- Table View
- List View
The Radical Act of Listening: Making Documentary and Investigative Theatre
by KJ SanchezThe Radical Act of Listening: Making Documenatry and Investigative Theatre explores best practices in the field of Documentary and Investigative theatre and offers readers a how-to guide for making their own work, written by a leading practitioner in the field.This book looks at how listening can radically bring about change through documentary and investigative theatre. It examines the mechanics and value of listening and how theatre practitioners can use these skills to create theatre. What does it mean to really listen, especially during a time when everyone is shouting? Can we listen without an agenda? Can we take what we hear and find ethical ways to share it with others so that we capture nuance, complexity, contradiction, i.e., all things human? In exploring these questions, author KJ Sanchez shares conversations with peers and fellow artists who work in the fields of interview-based and non-fiction art practices, to look at what it takes to be a great listener and a great theatre maker.Featuring key artists, themes, and practices, this book is written for students and practitioners interested in creating documentary and investigative theatre, as well as other interview-based artforms.
Radical Black Theatre in the New Deal (The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture)
by Kate DossettBetween 1935 and 1939, the United States government paid out-of-work artists to write, act, and stage theatre as part of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), a New Deal job relief program. In segregated "Negro Units" set up under the FTP, African American artists took on theatre work usually reserved for whites, staged black versions of "white" classics, and developed radical new dramas. In this fresh history of the FTP Negro Units, Kate Dossett examines what she calls the black performance community—a broad network of actors, dramatists, audiences, critics, and community activists—who made and remade black theatre manuscripts for the Negro Units and other theatre companies from New York to Seattle. Tracing how African American playwrights and troupes developed these manuscripts and how they were then contested, revised, and reinterpreted, Dossett argues that these texts constitute an archive of black agency, and understanding their history allows us to consider black dramas on their own terms. The cultural and intellectual labor of black theatre artists was at the heart of radical politics in 1930s America, and their work became an important battleground in a turbulent decade.
Radical Doubt: The Joker System, after Boal
by Mady SchutzmanRadical Doubt investigates ethical play across a spectrum of performances, on and off the stage. In witty, recursive, personal, and propulsive prose, Mady Schutzman elaborates on the Joker System, conceived by Augusto Boal, best known for Theatre of the Oppressed. The Joker System is a collaborative approach to representing social dilemmas through a rare fusion of destabilizing ambiguity and journalistic rigor. Schutzman models the Joker System while expanding well beyond the theatrical. In polyphonic compositions that perform their own philosophy, she uncovers illuminating links between calculus and conjuring, kōans and resistance, humor and witnessing, complexity theory and sorely needed new practices of living in our divisive times. These life practices rely upon crafty and circuitous strategies to deliver their subversive punch. Jok(er)ing matters, Schutzman insists. When communities fragment and identities fixate, enter the trickster! Sonja KuftinecTheatre Arts and Dance, University of Minnesota
The Radical in Performance: Between Brecht and Baudrillard
by Baz KershawThe Radical in Performance investigates the crisis in contemporary theatre, and celebrates the subversive in performance. It is the first full-length study to explore the link between a western theatre which, says Kershaw, is largely outdated and the blossoming of postmodern performance, much of which has a genuinely radical edge. In staying focused on the period between Brecht and Baudrillard, modernity and postmodernism, Baz Kershaw identifies crucial resources for the revitalisation of the radical across a wide spectrum of cultural practices. This is a timely, necessary and rigorous book. It will be a compelling read for anyone searching for a critical catalyst for new ways of viewing and practising cultural politics.
Radical Sensing and Performer Training: Elsa Gindler’s Embodied Translations (Perspectives on Performer Training)
by Rebecca LoukesThis exciting new book explores the pioneering radical sensing work of Elsa Gindler (1885–1961) and the practices of five women inspired by her. It re-considers a range of trajectories of influence across the established canons of twentieth-century performer training practices and challenges conventions of performer training historiography. Moving from the early twentieth‑century Physical Culture movement through Modern and Postmodern dance training in Europe and North America to contemporary devised theatre in the UK, this is the first book‑length study of Gindler’s pedagogy in relation to performance. It allows trainers, arts practitioners, theatre, dance and art historians, and students to understand previously untold stories in performance, Somatics and philosophies of knowledge. Bringing Gindler’s unique practice into dialogue with philosophies drawn from pragmatism and phenomenology, the book explores concepts of concentration and Gelassenheit, situation, gestalts of breathing, negative epistemology and phronesis, to create a picture of Elsa Gindler’s work as situated, context specific and inter‑subjective. It also explores how feminist ways of knowing and being are embedded in the practices themselves.Drawing on the author’s 30 years of experience of training in work inspired by Elsa Gindler, this book allows theories and practices to converse and merge to build a rich and multi‑dimensional perspective of performer training. Woven throughout are practical experiments for the reader to try, alongside analyses of performances and previously unpublished workshop material and notes. Beyond performance, this book locates Gindler’s work within wider contexts of social and ecological crises and suggests that this radical sensing practice can be used as a quiet way to make a difference in the world.
Radical Shakespeare: Politics and Stagecraft in the Early Career (Routledge Studies in Shakespeare)
by Chris FitterThis book argues that Shakespeare was permanently preoccupied with the brutality, corruption, and ultimate groundlessness of the political order of his state, and that the impact of original Tudor censorship, supplemented by the relatively depoliticizing aesthetic traditions of later centuries, have together obscured the consistent subversiveness of his work. Traditionally, Shakespeare’s political attitudes have been construed either as primarily conservative, or as essays in richly imaginative ambiguation, irreducible to settled viewpoints. Fitter contends that government censorship forced superficial acquiescence upon Shakespeare in establishment ideologies — monarchic, aristocratic and patriarchal — that were enunciated through rhetorical set pieces, but that Shakespeare the dramatist learned from Shakespeare the actor a variety of creative methods for sabotaging those perspectives in performance in the public theatres. Using historical contextualizations and recuperation of original performance values, the book argues that Shakespeare emerged as a radical writer not in middle age with King Lear and Coriolanus — plays whose radicalism is becoming widely recognized — but from his outset, with Henry VI and Taming of the Shrew. Recognizing Shakespeare’s allusiveness to 1590s controversies and dissident thought, and recovering the subtextual politics of Shakespeare’s distinctive stagecraft reveals populist, at times even radical meaning and a substantially new, and astonishingly interventionist, Shakespeare.
Radical Street Performance: An International Anthology
by Jan Cohen-CruzRadical Street Performance is the first volume to collect together the fascinating array of writings by activists, directors, performers, critics, scholars and journalists who have documented street theatre around the world. More than thirty essays explore the myriad forms this most public of performances can take: * agit-prop * invisible theatre * demonstrations and rallies * direct action * puppetry * parades and pageants * performance art * guerrilla theatre * circuses These essays look at performaces in Europe, Africa, China, India and both the Americas. They describe engagement with issues as diverse as abortion, colonialism, the environment and homophobia, to name only a few. Introduced by editor Jan Cohen-Cruz, the essays are organized into thematic sections: Agitating; Witnessing; Involving; Imagining; and Popularizing. Radical Street Performance is an inspiring testimony to this international performance phenomenon, and an invaluable record of a form of theatre which continues to flourish in a televisual age.
Radical Vision: A Biography of Lorraine Hansberry
by Soyica Diggs ColbertA &“loving, lavishly detailed&” (New York Times) and captivating portrait of Lorraine Hansberry&’s life, art, and political activism—one of O Magazine's best books of April 2021&“Hits the mark as a fresh and timely portrait of an influential playwright.&”—Publishers Weekly In this first scholarly biography of Lorraine Hansberry, Soyica Diggs Colbert narrates a life at the intersection of art and politics, arguing that for Hansberry the theater operated as a rehearsal room for her political and intellectual work. Celebrated for her play A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry was also the author of innovative journalism and of plays touching on slavery, interracial communities, and Black freedom movements. Hansberry was deeply involved in the Black freedom struggle during the Cold War and in the early civil rights movement, and here Colbert shows us an artist&’s life with the background of the Greenwich Village art scene in the 1960s, the homophile movement, Black diasporic freedom movements, and third-wave feminism. Drawing from Hansberry&’s papers, speeches, and interviews, this book provides a new point of entry in the history of Black radicalism, and a new perspective on Black women in mid‑twentieth‑century political movements.
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.
The Railway Siding
by Jonathan HollowayOut of work, out of luck, and out of favor with his wife, architect Jack Webb retreats to a cottage in Wales to concentrate on a new design project for a friend's business. With the deadline imminent, Jack takes the overnight train from Haverfordwest back to London to deliver his drawings. On the otherwise deserted train Jack encounters first an unusually friendly guard and then an aloof and otherworldly woman, Hope Cairns, who has just abandoned a planned rendezvous in Milford with a lover, also named Jack. When Hope suddenly disappears, and the guard reveals her story, we discover that Jack's journey is not all it seems. The Railway Siding is a stunningly crafted, highly atmospheric play in one act.
The Rainbow of Desire: The Boal Method of Theatre and Therapy
by Augusto BoalRainbow of Desire is a handbook of exercises with a difference. It is Augusto Boal's bold and brilliant statement about the therapeutic ability of theatre to liberate individuals and change lives. Now translated into English and comprehensively updated from the French, Rainbow of Desire sets out the techniques which help us `see' for the first time the oppressions we have internalised. Boal, a Brazilian theatre director, writer and politician, has been confronting oppression in various forms for over thirty years. His belief that theatre is a means to create the future has inspired hundreds of groups all over the world to use his techniques in a multitude of settings. This, his latest work, includes such exercises as: * The Cops in the Head and their anti-bodies * The screen image * The image of the future we are afraid of * Image and counter-image ....and many more. Rainbow of Desire will make fascinating reading for those already familiar with Boal's work and is also completely accessible to anyone new to Theatre of the Oppressed techniques.
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.
A Raisin in the Sun
by Lorraine Hansberry"Never before, the entire history of the American theater, has so much of the truth of black people's lives been seen on the stage," observed James Baldwin shortly before A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959.Indeed Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of black America--and changed American theater forever. The play's title comes from a line in Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem," which warns that a dream deferred might "dry up/like a raisin in the sun.""The events of every passing year add resonance to A Raisin in the Sun," said The New York Times. "It is as if history is conspiring to make the play a classic." This Modern Library edition presents the fully restored, uncut version of Hansberry's landmark work with an introduction by Robert Nemiroff. [This text is listed as an example that meets Common Core Standards in English language arts in grades 11-12 at http://www.corestandards.org.]
A Raisin in the Sun
by Lorraine HansberryNever before, in the entire history of the American theater, has so much of the truth of Black people's lives been seen on the stage," observed James Baldwin shortly before A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959. This edition presents the fully restored, uncut version of Hansberry's landmark work with an introduction by Robert Nemiroff. Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of Black America--and changed American theater forever. The play's title comes from a line in Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem," which warns that a dream deferred might "dry up/like a raisin in the sun." "The events of every passing year add resonance to A Raisin in the Sun," said The New York Times. It is as if history is conspiring to make the play a classic.
Raising the Stakes (Orca Limelights)
by null 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!
The Ramplings
by Stephen LeviFull Length, Farce / 2 m, 2 f / Interior / Nothing is as it appears and everything is as it should be is the motto of coastal Maine's Singapore Inn, where three guests pursue different ends on a snowy Christmas eve. Hector, a celebrity race car driver and an impeccable Irish drunk who speaks with a lilting brogue, desperately seeks an elusive bottle of Irish whisky. His wife wants to lay a wreath on her mother's grave on this first anniversary of her death in an automobile accident she blames on Hector. The only other guest also has plans for that bottle of whiskey: it will certainly coax her husband-who also died exactly a year ago-from his grave. Invisible cats, flying ghosts and an ageless innkeeper who may or may not be an angel spell madcap merriment that concludes with lives restored and relationships healed. This holiday delight is by the author of Good Morning Miss Vickers and other popular comedies.
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.
A Rasa Reader: Classical Indian Aesthetics (Historical Sourcebooks in Classical Indian Thought)
by Sheldon PollockFrom the early years of the Common Era to 1700, Indian intellectuals explored with unparalleled subtlety the place of emotion in art. Their investigations led to the deconstruction of art's formal structures and broader inquiries into the pleasure of tragic tales. Rasa, or taste, was the word they chose to describe art's aesthetics, and their passionate effort to pin down these phenomena became its own remarkable act of creation.This book is the first in any language to follow the evolution of rasa from its origins in dramaturgical thought—a concept for the stage—to its flourishing in literary thought—a concept for the page. A Rasa Reader incorporates primary texts by every significant thinker on classical Indian aesthetics, many never translated before. The arrangement of the selections captures the intellectual dynamism that has powered this debate for centuries. Headnotes explain the meaning and significance of each text, a comprehensive introduction summarizes major threads in intellectual-historical terms, and critical endnotes and an extensive bibliography add further depth to the selections. The Sanskrit theory of emotion in art is one of the most sophisticated in the ancient world, a precursor of the work being done today by critics and philosophers of aesthetics. A Rasa Reader's conceptual detail, historical precision, and clarity will appeal to any scholar interested in a full portrait of global intellectual development. A Rasa Reader is the inaugural book in the Historical Sourcebooks in Classical Indian Thought series, edited by Sheldon Pollock. These text-based books guide readers through the most important forms of classical Indian thought, from epistemology, rhetoric, and hermeneutics to astral science, yoga, and medicine. Each volume provides fresh translations of key works, headnotes to contextualize selections, a comprehensive analysis of major lines of development within the discipline, and exegetical and text-critical endnotes, as well as a bibliography. Designed for comparativists and interested general readers, Historical Sourcebooks is also a great resource for advanced scholars seeking authoritative commentary on challenging works.