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Greek Tragedies as Plays for Performance
by David RaeburnThis is a unique introduction to Greek tragedy that explores the plays as dramatic artifacts intended for performance and pays special attention to construction, design, staging, and musical composition. Written by a scholar who combines his academic understanding of Greek tragedy with his singular theatrical experience of producing these ancient dramas for the modern stage Discusses the masters of the genre—Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides—including similarities, differences, the hybrid nature of Greek tragedy, the significance that each poet attaches to familiar myths and his distinctive approach as a dramatic artist Examines 10 plays in detail, focusing on performances by the chorus and the 3 actors, the need to captivate audiences attending a major civic and religious festival, and the importance of the lyric sections for emotional effect Provides extended dramatic analysis of important Greek tragedies at an appropriate level for introductory students Contains a companion website, available upon publication at www.wiley.com/go/raeburn, with 136 audio recordings of Greek tragedy that illustrate the beauty of the Greek language and the powerful rhythms of the songs
Guards at the Taj and Mr. Wolf: Two Plays
by Rajiv JosephSet in India in 1648, Guards at the Taj introduces two young Imperial Guards, Humayun and Babur, as they stand watch in front of the city walls. New to their roles and just recently out of training, they have been assigned the less-than-exciting "dawn watch" leaving them plenty of time for discussion about the great Tajmahal-which they have heard much about, but have never seen until now. According to rumor, Shah Jahan has issued a royal decree that anyone who took part in the building of this majestic "city within a city" must have their hands chopped off, so as to ensure that "nothing so beautiful as the Tajmahal shall ever be built again." Humayun and Babur's repartee takes a somber turn as they realize that they will be the guards tasked with carrying out this violent judgment.Mr. Wolf is a powerful play about child abduction told from the point of view of various characters: Michael and Hana's daughter was kidnapped fourteen years ago. Julie also had a child kidnapped around a similar time. Theresa was kidnapped when she was three and knows nothing of the world except that which her captor selectively revealed to her over the years. These four lives, once altered by tragedy, now must face that nightmare once again.
Gwenllian ferch Gruffydd: Una obra en tres actos
by Laurel A. Rockefeller Andrés Sotelo SoriaLa inspiradora historia real de Gwenllian ferch Gruffydd, princesa real del reino de Gwynedd en Gales del Norte y princesa reinante del reino de Deheubarth en Gales del Sur llega a la puesta en escena en esta hermosa obra teatral basada en "Gwenllian ferch Gruffydd, la Princesa Guerrera de Deheubarth." Incluye nuevo material histórico que no se encuentra en la biografía estándar.
Hamlet: Globe to Globe: Two Years, 190,000 Miles, 197 Countries, One Play
by Dominic Dromgoole Michael GallagherFrom the artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London, an account of the theater’s extraordinary two-year tour bringing Hamlet to every country on earth
Haunted City: Three Centuries of Racial Impersonation in Philadelphia
by Christian DucombHaunted City explores the history of racial impersonation in Philadelphia from the late eighteenth century through the present day. The book focuses on select historical moments, such as the advent of the minstrel show and the ban on blackface makeup in the Philadelphia Mummers Parade, when local performances of racial impersonation inflected regional, national, transnational, and global formations of race. Mummers have long worn blackface makeup during winter holiday celebrations in Europe and North America; in Philadelphia, mummers’ blackface persisted from the colonial period well into the twentieth century. The first annual Mummers Parade, a publicly sanctioned procession from the working-class neighborhoods of South Philadelphia to the city center, occurred in 1901. Despite a ban on blackface in the Mummers Parade after civil rights protests in 1963–64, other forms of racial and ethnic impersonation in the parade have continued to flourish unchecked. Haunted City combines detailed historical research with the author’s own experiences performing in the Mummers Parade to create a lively and richly illustrated narrative. Through its interdisciplinary approach, Haunted City addresses not only theater history and performance studies but also folklore, American studies, critical race theory, and art history. It also offers a fresh take on the historiography of the antebellum minstrel show.
Heartthrobs: A History of Women and Desire
by Carol DyhouseFrom dreams of Prince Charming or dashing military heroes, to the lure of dark strangers and vampire lovers; from rock stars and rebels to soulmates, dependable family types, or simply good companions, female fantasies about men tell us a great deal about the history of women. In Heartthrobs, Carol Dyhouse draws upon literature, cinema, and popular romance to show how the changing cultural and economic position of women has shaped their dreams about men. <p><p> When girls were supposed to be shrinking violets, passionate females risked being seen as 'unbridled', or dangerously out of control. Change came slowly, and young women remained trapped in a double-bind: you may have needed a husband in order to survive, but you had to avoid looking like a gold-digger. Show attraction too openly and you might be judged 'fast' and undesirable. Education and wage-earning brought independence and a widening of horizons for women. <p><p> These new economic beings showed a sustained appetite for novel-reading, cinema-going, and the dancehall. They sighed over Rudolph Valentino's screen performances as tango-dancer or Arab tribesman and desert lover. Women may have been ridiculed for these obsessions, but, as consumers, they had new clout. This book reveals changing patterns of desire, and looks at men through the eyes of women.
Hedda Gabler & Sirens: Elektra In Bosnia
by Judith Thompson Cynthia AshpergerIn Hedda Gabler, a moving exploration of female oppression, a recently married Hedda navigates her new identity as a wife and the intense constraints put on her by society. She prefers pistols to cooking and does not care for raising a family. As Hedda fights against the pressures of her new life and her own neuroses, she comes to terms with an untimely choice. Sirens: Elektra in Bosnia is a gripping story about the horrors of collective and personal wars as a family torn apart by death and destruction becomes their own worst enemy. When a deal between Agamemnon and his brother Menelaus goes awry, Iphigenia becomes the blood sacrifice leading to truths her sister Elektra can no longer hide from. Against the backdrop of a family drama, Judith Thompson gives voice to the women who were silenced during the Bosnian War, examining a cultural trauma and its place in our collective history.
Heiner Müller's The Hamletmachine (The Fourth Wall)
by David Barnett"I’m good Hamlet gi’me a cause for grief" At first glance, readers of The Hamletmachine (1979) could be forgiven for wondering whether it is actually a play at all: it opens with a montage of texts that are not ascribed to a character, there is no vestige of a plot, and the whole piece lasts a total of ten pages. Yet, Heiner Müller’s play regularly features in theatres’ repertoires and is frequently staged by university theatre departments. In four short chapters, David Barnett unpicks the complexities of The Hamletmachine’s writing and frames its author as an experimental, politically committed writer who confronts the shortcomings of his age. In considering the problems Müller poses for the play’s performance, he also discusses two exemplary productions in order to show how the work can engage very different audiences. This book examines why such a compact, radically open, and yet seemingly obscure play has proved so popular.
The Hidden Machinery: Essays On Writing
by Margot LiveseyA masterclass for those who love reading literature and for those who aspire to write it. “Read everything that is good for the good of your soul. Then learn to read as a writer, to search out that hidden machinery, which it is the business of art to conceal and the business of the apprentice to comprehend.” In The Hidden Machinery, critically acclaimed and New York Times bestselling author Margot Livesey offers a masterclass for those who love reading literature and for those who aspire to write it. Through close readings, arguments about craft, and personal essay, Livesey delves into the inner workings of fiction and considers how our stories and novels benefit from paying close attention to both great works of literature and to our own individual experiences. Her essays range in subject matter from navigating the shoals of research to creating characters that walk off the page, from how Flaubert came to write his first novel to how Jane Austen subverted romance in her last one. As much at home on your nightstand as it is in the classroom, The Hidden Machinery will become a book readers and writers return to over and over again.
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.
A History of Italian Cinema
by Peter Bondanella Federico PacchioniA History of Italian Cinema, 2nd edition is the much-anticipated update from the author of the bestselling Italian Cinema—which has been published in four landmark editions and will celebrate its 35th anniversary in 2018. <p><p>Building upon decades of research, Peter Bondanella and Federico Pacchioni reorganize the current History in order to keep the book fresh and responsive not only to the actual films being created in Italy in the twenty-first century but also to the rapidly changing priorities of Italian film studies and film scholars. The new edition brings the definitive history of the subject, from the birth of cinema to the present day, up to date with revised filmography as well as more focused attention on melodrama, crime film, and historical drama. <P><p>The book is expanded to include a new generation of directors as well as to highlight themes such as gender issues, immigration, and media politics. Accessible, comprehensive, and heavily illustrated throughout, this is an essential purchase for any fan of Italian film.
Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years
by Julie AndrewsIn this follow-up to her critically acclaimed memoir, Home, Julie Andrews shares reflections on her astonishing career, including such classics as Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, and Victor/Victoria. <P><P> In Home, the number one New York Times international bestseller, Julie Andrews recounted her difficult childhood and her emergence as an acclaimed singer and performer on the stage. With this second memoir, Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years, Andrews picks up the story with her arrival in Hollywood and her phenomenal rise to fame in her earliest films--Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music. Andrews describes her years in the film industry -- from the incredible highs to the challenging lows. <P><P>Not only does she discuss her work in now-classic films and her collaborations with giants of cinema and television, she also unveils her personal story of adjusting to a new and often daunting world, dealing with the demands of unimaginable success, being a new mother, the end of her first marriage, embracing two stepchildren, adopting two more children, and falling in love with the brilliant and mercurial Blake Edwards. <P><P>The pair worked together in numerous films, including Victor/Victoria, the gender-bending comedy that garnered multiple Oscar nominations. Cowritten with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, and told with Andrews's trademark charm and candor, Home Work takes us on a rare and intimate journey into an extraordinary life that is funny, heartrending, and inspiring. <P><P><b>A New York Times Bestseller</b>
Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years
by Julie Andrews'The book is filled with that most distinctive of all her qualities: her voice' The TimesHome Work, the second instalment of Julie Andrews' internationally bestselling memoirs, begins with her arrival in Hollywood to make her screen debut in Walt Disney's Mary Poppins. It was closely followed by The Sound of Music, and the beginning of a movie career that would make her an icon to millions all over the world.With her trademark charm and candour, Julie reveals behind-the-scenes details and reflections on her impressive body of work - from the incredible highs to the challenging lows. She shares her professional experiences and collaborations with giants of cinema and television, and also unveils her personal story of adjusting to a new and often daunting world. This included dealing with unimaginable public scrutiny, being a new mother, embracing two stepchildren, adopting two more children, and falling in love with the brilliant and mercurial Blake Edwards. The pair worked together in numerous films, including 10, S.O.B and Victor/Victoria.Home Work takes us on a rare and intimate journey into a remarkable life that is funny, heart-breaking and inspiring.
Home Work: A Memoir of My Hollywood Years
by Julie Andrews'Home Work is written with a warm heart and a generous spirit ... an honest attempt to make sense of an often chaotic life' SUNDAY EPXRESS'The book is filled with that most distinctive of all her qualities: her voice ... Mary Poppins may appear only briefly here, but her spirit is alive and well' THE TIMESIn this follow-up to her critically acclaimed and bestselling memoir Home, the enchanting Julie Andrews picks up her story with her arrival in Hollywood, sharing the career highlights, personal experiences and reflections behind her astonishing career, including such classics as Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, Victor/Victoria and many others.In Home, Julie Andrews recounted her difficult childhood and her emergence as an acclaimed singer and performer on the stage. In her new memoir, Julie picks up the story with her arrival in Hollywood and her astonishing rise to fame as two of her early films -Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music- brought her instant and enormous success, including an Oscar. It was the beginning of a career that would make Julie Andrews an icon to millions the world over. In Home Work, Julie describes her years in Hollywood - from the incredible highs to the challenging lows. Not only does she detail her work in now-classic films and her collaborations with giants of cinema and television; she also unveils her personal story of adjusting to a new and often daunting world, dealing with the demands of unimaginable success, being a new mother, moving on from her first marriage, embracing two stepchildren, adopting two more children, and falling in love with the brilliant and mercurial Blake Edwards. The pair worked together in numerous films, culminating in Victor/Victoria, the gender-bending comedy that garnered multiple Oscar nominations. Told with her trademark charm and candour, Julie Andrews takes us on a rare and intimate journey into an astonishing life that is funny, heartbreaking and inspiring.
How Black Mothers Say I Love You
by Trey AnthonyClaudette still can’t forgive her mother for leaving. For six years of her childhood, Claudette and her sister Valerie were left with their grandmother while their mother, Daphne, moved from Jamaica to the United States to start a new chapter for their family. But in that time, Daphne remarried and had another daughter. Claudette, now in her late thirties, travels to visit her dying mother in Brooklyn, but that doesn’t stop her anger and abandonment issues from bubbling up. It doesn’t stop Daphne from voicing her opinions on how Claudette lives her life, either. With Daphne, Claudette, and Valerie all under one roof again, each family member is forced to confront their emotions while there’s still time. Though rooted in buried strife and sadness, How Black Mothers Say I Love You is full of humour, love and tenderness as it explores the complicated perceptions of immigrant mothers.
Huff & Stitch
by Cliff CardinalIn huff, brothers Wind, Huff, and Charles are trying to cope with their father’s abusive whims and their mother’s recent suicide. In a brutal reality of death and addiction, they huff gas and pull destructive pranks. Preyed upon by Trickster and his own fragile psyche, Wind looks for a way out, one that might lead him into his mother’s shadow. In Stitch, Kylie Grandview is a single mom struggling to make a living as a porn star while dreaming of being on the big screen. She’s painfully aware that she is among the many nameless faces on the Internet, the ones that blip across cyberspace, as her yeast infection, Itchia, reminds her at every turn. But when Kylie is offered the chance at a big break, a series of twisted events lead her down a destructive path, revealing a face no one will forget.
Human Resources
by Matt J. Mckinnon Margaret HartEdoardo Massini is an Italian executive, Head of Personnel at the most important oil company in Italy, who gains the world but suffers the loss of his own soul along the way. It shows the plight of the modern male executive who defines his life by his career and his work rather than by more solid values of relationships, love, loyalty and friendship. The novel shows the tragedy of human life where people live their life in the future and understand it in retrospect. The author plays neatly with the perspective of past and present to show the reader that time is not necessarily on their side.
iBroadway: Musical Theatre in the Digital Age
by Jessica Hillman-McCordThis book argues that the digital revolution has fundamentally altered the way musicals are produced, followed, admired, marketed, reviewed, researched, taught, and even cast. In the first hundred years of its existence, commercial musical theatre functioned on one basic model. However, with the advent of digital and network technologies, every musical theatre artist and professional has had to adjust to swift and unanticipated change. Due to the historically commercial nature of the musical theatre form, it offers a more potent test case to reveal the implications of this digital shift than other theatrical art forms. Rather than merely reflecting technological change, musical theatre scholarship and practice is at the forefront of the conversation about art in the digital age. This book is essential reading for musical theatre fans and scholars alike.
Illegible Will: Coercive Spectacles of Labor in South Africa and the Diaspora
by Hershini Bhana YoungIn Illegible Will Hershini Bhana Young engages with the archive of South African and black diasporic performance to examine the absence of black women's will from that archive. Young argues for that will's illegibility, given the paucity of materials outlining the agency of black historical subjects. Drawing on court documents, novels, photographs, historical records, websites, and descriptions of music and dance, Young shows how black will can be conjured through critical imaginings done in concert with historical research. She critically imagines the will of familiar subjects such as Sarah Baartman and that of obscure figures such as the eighteenth-century slave Tryntjie of Madagascar, who was executed in 1713 for attempting to poison her mistress. She also investigates the presence of will in contemporary expressive culture, such as the Miss Landmine Angola beauty pageant, placing it in the long genealogy of the freak show. In these capacious case studies Young situates South African performance within African diasporic circuits of meaning throughout Africa, North America, and South Asia, demonstrating how performative engagement with archival absence can locate that which was never recorded.
Imagined Theatres: Writing for a Theoretical Stage
by Daniel SackImagined Theatres collects theoretical dramas written by some of the leading scholars and artists of the contemporary stage. These dialogues, prose poems, and microfictions describe imaginary performance events that explore what might be possible and impossible in the theatre. Each scenario is mirrored by a brief accompanying reflection, asking what they might mean for our thinking about the theatre. These many possible worlds circle around questions that include: In what way is writing itself a performance? How do we understand the relationship between real performances that engender imaginary reflections and imaginary conceptions that form the basis for real theatrical productions? Are we not always imagining theatres when we read or even when we sit in the theatre, watching whatever event we imagine we are seeing?
The Importance of Being Earnest
by Oscar WildeA farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personæ to escape burdensome social obligations, this play is an unforgettable satire of Victorian ways. Wilde's notoriety caused the play, despite its early success, to be closed after 86 performances. This latest edition allows you to discover or enjoy once again the writing of one of history's great comedy and drama writers.
Improvisation and Social Aesthetics
by Eric Lewis Georgina Born Will StrawAddressing a wide range of improvised art and music forms—from jazz and cinema to dance and literature—this volume's contributors locate improvisation as a key site of mediation between the social and the aesthetic. As a catalyst for social experiment and political practice, improvisation aids in the creation, contestation, and codification of social realities and identities. Among other topics, the contributors discuss the social aesthetics of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the Feminist Improvising Group, and contemporary Malian music, as well as the virtual sociality of interactive computer music, the significance of "uncreative" improvisation, responses to French New Wave cinema, and the work of figures ranging from bell hooks and Billy Strayhorn to Kenneth Goldsmith. Across its diverse chapters, Improvisation and Social Aesthetics argues that ensemble improvisation is not inherently egalitarian or emancipatory, but offers a potential site for the cultivation of new forms of social relations. It sets out a new conceptualization of the aesthetic as immanently social and political, proposing a new paradigm of improvisation studies that will have reverberations throughout the humanities.Contributors. Lisa Barg, Georgina Born, David Brackett, Nicholas Cook, Marion Froger, Susan Kozel, Eric Lewis, George E. Lewis, Ingrid Monson, Tracey Nicholls, Winfried Siemerling, Will Straw, Zoë Svendsen, Darren Wershler
In Spirit
by Tara BeaganTwelve-year-old Molly was riding her new bicycle on a deserted road when a man in a truck pulled up next to her, saying he was lost. He asked if she could get in and help him back to the highway, and said he could bring her back to her bike after. Molly declined, out of interest for her own safety. The next things Molly remembers are dirt, branches, trees, pain, and darkness. Molly is now a spirit. Mustering up some courage, she pieces together her short life for herself and her family while she reassembles her bicycle—the same one that was found thrown into the trees on the side of the road. Juxtaposed with flashes of news, sounds, and videos, Molly’s chilling tale becomes more and more vivid, challenging humanity not to forget her presence and importance.
Indecent
by Paula VogelInspired by the true story of the controversial 1923 Broadway debut of Sholem Asch's play God of Vengeance, about an amorous affair between two women, Paula Vogel's Indecent is a riveting look at an explosive moment in theatrical history.
Inevitable and Only
by Lisa RosinskyWhat if you suddenly found out you had a sister . . . and she took over your life? Cadie is close to her father. They are so much alike—same temperament, sense of humor, and love for the theater—and Dad always knows how to comfort her . . . until the day he announces that he has another daughter. Suddenly, Cadie has a sister, Elizabeth—a sister who is six months older than her, a sister who is about to move in with them, a sister whose very existence means that Cadie’s beloved father cheated on her mother when they were already married. What other secrets might he have? Can she still trust him? Does Cadie really know her father at all? And when Elizabeth arrives, Cadie’s worst fears come true. Elizabeth looks just like Dad; not only that, she seems all too perfect. Until she begins stealing Cadie’s place in the family and even Cadie’s one true love . . . But Elizabeth has secrets of her own. This deeply emotional coming-of-age story explores the choices you make when your family—and your life—changes overnight. Are these choices the inevitable and only ones? And will they ultimately bring your family back together or push you further apart?