Theatre studies Books

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisFocusing on dramatic works by contemporary British and American playwrights, in conjunction with feminist political and theoretical texts, this book discusses feminist constructions of the category "Woman".Trade Review"With a shrewd grasp of theory and a comprehensive knowledge of British and American plays, Mary Brewer homes in on controversial issues among women - pornography, rape, mothering, domesticity and work, and debates about the butch/fem model and gender-bending among lesbians." -- From the Foreword by Alan Sinfield, Professor of Literature, University of Sussex.Table of ContentsContents: Foreword by Alan Sinfield; Introduction: Women and Representation; Contemporary Women's Theatre: The Plays; Feminist Constructions of Difference; Defining Race Organisation; Representations of Motherhood; And Who Would Call Her Mother?: Carers Without Control; Courts of Flaw: Representations of Lesbians and the Rights of Lesbian Mothers; Fortunes at Low Tide; The Politics of Lesbian Motherhood: Strategies for Resistance; Conformity or Rebellion: Lesbian Families at Risk; OtherMothers; The Sexgender/Racegender System; Survival as Resistance: Black Women and the Family; Black Women and the Race: Lifting as We Climb'; Re-constructing the Chitlin-Circuit': Race, Representation, and OtherMothers; Friedan's Daughters: Representations of Woman' at Work; The Return of the Happy Housewife: Feminists Re-forming Woman'; Resurrecting the Cult of Domesticity; Who's On Top? White Women, Work, and the Family; Power Feminism: The Genderquake; Working Across the Racial Divide: Imitating Anita; Woman' as Object; Universal Woman': The Trojan Horse of Feminism; Colourising Joan of Arc: Radicalised Femininity and the Politics of Appearance; The Pornography of Representation: Sex, Gender, Race, and Rape; Erotophobes; Black Women and the Sexual Politics of Rape; Woman' as Subject: Negotiating Multiple Identities; A Movement Out of Step With Itself; Women on the Borders of Womanhood': Negotiating Race, Sex, and Gender(s); Difference: What Makes a House a Home; Learning to Dance as Sisters; Infiltrating Woman': Butch/Fem Lesbian Subjectivity; Woman as Discursive Subject; The Butch/Fem Debate; Signs and Seduction; Butch, Fem, and the Mask of Womanliness; Performing Gender(s); Conclusion: Toward a Progressive Feminist Politics; A House of Difference; Index.

Read more less

Book SynopsisOne of the full-length studies of Japanese performance culture, this book covers a wide range of historical and theoretical topics, from Brecht in Japan to 'children's' bodies in postmodern Japanese performances, from the notion of beauty in contemporary cultural theory to practical and theoretical readings of other intercultural performances.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis volume is organized to roughly follow the order of events presented in the Kakuichi-bon variant of the Heike. Essays and translations focus on a series of major events from the Heike: Kiyomori's rise (the Giō cycle of plays); Yoshinaka's push to the capital; the flight of the Heike and the battle of Ichi-no-tani; and the aftermath of the war. Each event features a series of one to three plays preceded by essays.

Read more less

Book SynopsisBy examining the life and career of the most prominent noh practitioner of the fury noh composer, Kanze Kojirō Nobumitsu (1435-1516), the author showcases the critical presence of the late Muromachi period in the history of noh.Trade ReviewAnother Stage provides students of nō with tools to appreciate Nobumitsu, his plays, and his time.... [The] chapters portray the nō when it was clearly a living and vibrant art, motivated by the creativity of its writers and actors, as well as the appetites of the broad-based audience that supported them. Another Stage paints a picture very different from what moderns usually think of as constituting the nō and will be useful for students and scholars interested in this often overlooked period of theater history. * Journal of Japanese Studies *

Read more less

Book SynopsisBy examining the life and career of the most prominent noh practitioner of the fury noh composer, Kanze Kojirō Nobumitsu (1435-1516), the author showcases the critical presence of the late Muromachi period in the history of noh.Trade ReviewAnother Stage provides students of nō with tools to appreciate Nobumitsu, his plays, and his time.... [The] chapters portray the nō when it was clearly a living and vibrant art, motivated by the creativity of its writers and actors, as well as the appetites of the broad-based audience that supported them. Another Stage paints a picture very different from what moderns usually think of as constituting the nō and will be useful for students and scholars interested in this often overlooked period of theater history. * Journal of Japanese Studies *

Read more less

Book SynopsisA dreamlike, evocative reckoning with a lost epoch in popular culture—and with old, weird America.At the heart of American Vaudeville is one strange, unsettling fact: for nearly fifty years, from the late nineteenth century to the 1930s, vaudeville was everywhere—then, suddenly, it was nowhere. This book tells the story of what was once the most popular form of entertainment in the country using lists, creation myths, thumbnail biographies, dreams, and obituaries. A lyric history—part social history, part song—American Vaudeville sits at the nexus between poetry, experimental nonfiction, and, because it includes historic images, art books.Geoffrey Hilsabeck's book grows out of extensive archival research. Rather than arranging that research—the remains of vaudeville—into a realistic picture or tidy narrative, Hilsabeck dreams vaudeville back into existence, drawing on photographs, letters, joke books, reviews, newspaper stories, anecdotes, and other material gathered from numerous archives, as well as from memoirs by vaudeville performers like Buster Keaton, Eva Tanguay, and Eddie Cantor. Some of this research is presented as-is, a letter from a now forgotten vaudeville performer to her booking agent, for example; some is worked up into brief scenes and biographies; and some is put to even more imaginative uses, finding new life in dialogues and prose poems.American Vaudeville pulls the past into the present and finds in the beauty and carnivalesque grotesqueness of vaudeville a fitting image of American life today.Table of Contents Foreword Creation Myths Vanishing Act Just What Was Vaudeville? At the Wonderland Dreamsweat Jacks-in-the-Pew Bright Particular Star The Jonah Man The Muting of the Strings Obituaries and Obsolescencies The Playhouse History Acknowledgments Notes Sources Illustration Credits

Read more less

Book SynopsisBroadway musicals are one of America’s most beloved art forms and play to millions of people each year. But what do these shows, which are often thought to be just frothy entertainment, really have to say about our country and who we are as a nation? Now in a new second edition, The Great White Way is the first book to reveal the racial politics, content, and subtexts that have haunted musicals for almost one hundred years from Show Boat (1927) to Hamilton (2015). This revised edition includes a new introduction and conclusion, updated chapters, as well as a brand-new chapter that looks at the blockbuster musicals The Book of Mormon and Hamilton. Musicals mirror their time periods and reflect the political and social issues of their day. Warren Hoffman investigates the thematic content of the Broadway musical and considers how musicals work on a structural level, allowing them to simultaneously present and hide their racial agendas in plain view of their audiences. While the musical is informed by the cultural contributions of African Americans and Jewish immigrants, Hoffman argues that ultimately the history of the American musical is the history of white identity in the United States. Presented chronologically, The Great White Way shows how perceptions of race altered over time and how musicals dealt with those changes. Hoffman focuses first on shows leading up to and comprising the Golden Age of Broadway (1927–1960s), then turns his attention to the revivals and nostalgic vehicles that defined the final quarter of the twentieth century. He offers entirely new and surprising takes on shows from the American musical canon—Show Boat (1927), Oklahoma! (1943), Annie Get Your Gun (1946), The Music Man (1957), West Side Story (1957), A Chorus Line (1975), and 42nd Street (1980), among others. In addition to a new chapter on Hamilton and The Book of Mormon, this revised edition brings The Great White Way fully into the twenty-first century with an examination of jukebox musicals and the role of off-Broadway and regional theaters in the development of the American musical. New archival research on the creators who produced and wrote these shows, including Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins, Stephen Sondheim, and Edward Kleban, will have theater fans and scholars rethinking forever how they view this popular American entertainment. Trade Review“From Show Boat to Hamilton, from Oklahoma! to The Book of Mormon, Warren Hoffman provides an engaging and insightful analysis of how race has shaped 20th and 21st-century musical theatre. His perceptive and persuasive readings foreground normative whiteness and underline how every musical is “about” race. Required reading for the musical theatre student and aficionado alike.” -- Stacy Wolf * author of Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical *“Warren Hoffman’s new edition of The Great White Way remains as provocative, smart, challenging and entertaining as the original publication. Hoffman’s book is, in some sense, like a Broadway musical itself — surprising in its many and varied elements, opinions, defenses and prosecutions. The role of race in the history of Broadway has, I’m sure, never been more thoroughly or more judiciously explored. And it’s a terrific read.” -- Jack Viertel * author of The Secret Life of the American Musical *"Warren Hoffman delivers a comprehensive and robust examination of the American musical as a purveyor of white identity and privilege. Easy to read and adept at elucidating the complexities of race in performance, The Great White Way is straightforward and unapologetic. Within it, Hoffman contextualizes the racial disparities embedded in the art form and acknowledges the musical’s powerful and irresistible place in the public imagination. This book belongs on the shelf of any theater maker or scholar who seeks to decolonize sites of theater production and pedagogy." -- Rena M. Heinrich * University of Southern California *"This revised edition brings The Great White Way fully into the twenty-first century with an examination of jukebox musicals and the role of off-Broadway and regional theaters in the development of the American musical." * Broadway World *"There have been musicals produced on Broadway that have had subject matter that reflect diversity but it is Hoffman’s analysis that Broadway has yet to fully embrace diversity or taking risks. It seems that the non-profit theatre companies are more likely to take such risks. Hoffman’s analysis is worth pondering." * Mark Kappel Dance *"As ‘West Side Story’ returns to Broadway, it has a lot to say about race in America," by Warren Hoffman https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/02/20/west-side-story-returns-broadway-it-has-lot-say-about-race-america/ * Washington Post *"MAXAMOO BOOK CLUB: THE GREAT WHITE WAY – RACE AND THE BROADWAY MUSICAL" podcast interview with Warren Hoffman http://www.maxamoo.com/podcast/maxamoo-book-club-the-great-white-way-race-and-the-broadway-musical/ * Maxamoo Book Club podcast *Broadway Radio interview with Warren Hoffman * Broadway Radio *"The Lost Origins of Broadway's West Side Story," an excerpt from The Great White Way https://therevealer.org/the-lost-origins-of-broadways-west-side-story/ * The Revealer *"White Supremacy and the Broadway Musical" by Warren Hoffman https://medium.com/@whoffman18/white-supremacy-and-the-broadway-musical-a44ebd1b0f08 * Medium *"You've Got To Be Carefully Taught" BBC 2 interview with Warren Hoffman * BBC 2 - "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught" *Table of ContentsContents Preface to the Second Edition Overture: All Singin’! All Dancin’! All White People? Act One: 1927–1957 1 Only Make Believe: Performing Race in Show Boat 2 Playing Cowboys and Indians: Forging Whiteness in Oklahoma! and Annie Get Your Gun 3 Trouble in New York City: The Racial Politics of West Side Story and The Music Man Act Two: 1967–2019 4 Carbon Copies: Black and Interracial Productions of White Musicals 5 A Chorus Line: The Benetton of Broadway Musicals 6 Everything Old Is New Again: Nostalgia and the Broadway Musical at the End of the Twentieth Century 7 Blockbuster Musicals in the Age of Obama: The Book of Mormon and Hamilton Exit Music Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Permissions Index

Read more less

Book Synopsis2020 George Freedley Memorial Award Special Jury Prize from the Theatre Library Association​2021 PROSE Awards Finalist, Music & the Performing Arts In 1936 Orson Welles directed a celebrated all-black production of Macbeth that was hailed as a breakthrough for African Americans in the theater. For over a century, black performers had fought for the right to perform on the American stage, going all the way back to an 1820s Shakespearean troupe that performed Richard III, Othello, and Macbeth, without relying on white patronage."Macbeth" in Harlem tells the story of these actors and their fellow black theatrical artists, from the early nineteenth century to the dawn of the civil rights era. For the first time we see how African American performers fought to carve out a space for authentic black voices onstage, at a time when blockbuster plays like Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Octoroon trafficked in cheap stereotypes. Though the Harlem Renaissance brought an influx of talented black writers and directors to the forefront of the American stage, they still struggled to gain recognition from an indifferent critical press. Above all, "Macbeth" in Harlem is a testament to black artistry thriving in the face of adversity. It chronicles how even as the endemic racism in American society and its theatrical establishment forced black performers to abase themselves for white audiences’ amusement, African Americans overcame those obstacles to enrich the nation’s theater in countless ways.Trade Review"Clifford Mason’s 'Macbeth' in Harlem is a fascinating, comprehensive, and personalized account of the history of African American theater. The book guides us through the early musicals, plays, and performers who, despite enormous obstacles, created theatrical successes. Mason offers a richly detailed and broadly conceived study of this exciting period before the landmark A Raisin in the Sun." -- David Krasner * author of A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre, Drama, and Performance during the Harlem Re *“In 'Macbeth' in Harlem, Clifford Mason compellingly recounts the triumphs, struggles, and perseverance of early black theater practitioners. Performing Shakespeare as well as other dramatists became a vehicle for these daring, resilient, and, as Mason notes, heroic black artists to resist racism and share their genius. Moving from Ira Aldridge to Paul Robeson, from the early 1800s all the way up and through the 1950s, Mason’s lively chronicle is both revealing in its historic detail and relevant to the position of black theater arts today.” -- Harry J. Elam, Jr. * co-editor Afro-American Theatre and Performance History *"Engaging, analytical, and a refreshing historical account of the development of black theater in the United States from slavery and Reconstruction to the 1950s, Clifford Mason's important book brilliantly analyzes challenges, setbacks, and persistent creative modes of black expression that gave rise to black careers on and off stage. Walking readers through different historical episodes and moments in chronological order, from early to mid-twentieth century U.S. history, including the creation of the African Grove Theatre, Ira Aldridge's fame as a Shakespearean legend, and the successful undertakings of playwright Eugene O'Neil and actors Charles Gilpin and Paul Robeson all the way up to A Raisin in the Sun, Mason unapologetically documents social forces, inspiring events, and circumstances that were driven by the artistic inspirations, achievements, and show business successes of major black entertainment professionals." -- Ronald J. Stephens * author of Idlewild: The Rise, Decline, and Rebirth of a Unique African American Resort Town *"Clifford Mason’s Macbeth in Harlem astutely combines cultural studies, memoir, and personal recollection into a must-read narrative history of African American theatre from its beginnings to A Raisin in the Sun. Using a rather informal yet compelling mode of storytelling, Mason illuminates the underlying complexity, fraught tensions, and tribulations that define this history. More than thirty years in the making, this study is a rewarding act of textual recovery, one that profitably retraces and reinterprets our extant knowledge of Black theatre." -- John Edgar Tidwell * co-author of My Dear Boy: Carrie Hughes's Letters to Langston to Hughes, 1926-1938 *"New Books Network - New Books in Intellectual History" interview with Clifford Mason https://newbooksnetwork.com/clifford-mason-macbeth-in-harlem-black-theater-in-america-from-the-beginning-to-raisin-in-the-sun-rutgers-up-2020/ * New Books Network - New Books in Intellectual History *"A timely book...His commentary is important; some observations spot-on." * New York Theater *"Sharply written in a conversational tone that balances friendly sarcasm with burning poignancy, Macbeth in Harlem inspects the absence of Black heroes that reflect “realistic portrayals of Black life” in mainstream US theatre and drama....[M]ost noteworthy and useful to readers is the project’s painstaking archival use of newspaper reviews to analyze the cultural reception of the artistic works by Black artists....[An] excellent use of newspaper archives." * TDR *Macbeth in Harlem interview with Clifford Mason on the Root and Roots Show * The Root and Roots Show *“Mason’s voice shines bright and clear throughout, especially as he discusses the indignities that Black actors endured just to perform live theater… Mason also offers the provocative assertion that 'the true romance of America was the romance of the fugitive slave.' He contrasts the slave narrative with other sentimental US tales, including the displacement of Indigenous people, the 'New England character' of Emerson and Hawthorne, or the 'Virginia plantocracy' of Thackeray.” * The Gotham Center for the History of New York *"Mason’s book is one part history, one part memoir, and one part cultural history study. As a gifted playwright, Mason writes in a narrative style that is engaging and stirring. Highly recommended." * Choice *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1 The Beginning 2 The Long night of the 19th Century 3 New Beginnings for a New Century – 1890-1920 4 The Twenties – Roaring: A Precursor 5 The Voodoo Macbeth and the Famished Dawn 6 Paul Robeson and the Fifties Acknowledgements

Read more less

Book SynopsisWhile drag subcultures have gained mainstream media attention in recent years, the main focus has been on female impersonators. Equally lively, however, is the community of drag kings: cis women, trans men, and non-binary people who perform exaggerated masculine personas onstage under such names as Adonis Black, Papi Chulo, and Oliver Clothesoff. King of Hearts shows how drag king performers are thriving in an unlikely location: Southern Bible Belt states like Tennessee, Georgia, and South Carolina. Based on observations and interviews with sixty Southern drag kings, this study reveals how they are challenging the region’s gender norms while creating a unique community with its own distinctive Southern flair. Reflecting the region’s racial diversity, it profiles not only white drag kings, but also those who are African American, multiracial, and Hispanic. Queer scholar Baker A. Rogers—who has also performed as drag king Macon Love—takes you on an insider’s tour of Southern drag king culture, exploring its history, the communal bonds that unite it, and the controversies that have divided it. King of Hearts offers a groundbreaking look at a subculture that presents a subversion of gender norms while also providing a vital lifeline for non-gender-conforming Southerners.Trade Review"If you live on the fringe of society and challenge its most predominant norm, the majority isn't going to tell your story, or frankly, even know you exist. It's up to us to tell our own stories and Roger's brilliant book does just that. They share their story as well as the unique experience of Southeastern drag kings. They're taking up space, showcasing a specific demographic, and leading the way for others. The Kings have come."— Murray Hill, New York City drag king and comedian "King of Hearts is a readable and accessible adventure in the world of drag kinging, gender bending, and transmasculine life in the South. The author locates the spectacular performances of these drag kings within the place where they live and the rich history of drag kinging in the American South. If you are interested in being a drag king, understanding shows, or expanding your ideas about gender and sexuality, this is the book for you."— Amy L. Stone, author of Cornyation: San Antonio's Outrageous Fiesta TraditionTable of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1: History of Drag Kinging in the Southeastern United States Chapter 2: Drag Kinging at the Intersections of Identities Chapter 3: Drag Kinging as a Resource for Everyday Life Chapter 4: Controversies in the Drag King Community Conclusion Acknowledgments Appendix A: Demographics Table Appendix B: My Queer Methodology References Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisWhile drag subcultures have gained mainstream media attention in recent years, the main focus has been on female impersonators. Equally lively, however, is the community of drag kings: cis women, trans men, and non-binary people who perform exaggerated masculine personas onstage under such names as Adonis Black, Papi Chulo, and Oliver Clothesoff. King of Hearts shows how drag king performers are thriving in an unlikely location: Southern Bible Belt states like Tennessee, Georgia, and South Carolina. Based on observations and interviews with sixty Southern drag kings, this study reveals how they are challenging the region’s gender norms while creating a unique community with its own distinctive Southern flair. Reflecting the region’s racial diversity, it profiles not only white drag kings, but also those who are African American, multiracial, and Hispanic. Queer scholar Baker A. Rogers—who has also performed as drag king Macon Love—takes you on an insider’s tour of Southern drag king culture, exploring its history, the communal bonds that unite it, and the controversies that have divided it. King of Hearts offers a groundbreaking look at a subculture that presents a subversion of gender norms while also providing a vital lifeline for non-gender-conforming Southerners.Trade Review"If you live on the fringe of society and challenge its most predominant norm, the majority isn't going to tell your story, or frankly, even know you exist. It's up to us to tell our own stories and Roger's brilliant book does just that. They share their story as well as the unique experience of Southeastern drag kings. They're taking up space, showcasing a specific demographic, and leading the way for others. The Kings have come." -- Murray Hill * New York City drag king and comedian *"King of Hearts is a readable and accessible adventure in the world of drag kinging, gender bending, and transmasculine life in the South. The author locates the spectacular performances of these drag kings within the place where they live and the rich history of drag kinging in the American South. If you are interested in being a drag king, understanding shows, or expanding your ideas about gender and sexuality, this is the book for you." -- Amy L. Stone * author of Cornyation: San Antonio's Outrageous Fiesta Tradition *"If you live on the fringe of society and challenge its most predominant norm, the majority isn't going to tell your story, or frankly, even know you exist. It's up to us to tell our own stories and Roger's brilliant book does just that. They share their story as well as the unique experience of Southeastern drag kings. They're taking up space, showcasing a specific demographic, and leading the way for others. The Kings have come." -- Murray Hill * New York City drag king and comedian *"King of Hearts is a readable and accessible adventure in the world of drag kinging, gender bending, and transmasculine life in the South. The author locates the spectacular performances of these drag kings within the place where they live and the rich history of drag kinging in the American South. If you are interested in being a drag king, understanding shows, or expanding your ideas about gender and sexuality, this is the book for you." -- Amy L. Stone * author of Cornyation: San Antonio's Outrageous Fiesta Tradition *Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1: History of Drag Kinging in the Southeastern United States Chapter 2: Drag Kinging at the Intersections of Identities Chapter 3: Drag Kinging as a Resource for Everyday Life Chapter 4: Controversies in the Drag King Community Conclusion Acknowledgments Appendix A: Demographics Table Appendix B: My Queer Methodology References Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe neo-burlesque movement seeks to restore a sense of glamour, theatricality, and humor to striptease. Neo-burlesque performers strut their stuff in front of audiences that appreciate their playful brand of pro-sex, often gender-bending, feminism. Performance studies scholar and acclaimed burlesque artist Lynn Sally offers an inside look at the history, culture, and philosophy of New York’s neo-burlesque scene. Revealing how twenty-first century neo-burlesque is in constant dialogue with the classic burlesque of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, she considers how today’s performers use camp to comment on preconceived notions of femininity. She also explores how the striptease performer directs the audience’s gaze, putting on layers of meaning while taking off layers of clothing. Through detailed profiles of iconic neo-burlesque performers such as Dita Von Teese, Dirty Martini, Julie Atlas Muz, and World Famous *BOB*, this book makes the case for understanding neo-burlesque as a new sexual revolution. Yet it also examines the broader community of “Pro-Am” performers who use neo-burlesque as a liberating vehicle for self-expression. Raising important questions about what feminism looks like, Neo-Burlesque celebrates a revolutionary performing art and participatory culture whose acts have political reverberations, both onstage and off.Trade Review"A thorough exploration of the genre, Lynn Sally's insightful Neo-Burlesque: Striptease as Transformation has earned its place on the shelf of every neo-burlesque academic.” -- Dita Von Teese * author of Burlesque and the Art of the Teese/Fetish and the Art of the Teese *"A smart, feminist tour de force that strips away the stigmas, social, and legal bullshit surrounding burlesque, and gets down to the nitty-gritty of this sacred art form and the potentially deeply inspiring experience it holds for performers and audience alike. A must read for anybody interested in dance, art, and sexy fun." -- Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens * artists and authors of Assuming the Ecosexual Position *"With the deft eye of a performer-turned-ethnographer, Lynn Sally provides an insider’s account of the history and stakes of burlesque performance. Indeed, Neo-Burlesque demonstrates that underneath the performer’s coy wink, tuck, and flash lie a matrix of political entanglements that inform how gender, power, and sexuality shape our society’s engagement with popular entertainment." -- E. Patrick Johnson * author of Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women *"Lynn Sally taps her secret history as a burlesque dancer as well as multiple histories of the performing female body in this dazzling study of contemporary burlesque’s cultural meanings. Smart, funny, and moving, Sally's stories and insights will make you rethink this art form and the women who participate in it." -- Linda Mizejewski * author of Ziegfeld Girl: Image and Icon in Culture and Cinema *"Artist-scholar Lynn Sally shines a spotlight on some of the most iconic neo-burlesque performers of the past two decades. A rich addition to the field of striptease studies, Neo-Burlesque deftly reveals how 'unruly' and 'awarish' women creatively and critically interrogate their own construction through the wit of a knowing wink." -- Dr. Sherril Dodds * Professor of Dance at Temple University and editor of The Bloomsbury Companion to Dance Studies *"Neo-Burlesque is an impassioned manifesto for the transformative power of burlesque performance. Sally engages her insider perspective to document and theorize how neo-burlesque performers are remaking gender, sexuality, beauty, and feminist politics through the art of the striptease." -- Jillian Hernandez * author of Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment *"Theoretically sophisticated, rigorously researched, and written with confidence and ease, Neo-Burlesque: Striptease as Transformation takes aim at blind spots in academic approaches to sexuality, the female body and the boundaries between high and low cultures. Sally uses case studies enriched by her own experience as a stripper to argue for the radical potential of neo-burlesque. At the same time, she brings a critical eye to its failures to disentangle race from the cultural ideals of femininity and female beauty that neo-burlesque put—literally—on stage. Sally makes a bold and important contribution to the growing body of scholarship on unruly, 'nasty' women who, with fearlessness and wit, insist on not only being heard but also seen. An engrossing and eye-opening read!" -- Kathleen Rowe Karlyn * founding director of the Cinema Studies program and professor emerita at the University of Oregon and author of The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter *"Through interviews with performers and descriptive analyses of their acts, Sally characterizes burlesque as a complex practice with interesting historical underpinnings and unexpected contemporary manifestations. It is truly special to read an academic book where the author ensures that its primary subjects—burlesque performers—get to define, in their own words, what they are doing and why. An engaging read that builds toward a more holistic understanding of burlesque." -- Meredith Heller * author of Queering Drag: Redefining the Discourse of Gender-Bending *"Lynn Sally has written the account of record of the germination of the Neo Burlesque movement. Her perspective has been formed through her insider position as a performer, producer and emcee, giving her the authority to name the key contributions that the Neo Burlesque movement has made to feminism, politics, sexuality, and gender. This inclusive account of burlesque history will be enjoyed by burlesque audiences and scholars of performance and feminism. It is a book you will want to read cover to cover." -- Dr. Alison J. Carr * artist and author of Viewing Pleasure and Being a Showgirl: How Do I Look? *"Dr. Lynn Sally shares an essential insider’s view of an individualistic performing art and how it combines nostalgia and irony to comment on current events. Entertaining and academically diligent, this book connects all the dots between feminism and fun." -- Jo Weldon * founder of The New York School of Burlesque and author of Fierce: The History of Leopard Print *"A Different Kind of Coming Out: AFAB Dreams of Becoming a Drag Queen," by Lynn Sally * The Gay & Lesbian Review *"This remarkable treatise on a formerly taboo subject is a serious examination of an art form that has been tossed off as frivolous entertainment....But the book is not solely a scholarly treatise. Sally delights in taking her reader right into adult entertainment nightclubs via the book’s fabulous color photos, giving them front row seats, as one reviewer put it, as Sally 'shines a spotlight on the most iconic performers of the last two decades.'" * Sierra County Sun *"Striptease, once seen broadly as a symbol of women’s oppression, becomes in Sally's book a tool of empowerment, and she shows how different artists choose to wield it. Peppered with photographs and film stills from a vast array of performances, the book opens up a vibrant, engaging dialogue. Whether readers are new to or familiar with neo-burlesque, they’ll find that Sally’s book is an entertaining and informative study of striptease as performance art." * Library Journal *"?NEO-BURLESQUE SLAPS GLITTER ON FEMINISM AND MAKES IT SHINE," by Lynn Sally * Zócalo Public Square *"?Ladies' Night 2 for 1 refill with "Dr. Lucky" Lynn Sally" * Coffee, Candy, and Creatives podcast *"A thorough exploration of the genre, Lynn Sally's insightful Neo-Burlesque: Striptease as Transformation has earned its place on the shelf of every neo-burlesque academic.” -- Dita Von Teese * author of Burlesque and the Art of the Teese/Fetish and the Art of the Teese *"A smart, feminist tour de force that strips away the stigmas, social, and legal bullshit surrounding burlesque, and gets down to the nitty-gritty of this sacred art form and the potentially deeply inspiring experience it holds for performers and audience alike. A must read for anybody interested in dance, art, and sexy fun." -- Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens * artists and authors of Assuming the Ecosexual Position *"With the deft eye of a performer-turned-ethnographer, Lynn Sally provides an insider’s account of the history and stakes of burlesque performance. Indeed, Neo-Burlesque demonstrates that underneath the performer’s coy wink, tuck, and flash lie a matrix of political entanglements that inform how gender, power, and sexuality shape our society’s engagement with popular entertainment." -- E. Patrick Johnson * author of Honeypot: Black Southern Women Who Love Women *"Lynn Sally taps her secret history as a burlesque dancer as well as multiple histories of the performing female body in this dazzling study of contemporary burlesque’s cultural meanings. Smart, funny, and moving, Sally's stories and insights will make you rethink this art form and the women who participate in it." -- Linda Mizejewski * author of Ziegfeld Girl: Image and Icon in Culture and Cinema *"Artist-scholar Lynn Sally shines a spotlight on some of the most iconic neo-burlesque performers of the past two decades. A rich addition to the field of striptease studies, Neo-Burlesque deftly reveals how 'unruly' and 'awarish' women creatively and critically interrogate their own construction through the wit of a knowing wink." -- Dr. Sherril Dodds * Professor of Dance at Temple University and editor of The Bloomsbury Companion to Dance Studies *"Neo-Burlesque is an impassioned manifesto for the transformative power of burlesque performance. Sally engages her insider perspective to document and theorize how neo-burlesque performers are remaking gender, sexuality, beauty, and feminist politics through the art of the striptease." -- Jillian Hernandez * author of Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment *"Theoretically sophisticated, rigorously researched, and written with confidence and ease, Neo-Burlesque: Striptease as Transformation takes aim at blind spots in academic approaches to sexuality, the female body and the boundaries between high and low cultures. Sally uses case studies enriched by her own experience as a stripper to argue for the radical potential of neo-burlesque. At the same time, she brings a critical eye to its failures to disentangle race from the cultural ideals of femininity and female beauty that neo-burlesque put—literally—on stage. Sally makes a bold and important contribution to the growing body of scholarship on unruly, 'nasty' women who, with fearlessness and wit, insist on not only being heard but also seen. An engrossing and eye-opening read!" -- Kathleen Rowe Karlyn * founding director of the Cinema Studies program and professor emerita at the University of Oregon an *"Through interviews with performers and descriptive analyses of their acts, Sally characterizes burlesque as a complex practice with interesting historical underpinnings and unexpected contemporary manifestations. It is truly special to read an academic book where the author ensures that its primary subjects—burlesque performers—get to define, in their own words, what they are doing and why. An engaging read that builds toward a more holistic understanding of burlesque." -- Meredith Heller * author of Queering Drag: Redefining the Discourse of Gender-Bending *"Lynn Sally has written the account of record of the germination of the Neo Burlesque movement. Her perspective has been formed through her insider position as a performer, producer and emcee, giving her the authority to name the key contributions that the Neo Burlesque movement has made to feminism, politics, sexuality, and gender. This inclusive account of burlesque history will be enjoyed by burlesque audiences and scholars of performance and feminism. It is a book you will want to read cover to cover." -- Dr. Alison J. Carr * artist and author of Viewing Pleasure and Being a Showgirl: How Do I Look? *"Dr. Lynn Sally shares an essential insider’s view of an individualistic performing art and how it combines nostalgia and irony to comment on current events. Entertaining and academically diligent, this book connects all the dots between feminism and fun." -- Jo Weldon * founder of The New York School of Burlesque and author of Fierce: The History of Leopard Print *"A Different Kind of Coming Out: AFAB Dreams of Becoming a Drag Queen," by Lynn Sally * The Gay & Lesbian Review *"This remarkable treatise on a formerly taboo subject is a serious examination of an art form that has been tossed off as frivolous entertainment....But the book is not solely a scholarly treatise. Sally delights in taking her reader right into adult entertainment nightclubs via the book’s fabulous color photos, giving them front row seats, as one reviewer put it, as Sally 'shines a spotlight on the most iconic performers of the last two decades.'" * Sierra County Sun *"Striptease, once seen broadly as a symbol of women’s oppression, becomes in Sally's book a tool of empowerment, and she shows how different artists choose to wield it. Peppered with photographs and film stills from a vast array of performances, the book opens up a vibrant, engaging dialogue. Whether readers are new to or familiar with neo-burlesque, they’ll find that Sally’s book is an entertaining and informative study of striptease as performance art." * Library Journal *"NEO-BURLESQUE SLAPS GLITTER ON FEMINISM AND MAKES IT SHINE," by Lynn Sally * Zócalo Public Square *"Ladies' Night 2 for 1 refill with "Dr. Lucky" Lynn Sally" * Coffee, Candy, and Creatives podcast *Table of ContentsPreface: Revelations and Disidentification Introduction: Definitions and Methodologies 1 Burlesque as Popular Performance: MsTickle’s Explicit Body as Palimpsest 2 Burlesque as Monster/Beauty: Beautiful Monsters and the Monstrosity of Beauty in Dita Von Teese 3 Burlesque as Unruly: Dirty Martini and the Political Efficacy of an Invisible Wink 4 Burlesque as Pretty/Funny: The Comedic Stylings of Little Brooklyn’s Burlesquing Burlesque 5 Burlesque as Parodic Pageantry: The Agitprop Theatrics of Bambi the Mermaid’s Miss Coney Island Pageant 6 Burlesque as Camp: Gender Becoming in World Famous *BOB*’s “One Man Show” 7 Burlesque as Revolution: The Ridiculous Theatre of Julie Atlas Muz Conclusion: Nasty Women and Female Chauvinist Pigs Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisMixed-race Asian American plays are often overlooked for their failure to fit smoothly into static racial categories, rendering mixed-race drama inconsequential in conversations about race and performance. Since the nineteenth century, however, these plays have long advocated for the social significance of multiracial Asian people. Race and Role: The Mixed-Race Experience in American Drama traces the shifting identities of multiracial Asian figures in theater from the late-nineteenth century to the present day and explores the ways that mixed-race Asian identity transforms our understanding of race. Mixed-Asian playwrights harness theater’s generative power to enact performances of “double liminality” and expose the absurd tenacity with which society clings to a tenuous racial scaffolding.Trade Review"This book brilliantly argues for theater as a rich archive for understanding both the mixed-Asian experience and historical perceptions of multiraciality across the late nineteenth to early twenty-first century in the United States. Through cogent script analysis and fascinating biographical work on several under researched hapa playwrights, Heinrich insists on a consideration of the mixed-race experience as fundamentally distinct from representations of monoraciality. As such, mixed race theory has the potential to critique some of the monoracial presumptions of our prevailing discourse on race." -- SanSan Kwan * author of Love Dances: Loss and Mourning in Intercultural Collaboration *“Heinrich is brilliant, and her subject is fascinating. I loved every one of these chapters and found each one challenging in different and surprising ways. Race and Role seems destined to take its place in the canon of Asian American cultural studies.” -- Paul Spickard * author of Almost All Aliens: Immigration, Race, and Colonialism in American History and Identity *Table of ContentsContents Chapter 1: Stages of Denial Chapter 2: Tragic Eurasians: Mixed-Asian Dramas in the Late-Nineteenth Century Chapter 3: Shape Shifting Performances in the Twentieth Century Chapter 4: Cosmopolitan Identity in Mixed Dramatic Forms Chapter 5: Multiraciality in the Post-racial Era Chapter 6: Beyond Monoracial Hierarchies: Recovering Lost Selves Acknowledgments Notes Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book, the first of its kind, surveys the career of the renowned Australian-German theatre and opera director Barrie Kosky. Its nine chapters provide multidisciplinary analyses of Barrie Kosky’s working practices and stage productions, from the beginning of his career in Melbourne to his current roles as Head of the Komische Oper Berlin and as a guest director in international demand. Specialists in theatre studies, opera studies, musical theatre studies, aesthetics, and arts administration offer in-depth accounts of Kosky’s unusually wide-ranging engagements with the performing arts – as a director of spoken theatre, operas, musicals, operettas, as an adaptor, a performer, a writer, and an arts manager. Further, this book includes contributions from theatre practitioners with first-hand experience of collaborating with Kosky in the 1990s, who draw on interviews with members of Gilgul, Australia’s first Jewish theatre company, to document this formative period in Kosky’s career. The book investigates the ways in which Kosky has created transnational theatres, through introducing European themes and theatre techniques to his Australian work or through bringing fresh voices to the national dialogue in Germany’s theatre landscape. An appendix contains a timeline and guide to Kosky’s productions to date. Table of ContentsChapter 1: It Begins with the Theatre: Barrie Kosky’s Workshop.Chapter 2: “Very much a laboratory”: Barrie Kosky and the Gilgul Ensemble 1991–1997.Chapter 3: “Aesthetic Ideas”: Mystery and Meaning in the Early Work of Barrie Kosky.Chapter 4: Something for Everybody? Art, Community, the Unfamiliar, and Barrie Kosky at the Adelaide Festival.Chapter 5: Dramaturgies of Repetition and the Denial of Catharsis: Traumatic Breaking Points in Barrie Kosky’s Approach to Character.Chapter 6: When All Else Fails, Sing: Barrie Kosky’s The Women of Troy.Chapter 7: Barrie Kosky’s Grotesques and the Ecstasy of Theatre.Chapter 8: “Es klang so alt und war doch so neu”: Barrie Kosky and Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.Chapter 9: (Not) Repeating the Past in Barrie Kosky’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

Read more less

Book SynopsisShakespeare’s tragedies have been performed in the Sinophone world for over two centuries. Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear are three of the most frequently adapted plays. They have been re-imagined as political theatre, comedic parody, Chinese opera, avant-garde theatre, and experimental theatre in Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan. This ground-breaking anthology features the first English translations of seven influential adaptations from 1987 to 2007 across a number of traditional and modern performance genres in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Taipei. Each of the book's three sections offers a pair of two contrasting versions of each tragedy - in two distinct genres - for comparative analysis. This anthology is an indispensable tool for the teaching and research of Sinophone theatre's engagement with Western classics in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Table of ContentsChapter 1. Sinophone Shakespeares: A Critical Introduction, Alexa Alice Joubin Part 1. Existentialist Questions in Post-socialist China and Post-Martial-Law Taiwan Chapter 2. Hamlet as Political Theatre in Beijing: 哈姆雷特by Lin Zhaohua 林兆華 (1990), translated by Steven L. Riep and Ronald Kimmons and introduced by Steven Riep Chapter 3. Hamlet as Parody in Taipei: Shamlet 莎姆雷特 (Hamlet) by Lee Kuo-hsiu 李國修 (1992 / 2008), translated by Christopher Rea and introduced by Alexa Alice Joubin Part 2. Bewitched by Kunqu Opera and Avant-Garde Theatre Chapter 4. An Operatic Macbeth in Shanghai: Story of Bloody Hands 血手記 by Huang Zuolin 黃佐臨 (1987 / 2008), translated by Siyuan Liu and introduced by Alexa Alice Joubin Chapter 5. A Feminist Macbeth in Tainan: The Witches’ Sonata 女巫奏鳴曲．馬克白詩篇by Lü Po-shen呂柏伸 (2007), translated and introduced by Yilin Chen Part 3. Self-Identities in Traditional and Experimental Jingju Opera Chapter 6. A Confucian King Lear in Shanghai: King Qi’s Dream 岐王夢 (King Lear) by Shanghai Jingju Theatre Company (1995), translated by Dongshin Chang and introduced by Alexa Alice Joubin Chapter 7. A Buddhist King Lear in Taipei: Lear Is Here李爾在此by Wu Hsing-kuo 吳興國, Contemporary Legend Theatre (2001), translated and introduced by Alexa Alice JoubinChapter 8. Coda: Theatrical Bricolage of Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth,and Othello in Beijing, 1986

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Palgrave Handbook of Theatre and Migration provides a wide survey of theatre and performance practices related to the experience of global movements, both in historical and contemporary contexts. Given the largest number of people ever (over one hundred million) suffering from forced displacement today, much of the book centres around the topic of refuge and exile and the role of theatre in addressing these issues. The book is structured in six sections, the first of which is dedicated to the major theoretical concepts related to the field of theatre and migration including exile, refuge, displacement, asylum seeking, colonialism, human rights, globalization, and nomadism. The subsequent sections are devoted to several dozen case studies across various geographies and time periods that highlight, describe and analyse different theatre practices related to migration. The volume serves as a prestigious reference work to help theatre practitioners, students, scholars, and educators navigate the complex field of theatre and migration. Table of ContentsChapter 1: Theatre and Migration: Defining the Field.- Section One: Theatre and Migration: Themes and Concepts. Chapter 2: The Eternal Immigrant and the Aesthetics of Solidarity.Chapter 3: ‘A Real State of Exception’: Walter Benjamin and the Paradox of Theatrical Representation.Chapter 4: Theatre as Refrain: Representations of Departure from the Terezín/Theresienstadt Ghetto.Chapter 5: Refugees and the Right to Have Rights.Chapter 6: Postmigrant Theatre and its Impact on Contemporary German Theatre.Chapter 7: Interculturalism and Migration in Performance: From Distant Otherness to the Precarity of Proximity. Chapter 8: Cosmopolitanism: The Troublesome Offset of Global Migration.-Chapter 9: Indigenous Migrations: Performance, Urbanization and Survivance in Native North America.Chapter 10: Migratory Blackness in Leave Taking and Elmina’s Kitchen.Chapter 11: ‘What needs to happen so we may remain at home?’: Climate Migration and Performance.Chapter 12: Theatre’s Digital Migration, by Matthew Causey.- Section Two: Early Representations of Migration.Chapter 13: Theatre and Migration in Gilgamesh.Chapter 14: Migration and Ancient Indian Theatre.Chapter 15: Fated Arrivals: Greek Tragedy and Migration.Chapter 16: Migration in Greek and Roman Comedy.Chapter 17: Migrating Souls and Witnessing Travellers in the Dramaturgy of Nō Theatre.Chapter 18: The Things She Carried: The Vertical Migrations of Lady Rokujō in Japanese Theatre.Chapter 19: The Stranger’s Case: Exile in Shakespeare.Chapter 20: The ‘English Comedy’ in Early Modern Europe: Migration, Emigration, Integration.Chapter 21: Migrations and Cultural Navigations on Early-Modern Italian Stages.- Section Three: Migration and Nationalism.Chapter 22: Immigration and Family Life on the Early Twentieth-Century Argentine Stage.Chapter 23: Sonless Mothers and Motherless Sons, or How Has Polishness Haunted Polish Theatre Artists in Exile?.Chapter 24: All Our Migrants: Place and Displacement on the Israeli Stage.Chapter 25: Shylock is Me: Aryeh Elias as an Immigrant Jewish-Iraqi Actor in the Israeli Theatre.Chapter 26: Emerging, Staying or Leaving: ‘Immigrant’ Theatre in Canada.Chapter 27: Migrant Artists and Precarious Labour in Contemporary Russian Theatre.Chapter 28: Chicano Theatre and (Im)migration: La víctima.Chapter 29: Staging War at the Home Depot: Yoshua Okón’s Octopus and the Shadow Economy of Migrant Labour.Chapter 30: From Emigrant to Migrant Nation: Reckoning with Irish Historical Duty.Chapter 31: Dwelling in Multiple Languages: The Impossible Journeys Home in the Work of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Akram Khan.- Section Four: Migration, Colonialism and Forced Displacement.Chapter 32: The Theatre of Displacement and Migration in Southern Africa: Zimbabwe and South Africa in Focus.Chapter 33: From the Yoruba Travelling Theatre to the Nobel Prize in Literature: Nigerian Theatre in Motion.Chapter 34: Migratory Subjectivities and African Diasporic Theatre: Race, Gender and Nation.Chapter 35: Immobile Relegations and Exiles: Creation and Migration in French Theatre Between 1980 and 2020.Chapter 36: Storying Home: Retracing the Trail of Tears to Restore Ekvnvcakv.Chapter 37: Diasporic Trauma, Nativized Innovation, and Techno-Intercultural Predicament: The Story of Jingju in Taiwan.Chapter 38: Our Life Together: War, Migration, and Family Drama in Korean American Theatre.Chapter 39: Chronicles of Refugees Foretold, by Hala Khamis Nassar.Chapter 40: Ukrainian Theatre in Migration: Military Anthropology Perspective.- Section Five: Refugees.Chapter 41: Spaces and Memories of Migration in Twenty-First Century Greek Theatre: Station Athens’ I Left (E_Φυγα).Chapter 42: Troubled Waters: The Representation of Refugees in Maltese Theatre.Chapter 43: Staging Borders: Immigration Drama in Spain, from the 1990s to the Present.Chapter 44: Performance and Asylum Seekers in Australia (2000-2020).Chapter 45: Ramadram: Refugee Struggles, Empowerment and Institutional Openings in German Theatre.Chapter 46: To Come Between: Refugees at Sea, from Representation to Direct Action.Chapter 47: Theatre, Migration, and Activism: The Work of Good Chance Theatre.Chapter 48: Theatre and Migration in the Balkans: The Death of Asylum in Žiga Divjak’s The Game.Chapter 49: Theatre of the Syrian Diaspora.Chapter 50: The Finnish National Theatre, Refugees, and Equality.- Section Six: Itinerancy, Traveling and Transnationalism.Chapter 51: Transnationality: Intercultural Dialogues, Encounters, and the Theatres of Curiosity.Chapter 52: German Theatre and August von Kotzebue’s Theatrical Success and Pitfalls in Russia.- Chapter 53: The Itinerant Puppet.Chapter 54: Fin-de-siècle Black Minstrelsy, Itinerancy, and the Anglophone Imperial Circuit.Chapter 55: Actor Migration to and from Britain in the Nineteenth Century.Chapter 56: Migration and Marathi Theatre in Colonial India, 1850-1900.Chapter 57: The Dybbuk: Wandering Souls of the Vilna Troupe and Habimah Theatre.Chapter 58: Indian Circus: A Melting Pot of Migrant Artists, Performativity, and Race.Chapter 59: Contemporary (Post-)Migrant Theatre in Belgium and the Migratory Aesthetics of Milo Rau’s Theatre of the Real.Chapter 60: Belarus Free Theatre: Political Theatre in Exile.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book explores the notion of home in the wake of the so-called refugee crisis, and asks how home and belonging can be rethought through the act of creative practices and collective writing with refugees and asylum seekers. Where Giorgio Agamben calls the refugee ‘the figure of our time’, this study places the question of home among those who experience its ruptures. Veering away from treating the refugee as a conceptual figure, the lived experiences and creative expressions of seeking asylum in Denmark and the United Kingdom are explored instead. The study produces a theoretical framework around home by drawing from a cross-disciplinary field of existential and political philosophy, narratology, performance studies and anthropology. Moreover, it argues that theatre studies is uniquely positioned to understand the performative and storied aspects of seeking asylum and the compromises of belonging made through the asylum process. Table of ContentsChapter 1:Introduction: ‘How Much Home Does a Person Need?’.- Chapter 2: Ontologies of Belonging: Philosophical, Historical and Narratological Considerations.- Chapter 3: Dramaturgical Ethics: Undoing and Decreating.- Chapter 4: Ethnoplaywriting: Creating Belonging.- Chapter 5: Rebooting the Social Contract: Trampoline House and Deportation Centre Sjælsmark.- Chapter 6: Fieldwork Reflection: ‘Not just theatre, also politics, law’—Making Theatre in Deportation Centre Sjælsmark.- Chapter 7: ‘You are enough, you belong with us’: Reimagining Sisterhood as Collective Belonging.- Chapter 8: Fieldwork Reflection: The Sistas and Amazing Amelia.- Chapter 9: Conclusion: ‘Much Home’.

Read more less

Book SynopsisDiscussions of Coward's achievement in the theatre between 1920 and 1966 have tended to stay with the colourful biography. The more analytical literary approach adopted here places Coward's success in its wider theatrical context, making the connections with the work of other dramatists.

Read more less

Book SynopsisILBIJERRI Theatre Company is Australia's longest established First Nations theatre company, producing powerful works for over 30 years.

Read more less

Book Synopsis1.Theatre Censorship: an Unceasing (un)Official Menace? .-  2.Theatre Censorship in New Spain in the 17th-18th centuries.-  3.Theatre Censorship in Restoration London: The Case of Charles Killigrew, Master of the Revels .-  4.Theatre Censorship in the Age of Liberty? The Case of the French Revolution .-  5.Manoeuvering in Contested Space: Theatre-makers under Censorship in Early Nineteenth-Century Germany .-  6.Theatre Censorship in Denmark and Norway.- 7.The Catholic Church vs. the Quebec Theatre (1859-1914) .-  8. Cultural Conflict and Versions of Censorship in Post-Reformation Scottish Theatre .-  9. Theatre Censorship in Nazi Germany .- 10. Ideological Surveillance, Censorship and Retaliation .- 11. Old and New Censorship in Contemporary Spanish Theatre .- 12. Staging Reconciliations and Rainbowisms: The Paradox of Censorship in South Africa and Zimbabwe .- 13. Theatre Censorship in the Maghreb (1990-present) .- 14. Theatre and Censorship: the Russian Case.- 15. Commedia dell'Arte: Born out of Censorship? .- 16. Censorship, Performance and Strange Places in Czechoslovakia (1948 1989) .- 17. Writing Under Pressure: Václav Havel, the Absurd, and the Politics of Censorship .- 18. Risky Business: Theatre Censorship in Postcolonial Indonesian Theatre .- 19. The rocade' in Rocado: navigating state censorship and La Francophonie in postcolonial Congolese theatre .- 20. In the Name of the Author: Samuel Beckett, Sarah Kane, and their Disputed Italian Productions .- 21. Dramaturgy of Constraint in Contemporary Iranian Theatre.- 22. The Detour Around Censorship: Private Theatres and Independent Performance Groups in Guangzhou, China .- 23. British Women Playwrights: Censorship and Self-censorship in the Romantic period .- 24. London's Grand Guignol versus The Lord Chamberlain: The Rise and Fall of a Troublesome Theatre .- 25. A place where freedom of mind and spirit was possible: Black Theatre Makers and Censorship in Britain, 1900-1948.- 26.Conversion or Subversion: Homosexuality on the Portuguese Stage in Estado Novo Portugal.- 27.Theatre and Censorship Above and Within: Censorship and Self-Censorship in Israeli Theatre.- 28.Otherness and Censorship in the Theatre of Turkey (1960s-70s).- 29.A Paradigm of Populism: the Return to Censorship in Bolsonaro's Brazil.- 30.Censoring the Emperor: The Japanese Debut of The Mikado.- 31. Censorship Made Me: And Censorship Created Mae West.- 32.Offending Australia's Returned Servicemen? Alan Seymour's The One Day of the Year and Censorship by Rejection.- 33. Moving Censorship: Memory and Reception in Allan McClelland's Bloomsday in Dublin, 1962.- 34. Soviet Censorship and Self-censorship: the Case of Gunars Priede.- 35.Kallol and the Incarceration of Utpal Dutt: State Repression, Censorship and the Struggle for National' History.- 36.Delusions of Safeguarding: Homegrown and Islamic State on the UK stage.- 37.Who Cancelled Robert Lepage? The Noise and Silence of Cancel Culture.

Read more less

Book SynopsisChapter 01: Introduction.- Chapter 02: Mediating experience.- Chapter 03: Annotation as thinking and memory.- Chapter 04: A context for the emergence of video annotation in dance.- Chapter 05: User-generated annotations.- Chapter 06: Media objects: transmitting dance.- Chapter 07: Embracing new representational approaches: closing thoughts.

Read more less

Book Synopsis.- Introduction: Puppet and drama.- Chapter 1 – Animated objects and their expressive potential.- Chapter 2 – Imprints and traces.- Chapter 3 – Street scenes: short cuts of the human being.- Chapter 4 – Aristocratic stages: the miniaturized world.- Chapter 5 – First public theatres: from major to minor.- Chapter 6 - The theatre of popular classes.- Chapter 7 - The theatre of family and children.- Chapter 8 – The theatre of poets and writers.- Conclusion: The theatre of figures.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn Necroperformance, Dorata Sajewska proposes an innovative perspective for looking back at the formative process of Polish modernity, delving into repressed areas of experience connected with World War I and the ensuing emancipatory movements. Underpinning modern Polish nationhood, she reveals, is not only a Romantic myth of independence but also the up-close horrors of fratricidal warfare and the pacifist aspirations of those confronted with its violence. Searching for traces of memory in precarious bodies inflicted with the violence of war, Necroperformance implores us to acknowledge the fragility of life as it actively reinforces an attitude of respect for the right to live. Sajewska constructs here an alternative culture archive, conjuring it from compoundly-mediatized historical remnants--bodies, documents, artworks, and cultural writings--that demand to be recognized in non-canonical reflection on our past. Her chief objective is to understand the social impact of remains and their place in culture, and by examining the body and corporality in artistic practices, social and cultural performances, she strives to identify both the fragmentariness of memory and the discontinuity of history, and finally, to reinstate the body's (or its documental remains') historical and political dimension.Trade Review"What we have here is not just new factual knowledge arising from the author's source material research but also a conscious and skillfully executed intent to broaden the self-knowledge of performing art studies."--Tomasz Majewski, Jagiellonian University

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis volume launches a new, eight-volume series entitled Theatrum Scientiarum on the history of science and the media which has arisen from the work of the Berlin special research project on "Performative Cultures" under the aegis of the Theatre Studies Department of the Free University. The volume examines the role of space in the constitution of knowledge in the early modern age. "Kunstkammern" (art and curiosities cabinets), laboratories and stages arose in the 17th century as instruments of research and representation. There is, however, still a lack of precise descriptions of the epistemic contribution made by material and immaterial space in the performance of knowledge. Therefore, the authors present a novel view of the conditions surrounding the creation of these spatial forms. Account is taken bothof the institutional framework of these spaces and their placement within the history of ideas, the architectural models and the modular differentiations, and the scientific consequences of particular design decisions. Manifold paths are followed between the location of the observer in the representational space of science and the organization in time and space of sight, speech and action in the canon of European theatrical forms. Not only is an account given of the mutual architectural and intellectual influence of the spaces of knowledge and the performance spaces of art; they are also analyzed to ascertain what was possible in them and through them. This volume is the English translation of Kunstkammer, Laboratorium, Bühne (de Gruyter, Berlin, 2003).

Read more less

Book SynopsisTheatre is traditionally considered a live medium but its ‘liveness’ can no longer simply be taken for granted in view of the increasing mediatisation of the stage. Drawing on theories of intermediality, Liveness on Stage explores how performances that incorporate film or video self-reflexively stage and challenge their own liveness by contrasting or approximating live and mediatised action. To illustrate this, the monograph investigates key aspects such as ‘ephemerality’, ‘co-presence’, ‘unpredictability’, ‘interaction’ and ‘realistic representation’ and highlights their significance for re-evaluating received notions of liveness. The analysis is based on productions by Gob Squad, Forkbeard Fantasy, Station House Opera, Proto-type Theater, Tim Etchells and Mary Oliver. In their playful approaches these practitioners predominantly present such media combination as a means of cross-fertilisation rather than as an antagonism between liveness and mediatisation. Combining an original theoretical approach with an in-depth analysis of the selected productions, this study will appeal to scholars and practitioners of theatre and performance as well as to those researching intermedial phenomena.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe category of theatrical character has been swiftly dismissed in the academic reception of no-longer-dramatic texts and performances. However, claims on the dissolution of character narrowly demarcate what a subject is and how it may appear. This volume unmoors theatre scholarship from the regulatory ideals of liberal humanism, stretching the notion of character to encompass and illuminate otherwise unaccounted-for subjects, aesthetic strategies and political gestures in recent theatre works. To this aim, contemporary philosophical theories of subjectivation, European theatre studies, and experimental, script-led work produced in Britain since the late 1990s are mobilised as discussants on the question of subjectivity. Four contemporary playtexts and their performances are examined in depth: Sarah Kane’s Crave and 4.48 Psychosis, Ed Thomas’s Stone City Blue and Tim Crouch’s ENGLAND. Through these case studies, Delgado-García demonstrates alternative ways of engaging theoretically with character, and elucidating a range of subjective figures beyond identity and individuality. Alongside these analyses, the book traces a large body of work that has experimented with speech attribution since the early twentieth-century. This is a timely contribution to contemporary theatre scholarship, which demonstrates that character remains a malleable and politically-salient notion in which understandings of subjectivity are still being negotiated.

Read more less

Book SynopsisSeit ihren Anfängen vor gut 400 Jahren hat die Oper als aufwendigste aller Kunstformen die Menschen fasziniert und die Gesellschaften bewegt. Dieser reich illustrierte Band präsentiert die Oper in all ihren Facetten: Eine Geschichte der Oper mit den Meisterwerken von Monteverdi, Händel, Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, Strauss, Puccini, Nono und vielen anderen wird hier ebenso geboten wie Einblicke in den Opernbetrieb an den kleinen und großen Häusern mit ihren Dramaturgen, Bühnenbildnern, Regisseuren, Intendanten, den Musikern, Sängerinnen und Sängern von Farinelli bis Cecilia Bartoli, und nicht zuletzt dem Publikum. Auch die stilistische Vielfalt der Opern im 20. und 21. Jahrhundert wird ausführlich beschrieben. Trade Review“... Der Text ist informationsreich, farbig unterlegte Exkurse z.B. zu Komponisten, Sängern und Fachausdrücken vermitteln weiteres Wissen. Ausgewogen ausgewählt - sowohl im zeitlichen Kontext als auch thematisch - ist das wirklich schöne Bildmaterial. Sehr nützlich sind auch die Zeittabellen am Schluss. Ein empfehlenswertes Werk.” (Heidi Debschütz, in: ekz-Informationsdienst, Heft 27, 2019)Table of Contents1. Einleitung.- 2. Die Entstehung der Oper.- 3. Die Barockoper.- 4. Auf dem Weg zur Wiener Klassik.- 5. Die Oper der Romantik.- 6. Die Nationaloper.- 7. Giganten der Oper - Verdi und Wagner.- 8. Jahrhundertwende.- 9. Neue Wege im 20. Jahrhundert.- 10. Stilistische Vielfalt nach 1945.- 11. Opernbetrieb heute.- 12. Zeitstrahl.- 13. Literaturempfehlungen

Read more less

Book SynopsisMinu Hedayati-Aliabadi zeigt anhand ihrer deutsch–US-amerikanischen Studie, dass der Begriff Slam Poetry in erster Linie als Bedeutungsträger für performative, zeitgenössische und interaktive Literatur verwendet wird, während die reale Ausprägung bei Veranstaltungen weniger interaktiv ist. Sie setzt sich in Ihrer Arbeit mit den Ansichten und Handlungsweisen der beteiligten Akteure auseinander und untersucht das in 1986 in Chicago entstandene Veranstaltungsformat Poetry Slam. 1989 wurde dieses durch die Slam-Szene in New York City international bekannt und kann aufgrund der Ergebnisse der Studie in Deutschland heute als wenig elitäres, nicht kommerzielles, geplantes und kulturelles Event klassifiziert werden, das hauptsächlich von jungen Erwachsenen aus dem Bildungsbürgertum besucht wird. Table of Contents

Read more less

Book SynopsisDie Besetzung von Laien im Kinospielfilm hat eine lange Geschichte und ist bis heute verbreitet. Anna Luise Kiss analysiert Laiendarstellerinnen und Laiendarsteller erstmals als diskursive Phänomene, die auf der Basis filmischer und paratextueller Informationen durch Rezipientinnen und Rezipienten hervorgebracht werden. Mittels einer Kombination von Film- und Paratextanalysen werden die Mechanismen, die zur diskursiven Herausbildung der Laien als Darsteller ihrer selbst, Performer und Naturtalente beitragen, anschaulich gemacht und im Sinne einer kartografischen Erkundung die Topografie des Laiendarsteller-Diskurses herausgearbeitet. Table of ContentsLaien als filmspezifisches Gesetz.- Kreative Laien als Gegenstand der Forschung.- Laiendarstellerinnen und Laiendarsteller in der Filmtheorie.- Analysemodell zur Erschließung des Laiendarsteller-Diskurses.- Film- und Paratextanalysen.

Read more less

Book SynopsisDas Kleist-Jahrbuch 2022 dokumentiert die Verleihung des Kleist-Preises 2020 im November 2021 mit den Reden des Preisträgers Clemens J. Setz, der Vertrauensperson der Jury Daniela Strigl und des Präsidenten der Heinrich-von-Kleist-Gesellschaft Günter Blamberger. Den Schwerpunkt bilden die von Andrea Allerkamp und Martin Roussel betreuten Beiträge der internationalen Jahrestagung der Heinrich-von-Kleist-Gesellschaft 2021 ›Um einen Kleist von außen bittend‹ (u.a. von László F. Földényi, Rüdiger Görner, Andrea Pagni, Paul Michael Lützeler und Carlotta von Maltzan). Abhandlungen zu Kleists Werken und Rezensionen wissenschaftlicher Neuerscheinungen zu Kleist sowie zu seinen historischen und systematischen Kontexten beschließen den Band.Table of ContentsVerleihung des Kleist-Preises 2020.- Internationale Jahrestagung der Heinrich-von-Kleist-Gesellschaft 2021 ›Um einen Kleist von außen bittend‹. Bestandsaufnahme – Über-Setzungen – Konstellationen – Fallgeschichten.- Abhandlungen.- Rezensionen.- Anhang.

Read more less

Book SynopsisEinleitung.- Briefe und Dokumente.- Register.

Read more less

Book SynopsisDer Band 19 II der Schiller Nationalausgabe bietet erstmals einen umfassenden historisch-kritischen Anmerkungsapparat zu den in den Bänden 17 und 18 abgedruckten historischen Schriften Schillers. Dazu gehören ausführliche Dokumentationen und Darstellungen zu den Entstehungs- und Wirkungsgeschichten der einzelnen Werke, deren Überlieferung sowie die Lesarten unterschiedlicher Ausgaben zu Schillers Lebzeiten. Die Quellenarbeit Schillers wird systematisch rekonstruiert und dokumentiert. Ausführliche Stellenkommentare bieten nicht nur historische Personen-, Sach- und Worterläuterungen, sondern geben auch Einblick in den Diskurs- und Werkzusammenhang der Schillerʼschen Schriften. Mit Registern zu allen historiografischen Werken (Bände 17-19/I) und einer Chronik der ‚historischen Phase‘ Schillers.Table of ContentsAnmerkungen.- Handschriften.- Chronik.- Register

Read more less

Book SynopsisDieser Band enthält die Erläuterungen zu den beiden Bänden Lebenszeugnisse, Teil I (Schillers Kalender, Schillers Bibliothek) und Teil IIA (Dokumente zu Schillers Leben), die Schillers Leben beginnend mit dem Marbacher Taufeintrag von 1759 und endend mit dem Eintrag im Weimarer Sterberegister 1805 anhand der überlieferten Dokumente seines beruflichen und privaten Werdegangs darstellen. Die umfassenden Erläuterungen werden durch ein Personenregister erschlossen.Table of ContentsVorbemerkungen zur Edition.- Abkürzungen und Siglen.- Erläuterungen.- Personenregister

Read more less

Book SynopsisMit der dreibändigen Ausgabe ist die Neuedition des "Wallenstein " im Rahmen der Schiller-Nationalausgabe jetzt abgeschlossen und stellt die Schillerforschung auf eine neue Grundlage. Die Bände entsprechen den zeitgemäßen Anforderungen historisch-kritischer Ausgaben und enthalten erstmals buchstaben- und zeichengetreu die vollständigen Texte aller von Schiller autorisierten "Wallenstein"-Fassungen.

Read more less

Book SynopsisMit der dreibändigen Ausgabe ist die Neuedition des "Wallenstein " im Rahmen der Schiller-Nationalausgabe jetzt abgeschlossen und stellt die Schillerforschung auf eine neue Grundlage. Die Bände entsprechen den zeitgemäßen Anforderungen historisch-kritischer Ausgaben und enthalten erstmals buchstaben- und zeichengetreu die vollständigen Texte aller von Schiller autorisierten "Wallenstein"-Fassungen.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe motto “Národ sobě”—“From the Nation to Itself”—inscribed over the proscenium arch of Prague’s National Theatre symbolizes the great importance theater holds for the Czechs. It also belies an extraordinary history of subversion, repression, and an enduring capacity for reinvention. In Trial by Theatre, Barbara Day sets that story in its political and sociological contexts, painting a vivid portrait of the evolving nature and importance of Czech theater that illuminates the nation’s history more broadly. Drawing on a range of oral and written sources, as well as her unique personal experience of cultural and historical events in Czechoslovakia from the 1960s to the 1980s, Day offers a sweeping view of Czech theater, its colorful personalities, and international connections. Her story details: the days of the National Awakening in the nineteenth century, when theater took the place of politics, becoming an instrument of national identity in the hands of the revivalists; theater as a symbol of independence during the Nazi occupation; its survival of Socialist Realism and Stalinism and subsequent blossoming in the “Golden Sixties”; and theater’s essential role in Prague Spring and beyond, when for two decades theater operated in provisional spaces like gymnasiums, bars, trade union halls, art galleries, and living rooms. Trial by Theatre culminates in the Velvet Revolution of 1989, a year that saw the installation of Václav Havel—a playwright—as the first post-Communist president of Czechoslovakia.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe essays included in this volume attempt to answer, directly or indirectly, the following questions connected with Shakespeare’s popularity worldwide. Can we appropriate Enobarbus’s fascination with Cleopatra, borrowed for the motto of this volume: “age cannot wither Shakespeare, or custom stale”? What makes it so that his works do not “cloy” their recipients’ appetite, but instead constantly whet it for more? Can we still talk about Shakespeare’s “infinite variety” and how are we to understand this epithet in the twenty-first century? Does this opinion hold in the context of the international reception of his works? Why does he still enjoy such an exciting career—with his works still in active circulation—even though he died in 1616? How is it possible for works written with a quill over four hundred years ago by a man in ruffs and tights to resonate with the hearts and minds of contemporary recipients all over the world?Trade ReviewIt might appear that everything has been already said about Shakespeare, and yet new theatrical productions show how well Shakespeare’s plays function in new contexts and surprising interpretations. The great asset of Shakespeare: His Infinite Variety is its wide historical and geographical range – that is, from the time of the Bard himself to the latest metamorphoses of meanings that new electronic media has made available. Every reader, depending on his/her age and prior experience with Shakespeare, is at a different moment of this great historical-theoretical continuum of world culture. Everyone can also begin one’s own intellectual journey through cultural history – any time, any place. Despite the once popular but now outdated claim, history has not ended. This volume testifies to the benefits of combining historical perspective in its fairly elementary version, which is a linear sequence of events, with an in-depth analysis of the transformations in understanding, exhibiting, and using (appropriating) Shakespeare’s works in our rapidly changing reality. -- Marta Wiszniowska-Majchrzyk, professor emerita, Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisFrom Gao Xingjian, a winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize for Literature, comes a "major drama about life.Snow in August blends Eastern and Western cultures. In form, there are elements of Shakespearean and Greek tragedy, but in spirit, it embodies a uniquely Eastern sensibility."―Gao XingjianSnow in August is based on the life of Huineng (AD 633-713), the Sixth Patriarch of Zen Buddhism in Tang Dynasty China. Packed with the myriad sights and sounds of both the Eastern and Western theatrical traditions, the play exudes wonder and mysticism. The many koan cases and the story of Huineng's enlightenment afford the audience fascinating vignettes of Gao's vision of life and existence ¢w an awareness of the Void and the need for a personal peace with oneself.Trade ReviewMy aim is to create a new and contemporary musical theatre based on the foundations of Eastern traditional drama, an omnipotent theatre of singing, movement, dialogue, and the martial arts." — Gao Xingjian"Snow in August comes close to being Gao Xingjian's ideal theatre." —Gilbert C. F. Fong"A welcome addition to the growing body of Gao's works available in English." —Alexander Huang, Asian Theatre Journal

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis book is by far the best study of Huangmei Opera as social and cultural history of twentieth-century China. A regional opera of the countryside of the Anqing area, Huangmei Opera became popular all over China along with the great success of the play and the movie Married to a Heavenly Immortal in the 1950s.Through the case of Married to a Heavenly Immortal, Idema illustrates the complicated process of rewriting and revising the play/movie in the context of a rapidly changing cultural and ideological climate during the Communist theater reform movement. As a result, the traditional theme of filial piety was turned into class struggle and the pursuit of free love. The book is enriched by a full translation of a traditional version of the play and a revised one in the 1950s, as well as selected articles by script-writers, directors, performers, and critics. These primary sources allow readers to access inside views of the contemporaries and their political and artistic concerns.This book contributes substantially to the current scholarship on traditional Chinese opera, especially studies on Chinese theater and operatic movies in the early years of the People’s Republic of China.

Read more less

Book SynopsisDuring the dramatic economic and social transformation of late twentieth-century Indonesia, theatre performances in Central Java featured a familiar cast of rulers, nobles, clown servants and ordinary people. However, these presentations were not a repetition of age-old cultural 'traditions'. Instead, by stretching the framework of Javanese theatrical convention, theatre troupes challenged dominant cultural and political values. As political pressures intensified in the final months of the New Order regime, their witty, critical performances drew enthusiastic, oppositionist crowds.The dismantling of repressive state control after the fall of Suharto in 1998 diminished interest in political critiques from the stage, and growing economic weakness caused patronage and sponsorship to dry up. By 2003-04, however, a revival was underway as performers engaged with the politics of regional autonomy and democratisation, and actors responded to the devastating Yogyakarta earthquake of 2006 by staging shows in the worst-affected areas to help sustain community spirit and pride in local culture.Barbara Hatley's account of more than thirty years of theatre activities and social change shows how performers and audiences have adapted, resisted, incorporated and survived. As Indonesian society evolves, Javanese performances continue to engage with ever-changing social contexts, expressing the dynamic resilience and sense of identity of those who stage and watch them.

Read more less

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

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less