- Table View
- List View
Proof
by David AuburnOne of the most acclaimed plays of the 1999-2000 season, Proof is a work that explores the unknowability of love as much as it does the mysteries of science. <p><p> It focuses on Catherine, a young woman who has spent years caring for her father, Robert, a brilliant mathematician in his youth who was later unable to function without her help. His death has brought into her midst both her sister, Claire, who wants to take Catherine back to New York with her, and Hal, a former student of Catherine's father who hopes to find some hint of Robert's genius among his incoherent scribblings. <p><p> The passion that Hal feels for math both moves and angers Catherine, who, in her exhaustion, is torn between missing her father and resenting the great sacrifices she made for him. For Catherine has inherited at least a part of her father's brilliance -- and perhaps some of his instability as well. As she and Hal become attracted to each other, they push at the edges of each other's knowledge, considering not only the unpredictability of genius but also the human instinct toward love and trust.
Proof of Their Forbidden Night: Cinderella In The Sicilian's World / Proof Of Their Forbidden Night (Mills And Boon Modern Ser.)
by Chantelle ShawForbidden, seduced……pregnant with his baby!Greek CEO Andreas Karelis knows seducing innocent Isla Stanford would be a huge mistake—she’s completely off-limits! But thrown together on an Aegean island paradise, neither can resist indulging in their illicit temptation…Long after she leaves, their sizzling encounter is seared on to Isla’s heart—because she’s carrying Andreas’s heir! Scarred by her own father’s rejection, Isla is determined to make Andreas claim his son. Meaning she must face a terrifying truth—she wants Andreas to claim her, too…
Property
by Rosary Hartel O'NeillFull Length, Southern ComedyCharacters: 2 male, 3 female. Unit set. Property is a contemporary romantic comedy set in a Garden District mansion in New Orleans. Rooster Dubonnet, a young artist suffering from a terminal disease, is dazzled by love. Raised by an imperious society-driven mother, he has fallen in love with a New-Age nurse. Set during Mardi Gras--when a whole tradition of fun, revelry, and prestige seizes the city-- Rooster is caught between his dedication to his family's past (and "property") and his own very different future. . Also available in Ghosts of New Orleans.
Property and Finance on the Post-Brexit London Stage: We Want What You Have
by Michael MeeuwisA guide to the contemporary London stage as well as an argument about its future, the book walks readers through the city’s performance spaces following the Brexit vote. Austerity-era London theatre is suffused with the belief that private ownership defines full citizenship, its perspective narrowing to what an affluent audience might find relatable. From pub theatres to the National, Michael Meeuwis reveals how what gets put on in London interacts with the daily life of the neighbourhoods in which they are set. This study addresses global theatregoers, as well as students and scholars across theatre and performance studies—particularly those interested in UK culture after Brexit, urban geography, class, and theatrical economics.
Prophecy and Sibylline Imagery in the Renaissance: Shakespeare’s Sibyls (Routledge Studies In Renaissance Literature And Culture Ser. #15)
by Jessica L. MalayThis book restores the rich tradition of the Sibyls to the position of prominence they once held in the culture and society of the English Renaissance. The sibyls — figures from classical antiquity — played important roles in literature, scholarship and art of the period, exerting a powerful authority due to their centuries-old connection to prophetic declamations of the coming of Christ and the Apocalypse. The identity of the sibyls, however, was not limited to this particular aspect of their fame, but contained a fluid multi-layering of meanings given their prominence in ancient Greek and Roman cultures, as well as the widespread dissemination of prophecies attributed the sibyls that circulated through the oral tradition. Sibylline prophecy of the Middle Ages served as another conduit through which sibylline authority, fame, and familiarity was transmitted and enhanced. Writers as disparate as John Foxe, John Dee, Thomas Churchyard, John Fletcher, Thomas Heywood, Jane Seager, John Lyly, An Collins, William Shakespeare, and many draw upon this shared sibylline tradition to produce particular and specific meanings in their writing. This book explores the many identities, the many faces, of the prophetic sibyls as they appear in the works of English Renaissance writers.
Prophet
by Thomas BradshawFull Length, Satire . Characters: 4 male, 3 female . Simple settings . A man wakes up one morning and decides he must kill himself. He is angry with himself for not hitting his wife every time she has an independent thought (as Abraham and Moses would have done). After she dies and God reveals to him that he is the new Prophet, the man takes a new wife, dresses her in slave chains, and begins to preach his newfound gospel of male domination. Simultaneously humorous and disturbing, Bradshaw's Prophet explores controversial issues in startling and unexpected ways. . "Fasten your seatbelts. PROPHET, Thomas Bradshaw's lacerating satire,...hurtles from rambunctious mockery to real horror. This is situation satire with a vengeance..."-The New York Times . This play contains scenes of a graphic sexual and violent nature that may not be suitable for all audiences.
Proserpine and Midas: Two unpublished Mythological Dramas
by Mary Wollstonecraft ShelleyMary Shelley (née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, often known as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley) was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, travel writer, and editor of the works of her husband, Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. She was the daughter of the political philosopher William Godwin and the writer, philosopher, and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Mary Shelley was taken seriously as a writer in her own lifetime, though reviewers often missed the political edge to her novels. After her death, however, she was chiefly remembered only as the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley and as the author of Frankenstein. It was not until 1989, when Emily Sunstein published her prizewinning biography Mary Shelley: Romance and Reality, that a full-length scholarly biography analyzing all of Shelley's letters, journals, and works within their historical context was published. The well-meaning attempts of Mary Shelley's son and daughter-in-law to "Victorianise" her memory through the censoring of letters and biographical material contributed to a perception of Mary Shelley as a more conventional, less reformist figure than her works suggest. Her own timid omissions from Percy Shelley's works and her quiet avoidance of public controversy in the later years of her life added to this impression. The eclipse of Mary Shelley's reputation as a novelist and biographer meant that, until the last thirty years, most of her works remained out of print, obstructing a larger view of her achievement. She was seen as a one-novel author, if that. In recent decades, however, the republication of almost all her writings has stimulated a new recognition of its value. Her voracious reading habits and intensive study, revealed in her journals and letters and reflected in her works, is now better appreciated. Shelley's recognition of herself as an author has also been recognized; after Percy's death, she wrote about her authorial ambitions: "I think that I can maintain myself, and there is something inspiriting in the idea". Scholars now consider Mary Shelley to be a major Romantic figure, significant for her literary achievement and her political voice as a woman and a liberal.
Prospero's Daughter: A Novel
by Elizabeth NunezProspero's Daughter is a brilliantly conceived retelling of Shakespeare's The Tempest set in a remote corner of the author's native Trinidad during the height of tensions between Trinidadians and British Colonial rule. Above all, it is the story of a boy and a girl who form an unlikely and forbidden alliance to uncover a terrible secret.
Protestantism and Drama in Early Modern England
by Adrian StreeteContaining detailed readings of plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe and Middleton, as well as poetry and prose, this book provides a major historical and critical reassessment of the relationship between early modern Protestantism and drama. Examining the complex and painful shift from late Medieval religious culture to a society dominated by the ideas of the Reformers, Adrian Streete presents a fresh understanding of Reformed theology and the representation of early modern subjectivity. Through close analysis of major thinkers such as Augustine, William of Ockham, Erasmus, Luther and Calvin, the book argues for the profoundly Christological focus of Reformed theology and explores how this manifests itself in early modern drama. Moving beyond questions of authorial 'belief', Streete assesses Elizabethan and Jacobean drama's engagement with the challenges of the Reformation.
Proud
by Michael HealeyShortly after the Conservatives win a majority government in the 2011 federal election, the prime minister discovers a secret weapon in his caucus—Jisbella Lyth, a single mother with a limited understanding of her role as an MP. Using her ignorance to his advantage, the PM hatches a plan to have Jisbella front and centre in a campaign of misdirection and distraction. Humorous and clever, Proud explores the corrosive nature of the politics of division.
Provocation in Popular Culture
by Bim MasonWhat role can provocation play in the process of renewal, both of individuals and of societies? Provocation in Popular Culture is an investigation into the practice of specific provocateurs and the wider nature of cultural provocation, examining, among others: Banksy Sacha Baron Cohen Leo Bassi Pussy Riot Philippe Petit Archaos. Drawing on Bim Mason’s own twenty-five year career as performer, teacher and creative director, this book explores the power negotiations involved in the relationship between provocateur and provoked, and the implications of maintaining a position on the ‘edge’. Using neuroscience as a bridge, it proposes a similarity between complexity theory and cultural theories of play and risk. Three inter-related analogies for the ‘edge’ on which these performers operate – the fulcrum, the blade and the border – reveal the shifts between structure and fluidity, and the ways in which these can combine in a single moment.
Provocative Eloquence: Theater, Violence, and Antislavery Speech in the Antebellum United States
by Laura L MielkeIn the mid-19th century, rhetoric surrounding slavery was permeated by violence. Slavery’s defenders often used brute force to suppress opponents, and even those abolitionists dedicated to pacifism drew upon visions of widespread destruction. Provocative Eloquence recounts how the theater, long an arena for heightened eloquence and physical contest, proved terribly relevant in the lead up to the Civil War. As antislavery speech and open conflict intertwined, the nation became a stage. The book brings together notions of intertextuality and interperformativity to understand how the confluence of oratorical and theatrical practices in the antebellum period reflected the conflict over slavery and deeply influenced the language that barely contained that conflict. The book draws on a wide range of work in performance studies, theater history, black performance theory, oratorical studies, and literature and law to provide a new narrative of the interaction of oratorical, theatrical, and literary histories of the nineteenth-century U.S.
Präsenzgeschichten: Virtuelle Realitäten im Theater der Frühen Neuzeit (Simulatio. Theatertechniken in Literatur, Medien und Wissenschaft)
by Jenny Augustin Johanna AbelBei einem Blick auf virtuelle Realitäten im frühneuzeitlichen Theater gilt es, unsere vom digitalen Zeitalter geprägten Konzepte der Virtualität und Präsenz zu revidieren. Auf dem Gebiet der Kulturen der Romania haben multiple Präsenz- und Virtualitätsverständnisse eine lange und kontroverse Geschichte. In der Auseinandersetzung mit der Vorgeschichte erweiterter Realitätserfahrungen am Modell des Theaters geht es vor allem um die Einbettung von Vergegenwärtigungstechniken in verflochtene Geschichten und vielschichtige Narrationen vom wirkmächtig Virtuellen. Hier werden daher Präsenzgeschichten im Plural in diversen Medien und epistemischen Erzeugungskontexten durchgespielt.
Pseudolus
by David Christenson PlautusThe play Pseudolus provides an introduction to the world of Roman comedy from one of its best practitioners, Plautus. As with all Focus translations, the emphasis is on an inexpensive, readable edition that is close to the original, with an extensive introduction, notes and appendices.
Psycho Beach Party
by Charles BuschImagine 'Gidget' crossed with 'The Three Faces of Eve' and 'Mommie Dearest'. Chicklet, a perky teenager in Malibu Beach circa 1962, wants to learn to surf and join a group of beach bums led by the great Kanaka. Unfortunately, she suffers from a multiple personality disorder. Seeing red causes her to transform into various other selves, including a sinister vamp out to conquer the world. Complications arise when a movie starlet flees the set of her latest rotten movie to hide among the surfers. The climax is a wild luau scene where hypnosis reveals the shocking root of Chicklet's psychosis.
Psycho Night at the Paradise Lounge
by Kitty BurnsMystery / 9m, 7f / Interior / Four customers and their friends are at the Paradise Lounge to murder the singer. They do not know each other and are unaware of each other's evolving plots. As Cindy sings, the villains discuss with their accomplices the reasons and methods they've devised for her demise. One by one, four traps are set in Cindy's dressing room. At the end of Act I, Cindy leaves the stage and a commotion is followed by a scream from the direction of the dressing room. The police arrive to investigate and instruct the customers to remain in the lounge while they question staff in the office. With the police out of sight, each potential murderer returns to the dressing room to remove evidence. Each springs a fiendish trap set by another and dies, leaving the police with four bodies, a variety of unusual murder weapons and a room full of "silent partners" who are no help in unraveling the mystery.
Psychoanalysis and Performance
by Adrian Kear Patrick CampbellThe field of literary studies has long recognised the centrality of psychoanalysis as a method for looking at texts in a new way. But rarely has the relationship between psychoanalysis and performance been mapped out, either in terms of analysing the nature of performance itself, or in terms of making sense of specific performance-related activities. In this volume some of the most distinguished thinkers in the field make this exciting new connection and offer original perspectives on a wide variety of topics, including: · hypnotism and hysteria · ventriloquism and the body · dance and sublimation · the unconscious and the rehearsal process · melancholia and the uncanny · cloning and theatrical mimesis · censorship and activist performance · theatre and social memory. The arguments advanced here are based on the dual principle that psychoanalysis can provide a productive framework for understanding the work of performance, and that performance itself can help to investigate the problematic of identity.
Psychology for Actors: Theories and Practices for the Acting Process
by Kevin PagePsychology for Actors is a study of modern psychology, specifically designed for the working actor and actor-in-training, that covers discrete areas of psychological theory that actors can apply to their creative process to form and connect with characters. The book investigates many post-Stanislavsky ideas about human psychology from some of the twentieth century’s most brilliant minds – from Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung to Abraham Maslow and Ken Wilber – and offers step-by-step exercises to help actors understand their characters and effectively bring them to life on stage or in front of the camera. Psychology for Actors also offers advice on how to cope with the stresses and strains of a highly competitive field, and provides tools for deeper self-awareness and character exploration.
Psychophysical Acting: An Intercultural Approach after Stanislavski
by Phillip B. ZarrilliPsychophysical Acting is a direct and vital address to the demands of contemporary theatre on today’s actor. Drawing on over thirty years of intercultural experience, Phillip Zarrilli aims to equip actors with practical and conceptual tools with which to approach their work. Areas of focus include:an historical overview of a psychophysical approach to acting from Stanislavski to the presentacting as an ‘energetics’ of performance, applied to a wide range of playwrights: Samuel Beckett, Martin Crimp, Sarah Kane, Kaite O’Reilly and Ota Shogoa system of training though yoga and Asian martial arts that heightens sensory awareness, dynamic energy, and in which body and mind become onepractical application of training principles to improvisation exercises.Psychophysical Acting is accompanied by Peter Hulton’s downloadable resources featuring exercises, production documentation, interviews, and reflection.
Public Enemy
by Olivier ChoinièreThree generations of a family argue over current events, finances, and culture, with everyone looking to blame someone else for society’s ills in this satirical examination of how judgment can both divide and unite people. Elizabeth, the matriarch, has invited her children and grandchildren over for dinner. Instead of a nice family meal, it quickly slides into the adults arguing in the dining room and the kids fighting in the living room. Rapid-fire dialogue fuses and overlaps, but no one listens to each other. A blistering take on the family drama, Public Enemy asks, who’s really responsible for all our suffering?
Public Theatre and the Enslaved People of Colonial Saint-Domingue
by Julia PrestThe French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) was home to one of the richest public theatre traditions of the colonial-era Caribbean. This book examines the relationship between public theatre and the enslaved people of Saint-Domingue—something that is generally given short shrift owing to a perceived lack of documentation. Here, a range of materials and methodologies are used to explore pressing questions including the ‘mitigated spectatorship’ of the enslaved, portrayals of enslaved people in French and Creole repertoire, the contributions of enslaved people to theatre-making, and shifting attitudes during the revolutionary era. The book demonstrates that slavery was no mere backdrop to this portion of theatre history but an integral part of its story. It also helps recover the hidden experiences of some of the enslaved individuals who became entangled in that story.
Public Women in British India: Icons and the Urban Stage
by Rimli BhattacharyaThis book foregrounds the subjectivity of ‘acting women’ amidst violent debates on femininity and education, livelihood and labour, sexuality and marriage. It looks at the emergence of the stage actress as an artist and an ideological construct at critical phases of performance practice in British India. The focus here is on Calcutta, considered the ‘second city of the Empire’ and a nodal point in global trade circuits. Each chapter offers new ways of conceptualising the actress as a professional, a colonial subject, simultaneously the other and the model of the ‘new woman’. An underlying motif is the playing out of the idea of spiritual salvation, redemption and modernity. Analysing the dynamics behind stagecraft and spectacle, the study highlights the politics of demarcation and exclusion of social roles. It presents rich archival work from diverse sources, many translated for the first time. This book makes a distinctive contribution in intertwining performance studies with literary history and art practices within a cross-cultural framework. Interdisciplinary and innovative, it will appeal to scholars and researchers in South Asian theatre and performance studies, history and gender studies.
Public and Private Man in Shakespeare (Routledge Library Editions: Study of Shakespeare)
by J. M. GregsonThe potential duality of human character and its capacity for dissembling was a source of fascination to the Elizabethan dramatists. Where many of them used the Machiavellian picture to draw one fair-faced scheming villain after another, Shakespeare absorbed more deeply the problem of the tensions between the public and private face of man. Originally published in 1983, this book examines the ways in which this psychological insight is developed and modified as a source of dramatic power throughout Shakespeare’s career. In the great sequence of history plays he examines the conflicting tensions of kingship and humanity, and the destructive potential of this dilemma is exploited to the full in the ‘problem plays’. In the last plays power and virtue seem altogether divorced: Prospero can retire to an old age at peace only at the abdication of all his power. This theme is central to the art of many dramatists, but in the context of Renaissance political philosophy it takes on an added resonance for Shakespeare.
Publicity and the Early Modern Stage: People Made Public (Early Modern Cultural Studies 1500–1700)
by Matthew Hunter Allison K. Deutermann Musa GurnisWhat did publicity look like before the eighteenth century? What were its uses and effects, and around whom was it organized? The essays in this collection ask these questions of early modern London. Together, they argue that commercial theater was a vital engine in celebrity’s production. The men and women associated with playing—not just actors and authors, but playgoers, characters, and the extraordinary local figures adjunct to playhouse productions—introduced new ways of thinking about the function and meaning of fame in the period; about the networks of communication through which it spread; and about theatrical publics. Drawing on the insights of Habermasean public sphere theory and on the interdisciplinary field of celebrity studies, Publicity and the Early Modern Stage introduces a new and comprehensive look at early modern theories and experiences of publicity.
Publikumsschwund?: Ein Blick auf die Theaterstatistik seit 1949
by Rainer GlaapDurch den teils massiven Publikumsschwund nach der Pandemie stellt sich die Frage, ob diese als Brandbeschleuniger gewirkt hat für bereits vorhandene Trends. Der Autor geht dem nach anhand der Besuchszahlen bis zur letzten vollständigen vorpandemischen Spielzeit 2018/19. Er zeigt historische Zeitreihen zu Sparten- und Personalentwicklung, Vertriebskanälen und den Einnahmen. Die Theaterstatistik des Bühnenvereins dient vielen Entscheidungsträgern als Grundlage für z.B. kulturpolitische Steuerungen, obwohl sie nicht die komplette deutsche Theaterlandschaft abbildet. Deshalb beleuchtet der Autor weitere Anbieter. Da die Theaterstatistik große kulturpolitische Bedeutung hat, gibt es zum Schluss einige Vorschläge für die Zukunft.