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Theatre Responds to Social Trauma: Chasing the Demons (Routledge Series in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Theatre and Performance)
by Ellen W. KaplanThis book is a collection of chapters by playwrights, directors, devisers, scholars, and educators whose praxis involves representing, theorizing, and performing social trauma.Chapters explore how psychic catastrophes and ruptures are often embedded in social systems of oppression and forged in zones of conflict within and across national borders. Through multiple lenses and diverse approaches, the authors examine the connections between collective trauma, social identity, and personal struggle. We look at the generational transmission of trauma, socially induced pathologies, and societal re-inscriptions of trauma, from mass incarceration to war-induced psychoses, from gendered violence through racist practices. Collective trauma may shape, protect, and preserve group identity, promoting a sense of cohesion and meaning, even as it shakes individuals through pain. Engaging with communities under significant stress through artistic practice offers a path towards reconstructing the meaning(s) of social trauma, making sense of the past, understanding the present, and re-visioning the future.The chapters combine theoretical and practical work, exploring the conceptual foundations and the artists’ processes as they interrogate the intersections of personal grief and communal mourning, through drama, poetry, and embodied performance.
Theatre Work: Reimagining the Labor of Theatrical Production
by Brídín Clements Cotton Natalie RobinTheatre Work: Reimagining the Labor of Theatrical Production investigates both the history and current realities of life and work in professional theatrical production in the United States and explores labor practices that are equitable, accessible, and sustainable.In this book, Brídín Clements Cotton and Natalie Robin investigate the question of artmaking, specifically theatrical production, as work. When the art is the work, how do employers navigate the balance between creative freedom and these equitable, accessible, and sustainable personnel processes? Do theatrical production operations value the worker? Through data analyses, worker narratives, and analogues to the evolving gig economy, Theatre Work questions everything about theatrical production work – including our shared history, ways of operating, and assumptions about how theatre is made – and considers what might happen if the American Theatre was reborn in an entirely new form.Written for members of the theatrical production workplace, leaders of theatrical institutions and productions, labor organizers, and industry union leaders, Theatre Work: Reimagining the Labor of Theatrical Production speaks to the ways that employers and workers can reimagine how we work.
The Theatrical Legacy of Thomas Middleton, 1624–2024 (Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture)
by William David Green Anna L. Hegland Sam JermyThis volume celebrates Thomas Middleton’s legacy as a dramatist, marking the 400th anniversary of Middleton’s final and most contentious work for the public theatres, A Game at Chess (1624).The collection is divided into three sections: ‘Critical and Textual Reception’, ‘Afterlives and Legacies’, and ‘Practice and Performance’. This division reflects the book’s holistic approach to Middleton’s canon, and its emphasis on the continuing significance of Middleton’s writing to the study of early modern English drama. Each section offers an assessment of the place of Middleton’s drama in culture, criticism, and education today through a range of critical approaches.Featuring work from a range of voices (from early career, independent, and seasoned academics and practitioners), the collection will be appropriate for both specialists in early modern literature and drama who are interested in both theory and practice, and students or scholars researching Middleton’s historical significance to the study of early theatre.
The Third Space: Body, Voice, and Imagination
by Robert LewisThe Third Space serves a crucial need for contemporary performers by providing an interdisciplinary and physiovocal approach to training. It is a new take on body and voice integration designed to develop the holistic performer. It takes performers through a series of step-by-step practical physiovocal exercises that connects the actor’s centre to the outside world, which increases awareness of self and space. It also develops a deeper connection between spaces within the body and the environment by connecting sound, imagination, and movement.Robert Lewis’s approach is a way of working that unlocks the imagination as well as connecting performers to self, space, and imagination, through voice and body. It conditions, controls, and engages performers by integrating various voice and movement practices.The theories and practice are balanced throughout by: introducing the practical works theoretical underpinnings through research, related work, and case studies of performances; demonstrating a full program of exercises that helps performers get in touch with their centre, their space, and shape both within and outside the body; and exploring the performers physiovocal instrument and its connection with imagination, energies, and dynamics. This book is the result of nearly 20 years of research and practice working with voice and movement practitioners across the globe to develop training that produces performers that are physiovocally ready to work in theatre, screen, and emergent technologies.
Thunder on the Stage: The Dramatic Vision of Richard Wright
by Bruce Allen DickRichard Wright’s dramatic imagination guided the creation of his masterpieces Native Son and Black Boy and helped shape Wright’s long-overlooked writing for theater and other performative mediums. Drawing on decades of research and interviews with Wright’s family and Wright scholars, Bruce Allen Dick uncovers the theatrical influence on Wright’s oeuvre--from his 1930s boxing journalism to his unpublished one-acts on returning Black GIs in WWII to his unproduced pageant honoring Vladimir Lenin. Wright maintained rewarding associations with playwrights, writers, and actors such as Langston Hughes, Theodore Ward, Paul Robeson, and Lillian Hellman, and took particular inspiration from French literary figures like Jean-Paul Sartre. Dick’s analysis also illuminates Wright’s direct involvement with theater and film, including the performative aspects of his travel writings; the Orson Welles-directed Native Son on Broadway; his acting debut in Native Son’s first film version; and his play “Daddy Goodness,” a satire of religious charlatans like Father Divine, in the 1930s. Bold and original, Thunder on the Stage offers a groundbreaking reinterpretation of a major American writer.
To Repair the World: Zelda Fichandler and the Transformation of American Theater (ISSN)
by Mary B. RobinsonThis book is a biography in the form of an oral history about a woman whose founding of Arena Stage in Washington, DC in 1950 shifted live professional theater away from Broadway and inspired the creation of non-profit theaters around the country. Dianne Wiest, James Earl Jones, Stacy Keach, and Jane Alexander, among many others, share their memories of this intrepid pioneering woman during Arena Stage’s early years.As Head of New York University’s Graduate Acting Program for 25 years, Zelda Fichandler also trained a younger generation of gifted actors. Marcia Gay Harden, Rainn Wilson, Mahershala Ali, and other developing actors who became “artist-citizens” under her guidance, talk about the ways in which she transformed their lives.Theater practitioners who have lived during Zelda Fichandler’s time will find this book a fascinating and entertaining read––as will all theater lovers, especially those in Washington, DC. And through this vivid and compelling oral history, students and aspiring artists will come to grasp how the theatrical past can shed essential light on the theater of today and tomorrow.
The Tony Awards: A Celebration of Excellence in Theatre
by Eila Mell The American Theatre WingCommemorating over 75 years of Broadway greatness with never-before told stories, rare photos from the American Theatre Wings' archives, and interviews with major honorees like Lin-Manuel Miranda, Patti LuPone, and Hugh Jackman, The Tony Awards is the official, authorized guide to Broadway's biggest night.The Tony Awards: A Celebration of Excellence in Theatre pays tribute to the magic that happens when the curtain goes up and Broadway's best and brightest step onto center stage. Supported by the American Theatre Wing, the arts organization that founded the Tony Awards in 1947 and continues to produce the Tony Awards live telecast each year, author Eila Mell has interviewed a cavalcade of past and present Tony winners, including actors, producers, writers, costume designers, and many many others. Their voices fill the pages of this book with fascinating, behind-the-scenes stories about what it's like to win the theatre world's highest honor. Featuring a foreword by Audra McDonald and over 400 color and black-and-white photographs, The Tony Awards also spotlights more than 130 captivating interviews with a parade of industry insiders, including: Mel Brooks, Matthew Broderick, Carol Burnett, Kristin Chenoweth, Glenn Close, James Corden, Bryan Cranston, Neil Patrick Harris, Jennifer Holliday, Hugh Jackman, John Kander, Angela Lansbury, Judith Light, Hal Linden, Kenny Leon, Patti LuPone, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Rita Moreno, Bernadette Peters, Chita Rivera, Martin Short, Tom Stoppard, Julie Taymor, Leslie Uggams, and Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Trauma and Embodied Healing in Dramatherapy, Theatre and Performance
by J. F. JacquesThis edited volume explores the singularity of embodiment and somatic approaches in the healing of trauma from a dramatherapy, theatre and performance perspective.Collating voices from across the fields of dramatherapy, theatre and performance, this book examines how different interdisciplinary and intercultural approaches offer unique and unexplored perspectives on the body as a medium for the exploration, expression and resolution of chronic, acute and complex trauma as well as collective and intergenerational trauma. The diverse chapters highlight how the intersection between dramatherapy and body-based approaches in theatre and performance offers additional opportunities to explore and understand the creative, expressive and imaginative capacity of the body, and its application to the healing of trauma.The book will be of particular interest to dramatherapists and other creative and expressive arts therapists. It will also appeal to counsellors, psychotherapists, psychologists and theatre scholars.
Tropes and the Literary-Scientific Revolution: Forms of Proof (Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture)
by Michael SlaterTropes and the Literary-Scientific Revolution: Forms of Proof argues that the rise of mechanical science in the seventeenth century had a profound impact on both language and literature. To the extent that new ideas about things were accompanied by new attitudes toward words, what we commonly regard as the “scientific revolution” inevitably bore literary dimensions as well. Literary tropes and forms underwent tremendous reassessment in the seventeenth century, and early modern science was shaped just as powerfully by contest over the place of literary figures, from personification and metaphor to anamorphosis and allegory. In their rejection of teleological explanations of natural motion, for instance, early modern philosophers often disputed the value of personification, a figural projection of interiority onto what was becoming increasingly a mechanical world. And allegory—a dominant mode of literature from the late Middle Ages until well into the Renaissance—became “the vice of those times,” as Thomas Rymer described it in 1674. This book shows that its acute devaluation was possible only in conjunction with a distinctively modern physics. Analyzing writings by Sidney, Shakespeare, Bacon, Jonson, Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, Hobbes, Descartes, and more, it asserts that the scientific revolution was a literary phenomenon, just as the literary revolution was also a scientific one.
Utpal Dutt and Political Theatre in Postcolonial India (Elements in Theatre, Performance and the Political)
by null Mallarika Sinha RoyAmong the most significant playwrights and theatre-makers of postcolonial India, Utpal Dutt (1929–1993), was an early exponent of rethinking colonial history through political theatre. Dutt envisaged political theatre as part of the larger Marxist project, and his incorporation of new developments in Marxist thinking, including the contributions of Antonio Gramsci, makes it possible to conceptualise his protagonists as insurgent subalterns. A decolonial approach to staging history remained a significant element in Dutt's artistic project. This Element examines Dutt's passionate engagement with Marxism and explores how this sense of urgency was actioned through the writing and producing of plays about the peasant revolts and armed anti-colonial movements which took place during the period of British rule. Drawing on contemporary debates in political theatre regarding the autonomy of the spectator and the performance of history, the author locates Dutt's political theatre in a historical frame.
The Waistcoat Workbook: Historical, Modern and Genre Drafting of Waistcoats for Men and Women 1837 – Present Day
by J. François-CampbellThe Waistcoat Workbook: Historical, Modern, and Genre Drafting of Waistcoats for Men and Women 1837–Present Day provides comprehensive coverage of the design, construction, and role of waistcoats from the reign of Queen Victoria to the present day in the United Kingdom.The book contains step-by-step instructions on how to draft the garments onto pattern paper from start to finish with drafting tools, including diagrams and detailed instructions on what measurements are required and how to record the information. The book also features: A brief history of waistcoats in European, and particularly British history, highlighting key points in the evolution of the garment A discussion of fabrics that would be suitable to use for the garments and what kind of interlinings and linings are best suited, depending on the main fabric chosen for the front of the garment Information on how to deal with one and two-way fabrics and challenging materials, as well as fabric analysis and pressing techniques Step-by-step instructions to construct genre waistcoats, including cosplay and Steampunk clothing Industry terminology and suppliers and stockists The Waistcoat Workbook is an excellent resource for professional film and theatre costume makers and tailors, students of costume and fashion design, and makers in cosplay, Steampunk, and re-enactment fields.
What Is Lighting Design?: A Genealogy of People and Ideas
by Michael ChybowskiWhat Is Lighting Design?: A Genealogy of People and Ideas explains what lighting design is by looking at the history of ideas that are a part of this craft and how those ideas developed. Lighting design began in the West with the Renaissance, and each historical period since then has modified how and why light is used in performance, the methods for producing light, and the consensus around what its purpose is. Exploring each lighting design era and the basic components of lighting design, the book discusses how the central ideas of this craft developed over the past 500 years, what today’s lighting designers are concerned with, and how lighting design contributes to performances. This book is designed as a main course text for History of Lighting Design university courses and a supplementary text for and Introduction to Lighting Design, Stagecraft, and Scenography courses. It will also be of interest to directors, choreographers, and working lighting designers who wish to explore the history and meaning of their craft.
Witch Fulfillment: Adaptation Dramaturgy and Casting the Witch for Stage and Screen
by Jane BarnetteWitch Fulfillment: Adaptation Dramaturgy and Casting the Witch for Stage and Screen addresses the Witch as a theatrical type on twenty-first-century-North American stages and screens, seen through the lenses of casting, design, and adaptation, with attention paid to why these patterns persist, and what wishes they fulfil. Witch Fulfillment examines the Witch in performance, considering how actors embody iconic roles designated as witches (casting), and how dramaturgical choices (adaptation) heighten their witchy power. Through analysis of Witch characters ranging from Elphaba to Medea, classic plays such as The Crucible and Macbeth, feminist adaptations - including Sycorax, Obeah Opera, and Jen Silverman’s Witch - and popular culture offerings, like the Scarlet Witch and Jinkx Monsoon, this book examines the dramaturgical meanings of adapting and embodying witchy roles in the twenty-first century. This book contends that the Witch represents a crucial category of analysis for inclusive theatre and performance and will be of interest to theatre practitioners and designers, along with theatre, witchcraft, and occult studies scholars.
Writing Choreography: Textualities of and beyond Dance
by Leena Rouhiainen Kirsi Heimonen Rebecca Hilton Chrysa ParkinsonA new contribution to studies in choreography, Writing Choreography: Textualities of and beyond Dance focuses upon language and writing-based approaches to choreographing from the perspectives of artists and researchers active in the Nordic and Oceanic contexts.Through the contributions of 15 dance–artists, choreographers, dramaturges, writers, interdisciplinary artists and artist–researchers, the volume highlights diverse textual choreographic processes and outcomes arguing for their relevance to present-day practices of expanded choreography. The anthology introduces some Western trends related to utilizing writing, text and language in choreographic processes. In its focus on art-making processes, it likewise offers insight into how performance can be transcribed into writing, how practices of writing choreograph and how choreography can be a process of writing with. Readers, such as dancers, choreographers, students in higher education of these fields as well as researchers in choreography, gain understanding about different experimental forms of writing forwarded by diverse choreographers and how writing is the motional organisation of images, signs, words and texts. The volume presents a new strand in expanded choreography and acts as inspiration for its continued evolution that engenders new adaptations between language, writing and choreography.Ideal for students, scholars and researchers of choreography and dance studies.
Xueqin and Xakespeare: Reading The Story of the Stone through Hamlet (Routledge Studies in Comparative Literature)
by Judith ForsythThis monograph offers a detailed consideration of the five-volume novel written by Cao Xueqin and translated into English as The Story of the Stone, when read through William Shakespeare’s drama Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, A Tragedy in Five Acts. The book builds on the superlative David Hawkes/John Minford English language translation, which is inspired by resonances between the English Shakespearean literary heritage and the dynasties-old Chinese literary tradition inherited by Cao Xueqin. The Introduction sets out the potential for the significant cultural exchange between these two great literary works, each an inexhaustible inspiration of artistic and scholarly re-interpretation. Two chapters bring into consideration two universal literary themes: patriarchy – filial obedience and family honour, and tragic romantic love. These chapters are structured so that a key episode in Hamlet provides the initial perspective, which is then carried through to an episode in The Story of the Stone which offers points of complementarity: in-depth interpretation draws on inter-textual, historical and contemporary contexts referenced from the immense body of scholarly research which has accumulated around these iconic works. The third chapter proposes a new reading of the problematic ‘shrew’ character in the novel, Wang Xi-feng, through tracing the similarities of the structure of the narration of her life and death with a Shakespearean five-act tragedy.