Theatre studies Books

Book SynopsisCanada boasts a remarkable number of talented theatre artists, scholars, and educators. How Theatre Educates brings together essays and other contributions from members of these diverse communities to advocate for a broader and more inclusive understanding of theatre as an educative force.Organized to reflect the variety of contexts in which professionals are making, researching, and teaching drama, this anthology presents a wide range of articles, essays, reminiscences, songs, poems, plays, and interviews to elucidate the relationship between theatre practice and pedagogy, and to highlight the overriding theme: namely, that keeping 'education' – with its curriculum components of dramatic literature and theatre studies in formal school settings – separate from 'theatre' outside of the classroom, greatly diminishes both enterprises.In this volume, award-winning playwrights, directors, actors, and scholars reflect on the many ways in which those workin

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Book SynopsisEarly modern Britain witnessed a transformation in legal reasoning about human volition and intentional action. Examining the relation between law and theater in this period, this book reads plays by Shakespeare, Jonson, Marlowe, and others to demonstrate how legal understanding of willful human action pervades 16th- and 17th-century English drama.Trade Review"Wilson's tracing of legal sources for ideas, situations, and vocabulary concerning intention and agency in the drama texts he studies is convincing. . . . The original contribution here is in the depth and detail of Wilson's readings of these few plays and his elaboration of the complexity of the issues of intention they dramatize." -- Renaissance Quarterly"Rather than surveying the representation of law in plays, or even theater legislation, Wilson tracks the way legal changes—critically in the area of contracts and contract law—both express and create new understandings of the nature of intention and action, fundamental categories of the legal, political, and psychological subject. . . . Throughout Theaters of Intention, Wilson juxtaposes the law and the stage in provocative and productive ways, and captures the culture's anxious efforts to come to grips with its own emerging, slippery identities." -- Studies in English Literature"Theaters of Intention is . . . an original and provocative study. It manages to range across a considerable amount of often dense legalistic and literary material, but does so in a way that maintains a reasonable degree of accessibility for the non-specialist. The lawyer will learn much about early modern literature, whilst the literary scholar will find much of interest regarding the exercise of law. Above all, it adds further weight to the thesis that it is impossible to study either law or literature in early modern England without due consideration of both." -- English Studies"This is a learned, densely researched, and above all weighty book. Scholars of Renaissance drama will want to come to terms with it, and draw upon the wealth of information it contains. Many critics have attempted to relate English Renaissance drama to contemporaneous legal developments, but Luke Wilson really delves into the subject and displays an intimate knowledge of the arcana of that most arcane of all subjects—English common law." -- Ben Jonson Journal"This is a provocative book, one that may well repay repeated consulatation." -- Seventeenth-Century NewsTable of ContentsList of illustrations; Preface and acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. Hamlet, Hales v petit, and the hysteresis of action; 2. Ben Jonson and the law of contract; 3. Commodities and contracts; 4. Promissory performances; 5. Contracting damnation; 6. Nobodies that matter; Afterword; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

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Book SynopsisThrough an extended reading of the noh play Aoi ne Ue, as well as briefer examinations of several other plays, Theatricalities of Power sheds new light on the circulation of power and desire in the middle and late medieval periods in Japan. The author argues that, rather than simply mirroring the sociopolitical contexts in which they were performed, these plays constituted an active, productive force in the theater of the medieval cultural imaginary by engaging specific sociopolitical issues and problems.Neither reducing noh to its theatrical conventions nor abstracting its style and poetics from its performativity, the book reads noh differently, opening the performance text to its historically specific contexts. It aims not merely to recount the history of noh, but to investigate the history in noh, to explore the indecision as to the limit between the performance text of noh and its other.The author approaches noh as a site of conflict fr

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"A terrific contribution to the growing literature on theater and philosophy, The Mind-Body Stage shows us a Descartes who writes ballet and who sees his thought dramatized by Corneille and enacted by Moliere. Far from being mortal enemies, theater and philosophy engage in a passionate pas de deux from which emerges nothing less than a Cartesian Theater." -- Martin Puchner * Harvard University *"R. Darren Gobert's elegant and convincing The Mind-Body Stage: Passion and Interaction in the Cartesian Theater represents a significant scholarly and stylistic accomplishment that the members of the Ann Saddlemyer Award committee are pleased to elect as the winner for 2014. Gobert stages a generative incursion into contemporary and historical discussions around the complex relationship between theatre and philosophy by first demonstrating how theatre scholars have paid insufficient attention to Descartes' transformational impact on theatre history, and how for their part philosophers have generally not thoroughly investigated the cultural impact and reception of Descartes' thought. The contributions the volume makes to theatre studies and performance studies, as well as to the emerging discourse of performance philosophy, are significant. Gobert's extensive archival and theoretical engagements demonstrate the lack of veracity underpinning our currently dominant scholarly shorthand of 'Cartesian' as that which would establish a bifurcated relationship between 'mind' and 'body'. Descartes' exchange of letters with Elizabeth of Bohemia is shown to be key to a developing momentum of insights around mind-body interaction that leads the late Descartes to increasingly centralize the body as an epistemological nexus. Ballet and theatre are understood to be key sites of the manifestation of the body's capacity for generating joyful experience and memory. Gobert's acute analysis of Descartes' paradigm-shifting impact on playwriting is traced through the work of Corneille and John Dryden respectively. Descartes' significant contributions to thinking around acting are shown to have influenced an entire genealogy of writing and performance practice in France and in England, and by extension an entire practice of European theatre architecture. Overall, the text is an exemplar of finely-tuned, witty and compelling scholarship that will most certainly have a significant influence a variety of fields." * The Ann Saddlemyer Award *"With the publication of Gobert's book, no longer can we see the Cartesian subject as a pure mind disconnected from others or the 'emotional cocktails' that constitute experience. His fascinating and original discussion of Descartes's theory of the passions and the mind-body union is a must for scholars of early modern literature and drama, historians of philosophy and of science, and philosophers of mind and neuroscience." -- Patricia Easton * Claremont Graduate University *"This year's winner of the Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre goes to a book that the jury unanimously found unique and surprising. It enters the realm of seventeenth-century philosophy and finds there the key to understanding the profound influence it exerted in drama, stagecraft, playhouses, and performances—influences that would shape not only theatre throughout the eighteenth century, but theatre to the present day. Meticulously researched, the book traces the influence of mind-body dualism through literary and material manifestations: in Swedish court ballet, French classical tragedy, and English burlesques, as well as in theatrical architecture, design, and acting practices. This book demonstrates not only solid research but the kind of innovative thinking that moves our field forward. Congratulations to Darren Gobert for The Mind-Body Stage: Passion and Interaction in the Cartesian Theater." -- Mechele Leon * Barnard Hewitt Award for Outstanding Research in Theatre Committee Chair *"A major contribution to the burgeoning field of theatre and philosophy, The Mind-Body Stage shows that Descartes's meditations on subjectivity changed the way character was conceived, that his study of geometry literally reshaped theatrical space, and that his theory of the passions revolutionized conceptions of the emotional dynamic between spectacle and spectator . . . The Mind-Body Stage breaks new ground. Its theoretical rigour, historical depth, and acute analysis will contribute substantially to new work on the relation between theatre and philosophy. It should be required reading for anyone who cares about theatre, drama, and intellectual history." -- Alan Ackerman * Canadian Theatre Review *"R. Darren Gobert's elegant The Mind-Body Stage represents a significant scholarly and stylistic accomplishment . . . Gobert has made an important contribution to the wider intellectual discourse on the widely variegated terrain currently described as performance philosophy . . . [T]he text is an exemplar of finely tuned, witty, and compelling scholarship that will most certainly have a significant influence in theatre and performance studies, as well as in a variety of related interfields and emergent interdisciplinary constellations of thinking." -- David Fancy * Theatre Research International *"The strength of Darren R. Gobert's The Mind-Body Stage is in the creative and compelling layering of theatrical developments in playwriting, acting, and theatre architecture onto the philosophical writings of Rene Descartes . . . [T]his book [is] a fantastic resource for students of theatre as well as theatre historians." -- Megan Macdonald * Theatreforschung *"...Gobert is at his best, combining his facility with close readings of text and rigorous analyses of material history to shed light upon the 'quarrel' surrounding Moliere's School for Wives . . . [T]he reader feels not exhausted by the author's thoroughness, but impassioned by it." -- Brad Krumholz * Theatre Research in Canada *"[A] scholarly tour-de-force . . . Gobert has done a great service to scholarship in both the history of philosophy and theatre studies and helped Descartes take a further step onto the stage of the world." -- William Egginton * Theatre Journal *"This intriguing study fulfills the promise to trace the hidden role that Cartesianism played in theater history in the seventeenth century—and beyond." -- Erec R. Koch * Modern Philology *"The strength of R. Darren Gobert's book, The Mind-Body Stage: Passion and Interaction in the Cartesian Theater, is to align itself not with Cartesian dualism but with the theatrical proofs of Descartes's cultural relevance in the creation of the plays, performances, and even the theatrical architecture of his time . . . Gobert successfully illustrates the ways in which Cartesian philosophy has been coterminous with meaningful changes in the theatre of interrelationship, whose borders are constantly in and at play." -- Spencer Golub * Comparative Literature Studies *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Elegantly and engagingly written, The Singing Turk is the first exhaustive and definitive investigation of the largely forgotten body of operas on Turkish themes. It is also an intellectual history of European identity as it variously rejected, resisted, flirted with, but never genuinely embraced Turkey and the Turks, with far-reaching present-day relevance." -- Maria Todorova * University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign *"Larry Wolff's book combines in the best way imaginable the study of history and of opera. I have never hummed and drummed as much when reading a book." -- Philipp Ther * University of Vienna *"This tome is a vigorous, literate and well-informed examination of the place of Ottoman- Turks in European operatic traditions that succeeds in making sense of a complicated, intricate and otherwise fragmented page in Western history. A remarkable feat, The Singing Turk is the first full account of a musicological phenomenon that, following centuries of conflict, underwent unprecedented changes to its fundamental intellectual roots following the defeat of the Ottoman army outside Vienna in 1683 and the transformation of their portrayal in popular culture across Christian Europe in the eighteenth century...It is likely to become the standard text on the subject for English- speaking readers, and can be warmly recommended to graduate and undergraduate students with an interest in opera, music, history and the dynamic tensions of Christian– Muslim relations." -- Abdullah Drury * Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations *"The Ottoman Empire, seen in stage characters called Turks, served as an important vehicle for musical theater during the last four hundred years. Larry Wolff has produced a remarkably wide-ranging survey that suggests how the characters, the settings, and the music reflect social and political contexts of the time. Knitting together the work of musicologists, historians, and political scientists, Wolff establishes what members of the public inferred about the evolution of the Ottoman Empire within international affairs from watching these shows." -- William Weber * American Historical Review *"Wolff has a gift for contextualizing his subject without being reductive. This quality enables him to historicize perceptions of Turkishness instead of seeing them simply as emanations of some static "Other." Although not a professional musicologist, he deserves praise for venturing into a field usually confined to specialists. Here his status as an outsider may well be an asset. His forays into the strictly musical dimensions of his subject are erudite and well-informed, but his lucid style is accessible to nonspecialists. The result is a book that general historians as well as music scholars will find rewarding." -- James Van Horn Melton * Journal of Modern History *"Engagingly written and judiciously illustrated, The Singing Turk follows the evolution of Ottoman themes in Italian, German, and French opera during the long eighteenth century (roughly 1680–1820)...This book is rich in cultural and historical detail that somehow never threatens to overwhelm the author's overall analysis, which engages not only with geopolitics but with Orientalism and the history of emotions." -- Jane Hathaway * Canadian Journal of History *"In this penetrating study, Larry Wolff suggests not only how operatic representations of Turkish themes and characters might have reflected transformations in perceptions of Ottoman power, but also how – as in, say, Montesquieu's Lettres persanes, yet closer to 'home' – they enabled Enlightened criticism of European 'reality.'" -- Mark Berry * European History Quarterly *"As a general historian, Wolff can ignore the boundaries that generally surround—and defend—musical studies, and the result is refreshing, as well as confident in its command of musical terminology." -- Paul Griffiths * Times Literary Supplement *"[T]he brilliant idea of opening a website (www.singingturk.com) bringing together musical and operatic excerpts for every chapter with brief commentary about each clip raises the status of this work from an academic reading to an operatic experience on its own right."--Yasir Yılmaz, Austrian History Yearbook"Wolff combines history and music at an extraordinarily deep level and on a particularly large scale....[He shows] that the Singing Turk and associated figures, values, and musical elements had, indeed, played a paramount role in the construction of European identity, and that operatic stages had been primary venues for the articulation of that process....Never before has a study been able to illustrate this intricate process with such completeness and richness." -- Alessandra Palidda * H-France Review *Table of ContentsContents and AbstractsIntroduction chapter abstractThe introduction sets the problem of operatic representation in the context of the Triplex Confinium, the adjacency of the Ottoman, Venetian, and Habsburg states in the eighteenth century, creating circumstances of war and hostility, but also coexistence and familiarity. Venice and Vienna were significant both as capitals of the Triplex Confinium and as operatic centers for works on Turkish themes. Some familiarity and fascination with elements of Turkish musical style— Janissary or alla turca style— was one aspect of this geopolitical situation, and the introduction makes the case for thinking about musical issues in the context of international relations and the dynamics of war and peace. Finally, the introduction considers how the singing Turk on the operatic stage addressed issues of European identity in the age of Enlightenment, in matters of political theory, emotional discipline, and the presumption of civilization. 1The Captive Sultan: Operatic Transfigurations of the OttomanMenace after the Siege of Vienna chapter abstractThis chapter suggests that, following the failed Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683, a lessening of fear and anxiety in Europe coincided with the emergence of operas about Turks as European entertainment—even as Ottoman territorial recession was articulated in the treaties of Karlowitz (1699) and Passarowitz (1718). The most important subject of such operas, initially, was Tamerlane's capture of Sultan Bajazet, with the sultan singing in captivity as the emblem of Ottoman defeat, engaging European sympathy rather than dread. Such operas appeared first in Venice and Hamburg in 1689 and 1690, and then found definitive form with the libretto by Agostino Piovene and music by Francesco Gasparini in Venice in 1711, revised for Reggio Emilia in 1719. The most celebrated such work was Handel's Tamerlano, in London in 1724, borrowing Gasparini's tenor Francesco Borosini for the role of Bajazet. Vivaldi also set the Piovene libretto as Bajazet in 1735. 2The Generous Turk: Captive Christians and Operatic Comedy in Paris chapter abstractThis chapter considers Paris as an operatic perspective on the Ottoman empire, conditioned both by the relative remoteness of Paris from Istanbul and the longterm French solidarity with the Ottomans against the Habsburgs. The Paris fairs of the early eighteenth century served as a matrix for the emergence of new musical comedies on Turkish themes, including the comical figure of Arlequin (Harlequin). The Ottoman embassy to Paris in 1720-1721 stimulated a fashionable cultural interest in Turquerie, while the publication of Montesquieu's Persian Letters in 1721 as a foundational work of the French Enlightenment encouraged a philosophical perspective on the Muslim world. These new attitudes received their most important and influential operatic expression in Rameau's Les Indes galantes of 1735, with one act titled Le Turc généreux. The "generous Turk" was a magnanimous and sympathetic pasha who ultimately emancipated a female European captive from his harem. 3The Triumphant Sultana: Suleiman and His Operatic Harem chapter abstractThis chapter presents the French musical comedy phenomenon of Charles-Simon Favart's The Three Sultanas (Les Trois Sultanes) of 1761, about Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and the favorite of his harem, Roxelana, as performed by Marie-Justine Favart. In this Parisian work the Ottoman sultan was triumphantly "civilized" by Roxelana, who was fictively imagined as a Frenchwoman in Suleiman's harem. The work was staged and costumed in the spirit of cultural Turquerie, and was politically meaningful in relation to the court of Louis XV and the influence and precedence of his mistress Madame Pompadour. There was also a roughly concurrent opera seria libretto concerning Suleiman, titled Solimano, and first composed by Johann Adolph Hasse for Dresden in 1753. Favart's Three Sultanas was translated, recomposed, and restaged all over Europe, including notable versions composed by Joseph Martin Kraus for Stockholm in 1789, and by Franz Xaver Süssmayr for Vienna in 1799. 4The Turkish Subjects of Gluck and Haydn: Comic Opera in War And Peace chapter abstractThis chapter focuses on the 1760s and 1770s, especially in the Habsburg monarchy, as Gluck and Haydn began to compose comic operas on Turkish themes making use of Janissary percussion and alla turca style. Cultural interest in the Ottomans was conditioned by the presence of Ottoman envoys in Vienna in the age of Maria Theresa and, especially, by the international circumstances of the Russian-Turkish war of 1768 to 1774. Gluck's and Haydn's French and Italian versions of the same subject, Les Pèlerins de la Mecque and L'incontro improvviso, are discussed with reference to the comical figure of the Kalender. Haydn's comic opera Lo speziale, performed at Esterháza in 1768, is considered in relation to operatic Turkish travesty and disguise. The news of the ongoing war between the Turks and Russians created a climate encouraging for comic operas about Turks, including works by Niccolò Jommelli and Georg Joseph Vogler. 5Osmin in Vienna: Mozart's Abduction and the Centennial of the Ottoman Siege chapter abstractThis chapter discusses the creation of Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio in 1781 and 1782 in the context of the approaching centennial of the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1783. Mozart turned from a serious Turkish subject in the unfinished opera Zaide to a comic Turkish subject in the Abduction, using alla turca musical style. In the Abduction the issue of Osmin's rage, his inability to master his emotions, was also relevant to Mozart's own recent conditions of service under Archbishop Colloredo in Salzburg. Singing in the deepest part of the basso range, Ludwig Fischer in the role of Osmin offered a representation of Turkish masculinity that removed all suspicion that Osmin, as overseer of the sultan's harem, might actually be a eunuch. In fact, eighteenth-century culture kept carefully distinct the dangerously related discourses concerning harem eunuchs, on the one hand, and operatic castrati, on the other. 6"To Honor the Emperor": Pasha Selim and Emperor Joseph Ii in the Age of Enlightened Absolutism chapter abstractThis chapter considers the political and emotional dynamics of Mozart's Sultan Soliman in Zaide, and then addresses the dramatic portrait of Pasha Selim in the Abduction as a very purposeful effort by the composer to bring himself to the attention of Habsburg Emperor Joseph II. Pasha Selim was made to appear as a model of Ottoman magnanimity which was intended to reflect upon the emperor in the audience at the first performance in 1782. The course of Josephine enlightened absolutism was closely correlated with Mozart's career in Vienna, and Mozart showed himself a dedicated Josephine with his musical attentions to Joseph's Turkish war of 1787. This chapter also considers the enormous and persistent success of Grétry's La Caravane du Caire as a French counterpart to the Abduction in the 1780s, with parallel political implications. The Ottoman accession of Sultan Selim III is discussed in relation to European enlightened absolutism. 7The Ottoman Adventures of Rossini and Napoleon: Kaimacacchi and Missipipi at La Scala chapter abstractThis chapter considers Napoleonic Europe as the context for the formation of the young Rossini as an opera composer, with particular attention to Napoleon's invasion of Ottoman Egypt, which coincided with the first Parisian production of Mozart's Abduction in 1798. There were new attentions to Ottoman themes in Napoleonic Paris during the first decade of the century, not only at the Paris Opéra, but also in musical comedies and burlesque satires. In 1812 Rossini brought his own brand of Turkishness to La Scala in Napoleonic Milan with La pietra del paragone and its immensely popular comical scene of Turkish disguise. Stendhal, as an ardent admirer of Rossini, hailed the composer as Napoleon's successor, making his very own musical conquest of Europe. 8Pappataci and Kaimakan: Reflections in a Mediterranean Mirror chapter abstractThis chapter focuses on Rossini's L'Italiana in Algeri, considered as a Venetian triumph for Rossini in 1813, employing Turkish themes that resonated with Venetian-Ottoman history. The libretto by Angelo Anelli had been composed earlier by Luigi Mosca. Rossini's opera is considered in the context of Mediterranean piracy and captivity, and interpreted as an opera of conquest in which the heroine Isabella executes a successful European campaign against the Algerian Mustafa Bey— in some sense anticipating the French invasion of Algeria in 1830. The farce of reciprocal Ottoman-European honors— Pappataci and Kaimakan— is shown to reflect not the unbridgeable differences but rather the Mediterranean resemblances between the Napoleonic Italians and the Ottoman Algerians. Isabella's famous aria "Pensa alla patria" presented Italian patriotism within an Ottoman scenario. The basso Filippo Galli sang the role of Mustafa Bey, as he sang all of Rossini's leading Turkish roles. 9An Ottoman Prince in the Romantic Imagination: The Libertine Adventures of Rossini's Turkish Traveler chapter abstractThis chapter focuses on the Romantic conception of the singing Turk in Rossini's Il Turco in Italia. After centuries of European warfare with the Ottomans, Rossini in 1814, working with the librettist Felice Romani, conjured a traveling Turkish protagonist who not only embraced the beauty of Italy and the Italians, but also exercised a musical charisma that made him the conqueror of hearts without resort to any weaponry at all. As the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy collapsed in 1814, Prince Selim, played by Filippo Galli, made his entrance at La Scala, singing a greeting to "Bella Italia"— which enabled Italians to see their own politically problematic peninsula reflected in the gaze of an admiring Turk. For the heroine Fiorilla the libertine Turk was irresistible, and Rossini's music suggested the transgressive compatibility between the Italian woman and the Turkish man who both made love in exactly the same Mediterranean way. 10Maometto in Naples and Venice: The Operatic Charisma of the Conqueror chapter abstractThis chapter focuses on Rossini's Maometto Secondo, presenting the Ottoman conqueror of Constantinople, Mehmed II, at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples in 1820. The sultan appeared as a charismatic and romantic singing Turk, performed by Filippo Galli. Enthusiasm for Rossini is discussed in the political context of Restoration Europe in the age of Metternich. Rossini's Maometto Secondo is analyzed in relation to Peter Winter's Maometto at La Scala in 1817, an opera about Mohammed the Prophet, based on Voltaire's tragedy Mahomet. Rossini's Maometto Secondo also conjured memories of Napoleon, the man whose seemingly endless ambitions for conquest were reflected in the operatic ambitions of Maometto on the operatic stage. Finally, since the plot of the opera deals with the sultan's specific conquest of Venetian Negroponte, Rossini's revision of the opera for Venice in 1822 is considered in relation to the long history of Venetian-Ottoman relations. 11Rossini's Siege of Paris: Ottoman Subjects in the French Restoration chapter abstractThis chapter considers the flourishing of operas on Turkish themes in Restoration France, including Rossini's Turkish operas in Paris— especially as Rossini became director of the Théâtre-Italien in the 1820s. His most important contribution to Turkishness in Paris was his refashioning of Maometto Secondo as Le Siège de Corinthe for the Paris Opéra in 1826, and this was powerfully shaped by the ongoing Greek War of Independence and the potency of French Philhellenism. The Venetians of Maometto Secondo were now made into Greeks, at war with the Ottomans, and the opera was thus made relevant to contemporary Greece. Public response to Rossinian orchestration suggested that what was once considered "Janissary" percussion was now being generally absorbed into the percussion section of the modern orchestra. In 1824 Beethoven allowed for the brief nostalgic appearance of a Janissary band playing a Turkish march in the score of the Ninth Symphony. 12The Decline and Disappearance of the Singing Turk: Ottoman Reform, the Eastern Question, and the European Operatic Repertory chapter abstractThis chapter considers European opera after Rossini and the waning presence of Turkish figures and themes in nineteenth-century opera. Ottoman reform under Mahmud II and Abdülmecid I (including the reform of Ottoman music, led by "Donizetti Pasha," the brother of the famous composer), brought about some cultural convergence with Europe. At the same time the modern Eastern Question transformed European-Ottoman relations into an unoperatic calculus of the balance of power, and introduced modern European colonialism in the Ottoman lands, beginning with the French seizure of Algeria in 1830. The presence of the singing Turk in the operatic repertory became less and less viable, as was notably apparent in the cases of Verdi's I Lombardi and Il Corsaro in the 1840s. The chapter concludes by observing subliminal traces of Turkishness in the modern operatic repertory without Turks and the lingering presence of Turkishness in ballet and operetta. Conclusion chapter abstractThe conclusion argues that the singing Turk, beginning with the figure of Bajazet in captivity, participated in a discourse of absolute power and political abjection, exploring issues of sovereignty that were deeply relevant for European princes. The singing Turk could also reflect the magnanimity of princes across Europe, from Rameau in Paris in the 1730s to Mozart in Vienna in the 1780s, contributing musically to a discourse about enlightened absolutism as embodied in the figure of the Generous Turk. The musical expression of extreme emotions— especially rage, as in the case of Mozart's Osmin— was seen as closely related to the presumptions and frustrations of absolute power. The musical mastery of operatic emotions contributed to a discourse on the civilizing process, with Turkishness posing questions of civilization that were thoroughly relevant to Europe. The singing Turk must be understood and interpreted in the historical context of European-Ottoman relations.

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Book SynopsisLucidly written and meticulously researched, Show Town is a groundbreaking work of cultural history. By examining one city’s theatrical scene in all its complex dimensions, this book expands our understanding of the forces that shaped the urban American West.

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Book SynopsisFor two centuries, nearly all historical accounts of American theatre have focused on New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. Thomas A. Bogar's Theatre on the American Frontier provides an overdue, balanced treatment of the accomplishments of the troupes working in the trans-Appalachian West.Trade ReviewThomas A. Bogar, a leading theatre historian, has created a skillfully researched and superbly written story of the theatre on the American frontier. From fragmented and oft-conflicting sources, he has summoned a colorful era that brought the stage's improbable characters and lively culture to the West." - Terry Alford, author of In the Houses of Their Dead: The Lincolns, the Booths, and the Spirits"Bogar does a yeoman job of tracing the travels and travails of legendary theatre names from the 1800s. The book offers a solid documentary record, as well as human interest stories and vivid evocations of the conditions they faced." - Felicia Hardison Londré, coauthor of The History of North American Theater: From Pre-Columbian Times to the Present"Bogar shines an illuminating light on a little-known and underappreciated aspect of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American life: the many and varied live theatre performances that took place on the frontier from 1790 to 1890 from eastern Kentucky to the Dakota Territory. A fact-filled, sprightly written treat for theatre and history lovers." - Marc Leepson, author of Saving Monticello: The Levy Family’s Epic Quest to Rescue the House That Jefferson Built

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Book SynopsisExamines the interplay of history, textuality, dramaturgy, and politics in the school dramas of Daniel Casper von Lohenstein (1635-1683). The plays are based on well-known episodes from classical Roman history and were staged in Breslau by students at two all-male humanistic gymnasia.Trade ReviewNewman expertly guides the reader through the maze of seventeenth-century scholarly commentary, uncovering alternative readings as well as daring interventions in order to decode the manifold meanings encoded in Lohenstein's work. Drawing on a vast wealth of materials, including dramas in other languages, she has achieved what no other philologist of Lohenstein has before. In short, this book is a most original contribution that ought to be of interest to a vast number of scholars outside German literature." - Journal of English and Germanic Philology

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Book SynopsisFringe Benefits, an award-winning theatre company, collaborates with schools and communities to create plays that promote constructive dialogue about diversity and discrimination issues. Staging Social Justice is a groundbreaking collection of essays about Fringe Benefits’ script-devising methodology and their collaborations in the US, Australia, Canada and the UK.

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Book SynopsisWorking theatrically with technology, Systemic Dramaturgy offers an invigorating, practical look at the daunting cultural problems of the digital age as they relate to performance.Table of Contents List of Illustrations List of Contributors Dedication Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: Thinking and Making Systemically Chapter 1.Sokyokuchi INTERLUDE 1.Kill Your Darlings: Marianne Weems on Collaboration and Devising Chapter 2. Play INTERLUDE 2.Play Matters: Elizabeth Swensen on Theatricality and Gaming Chapter 3, Empathy INTERLUDE 3:Empathy for Whom?micha cÁrdenas on Activism and Digital Performance Chapter 4: Towards a Dramaturgy of Video Games INTERLUDE 4:SHTEAM:Noah Wardrip-Fruin on Storytelling in the Digital Age Chapter 5: A Case Study ofNeighborhood 3: Requisition of Doomby Jennifer Haley INTERLUDE 5:Generations:Jennifer Haley on the Theatre Game Chapter 6. Systemic Dramaturgy Roundtable Bibliography

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Book SynopsisA new edition of the celebrated introduction to dramaturgy training and practice. Perfectly suited for the undergraduate theatre classroom, this holistic guide includes chapter exercises for students to practice the skills as they learn. The new edition also incorporates recent theory and new resources on multimedia performance.Trade Review“With wit, intelligence, and generosity, Michael Mark Chemers offers students a wide range of concrete, practical, and immediate entry points to the work of the dramaturg from classics to new plays, devised theatre, adaptations, and more. Grounded in history, theory, and textual analysis, this comprehensive handbook underscores with great effect the centrality of curiosity, questioning, creativity, collaboration, and expertise to dramaturgy and theatre making as a whole.”—Geoff Proehl, author of Toward a Dramaturgical Sensibility “The first edition of Ghost Light carefully broke down the role of the dramaturg and provided an intelligent and accessible perspective on the underpinnings of dramaturgy. Chemers now gifts us with a revised and updated text that carefully considers radical changes of the past decade and blind spots that can come up when writing. Particularly, this new edition addresses societal strife and the pervasive systems of oppression that have informed the recent past that theatre studies must address.”—Analola Santana, coeditor of Theatre and Cartographies of Power: Repositioning the Latina/o Americas “Ghost Light is the best book I can recommend to someone looking for a book that covers the history, theory, and practice of dramaturgy in one place. I never teach a Dramaturgy class without it! I appreciate Chemers updating this important contribution to the field to wrestle with and open up an academic and practical discussion about how cultural competency and identity play an ever-changing role in the way dramaturgy functions in art-making.”— Martine Kei Green-Rogers, past president of LMDA “This second edition of Ghost Light offers welcome updates to what has become a trusted introductory textbook for the study of dramaturgy in the United States. Featuring additions to his “theory capsules” as well as new approaches to the “Twelve Steps,” the insight Chemers offers in Ghost Light is both practical and aspirational, a feat he accomplishes without losing his engaging, lively style of writing that at once demonstrates dramaturgy while explaining the long history and crucial role of the dramaturg in theatre.”— Jane Barnette , author of Adapturgy: The Dramaturg’s Art and Theatrical Adaptation “For over a decade, Ghost Light has welcomed newcomers with open arms to the rigorous building blocks that constitute contemporary dramaturgical practice. With this second edition, Chemers embraces the latest developments in an ever-diversifying field with his trademark humor, humility, and abiding love for this vocation we share. This book has earned an essential place in every dramaturg's library.”—Ken Cerniglia, editor of Newsies: Stories of the Unlikely Broadway HitTable of Contents Foreword by Faedra Chatard Carpenter Preface to the Second Edition Preface to the First Edition Acknowledgments Part One: Philosophy 1. What the #$%@ Is a Dramaturg? 2. Historicizing Dramaturgy 3. Power Plays Part Two: Analysis 4. The Twelve-Step Program for Script Analysts 5. Form Follows Function 6. Why This Play Now? Part Three: Practice 7. New Plays 8. The Company 9. Audiences Appendixes A: The Casebook B: The Dramaturg’s Library C: Journals, Periodicals, and Online Databases D: Accessing Original Texts Online E: Recommended Play Anthologies Notes

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Book SynopsisA twelve-member cast enacts Scheherazade's tales of love, lust, comedy, and dreams. This adaptation offers a wonderful blend of the lesser-known tales from Arabian Nights with the recurring theme of how the magic of storytelling holds the power to change people.

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Book SynopsisThe product of more than sixty years in the world of theatre and film, this offers the kind of insight only gained by experience as both a teacher and practitioner. Garfein distils this experience into a holistic technique for learning and teaching that will be an invaluable resource for teachers and students.

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Book SynopsisThrough interviews with prominent producers, directors, choreographers, designers, dancers, and actors, Young and Zabriskie create a portrait of a diverse, dynamic artistic community between 1970 and 2010. They frame this history with helpful guides, including a chronology of key events, a glossary of names, and an appendix of leading performing arts institutions in Chicago.

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Book SynopsisBased on a vast amount of archival research, Adrienne Macki Braconi's illuminating study of three important community-based theaters in Harlem shows how their work was essential to the formation of a public identity for African Americans and the articulation of their goals, laying the groundwork for the emergence of the Civil Rights movement.

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Book SynopsisBefore film made them international comedy legends, the Marx Brothers developed their comic skills on stage for twenty-five years. In Four of the Three Musketeers: The Marx Brothers onStage, Robert S. Bader offers the first comprehensive history ofthe foursome's hardscrabble early years honing their act in front of live audiences.

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Book SynopsisPresents an ethnographic study of the role of theatrical performance in questions regarding immigration, citizenship, and the formation of national identity. Focusing on Paris in the twenty-first century, Emine Fisek analyses the use of theatre by immigrant-rights organisations there and examines the relationship between aesthetic practices and the political personhoods they negotiate.Trade ReviewThanks to the acute and careful analysis of theater practitioners and the book’s generous contextualizations, Fisek’s study will appeal to scholars and practitioners from a wide community of disciplines, including: French theater studies, applied theater and performance studies, community-based theater practice, migration studies, history, politics, human rights, postcolonial studies, gender studies, and activist arts."" - Clare Finburgh, coeditor of Contemporary French Theatre and Performance and author of Jean GenetTable of Contents Acknowledgments Dedication Introduction Chapter One: Al Assifa and La Kahina on the Paris Stage Chapter Two: Prendre la Parole Chapter Three: The Integrated Actor Chapter Four: Re-thinking Community and Culture Chapter Five: Theater without Borders Conclusion Bibliography Notes

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Book SynopsisIf a theater-goer in Weimar Berlin were asked to name the best living German playwright, the answer would not be Bertolt Brecht or Georg Kaiser or Arnolt Bronnen. It would be Ferdinand Bruckner. And if asked, who is this Bruckner?, the Berliner would be at a loss to give you any information. In the late 1920s, the first two plays attributed to Bruckner, Youth Is a Sickness and Criminals, were hot tickets, but only gradually was the pseudonymous author identified. Bruckner continues to be an understudied figure in the Weimar figure, and this updated translation of two of his most well-known plays will be the definitive version for scholars and readers interested in better understanding his legacy. Youth Is a Sickness (1924) is an important document of the lost generation that grew up during the first World War, born in the aftermath of cataclysm, devoid of hope and ideals, lost in sex and drugs. If Youth is a compact, claustrophobic study in juvenile derangement, Criminals (192

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Book SynopsisTells the story of student and worker uprisings in France through the lens of theatre history, and the story of French theatre through the lens of May â68. The book shows how theatre artists during this period used a strategy of occupation - buildings, streets, language, words, traditions, artistic processes - as their central tactic of protest.

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Book SynopsisOffers an in-depth, multidisciplinary compendium of essays about one of the most influential theatre artists of the twentieth century. Hans-Thies Lehmann's theory of post-dramatic theatre and developments in critical theory serve to provide a previously unavailable vocabulary for discussion of Kantor's theatre.Trade Review“This groundbreaking collection of beautifully edited essays is impressive in both scope and depth. The book deftly interweaves Kantor’s Polish, Jewish, international, and theoretical roots, thus illuminating essential connections between each in thrilling new ways.”- Dassia Posner, author of The Director’s Prism: E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Russian Theatrical Avant-Garde “A unique collection, full of splendid writing and vivid insight, destined to become an essential resource on one of the twentieth century’s seminal experimental theater artists.”- Jonathan Kalb, Hunter College, the author of Great Lengths: Seven Works of Marathon Theater “An invaluable and much needed collection on the incomparable Kantor—his work, his life, his theatrical prescience. Kantor confronted the twentieth century in profound ways that changed the future of theater. This volume approaches his methods and means through twenty-first century lenses that Kantor’s own work might be said to have forecast—post-dramatic theory, new materialism, thing theory, and posthumanism. As such, Theatermachine expands our understanding not only of the theater artist but of theory and practice that would follow.”- Rebecca Schneider, Brown University, the author of Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical ReenactmentTable of Contents Introduction Kantor: A Short Biography Part I: Kantor in Theory Tadeusz Kantor and Modernism Tadeusz Kantor’s Objects: Materialism of the Encounter Human/Object/Thing: Kantor’s Puppets and Bio-objects Crushed People: Kantor and Trauma Theory Kantor and the Theatre of Postmemory Postdramatic Tragedy: Notes on the Theatre of Tadeusz Kantor Kantor and the Posthuman Stage Part II: Kantor, Locally Transgression and Eschatology in the Work of Tadeusz Kantor Possessed by the Traumatic Past: Postmemory and S. An-sky’s Dybbuk in Kantor’s Dead Class Tadeusz Kantor and Bruno Schulz Kantor and Witkacy: Childish Games with Death Witkacy’s and Gombrowicz’s Influence on the Theatre of Tadeusz Kantor Kantor’s and Grotowski’s Poor Theatre Imagining a Future that Never Was: Tadeusz Kantor’s Symbiotic Jewish-Polish Stage Kantor and Slobodzianek: The Dead Class and Our Class From Tadeusz Kantor’s Anatomy Lesson to the Autopsy in Polish Contemporary Art Part III: Kantor, Globally Kantor and Early Twentieth Century European Avant-Garde Directors Tadeusz Kantor and the German Bauhaus: From Technological to Metaphysical Utopia. Kantor and Japan On the Reception of Tadeusz Kantor’s Work in Germany Kantor and the Contemporary European Avant-Garde: Marthaler, Perceval, and Hermanis Kantor and the Contemporary French Avant-Garde Kantor, Pina Bausch, and Dance Theatre Kantor and the American Avant-Garde Contributors

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Book SynopsisSince Chicago's founding, theatre has blossomed in the city's makeshift spaces, from taverns to parks, living rooms to storefronts. Makeshift Chicago Stages brings together leading historians to share the history of theatre and performance in the Second City.Table of Contents Introduction: Chicago Theater as Makeshift Performance, Megan E. Geigner, Stuart J. Hecht, and Jasmine Jamillah Mahmoud Section I: Theater: Artistry Born of Ashes, Stuart J. Hecht 1. Entertaining People: The 1893 Columbian Exposition Midway Plaisance, Rosemarie K. Bank 2. From Marmalade to Gingerbread: The Columbian Exposition, Chicago’s 57th Street Artist Colony, and the Theaters it Spawned, Stuart J. Hecht 3. All Passes – Art Alone Endures: Staging the New Drama at the Fine Arts Building, Shannon Epplett Section II: From Mainstream to Institutionalized, Megan E. Geigner 4. Pillars of the Community: Reversing the Flow between the Goodman and Immigrant Theater, Megan E. Geigner 5. Theatrical Geographies of Segregation: Spatial Displacement in Theodore Ward’s Big White Fog, Aaron Krall 6. Lincoln Avenue and the Off-Loop Scene: Urban Renewal, and the Early Years of the Chicago Storefront Movement, Cat Gleason 7. Object Permanence: ImprovOlympic and the Legitimacy of Improv in Chicago, Travis Stern Section III: Centering the Decentered, Itinerant, Civic, and Home, Jasmine Jamillah Mahmoud 8. Reclaiming Space: An Oral History of Teatro Vista, Laura Lodewyck 9. Temple-Swapping in the City: The Spatial Imaginary and Performances of Place-Making in the Work of Theaster Gates, LaRonika Thomas 10. Staging Private Homes and the Transformations of Public Lives: A conversation with Irina Zadov, Laley Lippard, Aymar Jean Christian, and Meida McNeal of the Chicago Home Theater Festival, Jasmine Jamillah Mahmoud Epilogue: Chicago Theater amidst Pandemics, Megan E. Geigner and Jasmine Jamillah Mahmoud

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a huge range and FREE tracked UK delivery on ALL orders.

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Book SynopsisOffers an alternative to the modern model of human rights in an unexpected archive: the monarchist tragedies that shaped Louis XIV's absolutist France. Through fresh insights and incisive readings, this volume explores a form of political subjectivity that locates political power in connection to others.Table of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction 1: Affective Evidence 2: The Mourner 3: The Rebel 4: The Hero 5: The Savior Conclusion: The Subject of Rights Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisExplores a range of disciplinary, institutional, and political puzzles that engage the social and aesthetic practice of performance in this collection of twenty essential essays spanning Shannon Jackson’s career.Trade Review“More than anyone, Shannon Jackson has helped us grapple with the gestures, trajectories, and vibrant interanimations among visual, mediatic, theatrical, and performance-based arts. Across decades of commitment, her work has invited us into sumptuous critical entanglements where arts' histories meet performance studies, where arts work is social work and social work performs. Now, Back Stages offers a vital collection of Jackson's influential essays curated to show the arc of her oeuvre and including some new work as well. The book will be an essential reader for all of us who meet at the crossroads of arts disciplines or gather where making meets thinking meets making again.” —Rebecca Schneider, author of Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment“Shannon Jackson is the great participant-observer of performance. These essays, written over twenty years, are vibrant with insights, observations, and reflections. Reading them allows us to relive and rethink performance studies at its best. Highly recommended.” —Martin Puchner, author of The Language of Thieves: My Family’s Obsession with a Secret Code the Nazis Tried to Eliminate“This anthology’s breadth of exploration exemplifies Jackson’s depth of knowledge and agility in moving confidently and with compelling insight across a range of performative practices—particularly socially-engaged forms—connecting disciplines and their histories while offering more expansive methods for their interpretation and analysis. Back Stages is an essential contribution to the field.” —Paula Marincola, executive director of The Pew Center for Arts & HeritageTable of Contents INTRODUCTION SECTION 1: BACKGROUND STAGES 1. Performance at Hull-House: Museum, Microfiche, and Historiography 2. Performing Show and Tell: On the Disciplinary Problems of Mixed-Media Practice 3. Theatricality’s Proper Objects: Genealogies of Performance and Gender Theory 4. When “Everything Counts”: Experimental Performance and Performance Historiography 5. Resist Singularity 6. Rhetoric in Ruins: Performing Literature and Performance Studies 7. Living Takes Many Forms: Creative Time SECTION 2: THE ARTS AT WORK 8. Life Politics/Life Aesthetics: Environmental Performance in red, black & GREEN: a blues 9. Elmgreen & Dragset’s Theatrical Turn 10. Performativity and Its Addressee: Walker Art Collection 11. Just-in-Time: Performance and the Aesthetics of Precarity 12. Seven Ways to Look at Windows: Harrell Fletcher 13. Counter-Carnival in a Performance-Friendly World: En Mas’ 14. Utopian Operating Systems: Theaster’s Way of Working 15. Trusting Publics: Paul Ramirez Jonas SECTION 3: RE-STAGINGS 16. The Way We Perform Now 17. Drama and Other Time-Based Arts 18. Assemblies: Public Participation, Heteronomous Worlds 19. Epilogue: Essential Labor and Proximate Performance Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisFeeling is not feelin. As the poet, artist, and scholar Bettina Judd argues, feelin, in African American Vernacular English, is how Black women artists approach and produce knowledge as sensation: internal and complex, entangled with pleasure, pain, anger, and joy, and manifesting artistic production itself as the meaning of the work.Table of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Feel Me Chapter 1. A Black Study in Grief : Salish Sea Chapter 2. Lucille Clifton’s Atheology of Joy! Chapter 3. Ecstatic Vocal Practice Chapter 4.Shame and the Visual Field of Black Motherhood Chapter 5. Toward a Methodology of Anger The End: Everything in the Ocean Notes Bibliography

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Book SynopsisA rich history of American theater, Timothy White's Blue-Collar Broadway tells the story of the people who created costumes, shoes, scenery, lights, and props. From the 1880s to the 1990s, White explores the shifting centers of theatrical craft and their impact on the nation and the iconic New York City district of Times Square.Trade Review"Straddling the bustling intersection where urban studies, business history, and theater studies converge, Timothy R. White's engaging study focuses on the theater-related business clustered around Times Square . . . To his enormous credit, White carefully links his analysis of the theater industry to what was happening on the streets around Times Square at specific historical moments." * Journal of American History *"The story of urban de-industrialization is frequently told. Rarely conveyed, however, is the effect that process had had on theatre making. With Blue-Collar Broadway, [Timothy R.] White goes a long way toward rectifying this omission. Thus, his fine book should find a receptive audience with those who are interested in the intersection of American theatre history, American studies, and entertainment-industry studies." * Modern Drama *"Times Square and the Broadway theater district are world famous for bright lights, dense crowds, and long-running plays. Less well-known is the story of scenery, set design, costumes, and lights, activities once concentrated in the craft shops and rehearsal studios in Manhattan and now dispersed to the hinterlands. Blue-Collar Broadway is the fascinating backstage story of the history and evolution of theater craft and a compelling call for the recognition and preservation of its artistry." * Kenneth T. Jackson, editor of The Encyclopedia of New York City *"Blue-Collar Broadway identifies hundreds of costumers, carpenters, lighting riggers, and craftspeople who worked for commercial Broadway theater over a 130-year period and analyzes the shifting social, economic, and cultural factors that pushed these workers out of the Times Square theater district. This is a remarkable achievement." * Marlis Schweitzer, York University *"[Timothy R.] White meticulously details the economic impact on the people, industry, and culture responsible for creating theatrical spectacle, making a persuasive plea for acknowledgement of the importance of their theatrical contributions. Highly recommended." * Choice *"Certainly any fan of theater history, economics, the patterns of urban New York City or general urban history will find is meticulous research stimulating. Blue-Collar Broadway is appealing for its sincere and thorough attention to a key, little-known industry." * Shelf Awareness *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. "Second-Hand Rose": The Stage Before the Broadway Brand Chapter 2. "A Factory for Making Plays": Broadway's Industrial District Chapter 3. "Sing for Your Supper": Theater-Related Craft Work in Radio, Film, and Television Chapter 4. "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'": Show Construction at Midcentury Chapter 5. "Sunrise, Sunset": The Decline of Broadway Craft and the Rise of Regional Theaters Chapter 6. "Every Day a Little Death": Times Square After the Collapse of a Theatrical Production Center Chapter 7. "When the Money Keeps Rolling in You Don't Ask How": Broadway Craft in a Globalized Industry Notes Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Dazzlingly ambitious and meticulously researched. . . . [Antitheatricality and the Body Public] is a testament to the perspicacity of Freeman's thought that her ideas shed light not only on the theater as a key to understanding how societies have defined and debated their constituents in the near and distant past but also on how we might use the theater to think through the constitutional crises of the present and the future." * TDR: The Drama Review *"Lisa Freeman's rich study should take a privileged place alongside the most influential work in the field. . . . Antitheatricality and the Body Public should inspire any reader to pursue the reciprocity between theater and power modeled by her exemplary scholarship." * Theatre Journal *"It is, a bold-but certainly timely-move by Lisa Freeman to analyze antitheatricality anew. She delivers on this task with a thorough and thought-provoking investigation realized in a compelling series of case studies that demonstrate the pervasiveness of antitheatrical onslaughts across theater history. . . . A must-read for researchers working on any period of British or American theater." * Bulletin of the Comediantes *"This book's rigorous historicism and meticulous close readings are impressive, but more importantly, they are foundational to its theoretical reach and power. Freeman's premise that antitheatricality persistently calls on a 'body public,' a particular understanding of the ideal state that includes even as it excludes bodies, is a productive way to consider more than this book's five cases." * Eighteenth-Century Fiction *"As Lévi-Strauss said of cats, the theater 'is good to think with,' especially in moments of social stress and trauma, and Lisa A. Freeman demonstrates just how useful it can be in five meticulously researched case studies. Her book represents an impressive labor of research and writing, chock full of new material in every chapter." * Joseph Roach, Yale University *"A work of great erudition and scholarly merit that shows how antitheatrical rhetoric emerges as a way of mediating social, cultural, and governmental crisis. The result is a highly self-aware and remarkably original argument about the function of cultural regulation." * Daniel O'Quinn, University of Guelph *

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Book SynopsisLisa Freeman's excellent cultural analysis ... demonstrates that character is a contested site in England's attempt to negotiate a changing sociology of class, gender, and nation even as it retained fundamental forms of patriarchy.-AlbionTrade Review"A well-researched book, which draws on some interesting and lesser-known plays, such as those by neglected female playwrights." * Times Literary Supplement *"Lisa Freeman's excellent cultural analysis . . . demonstrates that character is a contested site in England's attempt to negotiate a changing sociology of class, gender, and nation even as it retained fundamental forms of patriarchy. . . . This is perhaps the most important new book on eighteenth-century theater." * Albion *

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Book SynopsisFanny Kemble played a highly significant cultural role on both sides of the Atlantic. As David so convincingly shows, the life of this actress-turned-writer-turned-polemicist not only offers a fascinating subject in its own right but also intersects with a host of nineteenth-century figures who still interest us today.-U. C. KnoepflmacherTrade Review"Acclaimed, reviled, acclaimed again, Fanny Kemble played a highly significant cultural role on both sides of the Atlantic. As Deirdre David convincingly shows, the life of this actress-turned-writer-turned-polemicist not only offers a fascinating subject in its own right but also intersects with so many of the nineteenth-century figures who still interest us today: the Shelleys, the Brownings, Carlyle, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Liszt, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Henry James, and many, many more. David's absolute familiarity with all of them is impressive and reassuring, but it is of course Kemble herself who matters here most, and David's enormous empathy with this mercurial woman is wonderfully infectious." * U. C. Knoepflmacher, Princeton University *"Fascination with Kemble . . . does not abate. This scholarly, erudite, and thorough study by David . . . far exceeds all others in its balance and in its careful analysis of this complex and variegated life. . . . A great addition to the literature on important women, the theater, and numerous aspects of the nineteenth century. . . . Highly recommended." * Choice *"Deirdre David's book, meticulously researched and vividly readable, while consistently sympathetic to her subject, is always thoughtful, considered, nuanced, and illuminating. It evokes with equal success the theatrical world of nineteenth-century England and the plantation world of the antebellum South." * Journal of Victorian Culture *"This very lively and engaging volume is a wonderful introduction into the world of one of the nineteenth century's most celebrated theatrical performers. . . . Distinctive and welcome . . . evocative and perceptive." * Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography *

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Book SynopsisSelected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic TitleDuring the eighteenth century, North American colonists began to display an increasing appetite for professional and amateur theatrical performances and a familiarity with the British dramatic canon ranging from the tragedies of Shakespeare, Addison, and Rowe to the comedies of Farquhar, Steele, and Gay. This interest sparked demand for both the latest hits of the London stage and a body of plays centered on patriotic (and often partisan) British themes. As relations between the crown and the colonies soured, the texts of these plays evolved into a common frame of reference for political arguments over colonial policy. Making the transition to print, these arguments deployed dramatic texts and theatrical metaphors for political advantage. Eventually, with the production of American propaganda plays during the Revolution, colonists began to develop a patriotic drama of their own, albeit one that still stressed tTrade Review"Jason Shaffer has written a much-needed transatlantic account of the theater of the eighteenth-century British North American colonies and the early U.S. and its relationship to imperial and revolutionary politics." * Sandra M. Gustafson, University of Notre Dame *"An engrossing genealogy of patriotism in early American theater. . . . The author looks at the way theater shaped-and was shaped by-America's transformation from province to colony to sovereign nation." * Choice *Table of ContentsPrologue Chapter 1. Theater, Nation, and State in Early America Chapter 2. Cato and Company: A Genealogy of Performance Chapter 3. Free-Born Peoples: The Politics of Professional Theater in Early America Chapter 4. A School for Patriots: Colonial College Theater Chapter 5. Bellicose Letters: Propaganda Plays of the Revolution Epilogue. Postrevolutionary Patriotism and the American Theater Notes Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisNo medieval writer reveals more about early English drama than John Lydgate, Claire Sponsler contends. Best known for his enormously long narrative poems The Fall of Princes and The Troy Book, Lydgate also wrote numerous verses related to theatrical performances and ceremonies. This rich yet understudied body of material includes mummings for London guildsmen and sheriffs, texts for wall hangings that combined pictures and poetry, a Corpus Christi procession, and entertainments for the young Henry VI and his mother.In The Queen''s Dumbshows, Sponsler reclaims these writings to reveal what they have to tell us about performance practices in the late Middle Ages. Placing theatricality at the hub of fifteenth-century British culture, she rethinks what constituted drama in the period and explores the relationship between private forms of entertainment, such as household banquets, and more overtly public forms of political theater, such as royal entries and proTrade Review"Claire Sponsler's lucid, precise, and highly enjoyable book is the latest entry in a growing list of monographs intent on reconsidering the parameters of "early theatre" in medieval Europe. . . . Her exemplary interdisciplinary work moving between the archive and the repertoire in fifteenth-century England provides both an enviable model to others and a thoroughly engaging trek into uncharted territory. Even for theatre scholars studying different eras, Sponsler's scholarship deserves attention, if for no other reason than that it will change what "early English theatre" means to you." * Theatre Journal *"Claire Sponsler's book offers a fascinating look at what so often either slips between the cracks of modern genre classifications or is left to lie at the edges of the strictly "literary." . . . Her work calls for nothing less than a re-evaluation of the terms, categories and assumptions with which we approach late medieval literature." * TLS *"This absorbing and well-plotted study affords a rare glimpse into the conceptualization, performance, and impact of drama at a crucial time in the creation of an English vernacular literature." * Carol Symes, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign *"An impressively researched, perceptive study of a neglected topic by a leading scholar of medieval English drama." * Theresa Coletti, University of Maryland *Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations Introduction: Theater History as a Challenge to Literary History Chapter 1. Shirley's Hand Chapter 2. Vernacular Cosmopolitanism: London Mummings and Disguisings Chapter 3. Performing Pictures Chapter 4. Performance and Gloss: The Procession of Corpus Christi Chapter 5. Inscription and Ceremony: The 1432 Royal Entry Chapter 6. Edible Theater Chapter 7. The Queen's Dumbshows Chapter 8. On Drama's Trail Afterword Notes Works Cited Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisSituating the theater as a site of broad cultural movements and conflicts, Lisa A. Freeman asserts that antitheatrical incidents from the English Renaissance to present-day America provide us with occasions to trace major struggles over the nature and balance of power and political authority. In studies of William Prynne''s Histrio-mastix (1633), Jeremy Collier''s A Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698), John Home''s Douglas (1757), the burning of the theater at Richmond (1811), and the U.S. Supreme Court''s decision in National Endowment for the Arts v. Finley (1998) Freeman engages in a careful examination of the political, religious, philosophical, literary, and dramatic contexts in which challenges to theatricality unfold. In so doing, she demonstrates that however differently the public might be defined in each epoch, what lies at the heart of antitheatrical disputes is a struggle over the character of the body poliTrade Review"Dazzlingly ambitious and meticulously researched. . . . [Antitheatricality and the Body Public] is a testament to the perspicacity of Freeman's thought that her ideas shed light not only on the theater as a key to understanding how societies have defined and debated their constituents in the near and distant past but also on how we might use the theater to think through the constitutional crises of the present and the future." * TDR: The Drama Review *"Lisa Freeman's rich study should take a privileged place alongside the most influential work in the field. . . . Antitheatricality and the Body Public should inspire any reader to pursue the reciprocity between theater and power modeled by her exemplary scholarship." * Theatre Journal *"It is, a bold-but certainly timely-move by Lisa Freeman to analyze antitheatricality anew. She delivers on this task with a thorough and thought-provoking investigation realized in a compelling series of case studies that demonstrate the pervasiveness of antitheatrical onslaughts across theater history. . . . A must-read for researchers working on any period of British or American theater." * Bulletin of the Comediantes *"This book's rigorous historicism and meticulous close readings are impressive, but more importantly, they are foundational to its theoretical reach and power. Freeman's premise that antitheatricality persistently calls on a 'body public,' a particular understanding of the ideal state that includes even as it excludes bodies, is a productive way to consider more than this book's five cases." * Eighteenth-Century Fiction *"As Lévi-Strauss said of cats, the theater 'is good to think with,' especially in moments of social stress and trauma, and Lisa A. Freeman demonstrates just how useful it can be in five meticulously researched case studies. Her book represents an impressive labor of research and writing, chock full of new material in every chapter." * Joseph Roach, Yale University *"A work of great erudition and scholarly merit that shows how antitheatrical rhetoric emerges as a way of mediating social, cultural, and governmental crisis. The result is a highly self-aware and remarkably original argument about the function of cultural regulation." * Daniel O'Quinn, University of Guelph *

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Book SynopsisMixed Faith and Shared Feeling explores the mutually generative relationship between post-Reformation religious life and London's commercial theaters. It explores the dynamic exchange between the imaginatively transformative capacities of shared theatrical experience, with the particular ideological baggage that individual playgoers bring into the theater. While early modern English drama was shaped by the polyvocal, confessional scene in which it was embedded, Musa Gurnis contends that theater does not simply reflect culture but shapes it. According to Gurnis, shared theatrical experience allowed mixed-faith audiences to vicariously occupy alternative emotional and cognitive perspectives across the confessional spectrum. In looking at individual plays, such as Thomas Middleton's A Game of Chess and Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, Gurnis shows how theatrical process can restructure playgoers' experiences of confessional material and interrupt dominant habits of religious thought. Trade Review"Mixed Faith and Shared Feeling deftly challenges oversimplified confessional assumptions about people of the period by demonstrating through a wide array of lenses and perspectives the nuances of post-Reformation political, social, and religious practices. Through meticulous, sophisticated study, the author details how the power of theater shapes and is shaped by audiences of the time to reveal 'a way of moving around, inside and out of, between, or aslant of rigid confessional binaries.' This volume requires careful reading for students and scholars of drama. It is a remarkable resource for our time." * Seventeenth-Century News *"Musa Gurnis's Mixed Faith and Shared Feeling is a deeply researched, methodologically sophisticated, and interpretively compelling intervention in current studies of the relationship between the post-Reformation religious landscape and the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century commercial drama . . . In its willingness to tackle a range of critical and historical positions and in its learned mixing of theater history, performance theory, and materialist criticism, Mixed Faith and Shared Feeling is an impressive, exciting work. Perhaps most impressive is its eloquent conviction about the role of the stage not merely in reinforcing but in actually fostering the audience's creativity and interpretive flexibility. It is a flexibility that Gurnis herself demonstrates everywhere throughout the monograph." * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *"Lucidly argued, elegantly written, and grounded in sophisticated readings of the plays it examines, Mixed Faith and Shared Feeling offers an important contribution to the literature on the impact of the Reformation on early modern English stage culture . . . [Gurnis'] vindication of 'classical' materialism over the current, depoliticized (and, one might add, intellectually rather opaque) forms of neomaterialist theory reads as timely and urgent. Gurnis's passion and conviction have resulted in a remarkable book." * Modern Language Review *"Gurnis offers a fascinating reevaluation of how dramatists writing for the commercial English theatre responded to the divisions within and plurality of post-Reformation Christianity. This subject has attracted considerable scholarly attention in recent years, but Gurnis’s monograph represents a unique and valuable contribution to the field." * Theatre Journal *"Mixed Faith and Shared Feeling is an unusually compelling book. It is artfully conceived and exhaustively researched and takes its readers on a thoroughly engaging, wide-ranging, and profoundly interactive journey through the material-confessional on the one hand, theatrical on the other. And it does this in a way that successively explodes a number of received ideas and unexamined myths, chief among which is that card-carrying Puritans never attended, much less tolerated, public theater plays." * Thomas Cartelli, Muhlenberg College *"Focusing on the confessional, social, and political dimensions of post-Reformation theater in early modern England, Mixed Faith and Shared Feeling brings together a broad and deep familiarity with early modern drama as well as a deft understanding of the ways in which theatrical form and performance can shape individual and collective identities." * Steven Mullaney, University of Michigan *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. Mixed Faith Chapter 2. Shared Feeling Chapter 3. In Mixed Company: Collaboration in Commercial Theater Chapter 4. Making a Public Through A Game at Chess Chapter 5. Measure for Measure: Theatrical Cues and Confessional Codes Epilogue. Pity in the Public Sphere Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"[O]ne of the last decade's most important books on eighteenth-century theater . . . Readers should not be fooled by the title: this book is not just about trials or plays depicting trials. Dramatic Justice is a meticulously researched coup against the idea that transparency and progress were uncontroversial values among the Revolution's most vocal proponents of liberalism . . . Robert's theorization of reenactment should be studied by contemporary performance scholars and his lucid explanation of Robespierre's (self-described) Socratic death would help students of all levels and disciplines understand the Revolution's most startling paradoxes. Robert has written an excellent book on eighteenth-century theater that resonates with today's trial practices, where tensions between accuracy and openness, due process and "purely theatrical spectacles" have not lost their vigor." * The French Review *"Robert richly and compellingly illustrates the promise and peril that theatricality represented for legal reformers between 1750 and 1800. Dramatic Justice describes in great detail both the reform of French legal proceedings during the Revolution and the debates that preceded and attended it . . . Robert succeeds in challenging some commonly accepted notions about eighteenth-century theater and justice in France." * Modern Philology *"[O]ne of the most important recent contributions to the growing scholarship on French Revolutionary drama...[Yann's] study will be appreciated for its interdisciplinary scope, lucid writing, and stimulating polemic (and charming predilection for exclamation points!). The impressive wealth of material and topics explored both illuminates underexplored pockets of the archive and offers new insight into well-known texts by leading Enlightenment figures...[A] tour de force that will be required reading for anyone working on theatre and history of the French Enlightenment and Revolution." * Theatre Survey *"[A] very substantial, well-made and thought-provoking monograph, and an important contribution to understanding the cultural politics of revolutionary France . . . Robert's research [is] a richly complex landscape in which French thinkers wrestled with the dilemma of judicial theatricality, as they wrestled with the wider cultural question of the theatrical, the performative and the emotional in public life." * English Historical Review *"This book constitutes a bold and detailed look at the relationship between theatre and justice in 'the Age of the French Revolution . . . ' Robert offers genuinely new readings of many plays and a sophisticated model for further analysis." * French Studies *"[O]riginal perspectives on French revolutionary justice and the significant transformation in the relation between representations of justice in the theatre and actual legal proceedings that occurred in the latter half of the eighteenth century . . . Through his incisive history of the intellectual, symbolic, and practical exercise of justice in the years before and during the Revolution, Robert offers an alternative to the political lens that informs prevailing narratives." * Modern Language Review *"Dramatic Justice is an impressive and erudite study that elucidates theatre’s complicated relationship with the law and underscores the power of antitheatrical thinking in dramatic and nondramatic realms...[I]t is hard to do justice to the intricacy and breadth of Robert’s scholarship or to the range of his legal, literary, and dramatic sources. Dramatic Justice is essential reading for anyone concerned with eighteenth-century France, with theatre and drama studies, and with the historical, cultural, and legal worlds of the late eighteenth century." * Theatre Journal *"Yann Robert’s Dramatic Justice provides a wonderful reading of 'judicial theater,' a term [Robert] coins to designate those plays that sought to reenact recent events taken from political life and that functioned to retry the matter before their spectators...[A] bold and original contribution to eighteenth-century French theater studies." * Modern Language Notes *"No one has pursued the arguments for and against theatricalizing justice across the Enlightenment and Revolutionary periods as thoroughly as Yann Robert does in this excellent book." * Jeffrey S. Ravel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology *"In Dramatic Justice, Yann Robert offers an original, nuanced, and convincing analysis of the interplay between justice, legitimacy, and representation in France in the second half of the eighteenth century." * Thomas Wynn, Durham University *Table of ContentsIntroduction PART I. THEATER AS JUSTICE Chapter 1. Fixing the Law: Reenactment in Diderot's Fils naturel Chapter 2. The Many Faces of Aristophanes: The Rise of a Judicial Theater PART II. JUSTICE AS THEATER Chapter 3. Players at the Bar: The Birth of the Modern Lawyer Chapter 4. Judges, Spectators, and Theatrocracy Chapter 5. From Parterre to Pater: Dreaming of Domestic Tribunals PART III. THE REVOLUTION'S PERFORMANCE OF JUSTICE Chapter 6. Performing Justice in the Early Years of the Revolution Chapter 7. The Curtain Falls on Judicial Theater and Theatrical Justice Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisSubscription Theater asks why turn-of-the-century British and Irish citizens spent so much time, money, and effort adding their names to subscription lists. Shining a spotlight on private play-producing clubs, public repertory theaters, amateur drama groups, and theatrical magazines, Matthew Franks locates subscription theaters in a vast constellation of civic subscription initiatives, ranging from voluntary schools and workers'' hospitals to soldiers'' memorials and Diamond Jubilee funds. Across these enterprises, Franks argues, subscribers created their own spaces for performing social roles from which they had long been excluded. Whether by undermining the authority of the Lord Chamberlain''s Examiner of Plays and London''s commercial theater producers, or by extending rights to disenfranchised women and property-less men, a diverse cast of subscribers including typists, plumbers, and maids acted as political representatives for their fellow citizens, both inside the theatTrade Review"Drama and theater scholars will find much to admire in Franks’s Subscription Theater...The book is bold in its claims, careful in its argumentation, and self-aware in its practice. Even those readers who will perhaps have anticipated the claim that theatrical ephemera are not, in fact, ephemeral will come away with new methods for reading a multimedia archive and new ways to approach performance events through a material apparatus. Readers will also come away with an expanded sense of the literary and of the ways in which Victorian and Edwardian theatergoers made theater—and themselves." * Victorian Studies *"Matthew Franks convincingly argues that subscription underlay the development of theater audience and repertoire in the modern period. His conclusions are original and make a substantial contribution to both theater history and print culture studies." * Elizabeth Carolyn Miller, University of California, Davis *"Matthew Franks offers valuable knowledge about the wider cultural context-social as well as artistic-of British and Irish Edwardian 'new' drama and stagecraft, the regional repertory movement, and the widespread phenomenon of amateur theater. His methodological focus on printed ephemera presents exciting new ways of thinking about documentary evidence in theater history." * Claire Cochrane, University of Worcester *Table of ContentsIntroduction. Stages of Subscription Chapter 1. Private Subscription: The Incorporated Stage Society and Ephemeral Repertoire Chapter 2. Public Subscription: Audience Impressions in Dublin, Glasgow, and Liverpool## Chapter 3. Subscription On and Beyond the Stage Chapter 4. Affiliative Subscription: Paying to Play with Amateur Groups Chapter 5. Virtual Subscription: The Mask as Readers' Theater Epilogue. Subscribe Now Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments

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Book SynopsisHistorians on “Hamilton” brings together a diverse collection of top scholars to explain the Hamilton phenomenon and explore what it might mean for our understanding of America’s history. In short, lively essays, these experts assess what the musical got right, what it got wrong, and why it matters. Trade Review“For Hamilton fans, history buffs, political thinkers and Broadway acolytes, this collection provides dozens of fascinating perspectives, correctives, and sidelong directives. It probably won’t change your mind about the show, but it will keep you thinking and talking about it, and the world that surrounds it, for a long time to come. If you love Hamilton the musical or have any curiosity about the man himself and where he fits into the American panorama, this is the book for you." -- Jack Viertel * producer, critic, renowned author, and senior vice president of Jujamcyn Theaters *"Hamilton, the musical, has turned thousands of people onto the history of the American founding. For those who want more, Historians on Hamilton digs deep into the myths and realities behind the show." -- Jacob Weisberg * editor-in-chief of the Slate Group and author of The Bush Tragedy *"Historians on Hamilton is an erudite and accessible scholarly consideration of the Broadway phenomenon that created an Alexander Hamilton palatable for our times. An indispensable work for all interested in the founding and contemporary racial politics." -- Annette Gordon-Reed * author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family *"Deeply documented, culturally astute, interpretively diverse, consistently illuminating—this is a model of intellectual engagement. Providing insight into Hamilton’s significance, the essays cogently reveal how contemporary culture shapes our past.” -- Joshua Brown * American Social History Project, City University of New York Graduate Center *"Treating Hamilton as a historical phenomenon in its own right, contributors to this volume reflect on the lives that inspired it and its meaning for our conflict-ridden present." -- Kathleen M. Brown * David Boies Professor of History, The University of Pennsylvania *"Think of this volume as a how-to manual for scholars to use the brilliance of Hamilton to teach about the incredibly complex power dynamics of early America." -- Gautham Rao * assistant professor of history at American University and author of National Duties *"Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton is enthralling as musical theater. As history…not so much. Fortunately, two great professional historians, Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter, are here to set the record straight, gathering expert essays to tell you the inconvenient truths about Alexander Hamilton that the hit play leaves out. More than that, though, Historians on Hamilton offers informed and insightful meditations on the themes of history, memory, legacy, interpretation and art that lie at the heart of the Broadway smash. No Hamilton fan should do without it." -- David Greenberg * professor of history at Rutgers University, author of Republic of Spin *"A thought-provoking and carefully crafted collection of scholarship that has much to offer readers interested in music, theater, or American history." * Library Journal starred review *"Historians on Hamilton is smart and interesting. It was great fun to read all the different points of view and even have some of my opinions changed. What more could you want from a book?" * Show Showdown *"The Issue on the Table: Is 'Hamilton' Good For History?" by Kate Keller * Smithsonian Magazine Online *"Cumulatively, the essays in Historians on Hamilton provide a useful and impressive range of perspectives from which to appreciate the historical significance of the Broadway sensation, to evaluate the historical accuracy of the story Hamilton tells, and to prod us to consider the contemporary stakes of the historical narratives we consume, celebrate, and propagate." * H-Net *"How ‘Hamilton’ Is Remaking American History" feature and excerpt * DC Metro Theater Arts *"The book takes a unique and revolutionary approach in bringing Hamilton to life." * Choice *New Books Network podcast interview with authors * New Books Network podcast interview *"This book is a collection of articles on the Broadway play Hamilton with what historians say about the play.... Suffice it to say that most of the play seems to be historically correct, but history is always a matter of interpretation, and Alexander Hamilton is certainly an historical figure who needs interpretation." * We Are Literate *"Gift Guide for Book Lovers" by the editors at Stanfordmag.org * Stanford Magazine *"Facing up to the award-winning play's power to shape our understanding of America's past, Romano and Potter present a collection of accessible but scholarly essays to investigate Hamilton: An American Musical. Delving into history, politics, race relations and contemporary culture, the book poses big questions: Can Hamilton help create a new, multiracial American civic myth? Or was the real-life Alexander Hamilton--an elitist and a skeptic of democracy--simply too divisive? Besides, who owns American history--and who gets to tell it?" * Stanford Magazine *"The collection will be of direct relevance and value to public historians. And like its subject, the volume should also appeal to multiple audiences—teachers and students on the college and other levels, scholars concerned with popular memory of the founders, and general readers wishing to learn more about both the musical and the historical world it depicts." * Public Historian *"Did ‘Hamilton’ Get the Story Wrong? One Playwright Thinks So," by James Barron * New York Times *"A valiant attempt to help audiences understand Hamilton’s achievements while also taking stock of the musical’s shortfalls. Accessibly written, the contributions cover the show as both art and history." * Public Books *"Fans of the musical will appreciate this opportunity to approach it from an academic perspective, and educators will find it productive to include particular chapters on their syllabi." * H-Net *"This book is a worthy addition to popular culture studies, history, American Studies, Africana Studies, Latinx Studies and, of course, theatre and musical theatre studies.....Historians on Hamilton successfully meets Miranda’s challenge, presenting engaging essays in which accomplished historians do take Hamilton seriously and offer a range of perspectives on its place in, and depiction of, American history." * Journal of American Drama and Theatre *"Fall Arts Preview: Theater," by Don Harrison https://richmondmagazine.com/arts-entertainment/fall-arts-preview-2019-theater/ * Richmond Magazine *"This collection of brief accessible essays offers nice balance of perspectives and topics. Taken as a whole, they argue that while Miranda’s Hamilton is not as revolutionary, either in terms of artistic originality or disruptive historical narrative, as many have suggested, it remains remarkably entertaining and presents an almost unique opportunity for historians to engage the public in meaningful conversations about the nation’s past and the nature of history itself. Everyone who has seen the show or listened to the cast recording, especially those who teach about it, will appreciate how this provocative and informative volume not only enlightens but also prompts them to revisit the show, one last time." * H-FedHist *"As a reference work aimed at those bridging the gap between academic and the Broadway audience...the volume will be a valuable contribution to widening discussion beyond the personality-led drama of the stage and the world of the American Revolution." * Journal of the Early Republic *"Just what is the story of Alexander Hamilton as Lin Manuel Miranda’s musical hits Disney Plus?" by Emma Kelly https://metro.co.uk/2020/07/02/just-what-story-alexander-hamilton-lin-manuel-mirandas-musical-hits-disney-plus-12934519/ * Metro UK *"As ‘Hamilton’ Arrives on Disney+, Five Lyrics That Have Shaped the Culture," by John Jurgensen https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-hamilton-arrives-on-disney-five-lyrics-that-have-shaped-the-culture-11593613712 * Wall Street Journal *"Hamilton is coming. Here’s how to give it your best shot," by Jenna Price * Sydney Morning Herald *"Historian, Hamilton fan, or some combination, something in Historians on Hamilton will inform and challenge you." * Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies *"Historians on Hamilton emerges as a template for thoughtful, deliberate dialogue. In the deft hands of Potter and Romano, the volume manages to be critical and incisive while still, from my impression, maintain a similar spirit to the musical itself. Both provide examples of how to talk across and not at disciplinary, professional, and creative categories. A cultural force as powerful as Hamilton gives historians in many hats a unique opportunity to demonstrate what our work can do....History is not, and should not, the sole interest of historians, but artists, musicians, performers, politicians, activists, and engaged, interested participants in the American and global communities. Historians on Hamilton is an intuitive reminder that historians can, and must, participate on that wider stage." * Early Americanists *Table of ContentsChronology Introduction: History is Happening in New York - Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter Act I: The Script Chapter 1: From Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton to Hamilton: An American Musical - William Hogeland Chapter 2: "Can We Get Back to Politics? Please?" Hamilton's Missing Politics in Hamilton - Joanne B. Freeman Chapter 3: Race-Conscious Casting and the Erasure of the Black Past in Hamilton - Lyra D. Monteiro Chapter 4: The Greatest City in the World? Slavery in New York in the Age of Hamilton - Leslie M. Harris Chapter 5: “Remember….I’m Your Man”: Masculinity, Marriage, and Gender in Hamilton - Catherine Allgor Act II: The Stage Chapter 6: “The Ten Dollar Founding Father”: Hamilton, Money and Federal Power - Michael O’Malley Chapter 7: Hamilton as Founders Chic: A Neo-Federalist, Antislavery, Usable Past? - David Waldstreicher and Jeffrey L. Pasley Chapter 8: Hamilton and the American Revolution on Stage and Screen - Andrew M. Schocket Chapter 9: From The Black Crook to Hamilton: A Brief History of Hot Tickets on Broadway - Elizabeth L. Wollman Chapter 10: Looking at Hamilton from Inside the Broadway Bubble - Brian Eugenio Herrera Act III: The Audience Chapter 11: Mind the Gap: Teaching Hamilton - Jim Cullen Chapter 12: Who Tells Your Story: Hamilton as a People’s History - Joseph M. Adelman Chapter 13: Reckoning with America’s Racial Past, Present, and Future in Hamilton - Patricia Herrera Chapter 14: Hamilton: A New American Civic Myth by Renee C. Romano Chapter 15: Safe in the Nation We’ve Made: Staging Hamilton on Social Media - Claire Bond Potter Sample Syllabus Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisHistorians on “Hamilton” brings together a diverse collection of top scholars to explain the Hamilton phenomenon and explore what it might mean for our understanding of America’s history. In short, lively essays, these experts assess what the musical got right, what it got wrong, and why it matters. Trade Review“For Hamilton fans, history buffs, political thinkers and Broadway acolytes, this collection provides dozens of fascinating perspectives, correctives, and sidelong directives. It probably won’t change your mind about the show, but it will keep you thinking and talking about it, and the world that surrounds it, for a long time to come. If you love Hamilton the musical or have any curiosity about the man himself and where he fits into the American panorama, this is the book for you." -- Jack Viertel * producer, critic, renowned author, and senior vice president of Jujamcyn Theaters *"Hamilton, the musical, has turned thousands of people onto the history of the American founding. For those who want more, Historians on Hamilton digs deep into the myths and realities behind the show." -- Jacob Weisberg * editor-in-chief of the Slate Group and author of The Bush Tragedy *"Historians on Hamilton is an erudite and accessible scholarly consideration of the Broadway phenomenon that created an Alexander Hamilton palatable for our times. An indispensable work for all interested in the founding and contemporary racial politics." -- Annette Gordon-Reed * author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family *"Deeply documented, culturally astute, interpretively diverse, consistently illuminating—this is a model of intellectual engagement. Providing insight into Hamilton’s significance, the essays cogently reveal how contemporary culture shapes our past.” -- Joshua Brown * American Social History Project, City University of New York Graduate Center *"Treating Hamilton as a historical phenomenon in its own right, contributors to this volume reflect on the lives that inspired it and its meaning for our conflict-ridden present." -- Kathleen M. Brown * David Boies Professor of History, The University of Pennsylvania *"Think of this volume as a how-to manual for scholars to use the brilliance of Hamilton to teach about the incredibly complex power dynamics of early America." -- Gautham Rao * assistant professor of history at American University and author of National Duties *"Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton is enthralling as musical theater. As history…not so much. Fortunately, two great professional historians, Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter, are here to set the record straight, gathering expert essays to tell you the inconvenient truths about Alexander Hamilton that the hit play leaves out. More than that, though, Historians on Hamilton offers informed and insightful meditations on the themes of history, memory, legacy, interpretation and art that lie at the heart of the Broadway smash. No Hamilton fan should do without it." -- David Greenberg * professor of history at Rutgers University, author of Republic of Spin *"A thought-provoking and carefully crafted collection of scholarship that has much to offer readers interested in music, theater, or American history." * Library Journal starred review *"Historians on Hamilton is smart and interesting. It was great fun to read all the different points of view and even have some of my opinions changed. What more could you want from a book?" * Show Showdown *"The Issue on the Table: Is 'Hamilton' Good For History?" by Kate Keller * Smithsonian Magazine Online *"Cumulatively, the essays in Historians on Hamilton provide a useful and impressive range of perspectives from which to appreciate the historical significance of the Broadway sensation, to evaluate the historical accuracy of the story Hamilton tells, and to prod us to consider the contemporary stakes of the historical narratives we consume, celebrate, and propagate." * H-Net *"How ‘Hamilton’ Is Remaking American History" feature and excerpt * DC Metro Theater Arts *"The book takes a unique and revolutionary approach in bringing Hamilton to life." * Choice *New Books Network podcast interview with authors * New Books Network podcast interview *"This book is a collection of articles on the Broadway play Hamilton with what historians say about the play.... Suffice it to say that most of the play seems to be historically correct, but history is always a matter of interpretation, and Alexander Hamilton is certainly an historical figure who needs interpretation." * We Are Literate *"Gift Guide for Book Lovers" by the editors at Stanfordmag.org * Stanford Magazine *"Facing up to the award-winning play's power to shape our understanding of America's past, Romano and Potter present a collection of accessible but scholarly essays to investigate Hamilton: An American Musical. Delving into history, politics, race relations and contemporary culture, the book poses big questions: Can Hamilton help create a new, multiracial American civic myth? Or was the real-life Alexander Hamilton--an elitist and a skeptic of democracy--simply too divisive? Besides, who owns American history--and who gets to tell it?" * Stanford Magazine *"The collection will be of direct relevance and value to public historians. And like its subject, the volume should also appeal to multiple audiences—teachers and students on the college and other levels, scholars concerned with popular memory of the founders, and general readers wishing to learn more about both the musical and the historical world it depicts." * Public Historian *"Did ‘Hamilton’ Get the Story Wrong? One Playwright Thinks So," by James Barron * New York Times *"A valiant attempt to help audiences understand Hamilton’s achievements while also taking stock of the musical’s shortfalls. Accessibly written, the contributions cover the show as both art and history." * Public Books *"Fans of the musical will appreciate this opportunity to approach it from an academic perspective, and educators will find it productive to include particular chapters on their syllabi." * H-Net *"This book is a worthy addition to popular culture studies, history, American Studies, Africana Studies, Latinx Studies and, of course, theatre and musical theatre studies.....Historians on Hamilton successfully meets Miranda’s challenge, presenting engaging essays in which accomplished historians do take Hamilton seriously and offer a range of perspectives on its place in, and depiction of, American history." * Journal of American Drama and Theatre *"Fall Arts Preview: Theater," by Don Harrison https://richmondmagazine.com/arts-entertainment/fall-arts-preview-2019-theater/ * Richmond Magazine *"This collection of brief accessible essays offers nice balance of perspectives and topics. Taken as a whole, they argue that while Miranda’s Hamilton is not as revolutionary, either in terms of artistic originality or disruptive historical narrative, as many have suggested, it remains remarkably entertaining and presents an almost unique opportunity for historians to engage the public in meaningful conversations about the nation’s past and the nature of history itself. Everyone who has seen the show or listened to the cast recording, especially those who teach about it, will appreciate how this provocative and informative volume not only enlightens but also prompts them to revisit the show, one last time." * H-FedHist *"As a reference work aimed at those bridging the gap between academic and the Broadway audience...the volume will be a valuable contribution to widening discussion beyond the personality-led drama of the stage and the world of the American Revolution." * Journal of the Early Republic *"Just what is the story of Alexander Hamilton as Lin Manuel Miranda’s musical hits Disney Plus?" by Emma Kelly https://metro.co.uk/2020/07/02/just-what-story-alexander-hamilton-lin-manuel-mirandas-musical-hits-disney-plus-12934519/ * Metro UK *"As ‘Hamilton’ Arrives on Disney+, Five Lyrics That Have Shaped the Culture," by John Jurgensen https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-hamilton-arrives-on-disney-five-lyrics-that-have-shaped-the-culture-11593613712 * Wall Street Journal *"Hamilton is coming. Here’s how to give it your best shot," by Jenna Price * Sydney Morning Herald *"Historian, Hamilton fan, or some combination, something in Historians on Hamilton will inform and challenge you." * Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies *"Historians on Hamilton emerges as a template for thoughtful, deliberate dialogue. In the deft hands of Potter and Romano, the volume manages to be critical and incisive while still, from my impression, maintain a similar spirit to the musical itself. Both provide examples of how to talk across and not at disciplinary, professional, and creative categories. A cultural force as powerful as Hamilton gives historians in many hats a unique opportunity to demonstrate what our work can do....History is not, and should not, the sole interest of historians, but artists, musicians, performers, politicians, activists, and engaged, interested participants in the American and global communities. Historians on Hamilton is an intuitive reminder that historians can, and must, participate on that wider stage." * Early Americanists *“For Hamilton fans, history buffs, political thinkers and Broadway acolytes, this collection provides dozens of fascinating perspectives, correctives, and sidelong directives. It probably won’t change your mind about the show, but it will keep you thinking and talking about it, and the world that surrounds it, for a long time to come. If you love Hamilton the musical or have any curiosity about the man himself and where he fits into the American panorama, this is the book for you." -- Jack Viertel * producer, critic, renowned author, and senior vice president of Jujamcyn Theaters *"Hamilton, the musical, has turned thousands of people onto the history of the American founding. For those who want more, Historians on Hamilton digs deep into the myths and realities behind the show." -- Jacob Weisberg * editor-in-chief of the Slate Group and author of The Bush Tragedy *"Historians on Hamilton is an erudite and accessible scholarly consideration of the Broadway phenomenon that created an Alexander Hamilton palatable for our times. An indispensable work for all interested in the founding and contemporary racial politics." -- Annette Gordon-Reed * author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family *"Deeply documented, culturally astute, interpretively diverse, consistently illuminating—this is a model of intellectual engagement. Providing insight into Hamilton’s significance, the essays cogently reveal how contemporary culture shapes our past.” -- Joshua Brown * American Social History Project, City University of New York Graduate Center *"Treating Hamilton as a historical phenomenon in its own right, contributors to this volume reflect on the lives that inspired it and its meaning for our conflict-ridden present." -- Kathleen M. Brown * David Boies Professor of History, The University of Pennsylvania *"Think of this volume as a how-to manual for scholars to use the brilliance of Hamilton to teach about the incredibly complex power dynamics of early America." -- Gautham Rao * assistant professor of history at American University and author of National Duties *"Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton is enthralling as musical theater. As history…not so much. Fortunately, two great professional historians, Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter, are here to set the record straight, gathering expert essays to tell you the inconvenient truths about Alexander Hamilton that the hit play leaves out. More than that, though, Historians on Hamilton offers informed and insightful meditations on the themes of history, memory, legacy, interpretation and art that lie at the heart of the Broadway smash. No Hamilton fan should do without it." -- David Greenberg * professor of history at Rutgers University, author of Republic of Spin *"A thought-provoking and carefully crafted collection of scholarship that has much to offer readers interested in music, theater, or American history." * Library Journal starred review *"Historians on Hamilton is smart and interesting. It was great fun to read all the different points of view and even have some of my opinions changed. What more could you want from a book?" * Show Showdown *"The Issue on the Table: Is 'Hamilton' Good For History?" by Kate Keller * Smithsonian Magazine Online *"Cumulatively, the essays in Historians on Hamilton provide a useful and impressive range of perspectives from which to appreciate the historical significance of the Broadway sensation, to evaluate the historical accuracy of the story Hamilton tells, and to prod us to consider the contemporary stakes of the historical narratives we consume, celebrate, and propagate." * H-Net *"How ‘Hamilton’ Is Remaking American History" feature and excerpt * DC Metro Theater Arts *"The book takes a unique and revolutionary approach in bringing Hamilton to life." * Choice *New Books Network podcast interview with authors * New Books Network podcast interview *"This book is a collection of articles on the Broadway play Hamilton with what historians say about the play.... Suffice it to say that most of the play seems to be historically correct, but history is always a matter of interpretation, and Alexander Hamilton is certainly an historical figure who needs interpretation." * We Are Literate *"Gift Guide for Book Lovers" by the editors at Stanfordmag.org * Stanford Magazine *"Facing up to the award-winning play's power to shape our understanding of America's past, Romano and Potter present a collection of accessible but scholarly essays to investigate Hamilton: An American Musical. Delving into history, politics, race relations and contemporary culture, the book poses big questions: Can Hamilton help create a new, multiracial American civic myth? Or was the real-life Alexander Hamilton--an elitist and a skeptic of democracy--simply too divisive? Besides, who owns American history--and who gets to tell it?" * Stanford Magazine *"The collection will be of direct relevance and value to public historians. And like its subject, the volume should also appeal to multiple audiences—teachers and students on the college and other levels, scholars concerned with popular memory of the founders, and general readers wishing to learn more about both the musical and the historical world it depicts." * Public Historian *"Did ‘Hamilton’ Get the Story Wrong? One Playwright Thinks So," by James Barron * New York Times *"A valiant attempt to help audiences understand Hamilton’s achievements while also taking stock of the musical’s shortfalls. Accessibly written, the contributions cover the show as both art and history." * Public Books *"Fans of the musical will appreciate this opportunity to approach it from an academic perspective, and educators will find it productive to include particular chapters on their syllabi." * H-Net *"This book is a worthy addition to popular culture studies, history, American Studies, Africana Studies, Latinx Studies and, of course, theatre and musical theatre studies.....Historians on Hamilton successfully meets Miranda’s challenge, presenting engaging essays in which accomplished historians do take Hamilton seriously and offer a range of perspectives on its place in, and depiction of, American history." * Journal of American Drama and Theatre *"Fall Arts Preview: Theater," by Don Harrison https://richmondmagazine.com/arts-entertainment/fall-arts-preview-2019-theater/ * Richmond Magazine *"This collection of brief accessible essays offers nice balance of perspectives and topics. Taken as a whole, they argue that while Miranda’s Hamilton is not as revolutionary, either in terms of artistic originality or disruptive historical narrative, as many have suggested, it remains remarkably entertaining and presents an almost unique opportunity for historians to engage the public in meaningful conversations about the nation’s past and the nature of history itself. Everyone who has seen the show or listened to the cast recording, especially those who teach about it, will appreciate how this provocative and informative volume not only enlightens but also prompts them to revisit the show, one last time." * H-FedHist *"As a reference work aimed at those bridging the gap between academic and the Broadway audience...the volume will be a valuable contribution to widening discussion beyond the personality-led drama of the stage and the world of the American Revolution." * Journal of the Early Republic *"Just what is the story of Alexander Hamilton as Lin Manuel Miranda’s musical hits Disney Plus?" by Emma Kelly https://metro.co.uk/2020/07/02/just-what-story-alexander-hamilton-lin-manuel-mirandas-musical-hits-disney-plus-12934519/ * Metro UK *"As ‘Hamilton’ Arrives on Disney+, Five Lyrics That Have Shaped the Culture," by John Jurgensen https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-hamilton-arrives-on-disney-five-lyrics-that-have-shaped-the-culture-11593613712 * Wall Street Journal *"Hamilton is coming. Here’s how to give it your best shot," by Jenna Price * Sydney Morning Herald *"Historian, Hamilton fan, or some combination, something in Historians on Hamilton will inform and challenge you." * Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies *"Historians on Hamilton emerges as a template for thoughtful, deliberate dialogue. In the deft hands of Potter and Romano, the volume manages to be critical and incisive while still, from my impression, maintain a similar spirit to the musical itself. Both provide examples of how to talk across and not at disciplinary, professional, and creative categories. A cultural force as powerful as Hamilton gives historians in many hats a unique opportunity to demonstrate what our work can do....History is not, and should not, the sole interest of historians, but artists, musicians, performers, politicians, activists, and engaged, interested participants in the American and global communities. Historians on Hamilton is an intuitive reminder that historians can, and must, participate on that wider stage." * Early Americanists *Table of ContentsChronology Introduction: History is Happening in New York - Renee C. Romano and Claire Bond Potter Act I: The Script Chapter 1: From Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton to Hamilton: An American Musical - William Hogeland Chapter 2: "Can We Get Back to Politics? Please?" Hamilton's Missing Politics in Hamilton - Joanne B. Freeman Chapter 3: Race-Conscious Casting and the Erasure of the Black Past in Hamilton - Lyra D. Monteiro Chapter 4: The Greatest City in the World? Slavery in New York in the Age of Hamilton - Leslie M. Harris Chapter 5: “Remember….I’m Your Man”: Masculinity, Marriage, and Gender in Hamilton - Catherine Allgor Act II: The Stage Chapter 6: “The Ten Dollar Founding Father”: Hamilton, Money and Federal Power - Michael O’Malley Chapter 7: Hamilton as Founders Chic: A Neo-Federalist, Antislavery, Usable Past? - David Waldstreicher and Jeffrey L. Pasley Chapter 8: Hamilton and the American Revolution on Stage and Screen - Andrew M. Schocket Chapter 9: From The Black Crook to Hamilton: A Brief History of Hot Tickets on Broadway - Elizabeth L. Wollman Chapter 10: Looking at Hamilton from Inside the Broadway Bubble - Brian Eugenio Herrera Act III: The Audience Chapter 11: Mind the Gap: Teaching Hamilton - Jim Cullen Chapter 12: Who Tells Your Story: Hamilton as a People’s History - Joseph M. Adelman Chapter 13: Reckoning with America’s Racial Past, Present, and Future in Hamilton - Patricia Herrera Chapter 14: Hamilton: A New American Civic Myth by Renee C. Romano Chapter 15: Safe in the Nation We’ve Made: Staging Hamilton on Social Media - Claire Bond Potter Sample Syllabus Acknowledgments Notes on Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisProvides a wide-ranging interdisciplinary study of live stage musicals from the mid- to late-twentieth century adapted from British literature written between 1837 and 1886. Investigating musical dramatizations of a range of works, Sharon Aronofsky Weltman reveals what these musicals teach us about the Victorian books from which they derive.

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