Performing arts Books

Book Synopsis"Do you have any notes for me?" Actors always ask for notes on their performance, and they will take them from just about anyone. Ron Marasco's Notes to an Actor grew out of the actor's profession. In his years as an actor, scholar, and teacher of acting, Mr. Marasco found that most acting books were either outdated classics that were rarely read, or quasi-textbooks that actors only "skimmed." So he developed Notes to an Actor, a compact, user-friendly book geared specifically to the way actors work. The book is based on the innovative idea that notes, given one on one, are the essential tool of creative learning.Trade ReviewIt is, hands down, the best book I have ever read on the art of acting...the writing is direct, smart, brief, and practical. -- Kelly Younger * Kellyyounger.net *I think this is the best book on acting I've ever read. -- Kirk DouglasRon's advice and tools on acting are incredibly astute, thought provoking, refreshing, and inspiring. I wish I'd had this book in my back pocket before many an audition. -- Neve Campbell, star of The CompanyNotes to an Actor is inspiring, transforming and absolutely fun. This brilliant book will be a cherished favorite of actors and artists until the last star falls from the sky. -- Beth Henley, Pullitzer Prize-winning playwrightFinally, the definitive book on acting. Ron Marasco will make you a better actor! -- Patricia Clarkson, two-time Emmy Award Winner and Academy Award NomineeNotes to an Actor is a conversation with an actor about his art, filled with insight and great stories. It is the best summary of notes for someone looking to be a truly 'complete' actor. -- Colin Hanks, star of Orange County and King KongHands down, the best book I have ever read on the art of acting and actually gave me a lot to think about as a playwright. The writing is direct, smart, brief, and practical. Even better, there are no long stories about the author's acting career or personal anecdotes that read like an autobiography rather than a guidebook. It's organized by topics actors (and writers) really want to understand. Can't recommend it highly enough. -- Kelly Younger, award-winning playwright, author of I Think You Think I Love You, and member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre and DramatistsThis is a helpful book for both actors and directors at every skill level. It tells them where to go and, most importantly, how to get there. -- Bernard Sahlins, author of Days and Nights at The Second CityRon Marasco is everything a young actor could want in a coach, a director, or a guru. His advice is practical and broad-ranging, his experience is extensive, and his stories about the business are often very funny. Notes to an Actor is a smart, useful, and even wise guide for living the actor's life. -- Curt Columbus, Artistic director of the Trinity Repertory CompanyTruly unique among acting resources...an insightful, invaluable, and definitive work....Essential. * CHOICE *There certainly is no shortage of books on acting, but Ron Marasco's Notes to an Actor takes a different approach than most. Notes to an Actor reads like a conversation between a director and actor, making it a more enjoyable read than most acting books. Highly recommended. * Stage-Direction.Com *The most practical book about acting that I have ever read....while it looks to be very useful to an actor, it is also fascinating for anyone who attends the theater...a great, simple read. -- Maria Knapp * About.Com *Useful both to those seeking to further their development as actors and to those for whom acting has long been a profession, this is an insightful, invaluable, and definitive work. * CHOICE *A witty, easy-to-read compilation of all the essential acting tips and tools that every actor should carry in his or her back pocket. * Instantcast Blog *

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisAnything But Dull: the Life and Art of Jeff Nuttall reveals the life lived and the art created by a visionary polymath whose generosity of spirit defined his character. From childhood traumas to revolutionary acts, through triumphs, defeats and resurrections Jeff Nuttall’s story is told here for the first time in all its richness and singularity. Based on over eighty interviews and meticulous archive research Anything But Dull shows just what made Jeff Nuttall such pivotal, provocative and important figure in twentieth century life and culture.Performer, poet, artist, writer, musician, teacher, film actor, bon vivant and hell raiser. Throughout his life Jeff Nuttall was always getting into scrapes, provoking outrage, drinking, fighting, falling in and out of love. Those intense experiences became the inspiration for his art. Almost no form of creative expression was foreign to him and within these nothing was forbidden – except, of course, to be dull.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisSince the mid-seventies there has been a dramatic decline in the popularity of seaside summer shows. The halcyon days of big productions playing to packed houses for long seasons have gone. This nostalgic book looks back at the hey day of the seaside show. Concentrating mainly on the period from the mid-seventies up until the present day, Peter Phillips’ journey starts in Cromer, visits all of our resorts and provides recollections and details of the theatres and the shows that played there. Whether they are big star shows in Blackpool and Great Yarmouth or concert parties in Newquay and Babbacombe they are all featured. This is not a definitive history, but an enthusiastic celebration of those wonderful seaside summer shows that were such a highlight of the British summer season.

Read more less

Book Synopsis"There is a mystery in every play that is written, no matter whether classical and poetic or modern and demotic, and it is the sound and the rhythm of the writing which take us there." Cicely Berry, the Royal Shakespeare Company's Voice Director, has been working alongside some of Britain's greatest actors and directors for over fifty years and is widely regarded as one of the most significant voice teachers in the world. From Word to Play draws on Cicely's extensive experience of working with theatre companies in Britain and throughout the world. It is her manifesto for a return to the words themselves: for moving away from an over-conceptualised, over-literal view of language and rediscovering the meaning in its sounds and rhythms. At the heart of this book is a concise, practical guide for directors in rehearsal, setting out work strategies that help bring out both the shape and the details within all kinds of text - whether verse or prose, seventeenth-century or contemporary. With a Foreword by Michael Boyd, Artistic Director of the RSC. Trade Review'Cicely Berry has based her work on the conviction that while all is present in nature our natural instincts have been crippled from birth by many processes – by the conditioning, in fact, of a warped society. So an actor needs precise exercise and clear understanding to liberate his hidden possibilities and to learn the hard task of being true to "the instinct of the moment"' - Peter Brook -- Peter Brook

Read more less

Book SynopsisHollywood is facing unprecedented challenges – and is changing rapidly and radically as a result. In this major new study of the contemporary film industry, leading film historian Tino Balio explores the impact of the Internet, declining DVD sales and changing consumer spending habits on the way Hollywood conducts its business. Today, the major studios play an insignificant role in the bottom lines of their conglomerate parents and have fled to safety, relying on big-budget tentpoles, franchises and family films to reach their target audiences. Comprehensive, compelling and filled with engaging case studies (TimeWarner, DreamWorks SKG, Spider Man, The Lord of the Rings, IMAX, Netflix, Miramax, Sony Pictures Classics, Lionsgate and Sundance), Hollywood in the New Millennium is a must-read for all students of film studies, cinema studies, media studies, communication studies, and radio and television.Table of ContentsIntroduction.- 1 Mergers and Acquisitions: The Quest for Synergy.- 2 Production: Tentpoles and Franchises.- 3 Distribution: Open Wide.- 4 Exhibition: Upgrading Moviegoing.- 5 Ancillary Markets: Shattered Windows.- 6 Independents: 'To the Rear and Back End'.- Conclusion.- References and Further Reading.- Index.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis is the true story of the American West on film, through its shooting stars and the directors who shot them...Howard Hughes explores the Western, running from John Ford's "Stagecoach" to the revisionary "Tombstone". Writing with panache and fresh insight, he explores 27 key films, and draws on production notes, cast and crew biographies, and the films' box-office success, to reveal their place in western history. He shows how through reinvention and resurrection, this genre continually postpones the big adios and avoids ending up in Boot Hill...permanently. Major films covered include the best from genre giants John Ford, Howard Hawks and John Wayne, plus classics "High Noon", "Shane", "The Magnificent Seven" and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". "Stagecoach to Tombstone" makes many more stops along the way, examining well-known blockbusters and lowly B-movie oaters alike. It examines comedy westerns, adventures 'south of the border', singing cowboys and the varied depiction of Native Americans on screen. Hughes also engagingly charts the genre's timely renovation by Sam Peckinpah ("Ride the High Country" and "The Wild Bunch" ), Sergio Leone ("Once Upon a Time in the West") and Clint Eastwood ("The Outlaw Josey Wales" and "Unforgiven"). Presented too are the best of western trivia, a filmography of essential films - and ten aficionados and critics, including Alex Cox, Christopher Frayling, Philip French and Ed Buscombe, give their verdict on the best in the west.Trade Review'hold your horses for next month's release of "Stagecoach to Tombstone: The Filmgoer's Guide to Great Westerns" author Howard Hughes' detailed tome on 27 classic films' - NEWSDAY.COMTable of ContentsCONTENTS: Preface: Colt Movies Acknowledgements Out of the West: An Introduction to Westerns Ten Top Tens 1.'The Tumbril Awaits' - Stagecoach (1939) 2.'Shakespeare in Tombstone' - My Darling Clementine (1946) 3.'Your Heart's Soft...Too Soft' - Red River (1948) 4.'Tomorrow's All I Need' - She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) 5.'What Will I Do If You Leave Me?' - High Noon (1952) 6.'You Can't Break The Mould' - Shane (1953) 7.'I Never Shake Hands With A Left-Handed Draw' - Johnny Guitar (1954) 8.'We'll Fool Saint Peter Yet' - Vera Cruz (1954) 9.'I Came A Thousand Miles To Kill You' - The Man from Laramie (1955) 10.'That'll Be The Day' - The Searchers (1956) 11.'There's A Hundred More Tombstones' - Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957) 12.'I Bet That Rattler Died' - Forty Guns (1957) 13.'There's Some Things A Man Just Can't Ride Around' - Ride Lonesome (1959) 14.'I'd Hate To Have To Live On The Difference' - Rio Bravo (1959) 15.'We Deal In Lead, Friend' - The Magnificent Seven (1960) 16.'I Seen The Other Side Of Your Face' - One-Eyed Jacks (1961) 17.'All I Want Is To Enter My House Justified' - Ride the High Country (1962) 18.'Ain't You Got No Respect For Your Elders?' - The Sons of Katie Elder (1965) 19.'The End Of The Line' - Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) 20.'The Fastest Finger In The West' - Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) 21.'This Time We Do It Right' - The Wild Bunch (1969) 22.'Who Are Those Guys?' - Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) 23.'I Got Poetry In Me' - McCabe & Mrs Miller (1971) 24.'Here In This Land, Man Must Have Power' - Ulzana's Raid (1972) 25.'Whooped 'Em Again, Josey' - The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) 26.'I've Always Been Lucky When It Comes To Killing Folks' - Unforgiven (1992) 27.'I'm Your Huckleberry' - Tombstone (1993) Filmography; Bibliography; Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisModern Lebanese cinema can best be explored in the context of the Civil War, in part because almost all the Lebanese films made since its outset in 1975 have been about this war. Lina Khatib takes 1975 Beirut as her starting point, and takes us right through to today for this, the first major book on Lebanese cinema and its links with politics and national identity.She examines how Lebanon is imagined in such films as Jocelyn Saab's "Once Upon a Time, Beirut", Ghassan Salhab's "Terra Incognita", and Ziad Doueiri's "West Beirut". In so doing, she re-examines the importance of cinema to the national imagination. Also, and using interviews with the current generation of Lebanese filmmakers, she uncovers how in the Lebanese context cinema can both construct and communicate a national identity and thereby opens up new perspectives on the socio-political role of cinema in the Arab world.Table of ContentsCONTENTS Introduction: On Lebanese Cinema and National Identity 1 The Lebanese Cinema Industry in Context 2 Religion, Conflict and the Other Within 3 War as a Masculine Arena 4 Women, the Body and the City 5 The Politics of Place, Exile and Belonging 6 History and the Avoidance of History Epilogue: Imagining the Nation Notes Bibliography Filmography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisIncludes the plays Moj of the Antarctic, Desert Boy, Matt Henson: North Star and Muhammad Ali and Me This collection signals the emergence of a distinctive new voice on the British theatre landscape. Moj of the Antarctic is inspired by the true story of an African American woman who cross-dresses as a white man to escape slavery; taken on a fantastical odyssey to Antarctica. Time Out Critics’ Choice ‘The language is rich and densely poetic. Reveling in the materiality and playfulness of words, cracking open complex ideas like eggshells.’ - Total Theatre Magazine Muhammad Ali and Me is a lyrical coming of age story, following the parallel struggles of a gay girl child growing up in foster care and the black Muslim boxing hero’s fight against racism and the Vietnam war. ‘As a piece of stagecraft, an entertaining kaleidoscope of social and political history, only one description will do: this is a play that ‘floatslike a butterfly and stings like a bee.’ - WhatsOnStage Desert Boy, a time-travelling a capella musical, offers a sharp twist on the subject of knife crime, black youth and absent fathers. ‘…a spiralling journey through colonial history not unlike Dante’s introduction to the Inferno. The juxtapositions are sometimes startling, and often quite comic.’ - Guardian Matt Henson, North Star is a biographical tale of Arctic betrayal, mixed with Greenlandic folk tales; all about love, climate and change. These plays queer the boundaries of sex and race, fact and fiction, history and geography, poetry and politics to illuminate contemporary themes through a dynamic African Diasporic theatrical aesthetic that leaps off the page.Trade Review"Adebayos startling plays blur the edges of sex and race, fact and fiction, history and geography and poetry and politics The Stage"Adebayo’s startling plays blur the edges of sex and race, fact and fiction, history and geography and poetry and politics” – The Stage

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis volume explores the recent ‘adolescent turn’ in contemporary Latin American cinema, challenging many of the underlying assumptions about the nature of youth and distinguishing adolescence as a distinct and vital area of study. Its contributors examine the narrative and political potential of teenage protagonists in a range of recent films from the region, acknowledging the distinct emotional registers that are at play throughout adolescence and releasing teenage subjectivities from restrictive critical and theoretical emphases on theories of childhood. As the first academic study to examine the figure of the adolescent in contemporary Latin American film, New Visions of Adolescence in Contemporary Latin American Cinema thus presents a timely and innovative analysis of issues of sexuality and gender, political and domestic violence and social class, and will be of significant interest to students and researchers in Latin American Studies, Cultural Studies, World Cinema and Childhood Studies.Table of Contents1. Introduction: Visualizing Adolescence in Contemporary Latin American Cinema: Gender, Class and Politics (Geoffrey Maguire and Rachel Randall)Part One: Gender and Sexuality 2. Visual Displeasure: Adolescence and the Erotics of the Queer Male Gaze in Marco Berger’s Ausente (Geoffrey Maguire) 3. (Re)Pairing Adolescent Masculinities: The Neo-Fraternal Social Contract and the Penal State in Hoje eu quero voltar sozinho and Beira-Mar (Ramiro Armas) 4.Sensorial Youths: Gender, Eroticism, and Agency in Lucrecia Martel’s Rey muerto (Inela Selimović) Part Two: Gender and Class 5. “Eu não sou o meu pai!”: Deception, Intimacy and Adolescence in (the) Casa grande (Rachel Randall) 6. Young, Male and Middle Class: Representations of Masculinity in Mexican Film (Georgia Seminet) 7. Beyond Pink or Blue: Portrayals of Adolescence in Latin American Animated Film (Milton Fernando González-Rodríguez) Part Three: Gender and Politics 8. Growing Pains: Young People and Violence in Peru’s Fiction Cinema (Sarah Barrow) 9. Tragic Adolescence in Michel Franco’s Heli and Amat Escalante’s Después de Lucía (Sophie Dufays) 10. From Girlhood to Adulthood: Colombian Adolescence in María, llena eres de gracia and La sirga (Carolina Rocha)

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book engages with the relationship between ruins, dilapidation, and abandonment and cultural events performed within such spaces. Following the author’s fieldwork in the UK, Bosnia Herzegovina, Poland, Germany, Greece, and Sicily, chapters describe, investigate, and reflect upon live performance events which have taken place in sites of decay and abandonment. The book’s main focus is upon modern economic ruins and ruins of warfare. Each chapter provides several case studies based upon the author’s own site visits and interviews with actors, directors, producers, curators, writers, and other artists. The book contextualises these events within the wider framework of Ruin Studies and provides brief summaries of how we might understand the ruin in terms of time, politics, culture, and atmospheres. The book is particularly preoccupied with artists’ reasons and motivations for placing performance events in ruined spaces and how these work dramaturgically.Table of Contents1. Introduction: Ruining the Project, Subjectivities, Fields and Methods.- 2. Ruins in Context - Context in Ruins.- 3. Performing the Antiquary: Classical Ruins in the Greek Imaginary.- 4. Nature’s Ruins.- 5. Dissonance and Contestation: Ruining Heritage and its Alternatives.- 6. Legacies of War: Performing Balkan Ruins.- 7. Ruins of Capital.- 8. After Communism and the Cold War: a Ruined Inheritance.- 9. Conclusion: Ruining the Ruin or Pausing at a Partial View.-

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis open access book explores the use of visual methods in migration studies through a combination of theoretical analyses and empirical studies. The first section looks at how various visual methods, including photography, film, and mental maps, may be used to analyse the spatial presence of migrants. The second section addresses the processual building of narratives around migration, thereby using formats such as film and visual essay, and reflecting upon the ways they become carriers and mediators of both story and theory within the subject of migration. Section three focuses on vulnerable communities and discusses how visual methods can empower these communities, thereby also focusing on the theoretical and ethical implications of migration. The fourth section addresses the issue of migrant representation in visual discourses. Based on these contributions, a concluding methodological chapter systematizes the use of visual methods in migration studies across disciplines, with regard to their empirical, theoretical, and ethical implications. Multidisciplinary in character, this book is an interesting read for students and migration scholars who engage with visual methodologies, as well as practitioners, journalists, filmmakers, photographers, curators of exhibitions who address the topic of migration visually.Table of ContentsChapter 1. Introduction Amandine Desille and Karolina Nikielska-Sekula.- Chapter 2. “Have you just taken a picture of me?”: Theoretical and ethical implications of the use of researcher-produced photography in studying migrant minorities.- Chapter 3. Migrants’ mental maps: unpacking inhabitants’ practical knowledges in Lisbon.- Chapter 4. On the Use of Visual Methods to Understand Local Immigration Politics.- Chapter 5. Conclusions Touching and being touched – experience and ethical relations.- Chapter 6. Ethnocinematographic theory. How to develop migration theory through ethnographic filmmaking.- Chapter 7. Migrant Cine-Eye: Storytelling in Documentary and Participatory Filmmaking.- Chapter 8. Story-making and Photography: The Visual Essay and Migration.- Chapter 9. Conclusions Migrants through images.- Chapter 10. Combining participatory and audiovisual methods with young Roma “affected by mobility”.- Chapter 11. Photovoice as a research tool of the ‘game’ along the ‘Balkan Route’.- Chapter 12. Crafting an event, an event on craft Working together to represent migration experiences.- Chapter 13. Conclusions Participating as power? The possibilities and politics of participation Céline Cantat.- Chapter 14. Chant Down the Walls: Exploring the Potential of Video Methods in the Study of Immigrant Politics and Social Movements.- Chapter 15. In the eye of the beholder? Minority representation and the politics of culture.- Chapter 16. The Researcher’s Nightworkshop: A Methodology of Bodily and Cyber-ethnographic Representations in Migration Studies.- Chapter 17. Conclusions “Ways of representation”: Is a reflexive representation possible?.- Chapter 18. Afterword Visual Research in Migration. (In)Visibilities, participation, discourses.

Read more less

Book SynopsisVirtual Realities presents a ground-breaking application of phenomenology as a critical method to explore the impact of immersive media. Specific case studies examine 360-degree documentary productions about trauma, virtual military simulations, VR exposure therapy for anxiety and posttraumatic stress disorder, and the emerging debate about regulating violent content in immersive media gaming. By addressing these texts primarily as experiences, Virtual Realities deploys an analytic and critical methodology that is sensitive to the bodily and cognitive impact of immersive media, especially via the body of an appropriately attentive researcher-critic. Virtual Realities provokes a rethinking of many of the taken-for-granted ideas and assumptions circulating in the field of immersive media. These include concepts of empathy, embodiment, the affective impact of textual and immersive properties on the users’ experience, as well as the “gee-whizz” mentality often associated with approaches to the medium. The case studies provide fresh engagement with immersive media such as cinematic VR at a time when dominant attitudes about the technology display an evangelical fascination with VR and other mixed realities as inexorably beneficial. Virtual Realities makes a compelling case for VR-phenomenology to be employed as a methodology by humanities scholars and also in cross-disciplinary applications of immersive media in fields such as psychology, human-computer interaction studies and the health sciences.Table of Contents1 Introduction2 Phenomenology and the Virtual Reality Researcher-Critic 3 On the Excitement of Measuring the Virtual Reality Audience 4 Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy 5 Virtual Reality, Trauma and Empathy 6 Regulation of Violent Content in Virtual Reality 7 Conclusion

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis open access collection deals with musical moments in film as one of the most pivotal and compelling issues of current film music research. Musical moments as defined by Amy Herzog occur when a musical number inverts the normal relationship between the image track and the soundtrack in a film in such a way that what we see is determined by what we hear. As one potential approach, this definition provokes a variety of perspectives to investigate the disruptive potential of these moments and numbers as a creative device in the production of audiovisual narratives. In this sense, the book responds to a need for an anthology that introduces students as well as scholars of cinema, musicology, media studies and cultural studies more broadly, to recent discourses in film music scholarship. The volume includes contributions by early career researchers as well as by established experts in the fields of musicology, film studies, media studies, and cultural studies, promoting cross-disciplinary collaboration in film music research. Table of Contents1. Introduction.- Part I. What the Musical Moment Can Do - Theoretical Approaches.- 2. The Musical Moment, Counter-Memory, Oblivion.- 3. The Crystal Song in four American Films from 2016 to 2018.- 4. Seriously Funny: Comedy, Performance and the Musical Moment in Toni Erdmann (2016).- 5. Experiencing Romance in Musical Moments.- Part II. How the Musical Moment was Created – Musical Numbers in Silent Cinema.- 6. Film’s First Musical Moment: The Dickson Experimental Sound Film, 1895.- 7. The Musical Moment in three Silent Films by Jacques Feyder: Narrative Vector or Emotional Catalyst?.- 8. A Waltz Dream: Musical Moments in Silent Operetta Films.- 9. Silent Movie Music(ians) on Screen: How Four Films Made Period Practices Audible and Visible.- Part III. Musical Dis/Placements – Musical Moments in Global Cinema.- 10. Musical Numbers in Bollywood Cinema's Homeland and Diaspora.- 11. Envisioning Chinese Musicals in the Era of Sound: Sound Cinema, the Songstress, and the Emergence of Mandarin Chinese Film Musicals, 1920s-1930s.- 12. De-Gendering Genre: Mayuzumi Toshirō's Avant-Garde Music in Popular Cinema.-13. Music in Nollywood Films: Schools of Thought and Performance Contexts.- 14. Redemption Songs: Musical Moments in Flora Gomes’s Nha Fala (2002) and Joseph Gaï Ramaka’s Karmen Geï (2001).- 15. “No hay nada que celebrar”: Migration, Violence, and Musical Moments in Luis Estrada’s El Infierno (2010).

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book explores the representation of London’s nightlife in popular films and newspapers of the interwar period. Through a series of case-studies, it analyses how British popular media in the 1920s and 1930s displayed the capital after dark. It argues that newspapers and films were part of a common culture, which capitalized on the transgressive possibilities of the night. At the same time both media ensured that those in authority, such as the police, were always shown to ultimately be in control of the night. The first chapter of the book provides an overview of the British film and newspaper industries in the interwar period. Subsequent chapters each explore a specific aspect of London’s nightlife. In turn, these chapters consider how films and newspapers of the interwar period depicted women navigating the street at night; the Metropolitan Police’s involvement in nightlife; and the capital’s newly built and expanded suburbs and public transport network. Finally, the book considers how newspapers and films depicted themselves and one another. Trade Review“One of the most impressive aspects of Interwar London After Dark is its catalogue of interwar films. … This makes the book an important resource, as readers will learn about films they might not have heard about otherwise.” (Michael McCluskey, The London Journal, August 29, 2023)Table of Contents1. Introduction: ‘Dancing Goes On Until Dawn’.2. Interwar London: Nights, Newspapers, Films.3. Women On The Night-Time Streets.4. The Metropolitan Police in Interwar Film and Newspapers.5. Suburbs and Public Transport at Night.6. Mirror Image: Newspapers and Films Reflecting Each Other.7. Conclusion.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn this comprehensive study of The Stars My Destination, D. Harlan Wilson makes a case for the continued significance of Alfred Bester’s SF masterwork, exploring its distinctive style, influences, intertextuality, affect, and innovation as well as its extensive metafictional properties. In Stars, Bester established himself as a son of the pulp-SF and high-modernist writers that preceded him and a forefather to the New Wave and cyberpunk movements that followed his lead. Wilson’s study depicts Bester as an SF insider as much as an outlier, writing in the spirit of the genre but breaking with the fixation on hard science in favor of psychological interiority, literary experimentation, and adult themes. The book combines close-readings of the novel with broader concerns about contemporary media, technoculture, and the current state of SF itself. In Wilson’s view, SF is a moribund artform, and Stars foresaw the inevitable science fictionalization of our benighted world. With scholarly lucidity and precision, Wilson shows us that Stars pointed the way to what we have (un)become. Table of Contents1. INTRODUCTION 2. SYNOPSIS 3. CHAPTER ONE: Cyberpunk Previsions and Literary Influences 4. CHAPTER TWO: The Frankenstein Riff 5. CHAPTER THREE: Architectures of Psyche, Power, and Patriarchy 6. CHAPTER FOUR: Speaking in Gutter Tongues 7. CODA

Read more less

Book SynopsisA charmingly illustrated exploration of The Nutcracker ballet, from the story to the characters to the music, for kids aged 8 - 12 to enjoy. The Nutcracker is one of the world''s most beloved and recognizable ballets. A holiday perennial, it is frequently the first ballet young people experience and remember for a lifetime. This wonderfully engaging book introduces children, ages 8 to 12, to the story of the ballet, its history, the music and choreography, as well as all of the characters from Clara and the Prince to the Mouse King and the Snow Queen. Special sections introduce children to some of the most famous dancers and companies that have brought the performance and the magic of the ballet to life. Including a fold-out poster that young readers can remove and hang on their walls, A Child''s Introduction to The Nutcracker is the perfect souvenir for the millions of young people who attend a holiday performance and have dreams of Sugarplum Fai

Read more less

Book SynopsisAN ACTOR PREPARES/WORK N Y

Read more less