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Paris and the Musical: The City of Light on Stage and Screen
by Olaf JubinParis and the Musical explores how the famous city has been portrayed on stage and screen, investigates why the city has been of such importance to the genre and tracks how it has developed as a trope over the 20th and 21st centuries. From global hits An American in Paris, Gigi, Les Misérables, Moulin Rouge! and The Phantom of the Opera to the less widely-known Bless the Bride, Can-Can, Irma la Douce and Marguerite, the French capital is a central character in an astounding number of Broadway, Hollywood and West End musicals. This collection of 18 essays combines cultural studies, sociology, musicology, art and adaptation theory, and gender studies to examine the envisioning and dramatisation of Paris, and its depiction as a place of romance, hedonism and libertinism or as ‘the capital of the arts’. The interdisciplinary nature of this collection renders it as a fascinating resource for a wide range of courses; it will be especially valuable for students and scholars of Musical Theatre and those interested in Theatre and Film History more generally.
Paris Blues: African American Music and French Popular Culture, 1920-1960
by Andy FryThe Jazz Age. The phrase conjures images of Louis Armstrong holding court at the Sunset Cafe in Chicago, Duke Ellington dazzling crowds at the Cotton Club in Harlem, and star singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. But the Jazz Age was every bit as much of a Paris phenomenon as it was a Chicago and New York scene. In Paris Blues, Andy Fry provides an alternative history of African American music and musicians in France, one that looks beyond familiar personalities and well-rehearsed stories. He pinpoints key issues of race and nation in France’s complicated jazz history from the 1920s through the 1950s. While he deals with many of the traditional icons--such as Josephine Baker, Django Reinhardt, and Sidney Bechet, among others--what he asks is how they came to be so iconic, and what their stories hide as well as what they preserve. Fry focuses throughout on early jazz and swing but includes its re-creation--reinvention--in the 1950s. Along the way, he pays tribute to forgotten traditions such as black musical theater, white show bands, and French wartime swing. Paris Blues provides a nuanced account of the French reception of African Americans and their music and contributes greatly to a growing literature on jazz, race, and nation in France.
Paris is Out!
by Richard SeffHortense and Daniel, a married couple of over 40 years, plan to embark on their first European vacation, but the two have very different outlooks on travel. Daniel is convinced he will be unimpressed by the other side of the pond. His conditions for the trip are: no Paris, no Venice, no shopping, sightseeing, or speaking in French. Hortense, on the other hand, is full of life and eager to experience Europe fully. When Daniel embarrasses Hortense in front of family and friends, she announces that the trip is cancelled. As her adult children try to convince her to forgive Daniel, Hortense must decide how she feels about the man with whom she has shared a life for 40 years. Daniel, in turn, to save his marriage must show how much he appreciates Hortense.
Park Songs
by R. C. Irwin David BudbillA "tale of the tribe" (Ezra Pound's phrase for his own longer work), Park Songs is set during a single day in a down-and-out Midwestern city park where people from all walks of life gather. In this small green space amidst a great gray city, the park provides a refuge for its caretaker (and resident poet), street preachers, retirees, moms, hustlers, and teenagers. Interspersed with blues songs, the community speaks through poetic monologues and conversations, while the homeless provide the introductory chorus--and all of their voices become one great epic tale of comedy and tragedy. Full of unexpected humor, hard-won wisdom, righteous (but sometimes misplaced) anger, and sly tenderness, their stories show us how people learn to live with mistakes and make connections in an antisocial world. As the poem/play engages us in their pain and joy--and the goofy delight of being human--it makes a quietly soulful statement about acceptance and community in our lives. David Budbill has worked as a carpenter's apprentice, short order cook, day laborer, and occasional commentator on NPR's All Thing Considered. His poems can often be heard on Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac and his books include the best-selling Happy Life (Copper Canyon Press) and Judevine, a collection of narrative poems that forms the basis for the play Judevine, which has been performed in twenty-two states. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Budbill now lives in the mountains of northern Vermont. R. C. Irwin, whose absurdist and nostalgic work provides the set design for Park Songs, teaches at San Francisco City College.
Park Your Car in Harvard Yard
by Israel HorovitzDramatic Comedy / 1f, 1m / Interior / One of the author's acclaimed Gloucester based plays. This resounding success throughout America and Europe, starred Judith Ivey and Jason Robards on Broadway. A hilarious and deeply moving tale about the toughest, meanest teacher to ever set foot in Gloucester High School. Now Jacob Brackish is dying. He advertises for a housekeeper to look after him during his final year and hires mousey, 40 year old Katherine Hogan, forgetting that he flunked Katherine ... and her mother and father ... and her recently deceased husband. Kathleen relishes the idea of watching Brackish suffer, but, as his final year passes, memories inspire revelations that redefine the nature of their lives.
Parker, Lopez and Stone's The Book of Mormon (The Fourth Wall)
by Brian Granger'Hasa Diga Eebowai' In 2011, a musical full of curse words and Mormon missionaries swept that year’s Tony Awards and was praised as a triumphant return of the American musical. This book explores the inherent achievements (and failures) of The Book of Mormon—one of the most ambitious, and problematic, musicals to achieve widespread success. The creative team members—Matt Parker, Trey Stone and composer Robert Lopez—were collectively known for their aggressive use of taboo subjects and crude, punchy humor. Using the metaphor of boxing, Granger explores the metaphorical punches the trio delivers and ruminates over the less-discussed ideological wounds that their style of shock absurdism might leave behind. This careful examination of where The Book of Mormon succeeds and fails is sure to challenge discussion of our understanding of musical comedy and our appreciation for this cultural landmark in theatre.
The Parlor Car
by William Dean HowellsWilliam Dean Howells (1837-1920) was an American realist author and literary critic. He wrote his first novel, Their Wedding Journey, in 1871, but his literary reputation really took off with the realist novel A Modern Instance, published in 1882, which describes the decay of a marriage. His 1885 novel The Rise of Silas Lapham is perhaps his best known, describing the rise and fall of an American entrepreneur in the paint business. His social views were also strongly reflected in the novels Annie Kilburn (1888) and A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890). While known primarily as a novelist, his short story "Editha" (1905) - included in the collection Between the Dark and the Daylight (1907) - appears in many anthologies of American literature. Howells also wrote plays, criticism, and essays about contemporary literary figures such as Ibsen, Zola, Verga, and, especially, Tolstoy, which helped establish their reputations in the United States. He also wrote critically in support of many American writers. It is perhaps in this role that he had his greatest influence.
Part I - Early English Stages 1576-1600
by Glynne WickhamThis volume forms part of the 5 volume set Early English Stages 1300-1660. This set examines the history of the development of dramatic spectacle and stage convention in England from the beginning of the fourteenth century to 1660.
Part II - Early English Stages 1576-1600
by Glynne WickhamThis volume forms part of the 5 volume set Early English Stages 1300-1660. This set examines the history of the development of dramatic spectacle and stage convention in England from the beginning of the fourteenth century to 1660.
Una parte del mal
by Ramón de la VegaDos parejas cuyos destinos se entrecruzan en una obra rápida, de diálogos afilados y con la ambición de dejar un mensaje. Una obra de estructura clásica, pero de tema profundamente moderno, de esa modernidad en la que se reconoce que nuestros placeres y tragedias se mantienen hoy como un eco inagotable de lo que vivieron, muchas veces con sorpresa o estupor, otros hombres y mujeres de otras épocas. <P><P>El mal es el protagonista de la obra o, más exactamente, «el pequeño mal», por utilizar las palabras de uno de los protagonistas; en este caso Carmen, una joven comprometida y necesitada de justificaciones más altas, pero que, en el momento de concluir el libro, está a punto de quedar atrapada por aquel al que se opuso, por el único personaje que, en la obra, representa abiertamente la manifestación cotidiana del mal.
Participatory Theatre and the Urban Everyday in South Africa: Place and Play in Johannesburg (Routledge Contemporary South Africa)
by Alexandra HalligeyThis book explores theatre and performance as participatory research practices for exploring the everyday of the city. Taking an inner-city suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa as its central case study, the book considers how theatre and performance might be both useful practical tools in considering the everyday city, as well as conceptual lenses for understanding it. The author establishes an understanding of space as ever evolving and formed through the ongoing relationship between things, human and non-human, and considers how theatre and performance offer useful paradigms for learning about and working with city spaces. As ephemeral, embodied, material artistic practices, theatre and performance mirror the nature of everyday life. The book discusses theatre and performance games and placemaking processes as offering valuable ways of discovering daily acts of place-making and providing insights that more conventional research methods may not allow. Yet the book also considers how seeing daily city life as a kind of performance, a kind of theatre in its own right, helps to further understandings of city spaces as ever evolving through complex webs of relationships. This book will be of interest to academics, academic practitioners and post-graduate students in the fields of theatre and performance studies, urban studies and cultural geography.
A Particle of Dread
by Sam ShepardIn A Particle of Dread, Sam Shepard takes one of the most famous plays in history—Oedipus Rex—and transforms it into a modern American classic. In this telling, Oedipus, King of Thebes, prophesized to kill his father and marry his mother, alternates between his classical identity and that of contemporary “Otto.” His wife (and true mother), Jocasta, is also called Jocelyn, and his antagonist (and true father) is split into three characters, Laius, Larry, and Langos. Two present-day policemen from the Southwest stand in for the Greek chorus as they investigate the murder case. Dazzlingly inventive, ringing with the timelessness of myth, A Particle of Dread is an unforgettable work that grapples with questions of storytelling and destiny—the narratives that we pass down, and how they shape our lives. It is a play that lingers in the mind long after we finish the last scene.
Partners of the Imagination: The Lives, Art and Struggles of John Arden and Margaretta D’Arcy
by Robert LeachPartners of the Imagination is the first in-depth study of the work of John Arden and Margaretta D’Arcy, partners in writing and cultural and political campaigns. Beginning in the 1950s, Arden and D’Arcy created a series of hugely admired plays performed at Britain’s major theatres. Political activists, they worked tirelessly in the peace movement and the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’, during which D’Arcy was gaoled. She is also a veteran of the Greenham Common Women’s Peace camp. Their later work included Booker-listed novels, prize-winning stories, essays and radio plays, and D’Arcy founded and ran a Woman’s Pirate Radio station. Raymond Williams described Arden as ‘the most genuinely innovative’ of the playwrights of his generation, and Chambers and Prior claimed that ‘The Non-Stop Connolly Show’, D’Arcy and Arden’s six-play epic, ‘has fair claim to being one of the finest pieces of post-war drama in the English language’. This study explores the connections between art and life, and between the responsibilities of the writer and the citizen. Importantly, it also evaluates the range of literary works (plays, poetry, novels, essays, polemics) created by these writers, both as literature and drama, and as controversialist activity in its own right. This work is a landmark examination of two hugely respected radical writers.
The Partnership
by Pamela KatzAmong the most creative and outsized personalities of the Weimar Republic, that sizzling yet decadent epoch between the Great War and the Nazis' rise to power, were the renegade poet Bertolt Brecht and the rebellious avant-garde composer Kurt Weill. These two young geniuses and the three women vital to their work--actresses Lotte Lenya and Helene Weigel and writer Elizabeth Hauptmann--joined talents to create the theatrical and musical masterworks The Threepenny Opera and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, only to split in rancor as their culture cracked open and their aesthetic and temperamental differences became irreconcilable. The Partnership is the first book to tell the full story of Brecht and Weill's impulsive, combustible partnership, the compelling psychological drama of one of the most important creative collaborations of the past century. It is also the first book to give full credit where it is richly due to the three women whose creative gifts contributed enormously to their masterworks. And it tells the thrilling and iconic story of artistic daring entwined with sexual freedom during the Weimar Republic's most fevered years, a time when art and politics and society were inextricably mixed.
Party Time with Old King Cole: An Adaptation of a Nursery Rhyme
by Jeffrey B. FuerstNIMAC-sourced textbook
A Party to Murder
by Marcia Kash Doug E. HughesLittle Theatre. Mystery . Marcia Kash and Douglas E. Hughes. Characters: 3 male, 3 female . Interior Set. Six people have come in secret on Halloween to play a murder mystery game at a rustic island cottage. Invited by writer Charles Prince, they appear set for a weekend of fun until ghosts from the past begin to haunt the proceedings and it becomes clear that all is not as it seems. The game takes on a sinister dimension when guests begin to die and the remaining players realize that they are playing for their lives. Tension rises. Secret passageways, incriminating letters, hidden compartments, bodies in the window seat and a twenty five year old unsolved mystery twist and turn toward the unexpected and terrifying conclusion. . "Enough to turn Dame Agatha green with envy." Oxford Press. . "Rather stunning." Cincinnati Post. . "Brilliant, even better than Agatha Christie's 'And Then There Were None'." Saskatoon Free Press. . "Cheeky and skillfully crafted mayhem." London Free Press. . "Thrills Christie fashion.... A superb climax." Kentucky Recorder. . "Christie meets Deathtrap [with] a lot of style." Cincinnati Enquirer.
Pass Over: A Play
by Antoinette NwanduA startling play examining the cyclical ravages of racial injustice and violence on two young black men, by an extraordinary voice in American theater. Moses and Kitch stand around on the corner—talking shit, passing the time, and hoping that maybe today will be different. As they dream of their promised land, a stranger wanders into their space with his own agenda and derails their plans. Emotional and lyrical, Pass Over crafts everyday profanities into poetic and humorous riffs, exposing the unquestionable human spirit of young men stuck in a cycle that they are desperately trying to escape. Spike Lee directed a film version of the play that premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and South by Southwest, and was produced by Amazon Studios. A provocative riff on the Book of Exodus and Waiting for Godot, Pass Over is a remarkable work of politically-charged theater by a bold new American voice.Praise for Pass Over &“Searing. . . . Blazingly theatrical. . . . Moses and Kitch are a dispossessed team like [Beckett&’s] Vladimir and Estragon, stuck in an existential cycle of hopelessness they try to master with gallows humor and jags of deluded optimism. . . . Creates a vivid world of injustice while riffing on earlier. . . . Resonates as a powerful tragedy.&” ―New York Time &“Chilling. . . . Combines daring near-experimental form and brutal content: what&’s at work is not some mysterious cosmic existentialism à la Beckett, but very real, very tangible racism.&” ―New Yorker &“In the insanity of a city filled with guns, and people ready and willing to use them whenever temperatures rise, waiting isn&’t so much a malaise as a badge of survival. That&’s one of the takeaways of Antoinette Nwandu&’s Pass Over, a very potent and promising play. . . . The language in the work is thrilling, poetical.&” ―Chicago Tribune
Passing Game
by Steve TesichPassing Game is an exploration of guilt, retribution and disillusionment. Two once promising actors, one white and one black, have descended to doing commercials and voice overs. At a seedy, deserted resort, the two engage in increasingly violent basketball games while they plot to do away with their wives reminders of their failure. Unexplained killings have already occurred in the area and the two men hope the murderer will oblige by making their wives his next rifle fodder. Barring that, they make a pact to dispose of each other's wife. Others inhabiting this sinister locale are a creepy, gun toting caretaker, his nasty nephew and the nephew's former girl friend, a natural prey for these two predatory men. Murder does take place, but not the one they've planned.
Passing Judgment: The Politics and Poetics of Sovereignty in French Tragedy from Hardy to Racine
by Helene E. BilisThe royal judge was an archetypal character in French tragedy during the 17th century. This figure impersonated the king by asserting his judicial authority and bringing order to an otherwise chaotic world.In Passing Judgment, Hélène Bilis examines how an overlooked character-type--the royal judge--remained a constant of the tragic genre throughout the 17th century, although the specifics of his role and position fluctuated as playwrights experimented with changing models of sovereignty onstage. Her readings analyze how this royal decision-maker stood at the intersection of political and theatrical debates, and evolved through a process of trial and error in which certain portrayals of kingship were deemed obsolete and were discarded, while others were promoted as culturally allowable and resonant. In tracing the royal judge's persistent presence and transformation, Bilis argues that we can better grasp the weighty political stakes of theatrical representations under the ancien régime.
Passing Strange: The Complete Book and Lyrics of the Broadway Musical
by StewThe innovative new musical won the 2008 Tony Award for Best Book and is soon to be a Spike Lee film.
Passion and Elegance: How Flamenco and Classical Ballet Met at the Ballets Russes (ISSN)
by Barbara File MarangonThis book commences with the history of Indian, Egyptian, Arab, and flamenco dance, then compares and contrasts the history of both classical ballet and flamenco.The book outlines the early roots of flamenco in India, and the journey of the Romani through the Middle East and Europe up to their final destination in Spain. Alongside this, the history of classical ballet is detailed from its beginning in Italy to its later development in France. The book spans the period from the temples of India to Massine’s Spanish ballet, The Three-cornered Hat, for the Ballets Russes. The chronicle of flamenco's journey from India to Spain is important to understanding the development of classical ballet as it relates to The Three-cornered Hat, which is the culmination of the story. The evolution of costumes, space, scenery, and props is examined along with the historical parallels.This exploration is set to inspire and encourage choreographers to partner other dance forms with ballet as Leonide Massine did with flamenco in The Three-cornered Hat while also challenging the anthropological idea of the language of dance movement tracing the migration of people.
Passion Play
by Sarah RuhlNamed one of the "Ten Best Plays of 2008" by The New Yorker"Sarah Ruhl's bold, inventive, and ironic triptych [is] a meditation on devotion and its appropriation by the state. . . . Ruhl is an original; a storyteller with a fine mind evolving her own theatrical idiom."--John Lahr, The New Yorker"It's a different kind of morality play . . . an often wondrous work . . . with [Ruhl's] own special lyrical blend of poetry, humor and grace."--Frank Rizzo, VarietyPassion Play is Sarah Ruhl's "biggest, most ambitious effort yet" (The New York Times), a three-and-a-half hour intimate epic, plunging the depths of the timely intersection of politics and religion. Ruhl dramatizes a community of players rehearsing their annual staging of the Easter Passion in three different eras: 1575 northern England, just before Queen Elizabeth outlaws the ritual; 1934 Oberammergua, Bavaria, as Hitler is rising to power; and Spearfish, South Dakota, from the time of Vietnam through Reagan's presidency. In each period, the players grapple in different ways with the transformative nature of art, and politics are never far in the background, as Queen Elizabeth, Hitler, and Reagan each appear, played by a single commanding actor.Sarah Ruhl's plays include Dead Man's Cell Phone, Eurydice, and The Clean House, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has been widely produced both throughout the country and internationally, and she is the recipient of the MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship.
Passionate Amateurs: Theatre, Communism, And Love
by Nicholas RidoutPassionate Amateurs tells a new story about modern theater: the story of a romantic attachment to theater’s potential to produce surprising experiences of human community. It begins with one of the first great plays of modern European theater—Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in Moscow—and then crosses the 20th and 21st centuries to look at how its story plays out in Weimar Republic Berlin, in the Paris of the 1960s, and in a spectrum of contemporary performance in Europe and the United States. This is a work of historical materialist theater scholarship, which combines a materialism grounded in a socialist tradition of cultural studies with some of the insights developed in recent years by theorists of affect, and addresses some fundamental questions about the social function and political potential of theater within modern capitalism. Passionate Amateurs argues that theater in modern capitalism can help us think afresh about notions of work, time, and freedom. Its title concept is a theoretical and historical figure, someone whose work in theater is undertaken within capitalism, but motivated by a love that desires something different. In addition to its theoretical originality, it offers a significant new reading of a major Chekhov play, the most sustained scholarly engagement to date with Benjamin’s “Program for a Proletarian Children’s Theatre,” the first major consideration of Godard’s La chinoise as a “theatrical” work, and the first chapter-length discussion of the work of The Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, an American company rapidly gaining a profile in the European theater scene. Passionate Amateurs contributes to the development of theater and performance studies in a way that moves beyond debates over the differences between theater and performance in order to tell a powerful, historically grounded story about what theater and performance are for in the modern world.
Passionate Playgoing in Early Modern England
by Allison P. HobgoodAllison P. Hobgood tells a new story about the emotional experiences of theatregoers in Renaissance England. Through detailed case studies of canonical plays by Shakespeare, Jonson, Kyd and Heywood, the reader will discover what it felt like to be part of performances in English theatre and appreciate the key role theatregoers played in the life of early modern drama. How were spectators moved - by delight, fear or shame, for example - and how did their own reactions in turn make an impact on stage performances? Addressing these questions and many more, this book discerns not just how theatregoers were altered by drama's affective encounters, but how they were undeniable influences upon those encounters. Overall, Hobgood reveals a unique collaboration between the English world and stage, one that significantly reshapes the ways we watch, read and understand early modern drama.
Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion
by Carl Plantinga and Greg M. SmithThe movie theater has always been a place where people come together to share powerful emotional experiences, from the fear generated by horror films and the anxiety induced by thrillers to the laughter elicited by screwball comedies and the tears precipitated by melodramas. Indeed, the dependability of movies to provide such experiences lies at the center of the medium's appeal and power. Yet cinema's ability to influence, even manipulate, the emotions of the spectator is one of the least-explored topics in film theory today.In Passionate Views, thirteen internationally recognized scholars of film studies, philosophy, and psychology explore the emotional appeal of the cinema. Employing a novel cognitive perspective, the volume investigates the relationship between genre and emotion; explores how film narrative, music, and cinematic techniques such as the close-up are used to elicit emotion; and examines the spectator's identification with and response to film characters.An impressive range of films and topics is brought together by Carl Plantinga and Greg M. Smith, including: the success of Stella Dallas and An Affair to Remember as tearjerkers; the power of Night of the Living Dead to inspire fear and disgust; the sublime evoked in The Passion of Joan of Arc, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, and The Children of Paradise; the emotional basis of film comedy as seen in When Harry Met Sally; the use of cinematic cues in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Local Hero to arouse emotions; the relationship between narrative flow and emotion in Once Upon a Time in the West and E.T.; the emotive use of music in The Elephant Man and A Clockwork Orange; Stranger than Paradise's sense of timing; desire and resolution in Casablanca; audience identification with the main characters in Groundhog Day and The Crying Game; portrayal of perversity in The Silence of the Lambs, Flaming Creatures, and Shivers; and empathy elicited through closeups of actors' faces in Yankee Doodle Dandy and Blade Runner.Passionate Views offers a new approach to our understanding of film and will be of interest to anyone fascinated by the emotional power of motion pictures and their relationship to the central concerns of our lives, as well as by the techniques filmmakers use to move an audience.