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The Arts: World Themes
by Geraldine NagleA fresh approach to the interdisciplinary humanities course that takes a strong multicultural approach to the visual and performing arts. Organized thematically, the text covers painting, printmaking, sculpture, camera arts, architecture, music, and drama.
New York’s Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway
by Edna NahshonIn the early decades of the twentieth century, a vibrant theatrical culture took shape on New York City's Lower East Side. Original dramas, comedies, musicals, and vaudeville, along with sophisticated productions of Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Chekhov, were innovatively staged for crowds that rivaled the audiences on Broadway. Though these productions were in Yiddish and catered to Eastern European, Jewish audiences (the largest immigrant group in the city at the time), their artistic innovations, energetic style, and engagement with politics and the world around them came to influence all facets of the American stage. Vividly illustrated and with essays from leading historians and critics, this book recounts the heyday of "Yiddish Broadway" and its vital contribution to American Jewish life and crossover to the broader American culture. These performances grappled with Jewish nationalism, labor relations, women's rights, religious observance, acculturation, and assimilation. They reflected a range of genres, from tear-jerkers to experimental theater. The artists who came of age in this world include Stella Adler, Eddie Cantor, Jerry Lewis, Sophie Tucker, Mel Brooks, and Joan Rivers. The story of New York's Yiddish theater is a tale of creativity and legacy and of immigrants who, in the process of becoming Americans, had an enormous impact on the country's cultural and artistic development.
Wrestling With Shylock
by Edna Nahshon Michael ShapiroShakespeare's The Merchant of Venice occupies a unique place in world culture. As the fictional, albeit iconic, character of Shylock has been interpreted as exotic outsider, social pariah, melodramatic villain and tragic victim, the play, which has been performed and read in dozens of languages, has served as a lens for examining ideas and images of the Jew at various historical moments. In the last two hundred years, many of the play's stage interpreters, spectators, readers and adapters have themselves been Jews, whose responses are often embedded in literary, theatrical and musical works. This volume examines the ever-expanding body of Jewish responses to Shakespeare's most Jewishly relevant play.
Antic Street
by Robert NailComedy, 3m, 3f; Placing emphasis on pantomine and character portrayal, it needs only six chairs-- to represent an open touring car. In the car are young people of high school age going on a picnic. There is Ginger, earnest and overbearingly sunny; Robert, the sensitive one, impressed only by poetry (or ants, as a hilarious final scene proves); Blossom, the exuberant and idiotic teenager; Sam and Gwendolyn, the lovers who live-- in thirty minutes-- a life of adolescent violence, ranging from rage to young soulfulness; and Elbert, the little brother who looks with noisy criticism on their actions and suffers their company only for the food likely to be served. The relations of these, oddly assorted six, put to the trials and tribulations of a picnic, result in situations of merriment and in dialogue flippant, fast and rich in performance possibilities.
The Art of Unarmed Stage Combat
by Robert NajarianThe Art of Unarmed Stage Combat is your guide to the principles and techniques of theatrical violence, combining detailed discussions of the mechanics of stage fighting with the nuances of acting decisions to make fighting styles reflect character and story. Expert Fight Director Robert Najarian offers never-before-published games and exercises that will allow you to develop the skills and concepts for performing violence for stage and screen. This title utilizes a unique system of training techniques that result in stage violence that is both physically engaging for you as a performer, while remaining viscerally engaging for the audience.
Exit Stage Left
by Gail NallIn this funny and sweet digital-original novel perfect for fans of Fame, Casey works to find a new passion after her dreams of becoming a Broadway star are ruined.Casey Fitzgerald has always been an actress. She's known it was her destiny ever since she snagged the role of "apple" in her kindergarten's production of The Food Pyramid. But when she doesn't get the lead in her performing arts high school's production of The Sound of Music, she begins to question everything. Not getting the lead means no recommendations, and no recommendations means she can kiss good-bye any chance of getting a scholarship to the prestigious New York College of Performing Arts.After some soul searching and some wise words from her friend Harrison, Casey decides to totally reinvent herself. She's already ditched her on-again off-again boyfriend Trevor and is interested in the new boy at school, so why not start fresh with everything? But every new destiny she tries doesn't seem quite right. And when her best friend, Amanda, who did get the lead, starts hanging out with Trevor, Casey's not sure if she'll ever be able to leave the drama behind.Epic Reads Impulse is a digital imprint with new releases each month.
A Cuban Girl's Guide to Tea and Tomorrow: Soon to be a movie starring Kit Connor (Cuban Girl's Guide Ser.)
by Laura Taylor NameyLove isn't always part of the plan . . . A charming, heartwarming story following a Miami girl who unexpectedly finds love – and herself – in a small English town. Soon to be a movie starring Heartstopper's Kit Connor and Pretty Little Liars' Maia Reficco! For Lila Reyes, a summer in England hadn't been on the cards. Certainly not one stuck in the small town of Winchester with a lack of sun and zero Miami flavour. But when Lila meets Orion Maxwell in the local tea shop, her nightmare trip starts to look up. With a bright new future suddenly on the horizon, will Lila leave behind everything she's ever planned and follow her heart? A New York Times bestseller and Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club YA Pick.PRAISE FOR A CUBAN GIRL'S GUIDE TO TEA AND TOMORROW: 'An absolute delight' Rachael Lippincott, author of Five Feet Apart 'An utterly charming read that feels like a treasured recipe that will heal and feed a broken heart.' Nina Moreno, author of Don&’t Date Rosa Santos 'I could live inside Laura Taylor Namey&’s lush, vibrant words forever.' Rachel Lynn Solomon, author of Today Tonight Tomorrow 'This book. THIS BOOK. Laura Taylor Namey has written the coziest love story I&’ve ever had the pleasure to read.' Erin Hahn, author of You&’d Be Mine and More Than Maybe
Scenic Design and Lighting Techniques: A Basic Guide for Theatre
by Rob Napoli Chuck GlomanBasic. This is the key word in Scenic Design and Lighting Tecniques: A Basic Guide for Theatre, written by two seasoned professionals with over twenty years of experience. This book is designed to show you how to turn a bare stage into a basic set design, without using heavy language that would bog you down. From materials and construction to basic props and lighting, this book explains all you will need to know to build your set and light it.
Space, Time and Ways of Seeing: The Performance Culture of Kutiyattam
by Mundoli NarayananThis volume explores the constitutive role played by space in the performance of Kutiyattam. The only surviving form of Sanskrit theatre, Kutiyattam is distinctive in terms of its performance conventions and its unique culture of extensive elaboration and interpretation. Drawing upon the concepts of phenomenology on the processes of perception, particularly on the works of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, it analyses the role of space in the communicative structures of performance of Kutiyattam and its contribution to the production of meaning in theatre, especially in the context of contemporary theatre. The book explores the theatrical event as a phenomenon that comes into existence through a triangular relationship among the ‘ways of being’ of the performers, the ‘ways of seeing’ of the audience, and the space which brings them together. Based on this formulation, Kutiyattam is approached as a ‘theatre of elaboration,’ made possible by the ‘intimate,’ ‘proximal’ ways of seeing of the audience, in the particular theatrical space of the kūttampalaṃs, the temple theatres, where Kutiyattam has customarily been performed for more than five centuries. This volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of cultural studies, theatre and performance studies, cultural anthropology, phenomenology and South Asian studies.
Wooden Os
by Vin NardizziWooden Os is a study of the presence of trees and wood in the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries - in plays set within forests, in character dialogue, and in props and theatre constructions. Vin Nardizzi connects these themes to the dependence, and surprising ecological impact, of London's commercial theatre industry on England's woodlands, the primary resource required to build all structures in early modern England.Wooden Os situates the theatre within an environmental history that witnessed a perceived scarcity of wood and timber that drove up prices, as well as statute law prohibiting the devastation of English woodlands and urgent calls for the remedying of a resource shortage that was feared would result in eco-political collapse. By considering works including Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, the revised Spanish Tragedy, and The Tempest, Nardizzi demonstrates how the "trees" within them were used in imaginative ways to mediate England's resource crisis.
Crossing Cultural Borders Through the Actor's Work: Foreign Bodies of Knowledge (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
by Cláudia Tatinge NascimentoA sophisticated analysis of how the intersection of technique, memory, and imagination inform performance, this book redirects the intercultural debate by focusing exclusively on the actor at work. Alongside the perspectives of other prominent intercultural actors, this study draws from original interviews with Ang Gey Pin (formerly with the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards) and Roberta Carreri (Odin Teatret). By illuminating the hidden creative processes usually unavailable to outsiders--the actor’s apprenticeship, training, character development, and rehearsals--Nascimento both reveals how assumptions based on race or ethnicity are misguiding, trouble definitions of intra- and intercultural practices, and details how performance analyses and claims of appropriation fail to consider the permanent transformation of the actor’s identity that cultural transmission and embodiment represent.
Rainmaker
by N. Richard NashAt the time of a paralyzing drought in the West, we discover a girl whose father and two brothers are worried as much about her becoming an old maid as they are about their dying cattle. For the truth is, she is indeed a plain girl. The brothers try every possible scheme to marry her off but without success. Nor is there any sign of relief from the dry heat. Suddenly from out of nowhere appears a picaresque character with a mellifluous tongue and the most grandiose notions a man could imagine. He claims to be a rainmaker. And he promises to bring rain, for $100. It's a silly idea, but the rainmaker is so refreshing and ingratiating that the family finally consents. Forthwith they begin banging on big brass drums to rattle the sky; while the rainmaker turns his magic on the girl, and persuades her that she has a very real beauty of her own. And she believes it, just as her father believes the fellow can actually bring rain. And rain does come, and so does love.
Three One Act Plays about the Elderly
by Elyse NassA collection of three short plays with excellent roles for elderly actors. Admit One,The Cat Connection, and Second Chance
Opal
by Robert Lindsey NassifMusical / 3m, 6f, 1f child / Unit set / This award winning Off Broadway hit from the composer/lyricist of Honky Tonk Highway is magical, delightful, poignant and poetic. It tells the story of a seven year old aristocratic girl who is orphaned in a shipwreck and placed in an Oregon lumber camp in 1904. Her one desire is to find the secret way to return to her parents and her former life. To survive, she creates a world of fantasy and enchantment. The magic of her extraordinary imagination transforms the lives of those around her the shy lumberjack, the blind girl and her embittered foster mother. Finally, in the ashes of a devastating forest fire, Opal discovers hope and home.
Making a Killing
by John NassiveraFull length, thriller / 2m, 2f / Interior / A Broadway playwright, his conniving producer and his actress wife hatch a plot to guarantee their new play will be a success; they fake the suicide of the playwright on opening night! They then high tail it up to Vermont where the playwright hopes to disappear, as he hates the public spotlight anyway. However, after a few weeks the playwright decides he no longer wants to participate in the scheme. Maybe his wife and his producer who are having an affair will have to kill him for real! Also on the scene is the playwright's feisty agent, who uncovers the plot and then helps her client deal with his most difficult artistic challenge: foiling his producer and wife!
The Penultimate Problem Sherlock Holmes
by John NassiveraMystery Drama \ 6 m, 3 f \ Int. \ This play about the famous detective has Holmes venturing into the occult where, during a seance, he is warned that he is about to meet his maker. The play has Holmes, Waston and Prof. Moriarty meet their maker, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wishes to end their existence literally with the final stroke of his pen. Holmes cannot accept the fact that he is the product of another's imagination, a mere pawn of another man's genius. Who is the creator and who the pawn becomes the central question as Holmes and the others threaten their creator with the death to which he has sentenced them. \ "A must for all the fans of Sherlock Holmes stories, the play contains startling twists and turns that keep the audience on the edge of their seats." The Resorter.
Poetry, Print, and the Making of Postcolonial Literature
by Nathan Suhr-SytsmaPoetry, Print, and the Making of Postcolonial Literature reveals an intriguing history of relationships among poets and editors from Ireland and Nigeria, as well as Britain and the Caribbean, during the mid-twentieth-century era of decolonization. The book explores what such leading anglophone poets as Seamus Heaney, Christopher Okigbo, and Derek Walcott had in common: 'peripheral' origins and a desire to address transnational publics without expatriating themselves. The book reconstructs how they gained the imprimatur of both local and London-based cultural institutions. It shows, furthermore, how political crises challenged them to reconsider their poetry's publics. Making substantial use of unpublished archival material, Nathan Suhr-Sytsma examines poems in print, often the pages on which they first appeared, in order to chart the transformation of the anglophone literary world. He argues that these poets' achievements cannot be extricated from the transnational networks through which their poems circulated - and which they in turn remade.
Hideous Characters and Beautiful Pagans: Performing Jewish Identity on the Antebellum American Stage
by Heather NathansWhile battling negative stereotypes, American Jews carved out new roles for themselves within the first theatrical entertainments in America. Jewish citizens were active as performers, playwrights, critics, managers, and theatrical shareholders, and often tied their involvement in these endeavors to the patriotic rhetoric of the young republic as they struggled to establish themselves in the new nation. Examining play texts, theatrical reviews, political discourse, and public performances of Jewish rights and rituals, Hideous Characters and Beautiful Pagans argues that Jewish stage types shed light on our understanding of the status of Jewish Americans during a critical historical period. Using an eclectic range of sources including theatrical reviews, diaries, letters, cartoons, portraiture, tax records, rumors flying around the tavern, and more, Heather S. Nathans has listened for the echoes of vanished audiences who witnessed and responded to these stereotypes onstage, from the earliest appearance of Shylock on an American stage in 1752 to Jewish theater artists on the eve of the Civil War. The book integrates social, political, and cultural histories, with an examination of those texts (both dramatic and literary) that shaped the stage Jew.
Scripts of Blackness: Early Modern Performance Culture and the Making of Race (RaceB4Race: Critical Race Studies of the Premodern)
by Noémie NdiayeScripts of Blackness shows how the early modern mass media of theatre and performance culture at-large helped turn blackness into a racial category, that is, into a type of difference justifying emerging social hierarchies and power relations in a new world order driven by colonialism and capitalism.In this book, Noémie Ndiaye explores the techniques of impersonation used by white performers to represent Afro-diasporic people in England, France, and Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, using a comparative and transnational framework. She reconstructs three specific performance techniques—black-up (cosmetic blackness), blackspeak (acoustic blackness), and black dances (kinetic blackness)—in order to map out the poetics of those techniques, and track a number of metaphorical strains that early modern playtexts regularly associated with them. Those metaphorical strains, the titular scripts of blackness of this book, operated across national borders and constituted resources, as they provided spectators and participants with new ways of thinking about the Afro-diasporic people who lived or could/would ultimately live in their midst.Those scripts were often gendered and hinged on notions of demonization, exclusion, exploitation, animalization, commodification, sexualization, consensual enslavement, misogynoir, infantilization, and evocative association with other racialized minorities. Scripts of Blackness attempts to grasp the stories that Western Europeans told themselves through performative blackness, and the effects of those fictions on early modern Afro-diasporic subjects.
Theatre Appreciation Online: Course Number THE 2000
by Stephen NealThis Theatre Appreciation Online course textbook for Florida International University students provides an extensive study on What Is the Theatre, What Is a Play, The Playwright, The Critic and the Dramaturg, The Actor, The Director, Designers and Technicians, Theatre Traditions: East and West, and The Modem Theatre.
Wingfield's World
by Dan NeedlesWalt Wingfield, the character beloved by thousands in every part of the country, is back with a new and complete book, with a new introduction from the author. Walt Wingfield is a Bay Street stockbroker who quits his job and buys a hundred-acre farm in Persephone Township, Ontario. In a series of letters to the editor of the local newspaper, Walt chronicles his modest successes and spectacular defeats in an age when farming has become difficult for farmers old and new. Dan Needles' rich and charming rural neighbourhood may be difficult to find on a map but it is very close to the Canadian soul. Including a new introduction from Dan Needles, the writer who brought this marvellous world to life 27 years ago, and all your favourite mishaps, triumphs and eccentric neighbours Wingfield's World is the full story of one man's attempt to embrace a less complicated world and how he ends up with more complication and drama, and more love and richness than he could have imagined.From the Trade Paperback edition.
Beginning Drama 11–14
by Jonothan NeelandsThis guide explores the roles, skills and knowledge needed to become an effective drama teacher. It combines practical advice on planning, teaching and assessing with the best teaching practices. It also offers lesson plans for years 7-9 students to use intheir teaching.
Trilogy of Resistance
by Antonio Negri Timothy S. MurphyWith Trilogy of Resistance, the political philosopher Antonio Negri extends his intervention in contemporary politics and culture into a new medium: drama. The three plays collected for the first time in this volume dramatize the central concepts of the innovative and influential thought he has articulated in his best-selling books Empire and Multitude, coauthored with Michael Hardt. In the tradition of Bertolt Brecht and Heiner Müller, Negri's political dramas are designed to provoke debate around the fundamental questions they raise about resistance, violence, and tyranny. In Swarm, the protagonist searches for an effective mode of activism; with the help of a Greek-style chorus, she tries on different roles, from the suicide bomber and party apparatchik to the multitude. The Bent Man, set in fascist Italy, focuses on a woodcutter who resists fascism by bending himself in two and using his own now-twisted body as a weapon against war. In Cithaeron, perhaps the most audacious of the three plays, Negri reworks Euripides's Bacchae to explore the circumstances that would compel a diverse and creative community to withdraw from both the despotic government that constrains it and the traditional family relationships that reinforce that despotism.First published in France in 2009 and featuring an introduction by Negri, Trilogy of Resistance provides a direct and passionate distillation of Negri's concepts and offers insights into one of the most important projects in political philosophy currently under way, as well as a timely reminder of the power of theater to effectively dramatize complex and challenging ideas.
A Masterclass in Dramatic Writing: Theater, Film, and Television
by Janet NeiprisA Masterclass in Dramatic Writing addresses all three genres of dramatic writing - for theatre, film and TV - in a comprehensive, one-semester, 14-week masterclass for the dramatic writer.This book is tightly focused on the practical outcome of completing a first draft and first rewrite of a dramatic work, drawing on Professor Janet Neipris’ many years of experience as the head of Dramatic Writing at NYU Tisch. The fourteen chapters, organized like a semester, take the reader week-by-week and step-by-step through writing a first draft of an original play, screenplay, or TV pilot, while also teaching the core principles of dramatic writing. Chapters include Beginnings, Creating Complex Characters, Dialogue, Escalating Conflicts, Endings, Checkpoints, Comedy, and Adaptation, and there are Weekly Exercises and progressive Assignments.This book is perfect for professional writers, teachers, and students of dramatic writing, as well as anyone who wants to complete their first dramatic work.An award-winning playwright and Professor of Dramatic Writing at NYU, Janet Neipris has written for Screen and Television. She has also taught dramatic writers at UCLA and in China, Australia, Indonesia, South Africa, Italy, and in the UK at Oxford, CSSD, University of Birmingham, and the University of East Anglia. Previous publications include To Be A Playwright (Routledge 2006). Janet Neipris’s plays and letters are in the Theatre Collection of Harvard University’s Houghton Library. For more, see www.janetneipris.com.
To Be a Playwright
by Janet NeiprisFirst Published in 2006. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.