . . . but your busy schedule never allowed it? Well, this book is the answer. It will pull you by the sleeve and set you on the tightrope or the flying trapeze . . . until you find yourself landing on the stage of an improv theater. Bravo, Maestro Dudley Riggs!"—Philippe Petit, high wire artist and author"Riggs is known nationally as founder of the Minneapolis-based Brave New Workshop, but his memoir Flying Funny: My Life without a Net doesn’t dwell on the comedy club. It’s about growing up among circus people, his brief career as an aerialist and the ‘stubborn, recurrent notion I had of creating an original scene onstage while performing it.’"—Pioneer Press"Like Riggs himself, his book is warm and a bit bashful in tone, avoiding the acres of melodrama and flamboyant flimflam found in many show business autobiographies. It reads like the work of a man with more good cheer than worry, making it through life’s travails without deep scars on his body or spirit. "—Star Tribune"The book is as entertaining as Riggs’ life and career and is recommended."—Circus Report and Show Biz USA"In this amusing memoir the ex-acrobat is still flying funny."—SpectacleTable of ContentsContentsForewordPreface1. The Polar Prince2. Vaudeville3. The World’s Fair4. The Riggs Brothers Circus5. School on the Road6. The Circus at War7. The Great Alberty8. Flying Funny9. Clown Diplomacy10. Fliffus It is!11. Word Jazz12. Change the Act?13. Yes . . . Please!14. Instant Theater15. New Ideas16. Theater Without a NetAcknowledgments

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Book SynopsisBritish filmmaker Michael Powell (1905-1990) began his career assisting director Rex Ingram in the waning years of silent film. Given a boost by Alfred Hitchcock, Powell spent much of the 1930s directing what were known as ""quota quickies,"" low-budget B movies. Later he created some of the most daring, interesting, and literate films ever made, including The Edge of the World (1937), Peeping Tom (1960), and his work with Hungarian-born filmmaker Emeric Pressburger, with whom producer/director Alexander Korda paired him. Powell's conversations disclose the same intellectual and artistic range that makes his films so rewarding. This collection of interviews manifests how he imagined himself simultaneously as a classic English gentleman and as a citizen of the world, making films with social conscience about life both in England and abroad. His expressions are charged with brilliance, wit, and jauntiness as he discusses his work on Thief of Baghdad, One of Our Aircraft Is Missing, The Red Shoes, The Tales of Hoffman, and Black Narcissus, as well as the politics of the British film industry. He is candid about the controversy surrounding his thriller Peeping Tom (1960). Now regarded as a classic, it was so derided upon its original release that Powell could not direct in the United Kingdom for a decade. This collection reveals the mind and the tactics of a master filmmaker who is woefully under-known, even as his films are widely celebrated throughout the world. Martin Scorsese, whom Powell befriended in his later years, considers him a towering genius of cinema. David Lazar, an associate professor of English at Ohio University, senior editor of Hotel Amerika, and editor/publisher of CreativeNonfiction.com, edited Conversations with M. F. K. Fisher (University Press of Mississippi). He is the author of The Body of Brooklyn and his work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, Aperture, Southwest Review, and many other journals and magazines.

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Book Synopsis"For over fifty years, Barbara T. Smith has been at the forefront of artistic movements in California. Her work across many mediums explores concepts that strike at the core of human nature, including sexuality, physical and spiritual sustenance, technology, and death. In this memoir, Smith weaves together descriptive accounts of her pioneering performances with an intimate narrative of her life. The Way to Be covers the years 1931 to 1981, up to the artist’s fiftieth birthday, resulting in an exhaustive catalogue of her early work. It reveals the personal stories and events behind her pieces and the challenges she faced in an art world dominated by sexism and machismo. Drawing on Smith’s archive at the Getty Research Institute, this enthralling book presents previously unpublished notes, documents, photographs, and firsthand accounts of her life and practice, as well as her more recent reflections on the past. The Way to Be demonstrates Smith’s lasting contributions to the field of contemporary art and provides an engaging commentary on a recent period of great cultural and political change. "

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Book SynopsisThe nineteenth century saw the American circus move from a reviled and rejected form of entertainment to the “Greatest Show on Earth.” Circus Life by Micah D. Childress looks at this transition from the perspective of the people who owned and worked in circuses and how they responded to the new incentives that rapid industrialization made possible.The circus has long been a subject of fascination for many, as evidenced by the millions of Americans that have attended circus performances over many decades since 1870 when the circus established itself as a truly unique entertainment enterprise. Yet the few analyses of the circus that do exist have only examined the circus as its own closed microcosm—the “circus family.” Circus Life, on the other hand, places circus employees in the larger context of the history of US workers and corporate America. Focusing on the circus as a business-entertainment venture, Childress pushes the scholarship on circuses to new depths, examining the performers, managers, and laborers’ lives and how the circus evolved as it grew in popularity over time. Beginning with circuses in the antebellum era, Childress examines changes in circuses as gender balances shifted, industrialization influenced the nature of shows, and customers and crowds became increasingly more middle-class.As a study in sport and social history, Childress’s account demonstrates how the itinerant nature of the circus drew specific types of workers and performers, and how the circus was internally in constant upheaval due to the changing nature of its patrons and a changing economy.

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Book SynopsisApparently, slumber parties in the mid-South 1970s were plied with a strange ritual. At midnight attendees would gather before a mirror and chant “I don’t believe in the Bell Witch” three times to see if the legendary spook would appear alongside their own reflections—a practice that echoes the “Bloody Mary” pattern following the execution of Mary Queen of Scots centuries ago. But that small circuit of preteen gatherings was neither the beginning nor the end of the Bell Witch’s travels. Indeed, the legend of the haint who terrorized the Bell family of Adams, Tennessee, is one of the best-known pieces of folklore in American storytelling—featured around the globe in popular-culture references as varied as a 1930s radio skit and a 1980s song from a Danish heavy metal band. Legend has it that “Old Kate” was investigated even by the likes of future president Andrew Jackson, who was reported to have said, “I would rather fight the British ten times over than to ever face the Bell Witch again.” While dozens of books and articles have thoroughly analyzed this intriguing tale, this book breaks new ground by exploring the oral traditions associated with the poltergeist and demonstrating her regional, national, and even international sweep. Author Rick Gregory details the ways the narrative mirrors other legends with similar themes and examines the modern proliferation of the story via contemporary digital media. The Bell Witch in Myth and Memory ultimately explores what people believe and why they believe what they cannot explicitly prove—and, more particularly, why for two hundred years so many have sworn by the reality of the Bell Witch. In this highly engaging study, Rick Gregory not only sheds light on Tennessee’s vibrant oral history tradition but also provides insight into the enduring, worldwide phenomenon that is folklore.

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Book SynopsisBy the 1740s, colonists living in North America began to encounter scores of itinerant performers from England and Europe. These show people—acrobats, wire dancers, tumblers, trick riders, painters, dancing-masters, waxworks proprietors, healers, and singing and language teachers—brought novelty and culture to remote areas. Advertising in newspapers, they attracted audiences with the hook of appearing “for a short time only.”In this richly illustrated and deeply researched book, Peter Benes examines the rise of early American popular culture through the lives and work of itinerants who circulated in British North America and the United States from the late seventeenth through the early nineteenth century. Although they were frequently reviled as quacks and absconders by many provincials, these transients enjoyed a unique camaraderie and found audiences among high- and lowbrow alike. Drawing on contemporary diaries, letters, reminiscences, and hitherto inaccessible newspaper ads, broadsides, and images, Benes suggests why some elements of Europe’s carnival and folklore traditions failed to gain acceptance in American society while others flourished brilliantly.Trade ReviewThis is an original and scholarly study, based on an impressively deep knowledge of a cultural world that we have lost, and so a book with wide potential appeal.""—Peter Burke, author of A Social History of Knowledge II: From the Encyclopédie to Wikipedia""For a Short Time Only is a masterful work of research.""—David Jaffe, author of A New Nation of Goods: The Material Culture of Early America

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Book SynopsisIn A Vulgar Art Ian Brodie uses a folkloristic approach to stand-up comedy, engaging the discipline's central method of studying interpersonal, artistic communication and performance. Because stand-up comedy is a rather broad category, people who study it often begin by relating it to something they recognize--""literature"" or ""theatre""; ""editorial"" or ""morality""--and analyze it accordingly. A Vulgar Art begins with a more fundamental observation: someone is standing in front of a group of people, talking to them directly, and trying to make them laugh. So this book takes the moment of performance as its focus, that stand-up comedy is a collaborative act between the comedian and the audience.Although the form of talk on the stage resembles talk among friends and intimates in social settings, stand-up comedy remains a profession. As such, it requires performance outside of the comedian's own community to gain larger and larger audiences. How do comedians recreate that atmosphere of intimacy in a roomful of strangers? This book regards everything from microphones to clothing and LPs to Twitter as strategies for bridging the spatial, temporal, and socio-cultural distances between the performer and the audience.

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Book SynopsisConfidence is essential for any stand-up comic and having confidence in your material is the first step to having greater confidence on stage. It is said that proper preparation makes for professional performance and this book provides the tools to achieve this, offering down-to-earth practical advice and a logical progression from identifying your stage persona, thinking about your audience and the craft of honing comedy material to fit your persona and audience, through to structuring your stand-up set, preparing for when things might go wrong, and last but not least - progressing your career. Get Your Act Together is a book for anyone who wants to be serious about becoming a stand-up comic and wants to do it well.

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Book SynopsisDigital traces, whether digitized (programs, notebooks, drawings, etc.) or born digital (emails, websites, video recordings, etc.), constitute a major challenge for the memory of the ephemeral performing arts.Digital technology transforms traces into data and, in doing so, opens them up to manipulation. This paradigm shift calls for a renewal of methodologies for writing the history of theater today, analyzing works and their creative process, and preserving performances. At the crossroads of performing arts studies, the history, digital humanities, conservation and archiving, these methodologies allow us to take into account what is generally dismissed, namely, digital traces that are considered too complex, too numerous, too fragile, of dubious authenticity, etc.With the analysis of Merce Cunningham’s digital traces as a guideline, and through many other examples, this book is intended for researchers and archivists, as well as artists and cultural institutions.Table of ContentsForeword ixBruno BACHIMONT Preface xiii Introduction xxxv Chapter 1. The Digital Trace: From Data to Metatrace 1 1.1. Tracing the ephemeral 2 1.1.1. An impossible history? 3 1.1.2. Relying on traces 4 1.2. The digital trace 8 1.2.1. Digitized traces 9 1.2.2. Born digital traces 10 1.2.3. Heterogeneous, numerous and fragile traces 11 1.3. Transforming traces into data 14 1.3.1. Analog trace and digital trace 14 1.3.2. From trace to data: the datatrace 16 1.3.3. Metatrace 22 1.4. Performing arts data 25 1.4.1. Performing arts data landscapes 25 1.4.2. The Semantic Web paradigm 27 1.4.3. Transforming the living archive into data 33 1.5. Conclusion 38 Chapter 2. Preserving the Impermanent 41 2.1. Note: scoring the representation 42 2.1.1. Notation of the performing arts 43 2.1.2. Scoring 49 2.1.3. From autography to allography: scoring digital works 52 2.1.4. The performing arts, between allography and autography 57 2.2. Diachronic documentation: reconnecting with the process 62 2.2.1. Making digital traces last 63 2.2.2. Taking the creation processes into account 66 2.3. Annotating: redocumentarizing traces 69 2.3.1. Digital as an annotation practice 71 2.3.2. The special case of video recording 73 2.3.3. Intra- and inter-documentary approaches 76 2.3.4. MemoRekall, a video annotation tool for redocumentarizing traces 79 2.4. Denote/connote: artistic intent and datatraces 83 2.4.1. Articulating close and distant reading 83 2.4.2. Rekall 90 2.5. Conclusion 95 Chapter 3. Writing the History of the Performing Arts 97 3.1. Sources and resources 99 3.1.1. Theater studies and digital humanities 100 3.1.2. Scrutinizing 105 3.1.3. Going back to the source 110 3.2. Exposing traces 113 3.2.1. Linking 114 3.2.2. Structuring 119 3.2.3. Reconstructing 124 3.3. Analyzing performing arts data 127 3.3.1. History 129 3.3.2. Literature 135 3.3.3. Shows 141 3.4. Conclusion 147 Conclusion 149 Glossary 153 References 163 Index of Names 179 Index of Terms 183

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Book SynopsisAfrican dance is discussed here in its global as well as local contexts as a powerful vehicle of aesthetic and cultural exchange and influence. To date, scholars have tended, with a few exceptions, to write about African dance in primarily ethnographic terms. This collection seeks to challenge this pattern and expand dance research by engaging with the aesthetics and socio-political impact of dance for communities in and out of Africa in an increasingly global context. Contributors to this issue look at the impact that specifically situated indigenous dance forms have had on the development of newforms locally, and the reciprocal impact of local and international infrastructures, including funding bodies, tourism and festivals. African Theatre 17 examines how dance is contributing to a particularly African interculturalism, while analysing the issues of representation of Africa in a postcolonial context. Articles address the efficacy of dance to engage audiences with disavowed issues regarding gender, sexuality and dis/ability both within and beyond Africa. Highlights include a dance photo essay on F.O.D. Gang's 2017 site-specific street performance "Untitled" in Lagos, a new non-themed section, and the playscript Lunatic! by Zimbabwean playwright Thoko Zulu. Volume Editors: YVETTE HUTCHISON & CHUKWUMA OKOYE Series Editors: Yvette Hutchison, Reader, Department of Theatre & Performance Studies, University of Warwick; Chukwuma Okoye, Reader in African Theatre & Performance University of Ibadan; Jane Plastow, Professor of African Theatre, University of Leeds.Table of ContentsObituary: J.C. Abbey, Master Puppeteer of Ghana (Steve Feld & Nii Noi Ortey) Introduction - Yvette Hutchison and Chukwuma Okoye DANCE James Mweu & Kunja Dance Theatre: Contemporary dance as African cultural production - 'Funmi Adewole Looking behind the mirror: Challenging representationalism in contemporary dance in postcolonial African contexts - Kristina Johnstone Looking behind the mirror: Challenging representationalism in contemporary dance in postcolonial African contexts - Kristina Johnstone Decolonizing the stage: Reflecting on a Canadian-hosted South African Performance Festival - Kymberley Feltham Unmuting South African citizenship through integrated/ disability dance - Yvette Hutchison From television to the streets: The rise and rise of dance-based advertising in Nigeria - 'Tosin Kooshima Tume Dance photo essay: Untitled: FOD Gang's Environmental Activism - Chukwuma Okoye OPEN SECTION Cultural production in a digital age: A reflection on the adaptation of an African folktale for a young audience - J.C. Niala And With Them Came Devils: Ebrahim Hussein, Mashetani & the poetics of doubt - Joshua Williams Playscript: Lunatic! by Thoko Zulu Book Reviews edited by Sola Adeyemi

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Book SynopsisDating back to the blackface minstrel performances of Bert Williams and the trickster figure of Uncle Julius in Charles Chesnutt’s Conjure Tales, black humorists have negotiated American racial ideologies as they reclaimed the ability to represent themselves in the changing landscape of the early 20th century. Marginalized communities routinely use humor, specifically satire, to subvert the political, social, and cultural realities of race and racism in America. Through contemporary examples in popular culture and politics, including the work of Kendrick Lamar, Key and Peele and the presidency of Barack Obama and many others, in Played Out: The Race Man in 21st Century Satire author Brandon J. Manning examines how Black satirists create vulnerability to highlight the inner emotional lives of Black men. In focusing on vulnerability these satirists attend to America’s most basic assumptions about Black men. Contemporary Black satire is a highly visible and celebrated site of black masculine self-expression. Black satirists leverage this visibility to trouble discourses on race and gender in the Post-Civil Rights era. More specifically, contemporary Black satire uses laughter to decenter Black men from the socio-political tradition of the Race Man. Trade Review"Played Out is an instantly canonical book. It tackles narratives of the Race Man, racial uplift, and respectability politics through the lens of satire to reveal the enduring mythos of acceptable Black social justice work. Through this brilliant, deeply researched book, Brandon Manning rescripts the pathways to social transformation and progress." -- Robin R. Means Coleman * author of African American Viewers and the Black Situation Comedy: Situating Racial Humor *“Brandon Manning joins a group of brilliant scholars working on contemporary African American satire who have redefined scholarship on Black texts and Black bodies. His analyses of Percival Everett’s recent work and President Barack Obama’s role in this era cannot be missed.” -- Darryl Dickson-Carr * author of Spoofing the Modern: Satire in the Harlem Renaissance *Left of Black | Brandon J. Manning on Black Satire * Left of Black Podcast, produced by the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute *"Played Out is an instantly canonical book. It tackles narratives of the Race Man, racial uplift, and respectability politics through the lens of satire to reveal the enduring mythos of acceptable Black social justice work. Through this brilliant, deeply researched book, Brandon Manning rescripts the pathways to social transformation and progress." -- Robin R. Means Coleman * author of African American Viewers and the Black Situation Comedy: Situating Racial Humor *“Brandon Manning joins a group of brilliant scholars working on contemporary African American satire who have redefined scholarship on Black texts and Black bodies. His analyses of Percival Everett’s recent work and President Barack Obama’s role in this era cannot be missed.” -- Darryl Dickson-Carr * author of Spoofing the Modern: Satire in the Harlem Renaissance *Left of Black | Brandon J. Manning on Black Satire * Left of Black Podcast, produced by the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute *Table of ContentsContents Acknowledgements Preface Introduction: Please Let Me Be Misunderstood Chapter 1: Of Our Satirical Strivings Chapter 2: Neoliberalism and the Funny Race Man Chapter 3: Integrationist Intimacies Chapter 4: The President and His Translator Conclusion: Beyond the Funny Race Man

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Book SynopsisOver the past few decades, French filmmaker Olivier Assayas has become a powerful force in contemporary cinema. Between his first feature Désordre (1986) and such major works as L'Eau froide, Irma Vep, Les Destinées Sentimentales, demonlover and, most recently, L'Heure d'été and Carlos, he has charted an exciting path, strongly embracing narrative and character and simultaneously dealing with the 'fragmentary reality' of life in a global economy. He also brought a fresh perspective to the problem of politics after '68, a subject that he revisits in his memoir A Post-May Adolescence (published as a companion book to this volume) and in his most recent film Après-Mai. This first English-language book about Olivier Assayas includes a major essay by Kent Jones, based on his two decades of correspondence and exchanges of ideas with the filmmaker, as well as contributions from Assayas and his most important artistic collaborators. The central part consists of individual essays on each of his works, written by Chris Chang, Larry Gross, Howard Hampton, Kristin M. Jones, B. Kite, Glenn Kenny, Michael Koresky, Alice Lovejoy, Greil Marcus, Geoffrey O'Brien, Jeff Reichert, Richard Suchenski, and Gina Telaroli.Trade ReviewEnthusiastic, personal, and easy to read.... Recommended. * Choice *The book is really beautiful: the layout is terrific, the illustrations fantastic, well-chosen; it’s truly a wonderful package. -- Some Came RunningA thoughtful, personal survey of Assayas's career by American critics edited by Jones and an English translation of Assayas's 2002 memoir 'A Post-May Adolescence: Letter to Alice Debord', both published in handsome volumes by the Austrian Film Museum, expose this tension in Assayas's work: between a desire for risk and a sensitive intelligence resistant to easy solutions; between allegiance to cinema 'degree zero,' a cinema of presence, and a romantic fascination with the passage of time...Jones, who writes four of the essays himself, has been in correspondence with Assayas for two decades, and the richness of the book is due not only to his deep affinity for Assayas's work but from the dialogue that has developed between the two of them on the nature of cinema and art. -- Film CommentTable of ContentsPreface, by Kent JonesWestway to the World, by Glenn KennyBlack Boxes. Désordre, by Jeff ReichertCold Comforts. L'Enfant de l'hiver, by Alice LovejoyWhen You Leave, You Want Time to Stand Still. Paris s'éveille, by Michael KoreskyMoving On. Une nouvelle vie, by Kent JonesRevival. L'Eau froide, by Howard HamptonThe Strange Case of Irma Vep. Irma Vep, by Larry GrossAfter Art Cinema. HHH—Portrait de Hou Hsiao-hsien, by Kristin M. JonesThe Soul in Times of Danger. Fin août, début septembre, by Richard Suchenski"How Futile Work Is." Les Destinées sentimentales, by B. KiteStop Stop Start Again. Demonlover, by Nick PinkertonBetter to Fade Away. Clean, by Chris ChangThe Doctor Is In. Noise, by Gina TelaroliAnywhere and Everywhere. Boarding Gate, by Kent JonesCosmic Pulses. Eldorado, by Geoffrey O'brienThe Secret Life of Objects. L'Heure d'été, by Greil MarcusWhat the Film Wants. Carlos, by Kent JonesLost Companions and Fleeing Ghosts. Après-Mai, by David Phelps, Kent JonesEarly and In-Between. Short Films, by CollaboratorsDenis Lenoir, Éric Gautier, Sylvie Barthet, and Luc Barnier in conversation with Kent Jones, by Olivier AssayasTen FilmsTimelineFilmographyBibliographyContributorsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgments

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Book SynopsisOlivier Assayas is best known as a filmmaker, yet cinema makes only a late appearance in this volume. A Post-May Adolescence is an account of a personal formation, an initiation into an individual vision of the world. It is, equally, a record of youthful struggle. Assayas' reflective memoir takes the reader from the massive cultural upheaval of France in May 1968 to the mid-1990s, when the artist made his first autobiographical film about his teenage years, L'Eau froide. The movement of thought and creation known as Situationism is the golden thread that connects and, in part, inspires his memoir. This book also includes two essays by Assayas on the aesthetic and political legacy of Guy Debord, who played a decisive role in shaping the author's understanding of the world and his path towards an extremely personal way of making films. A Post-May Adolescence was first published in French in 2005. Its expanded English edition makes a valuable companion to the first English-language monograph on Assayas' body of work, Olivier Assayas, edited by Kent Jones, also published by the Austrian Film Museum.Trade ReviewA thoughtful, personal survey of Assayas's career by American critics edited by Jones and an English translation of Assayas's 2002 memoir A Post-May Adolescence: Letter to Alice Debord, both published in handsome volumes by the Austrian Film Museum, expose this tension in Assayas's work: between a desire for risk and a sensitive intelligence resistant to easy solutions; between allegiance to cinema 'degree zero,' a cinema of presence, and a romantic fascination with the passage of time...The slim memoir, packaged with two additional essays by Assayas on Debord, is a valuable companion to the Jones collection, which is often in explicit dialogue with Assayas's analysis of his own work. -- Film CommentAssayas' voice is clear, urgent, and persuasive. For him the matter at hand, the subject that keeps slipping away, is the story of how he came to know the work of Guy Debord. This is nothing less that the story of his life. -- Film Quarterly

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Book SynopsisA richly illustrated study of wayang, the traditional puppet theater form of Java, based on unprecedented decades-long participatory research. Wayang, the traditional puppet theater form of Java, fascinates and endures thanks to the many ways it works as a medium—bearing the weight of Javanese culture and tradition as a key component of rites of passage, as a medium of ritual and spiritual practice, as public spectacle, and as entertainment of the broadest sort, performed live, broadcast, or streamed. Over the past forty years, the form has been subject to a great deal of experimentation and innovation, pulled in many directions within an ever-changing media landscape. In this book, Kathryn Anne Emerson outlines both significant contributions by a number of key figures and the social and political influences propelling such innovations. She also describes deeper and more lasting changes in wayang, based on what the art form's most accomplished practitioners have to say about it. At the core of the book is one pivotal figure, Purbo Asmoro of the Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Surakarta, who, Emerson argues, has taken the individual and singular innovations of the era and integrated them into a new system of performance practice, one that has shaped the key Surakarta school of performance. Grounded in an unprecedented, decades-long participatory research project involving hundreds of interlocutors, the book is beautifully illustrated and will be of considerable interest in Indonesian studies.Table of Contents List of Illustrations, Tables, and Charts Acknowledgements Basic Terminology Guide to Illustrative Audio-Video Clips Variant Spellings Map of Java Introduction Part One: Historical Perspective Classical Style Condensed Style Birth of an Idea: All-Night Interpretive Style or Garapan Rise to Fame in the Age of the Entertainment Interlude Part Two: All-Night Interpretive (Garapan) Style A New Vocabulary for Wayang Accompaniment The Prologue Creating Dramatic Hierarchy: a New Level of Intensity Multi-Episode Constructions In the Hands of Other Practitioners Passing on the Art Going Virtual Amid a Pandemic: An Unexpected Third Rail Conclusion Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisWhat started out as a correspondence course in magic ended up becoming a masterpiece of magic literature. Remarkably detailed and clearly explained, this course includes theory, technique, and psychology, along with impactful routines. Eight volumes in all each containing 600 pages complete this set of five books. The most respected course in magic that serves the needs of both beginners and professionals. A must have for every magic library!

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Book SynopsisEdiciÓn limitada de 1940 «ConfÍa en Dios, jovencito, pero corta siempre la baraja». Antiguo proverbio irlandÉs La cartomagia tiene con Martin Gardner una deuda muy superior de lo que la mayorÍa de los magos son conscientes. En Corta la baraja encontrarÁs diecisiete efectos originales y tremendamente prÁcticos; algunos con una construcciÓn exquisita, y muchos con tÉcnicas e ideas muy valiosas. Juegos que han pasado a formar parte de los repertorios habituales de los cartomagos, aunque otros yacen todavÍa escondidos y merecen ser redescubiertos. Jim SteinmeyerWhile some of the card tricks in this book are repertoire standards, some of them have fallen into obscurity. All seventeen of them are original, highly practical, and exquisitely carried out.

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