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Radio Golf
by August WilsonA real-estate developer sets about trying to redevelop the 'blighted' Hill District of Pittsburgh in the final part of August Wilson's Century Cycle, his epic dramatisation of the African American experience in the twentieth century. Ivy League-educated Harmond Wilks has a plan to redevelop Pittsburgh's Hill District and hopes to become the town's first black mayor. But an old mansion slated for demolition, 1839 Wylie Avenue, turns out to have a significant past. 'I would encourage people to rave in the nonlinearity of his well-made plots, to big up his quirky architecture, to honor guard the house at 1839 Wylie so that it will always remain standing' Suzan-Lori Parks, from her Foreword.
Raindance
by M. Z. RibalowComedy / 5m, 1f / Interior / In a metaphysical wild west saloon are gathered a Black man named Jim Crow, gunslinger John Wesley Hardin, Sitting Bull, arch capitalist J.P. Standard and wicked Falina, the Mexican saloon girl. There has been no rain for who knows how long. Nothing will induce young George, who sometimes has seizures and dances about causing rain, into a fit. Finally, George spontaneously begins to dance. At the start of the second act, it has been raining for who knows how long. Every effort to force George into a reverse rain dance fails. The play ends with the waters rising and no Ark in sight.
Rainmaker
by N. Richard NashAt the time of a paralyzing drought in the West, we discover a girl whose father and two brothers are worried as much about her becoming an old maid as they are about their dying cattle. For the truth is, she is indeed a plain girl. The brothers try every possible scheme to marry her off but without success. Nor is there any sign of relief from the dry heat. Suddenly from out of nowhere appears a picaresque character with a mellifluous tongue and the most grandiose notions a man could imagine. He claims to be a rainmaker. And he promises to bring rain, for $100. It's a silly idea, but the rainmaker is so refreshing and ingratiating that the family finally consents. Forthwith they begin banging on big brass drums to rattle the sky; while the rainmaker turns his magic on the girl, and persuades her that she has a very real beauty of her own. And she believes it, just as her father believes the fellow can actually bring rain. And rain does come, and so does love.
Raised in Captivity
by Nicky SilverWith sharp comic turns and absurdist twists, Raised in Captivity explores the guilt, self-punishment, and redemption in the lives of two estranged and equally odd siblings when they reunite at the funeral of their mother--whose demise was caused by nothing less than an errant showerhead.
Raisin
by Robert NemiroffBased on Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun / Musical Drama / 9m, 6f, chorus and extras / Unit set / This winner of Tony and Grammy awards as Best Musical ran for three years on Broadway and enjoyed a record breaking national tour. A proud family's quest for a better life meets conflicts that span three generations and set the stage for a drama rich in emotion and laughter. Taking place on Chicago's Southside, it explodes in song, dance, drama and comedy. "Pure magic ... dazzling! Tremendous!... Warms the heart and touches the soul ... with a human dimension that takes the measurement of man!"- N.Y. Times "A tidal wave of soul!" - Ebony.
Raising the Stakes (Orca Limelights)
by Trudee RomanekIt’s the start of a new season for Harrington High’s improv team—and Chloe is determined that this will be the year they make it all the way to the top. Chloe's teammates (who also happen to be her closest friends) are a talented bunch, and she knows they can do it. They have to. Because getting to nationals is Chloe’s best chance to prove—to her parents, to the improv scouts and, most of all, to herself—that she has what it takes to succeed. Chloe is doing everything she can to help her teammates perform better. So why are they all mad at her? This short novel is a high-interest, low-reading level book for middle-grade readers who are building reading skills, want a quick read or say they don’t like to read!
Randia’s Quiet Theatre: Performing Care and Activism with a Romani Elder
by Magdalena Kazubowski-HoustonThroughout Poland, tens of thousands of elderly people live with disabilities in four-storey walk-up apartment buildings. In many cases their children have emigrated; they live with loneliness, a lack of basic amenities, silence, and the absence of care. They are known as “prisoners of the fourth floor.”In Randia’s Quiet Theatre Magdalena Kazubowski-Houston mixes autofiction, ethnography, and theatrical improvisation to unravel the politics of aging in Poland. At the centre of the book is Randia, a Romani fortune teller, storyteller, and performer confined to her fourth-floor apartment in old age. In interviews, Randia’s identity is fixed: she tells of the hardships she faced as a Romani girl and as a wife, mother, and grandmother whose relationship with her family was shaped by separation, sickness, and death. But in storytelling sessions staged in her home, Randia steps into characters and is freed: her tales move between the past, the present, and the future, across life and death; her characters look after one another and change history. Kazubowski-Houston finds in Randia’s performances a quiet activism through which she envisages alternative lives and articulates an ethics of care among individuals, communities, and spirits.Interwoven throughout Randia’s Quiet Theatre are Kazubowski-Houston’s own stories about caring for her elderly and disabled mother, making the book a collaborative, reflexive, and complex creative work. It reveals how ethnographers and their interlocutors can stand on more equal ground. Ultimately it is a profound reflection on how the elderly can live with dignity and how we can care for each other.
Ranna: Gadāyuddham – The Duel of the Maces
by R.V.S. Sundaram Ammel Sharon AkkamahadeviThe Gadāyuddham (The Duel of the Maces) is a kāvya (poetry) composed in classical Kannada literary style at the turn of the eleventh century. It is written in campū, a genre that developed in the tenth century as a mixture of poetry and prose. Ranna’s poem is remarkably dramatic in nature and is a meditation on the cost of war. Crisp dialogue, body gestures and imagery fill the poem. It is as if the poet were giving us directions for a play.Ranna employs ‘flashbacks’, a technique called simhāvalōkana, that is, a lion turning casually to glance behind him. Ranna builds up to the duel through characters recalling episodes of injury or through lamentation. The duel occupies only a short space in the eighth canto, but Ranna takes this time to fill in past episodes and reflect on the impact of war. This thousand-year-old poem will interest scholars as well as lay readers. Please note: This title is co-published with Manohar Publishers, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka
Rapa Nui Theatre: Staging Indigenous Identities in Easter Island (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies #1)
by Moira Fortin CornejoThis book examines the relationships between theatrical representations and socio-political aspects of Rapa Nui culture from pre-colonial times to the present. This is the first book written about the production of Rapa Nui theatre, which is understood as a unique and culturally distinct performance tradition. Using a multilingual approach, this book journeys through Oceania, reclaiming a sense of connection and reflecting on synergies between performances of Oceanic cultures beyond imagined national boundaries. The author argues for a holistic and inclusive understanding of Rapa Nui theatre as encompassing and being inspired by diverse aspects of Rapa Nui performance cultures, festivals, and art forms. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of Indigenous studies, Pacific Island studies, performance, anthropology, theatre education and Rapa Nui community, especially schoolchildren from the island who are learning about their own heritage.
Raparigas como nós
by Helena MagalhãesIsabel e Alice são inseparáveis. Afonso e Ventura já não sabem o que os une. Simão e Zeca querem mudar quem são. E Marisa talvez seja apenas a vilã. Uma reflexão sobre a juventude, pressão dos pares, laços de amizade entre raparigas, festas, drogas, depressão, morte e autodescoberta. Uma reflexão que é também o retrato de uma geração e a ânsia de pertencer. Raparigas como nós é uma viagem entre Lisboa, Cascais e Madrid, contada pela voz de Isabel e que, numa narrativa veloz, nos revela o impacto que podemos ter na vida uns dos outros. Um romance sobre a eletricidade do primeiro amor e os intensos emaranhados das relações de amizade e das memórias de infância.
Ravage of Life
by Evelyne de la ChenelièreFor three years, Evelyne de la Chenelière wrote on the entrance wall of Montréal’s Espace GO theatre as part of an artistic residency that would profoundly shake her practice. The culmination of this is La vie utile [translated as Ravage of Life], a bold departure from prevailing norms where the author breaks with textual and performative conventions in her dramatization of a multi-faceted instant between life and death.In this experimental play—preceded by an original essay about its creative process—bits and pieces of a family’s realities unfold in a non-linear simultaneity that reflects, with captivating irony, the difficulties encountered when language is expected to facilitate communication.Ravage of Life is a challenging invitation to eviscerate literature and conceive a space where words find their body, freeing poetic expression from grammatical constraints, logic, and structure in order to embrace the limitlessness of living thought.
Ravenscroft
by Don NigroMystery / 1m, 5f / Simple unit set This psychological drama is a thinking person's Gothic thriller, a dark comedy that is both funny and frightening. On a snowy night, Inspector Ruffing is called to a remote house to investigate the headlong plunge of Patrick Roarke down the main staircase. He becomes involved in the lives of five alluring and dangerous women: Marcy, the beautiful Viennese governess with a past; Mrs. Ravenscroft, the flirtatious lady of the manor; Gillian, her charming but possibly demented daughter; Mrs. French, the formidable and passionate cook, and Dolly, a terrified maid. They lead him through a bewildering labyrinth of contradictory versions of Patrick's demise and that of the late Mr. Ravenscroft. There are ghosts on the staircase, skeletons in the closet, and much more than the Inspector bargained for. His investigation leads into own tortured soul and the nature of truth itself. You will not guess the ending, but you will be teased, seduced, bewildered, amused, frightened and led to a dark encounter with truth or something even stranger.
Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway
by Michael Riedel&“A vivid page-turner&” (NPR) detailing the rise, fall, and redemption of Broadway—its stars, its biggest shows, its producers, and all the drama, intrigue, and power plays that happened behind the scenes.&“A rich, lovely, debut history of New York theater in the 1970s and eighties&” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), Razzle Dazzle is a narrative account of the people and the money and the power that turned New York&’s gritty back alleys and sex-shops into the glitzy, dazzling Great White Way. In the mid-1970s Times Square was the seedy symbol of New York&’s economic decline. Its once shining star, the renowned Shubert Organization, was losing theaters to make way for parking lots and losing money. Bernard Jacobs and Jerry Schoenfeld, two ambitious board members, saw the crumbling company was ripe for takeover and staged a coup and staved off corporate intrigue, personal betrayals and criminal investigations. Once Jacobs and Schoenfeld solidified their power, they turned a collapsed theater-owning holding company into one of the most successful entertainment empires in the world, spearheading the revitalization of Broadway and the renewal of Times Square. &“For those interested in the business behind the greasepaint, at a riveting time in Broadway&’s and New York&’s history, this is the ticket&” (USA TODAY). Michael Riedel tells the stories of the Shubert Organization and the shows that re-built a city in grand style—including Cats, A Chorus Line, and Mamma Mia!—revealing the backstage drama that often rivaled what transpired onstage, exposing bitter rivalries, unlikely alliances, and inside gossip. &“The trouble with Razzle Dazzle is…you can&’t put the damn thing down&” (Huffington Post).
Re-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theatre and Gender
by Alisa SolomonRe-Dressing the Canon examines the relationship between gender and performance in a series of essays which combine the critique of specific live performances with an astute theoretical analysis. Alisa Solomon discusses both canonical texts and contemporary productions in a lively jargon-free style. Among the dramatic texts considered are those of Aristophanes, Ibsen, Yiddish theatre, Mabou Mines, Deborah Warner, Shakespeare, Brecht, Split Britches, Ridiculous Theatre, and Tony Kushner. Bringing to bear theories of 'gender performativity' upon theatrical events, the author explores: * the 'double disguise' of cross-dressed boy-actresses * how gender relates to genre (particularly in Ibsens' realism) * how canonical theatre represented gender in ways which maintain traditional images of masculinity and femininity.
Re-Enacting the Past: Heritage, Materiality and Performance
by Mads Daugbjerg, Rivka Syd Eisner and Britta Timm KnudsenWhat is re-enactment and how does it relate to heritage? Re-enactments are a ubiquitous part of popular and memory culture and are of growing importance to heritage studies. As concept and practice, re-enactments encompass a wide range of forms: from the annual ‘Viking Moot’ festival in Denmark drawing thousands of participants and spectators, to the (re)staged war photography of An-My Lê, to the Titanic Memorial Cruise commemorating the centennial of the ill-fated voyage, to the symbolic retracing of the Berlin Wall across the city on 9 November 2014 to mark the 25th anniversary of its toppling.Re-enactments involve the sensuousness of bodily experience and engagement, the exhilarating yet precarious combination of imagination with ‘historical fact’, in-the-moment negotiations between and within temporalities, and the compelling drive to re-make, or re-presence, the past. As such, re-enactments present a number of challenges to traditional understandings of heritage, including taken-for-granted assumptions regarding fixity, conservation, originality, ownership and authenticity. Using a variety of international, cross-disciplinary case studies, this volume explores re-enactment as practice, problem, and/or potential, in order to widen the scope of heritage thinking and analysis toward impermanence, performance, flux, innovation and creativity.This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Heritage Studies.
Re-Purposing Suzuki: A Hybrid Approach to Actor Training
by Maria PorterRe-Purposing Suzuki: A Hybrid Approach to Actor Training introduces a system of text analysis that synthesizes physical, psychological, and vocal components in order to truthfully embody heightened texts and contexts. By understanding how the author has re-purposed Suzuki and other physical training methods, as well as Stanislavski, readers will gain an awareness of how to analyze a particular training method by extrapolating its key components and integrating it into a holistic, embodied approach to text analysis. The book explores a method of physical scoring via Rules of the Body and Rules of Composition, as well as a method of approaching heightened texts from Greek drama to post-modern playwrights that draws on the individual actor’s imagination and experience and integrates voice, mind, and body. Readers will be able to either replicate this approach, or apply the logic of its building blocks to assemble their own personal creative process applicable to a variety of performance genres. This is a source book for actors, theatre students, practitioners, and educators interested in assembling tools derived from different sources to create alternative approaches to actor training. While the process outlined in the book evolves in a classroom setting, the components of the pedagogy can also be practiced by individuals who are interested in finding new ways to explore text and character and bring them into their own personal practice.
Re-Situating Public Theatre in Contemporary France: Theatres and Their Publics
by Ifigenia GonisThis book examines the dynamics of the relational and spatial politics of contemporary French theatrical production, with a focus on four theatres in the Greater Paris region. It situates these dynamics within the intersection of the histories of the public theatre and theatre decentralization in France, and the dialogues between live performances and the larger frameworks of artistic direction and programming as well as various imaginations of the “public”. Understanding these phenomena, as well as the politics that underscore them, is key to understanding not only the present status of the public theatre in France, but also how theatre as a publicly funded institution interacts with the notion of the plurality, rather than the homogeneity, of its publics.
Re-Visioning Lear’s Daughters
by Lesley Kordecki Karla KoskinenKing Lear is believed by many feminists to be irretrievably sexist. Through detailed line readings supported by a wealth of critical commentary, Re-Visioning Lear's Daughters reconceives Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia as full characters, not stereotypes of good and evil.
Re-imagining Western European Geography in English Renaissance Drama
by Monica Matei-ChesnoiuFocusing on how citizens of early modern England tried to locate themselves and their nation through geography and travel writing, Monica Matei-Chesnoiu explores theatrical representations of Western European space and ethnography. Geographic discourses share many features with drama in that they appeal to the readers' and audience's curiosity and imagination. Playwrights use information derived from geography treatises as vehicles to allegorize contemporary English issues in a dialogical mode. While geography and travel texts provide an objective synthesis in describing Western European nations, dramatic interaction destabilizes any preconceived notions and submits contrastive views on imagined global European communities. This book explores representations of France, Spain, Germany, the Low Countries, and Denmark in a wide range of geography texts and offers fresh readings of Shakespeare, Jonson, Marlowe, Middleton, Dekker, Massinger, Marston, and others.
Re-performance, Mourning and Death: Specters of the Past (Adaptation in Theatre and Performance)
by Sarah JuliusThis book examines the recent trend for re-performance and how this impacts on the relationship between live performance and death. Focusing specifically on examples of performance art the text analyses the relationship between performance, re-performance and death, comparing the process of re-performance to the process of mourning and arguing that both of these are processes of adaptation and survival. Using a variety of case studies, including performances by Ron Athey, Julie Tolentino, Martin O’Brien, Sheree Rose, Jo Spence and Hannah Wilke, the book explores performances which can be considered acts of re-performance, as well as performances which examine some of the critical concerns of re-performance, including notions of illness, loss and death. By drawing upon both philosophical and performance studies discourses the text takes a novel approach to the relationship between re-performance, mourning and death.
Re-playing Shakespeare in Asia
by Poonam Trivedi Minami RyutaIn this critical volume, leading scholars in the field examine the performance of Shakespeare in Asia. Emerging out of the view that it is in "play" or performance, and particularly in intercultural / multicultural performance, that the cutting edge of Shakespeare studies is to be found, the essays in this volume pay close attention to the modes of transference of the language of the text into the alternative languages of Asian theatres; to the history and politics of the performance of Shakespeare in key locations in Asia; to the new Asian experimentation with indigenous forms via Shakespeare and the consequent revitalizing and revising of the traditional boundaries of genre and gender; and to Shakespeare as a cultural capital world wide. Focusing specifically on the work of major directors in the central and emerging areas of Asia – Japan, China, India, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines - the chapters in this volume encompass a broader and more representative swath of Asian performances and locations in one book than has been attempted till now.
Re: A Theoretical and Practical Guide (Worlds of Performance)
by Gabrielle Cody Rebecca SchneiderRe: Direction is an extraordinary resource for practitioners and students on directing. It provides a collection of ground-breaking interviews, primary sources and essays on 20th century directing theories and practices around the world. Helpfully organized into four key areas of the subject, the book explores: * theories of directing * the boundaries of the director's role * the limits of categorization * the history of the theatre and performance art. Exceptionally useful and thought-provoking introductory essays by editors Schneider and Cody guide you through the wealth of materials included here. Re: Direction is the kind of book anyone interested in theatre history should own, and which will prove an indispensable toolkit for a lifetime of study.
Re: Producing Women's Dramatic History
by D. A. HadfieldWithin the last generation, Canadian drama, like other literary forms, has seen the emergence of works by women that re-vision the role of women in history. However, in order to write themselves into theatre history, women have had to negotiate a complex journey through both pages and stages, a network of public production that is highly politically charged at every turn. This book examines the strategies employed by seven feminist productions that have managed to achieve a canonic place in the recorded history of Canadian theatre. All of the plays under consideration here exist (or have existed) in at least one published script form. However, Dorothy Hadfield’s purpose here is not to analyze these scripts for the definitive meaning of the narratives in these plays, nor is she trying to suggest how a reader or audience should inevitably read them. Instead, Hadfield is trying to account for how and why these scripts came to exist in published form, given the strong implicit connection between publication and a public assumption of "good” or "successful” theatre. In a system where textual visibility leads to opportunities for study, reproduction and validation for both play and playwright, the permanence of script publication can have real economic and ideological advantages. By analyzing publicity materials, photos, programs, reviews, box office and theatre records, it is possible to trace the process of creating a theatrical "success,” as well as to assess what effect that critical verdict has on the shape of the script publications of these works. In effect, by placing the textual artifacts left behind by these performances in the context of their production and reception, in part through a carefully constructed ideological compatibility throughout the production process, it is possible to investigate how the politics of the theatrical process influences what we perceive as "good” playwriting.
Reaching for Starlight
by Donna-Michelle St. BernardReenie wants to dance, following in her mother’s footsteps. Just like the rest of her ensemble, she believes she has what it takes to earn the coveted solo at the year-end recital. But when she notices that their strict maestra is not holding everyone to the same “traditional” standard—particularly Maia, the other Black girl in the class—Reenie is determined to stop her friend from being counted out of the competition. Frustrated with not being understood by her mother and filled with a new-found passion to fight a broken system, Reenie hatches a plan with her classmates but doesn’t realize where her quick journey towards justice missed the mark with her friend.Reaching for Starlight is a compassionate story about the way we are told to move through a world not made for us, whether together or alone.
Reactivations: Essays on Performance and Its Documentation
by Philip AuslanderMost people agree that witnessing a live performance is not the same as seeing it on screen; however, most of the performances we experience are in recorded forms. Some aver that the recorded form of a performance necessarily distorts it or betrays it, focusing on the relationship between the original event and its recorded versions. By contrast, Reactivations focuses on how the audience experiences the performance, as opposed to its documentation. How does a spectator access and experience a performance from its documentation? What is the value of performance documentation? The book treats performance documentation as a specific discursive use of media that arose in the middle of the 20th century alongside such forms of performance as the Happening and that is different, both discursively and as a practice, from traditional theater and dance photography. Philip Auslander explores the phenomenal relationship between the spectator who experiences the performance from the document and the document itself. The document is not merely a secondary iteration of the original event but a vehicle that gives us meaningful access to the performance itself as an artistic work.