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Samuel Beckett Comment C'est How It Is And / et L'image: A Critical-Genetic Edition Une Edition Critic-Genetique

by Samuel Beckett

This book contains the English and French texts and a complete record of the genesis of each. Besides Comment C'est How It Is, O'Reilly has included L'Image and an excerpt from Comment C'est that was published later in another volume.

Samuel Beckett's Critical Aesthetics

by Tim Lawrence

This book considers how Samuel Beckett’s critical essays, dialogues and reflections drew together longstanding philosophical discourses about the nature of representation, and fostered crucial, yet overlooked, connections between these discourses and his fiction and poetry. It also pays attention to Beckett’s writing for little-magazines in France from the 1930s to the 1950s, before going on to consider how the style of Beckett’s late prose recalls and develops figures and themes in his critical writing. By providing a long-overdue assessment of Beckett’s work as a critic, this study shows how Beckett developed a new aesthetic in knowing dialogue with ideas including phenomenology, Kandinsky’s theories of abstraction, and avant-garde movements such as Surrealism. This book will be illuminating for students and researchers interested not just in Beckett, but in literary modernism, the avant-garde, European visual culture and philosophy.

Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape (The Fourth Wall)

by Daniel Sack

"We lay there without moving. But under us all moved, and moved us." - Krapp Samuel Beckett’s most accessible play is also one of the twentieth century’s most moving dramas about aging, memory, and disappointment. Daniel Sack offers the first comprehensive survey of Krapp’s Last Tape (1958) with a general reader in mind. Structured around a series of questions, five approachable sections contextualize the play in the larger career of its Nobel-Prize-winning writer, explore its major thematic concerns, and offer comparative analyses with Beckett’s other signal works. Sack also uses discussions of significant productions, including those directed by the playwright himself, to ground interpretation of the play in terms of its performance and provide a useful resource to directors and actors. Both a critical and personal exploration of this haunting play, this volume is a must-read for anyone with an interest in Beckett’s work.

Samuel Beckett’s Legacies in American Fiction: Problems in Postmodernism (New Interpretations of Beckett in the Twenty-First Century)

by James Baxter

Samuel Beckett’s Legacies in American Fiction provides an overdue investigation into Beckett’s rich influences over American writing. Through in-depth readings of postmodern authors such as Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, Paul Auster and Lydia Davis, this book situates Beckett’s post-war writing of exhaustion and generation in relation to the emergence of an explosive American avant-garde. In turn, this study provides a valuable insight into the practical realities of Beckett’s dissemination in America, following the author’s long-standing relationship with the countercultural magazine Evergreen Review and its dramatic role in redrawing the possibilities of American culture in the 1960s. While Beckett would be largely removed from his American context, this book follows his vigorous, albeit sometimes awkward, reception alongside the authors and institutions central to shaping his legacies in 20th and 21st century America.

Samuel Beckett’s Theatre in America

by Natka Bianchini

A study of the 30-year collaboration between playwright Samuel Beckett and director Alan Schneider, Bianchini reconstructs their shared American productions between 1956 and 1984. By examining how Beckett was introduced to American audiences, this book leads into a wider historical discussion of American theatre in the mid-to-late 20th century.

Samuel Phelps and Sadler's Wells Theatre

by Shirley S. Allen

This is the definitive biography of the actor Samuel Phelps (1804-1878) who brought the Shakespeare’s original plays back to the forefront of theatre after over 100 years of derived versions, and revolutionized theater design in the 20th Century. In an era when performances of Shakespeare’s works had been replaced with derived versions of themselves, Phelps became known for his exquisite productions of Shakespeare that were faithful to their original versions. Phelps revolutionized Shakespearean theatre when he took over management of Sadler’s Wells Theatre. As manager and director, he brought to each production—whether of Shakespeare or of Restoration or contemporary pieces—his own total concept, in which acting, setting, and staging were integrated under his supervision to produce fresh, striking effects. He preserved the best of the traditional past; he pioneered in directions the theatre would follow for decades afterward. This carefully researched and fluently written book covers the full range of Phelps’s half-century career, with special emphasis on his fruitful decades at Sadler’s Wells and on his work as performer and producer of Shakespearian drama. Scholar Shirley S. Allen presents the background against which Phelps worked: the theatrical monopoly, traditional techniques of acting, the repertory system, the advent of melodrama, and the social milieu. She also examines Phelps’s important contemporaries in the theatre—Macready, Charles Kean, Ben Webster, Mrs. Warner, and more—especially as their careers were intertwined with his. This book, first published in 1971, is widely considered the definitive work on Phelps and adds substantially to our understanding of the London stage and of Victorian England.

The San Francisco Mime Troupe Reader

by Mason Susan Vaneta

The San Francisco Mime Troupe Reader is a long-overdue collection of some of the finest political satires created and produced by the Tony Award-winning company during the last forty years. It is also a history of the company that was the theater of the counterculture movement in the 1960s and that, against all odds, has managed to survive the often hostile economic climate for the arts in the United States. The plays selected are diverse, representing some of the Troupe's finest shows, and the book's illustrations capture some of the Troupe's most memorable moments. These hilarious, edgy, and imaginative scripts are accompanied by insightful commentary by theater historian and critic Susan Vaneta Mason, who has been following the Troupe for more than three decades. The Mime Troupe Reader will engage and entertain a wide range of audiences, not only general readers but also those interested in the history of American social protest, the counterculture of the 1960s-particularly the San Francisco scene-and the evolution of contemporary political theater. It will also appeal to the legions of Troupe fans who return every year to see them stand up against another social or corporate Goliath.

Sand Pies & Scissorlegs

by Mark Dunn

Comedy / Mark Dunn / 2 m., 4 f. / This gentle southern comedy by the author of Belles and Minus Some Buttons is about two sisters and a brother who find themselves at a crossroads in their lives. As children they ran away from an unhappy foster home in Ohio and headed for Disney World. They made it as far as a small resort town on the Alabama gulf coast where they moved in with a couple with Down's Syndrome who became their surrogate parents. It's now one year after the couple's death and tough decisions must be made about the beach house which has been Parry and Joshalynn and Nicky's home for the last twenty years, and about what these three will be doing with the rest of their lives. It's a play about the sometimes reluctant passage from childhood to adulthood and about how difficult it is to trade the safety and security of youth for the problems and responsibilities of the world of the adult.

Sanders Family Christmas

by Connie Ray Gary Fagin John Foley

Musical Comedy / 4m, 3f / Interior / In this sequel to the ever popular New York hit Smoke on the Mountain, the Sanders family returns to Mount Pleasant, NC, home of the Mount Pleasant Pickle Factory. It's Christmas Eve, 1941. Reverend Oglethorpe has invited them to the Baptist Church to sing and witness, getting the congregation into the down home holiday spirit before the boys, including one of the Sanders' own, are shipped off to World War II. More than two dozen Christmas carols, many of them vintage hymns, and hilarious yuletide stories from the more or less devote Sanders family keep the audience laughing, clapping and singing along with bluegrass Christmas favorites. Richly entertaining, this wildly infections musical brings cheer to audiences eager to see how their friends from Smoke on the Mountain have been getting along.

The Sanford Meisner Approach: An Actor's Workbook (A Career Development Book)

by Larry Silverberg

The Sanford Meisner Approach: An Actor's Workbook is appropriate for any actor, from beginning student to working professional. As you experience the joy of discovery offered in each lesson, the Workbook will awaken within you a profound passion to create and a hunger to express yourself as an artist of the theatre, An Actor!

Sang Thong: A Dance-Drama From Thailand

by King Rama II Fern Ingersoll

Sang Thong: A Dance-Drama from Thailand, a beloved treasure of Thailand's classical theater is now available for the first time in English.<P><P>Composed by King Rama II and his court poets early in the 19th century, this captivating dance-drama blends ribald humor, sharp observation, and graceful poetry. Its incidents are based on age-old Asian legends and on vigorous folk-traditions of the Thai countryside, where King Rama II had been raised as a commoner before his father ascended the throne. Into his retelling of the story Sang Thong, a child of godlike beauty whose strange birth in a conch shell caused him to be exiled from his kingdom, the dramatist king wove reflections on the mysterious workings of fate, legends of spirits and ogres, and episodes in which the machinations of courtiers and foibles of lovers play important parts. The world transformed by the beliefs and values of an ancient civilization.For the modern Thais, Sang Thong is a rich and pervasive cultural influence. For Western readers, this translation will provide valuable insights into a fascinating, hitherto unknown literary masterpiece. Sang Thong: A Dance Drama From Thailand will offer stimulating cultural data for years to come.

Sarah Bernhardt: The Divine and Dazzling Life of the World's First Superstar

by Catherine Reef

A tantalizing biography for teens on Sarah Bernhardt, the first international celebrity and one of the greatest actors of all time, who lived a highly unconventional, utterly fascinating life. Illustrated with more than sixty-five photos of Bernhardt on stage, in film, and in real life. Sarah Bernhardt was a French stage actor who became a global superstar in the late nineteenth century—the Lady Gaga of her day—and is still considered to be one of the greatest performers of all time. This fast-paced account of her life, filled with provocative detail, brilliantly follows the transformation of a girl of humble origins, born to a courtesan, into a fabulously talented, wealthy, and beloved icon. Not only was her acting trajectory remarkable, but her personal life was filled with jaw-dropping exploits, and she was extravagantly eccentric, living with a series of exotic animals and sleeping in a coffin. She grew to be deeply admired around the world, despite her unabashed and public promiscuity at a time when convention was king; she slept with each of her leading men and proudly raised a son without a husband. A fascinating and fast-paced deep dive into the world of the divine Sarah. Illustrated with more than sixty-five photos of Bernhardt on stage, in film, and in real life.

Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis (The Fourth Wall)

by Glenn D'Cruz

"Everything passes/Everything perishes/Everything palls" – 4.48 Psychosis <P><P> How on earth do you award aesthetic points to a 75-minute suicide note? The question comes from a review of 4.48 Psychosis’ inaugural production, the year after Sarah Kane took her own life, but this book explores the ways in which it misses the point. Kane’s final play is much more than a bizarre farewell to mortality. It’s a work best understood by approaching it first and foremost as theatre – as a singular component in a theatrical assemblage of bodies, voices, light and energy. The play finds an unexpectedly close fit in the established traditions of modern drama and the practices of postdramatic theatre. <P><P> Glenn D’Cruz explores this theatrical angle through a number of exemplary professional and student productions with a focus on the staging of the play by the Belarus Free Theatre (2005) and Melbourne’s Red Stitch Theatre (2007).

The Sarah Siddons Audio Files: Romanticism and the Lost Voice

by Judith Pascoe

“The theatre scholar’s daunting but irresistible quest to recover some echoes of performance of the past has never been more engagingly presented than in Pascoe’s account of tracing the long-silenced voice of Sarah Siddons. Her report is a warm, witty, and highly informative exploration of the methodology and the pleasures of historical research. ” —Marvin Carlson, author of The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine During her lifetime (1755–1831), English actress Sarah Siddons was an international celebrity acclaimed for her performances of tragic heroines. We know what she looked like—an endless number of artists asked her to sit for portraits and sculptures—but what of her famous voice, reported to cause audiences to hyperventilate or faint? In The Sarah Siddons Audio Files, Judith Pascoe takes readers on a journey to discover how the actor’s voice actually sounded. In lively and engaging prose, Pascoe retraces her quixotic search, which leads her to enroll in a “Voice for Actors” class, to collect Lady Macbeth voice prints, and to listen more carefully to the soundscape of her life. Bringing together archival discoveries, sound recording history, and media theory, Pascoe shows how romantic poets’ preoccupation with voices is linked to a larger cultural anxiety about the voice’s ephemerality. The Sarah Siddons Audio Files contributes to a growing body of work on the fascinating history of sound and will engage a broad audience interested in how recording technology has altered human experience.

Satire & The State: Sketch Comedy and the Presidency

by Matt Fotis

Satire & The State focuses on performance-based satire, most often seen in sketch comedy, from 1960 to the present, and explores how sketch comedy has shaped the way Americans view the president and themselves. Numerous sketch comedy portrayals of presidents that have seeped into the American consciousness – Chevy Chase’s Gerald Ford, Dana Carvey’s George H.W. Bush, and Will Ferrell’s George W. Bush all worked to shape the actual politician’s public persona. The book analyzes these sketches and many others, illustrating how comedy is at the heart of the health and function of American democracy. At its best, satire aimed at the presidency can work as a populist check on executive power, becoming one of the most important weapons for everyday Americans against tyranny and political corruption. At its worst, satire can reflect and promote racism, misogyny, and homophobia in America. Written for students of Theatre, Performance, Political Science, and Media Studies courses, as well as readers with an interest in political comedy, Satire & The State offers a deeper understanding of the relationship between comedy and the presidency, and the ways in which satire becomes a window into the culture, principles, and beliefs of a country.

Saudade

by Ursula Sila-Gasser

Un libro que habla de exilio. Exilio geográfico a través de continentes, que a menudo separa dolorosamente a las personas que se aman. Pero también del exilio interno, a veces aún más doloroso ya que puede alejarnos de nosotros mismos. Una historia entre Brasil y Suiza, que trata sobre el exilio y el maltrato psicológico. Un libro cuya historia pudiera ser la de muchas personas que por una razón u otra viven lejos de la familia, lejos de la tierra que los vió nacer.

Save The Cat! Goes To The Indies: The Screenwriters Guide To 50 Films From The Masters

by Salva Rubio

In his best-selling book, Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies, Blake Snyder provided 50 “beat sheets” to 50 films, mostly studio-made. Now his student, screenwriter and novelist Salva Rubio, applies Blake’s principles to 50 independent, auteur, European and cult films (again with 5 beat sheets for each of Blake’s 10 genres). If you're a moviegoer, you'll discover a language to analyze film and understand how filmmakers can effectively reach audiences. If you're a writer, this book reveals how those who came before you tackled the same challenges you are facing with the films you want to write. Writing a “rom-com”? Check out the “Buddy Love” chapter for a “beat for beat” dissection of Before Sunrise, The Reader, Blue Is the Warmest Color and more to see how Linklater and Krizan, David Hare, and Kechiche and Lacroix structured their films. Scripting a horror film? Read the “Monster in the House” section and discover how 28 Days Later and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre are the same movie – and what you need to do to write a scary story that keeps audiences on the edge of their seats. Want to execute a great mystery? Go to the “Whydunit” chapter and learn about the “dark turn” that’s essential to the heroes of The Big Lebowski, The French Connection, and Michael Clayton. Want your protagonist to go up against an evil “institution”? Consider how Mamet handled Glengarry Glen Ross and Tarantino framed Pulp Fiction. Writing a “Superhero” story? See how Susannah Grant structured Erin Brockovich, Anderson & Baumbach worked out Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Gilliam & Stoppard & McKeown laid the foundation for Brazil. With these 50 beat sheets, you’ll see how “hitting the beats” creates stories that resonate the world over for these outstanding writers—and how you can follow in their footsteps.

Save the Fairy Penguins (Reader's Theater)

by Katherine Scraper

NIMAC-sourced textbook

Saving America and Other Plays

by Ludmilla Bollow

In the Rest Room at Rosenblooms author Ludmilla Bollow presents four short plays depicting various aspects of the American scene. These award winning productions will take you cross country - to a group on the beach, to a selective animal shelter, a firefly get-together in the woods, and a secret government gathering. All can be presented in one evening, or each performed separately. / Contains: Saving America, Flickering Fireflies, Shelter Skelter, The Beach Club

Saving Grace

by Jack Sharkey

Romantic Comedy / 3m, 2f / Interior / This zany tale of a warmhearted girl who mistakes a telephone repairman for a burglar, tries to convert him from his life of crime, and ends up having to pretend he's her husband, dismaying her strait laced sister's evangelist fiance, had critics and audiences cheering both at the Maryland and the Chicago premier productions.

Saving Juliet

by Suzanne Selfors

Mimi Wallingford, Great Granddaughter of Adelaide Wallingford, has the life that most girls dream about, playing Juliet opposite teen heartthrob Troy Summer on Broadway in Shakespeare's famous play. Unfortunately, she has no desire to be an actress, a fact her mother can't seem to grasp. But when she and Troy are magically thrust into Shakespeare's Verona, they experience the feud between the Capulets and Montagues first hand. Mimi realizes that she and Juliet have more in common than Shakespeare's script -- they are both fighting for futures of their own choosing. Mimi feels compelled to help her and with Troy's unexpected help, hopes to give Shakespeare's most famous tragedy a happily-ever-after ending.

Say It Out Loud

by Allison Varnes

An empowering look at finding your voice, facing your fears, and standing up for what's right, from the author of Property of the Rebel Librarian. Charlotte Andrews is perfectly fine being quiet--in fact, she prefers it. When she doesn't speak, people can't make fun of her stutter. But when she witnesses bullying on the school bus and doesn't say anything, her silence comes between her and her best friend. <p><p> As if that wasn't bad enough, her parents signed her up for musical theater. Charlotte doesn't want to speak onstage, but at least she doesn't stutter when she sings. Then, just as she starts to find her voice, the arts program is cut. Charlotte can't stay silent anymore. <p><p> So she begins to write. Anonymous encouraging notes to her classmates. Letters to the school board to save the school musical. And an essay about the end of her best friendship--and her hope that she can still save it. <p><p> Words could save Charlotte Andrews and everything she believes in . . . if she just believes in herself enough to speak up.

Say Uncle, Uncle Silas

by Tim Kelly

5m, 9f / Savage murders! Blackmail! Thunderstorms! And yes, Romance! This hilarious spoof of Gothic melodramas suggested by Sheridan LeFanu's Uncle Silas is set at Barnum Hogg, a grim edifice that looks like Wuthering Heights after a fire. Ghosts walk where tombstones stick up like swollen thumbs. Here Maud Ruthyn, a young heiress, finds herself menaced by a creepy relative who makes Sweeney Todd seem like a nice guy. He hires a monstrous governess, Madame De La Rougepot, and schemes to force Maud to marry his brutish son, Dudley. However, Dudley has a secret wife so he formulates another plan to get Maud's fortune a nasty (and uproarious) scheme involving deceit and murder. Will handsome Captain Oakley and sophisticated Lady Monica save Maud? Will the mystery of the locked room be revealed? Wonderfully goofy roles and easy production requirements add up to an audience and cast pleaser by the author of Egad, The Woman in White and The Face on the Barroom Floor.

Scab

by Sheila Callaghan

Dramtic Comedy / 1-2m, 3f / Simple Set Anima's sphere of desperation and self-destruction is invaded by the arrival of her perky new roommate, Christa. Moved by a particularly malevolent statue of the Virgin Mary and a houseplant named Susan, Anima and Christa soon enter into a profound and intimate friendship that incurs traumatic results. "Brilliantly and poetically rendered...[Callaghan's] playful sense of language and her attunement to her characters are enthralling." - Time Out Chicago "Scab...is a textbook example of promising work, written with a yen for interesting language and liberally salted with well-observed details of the lives of newly minted adults...the play shines." - The New York Times "Darkly funny forays into the surreal...Callaghan shows talent in the inventive fantasy sequences...A stylish production." - The Village Voice

Scandal on Stage: European Theater as Moral Trial

by Theodore Ziolkowski

New plays and operas have often tried to upset the status quo or disturb the assumptions of theatre audiences. Yet, as this study explores, the reactions of the audience or of the authorities are often more extreme than the creators had envisaged, to include outrage, riots, protests or censorship. Scandal on Stage looks at ten famous theater scandals of the past two centuries in Germany and France as symptoms of contemporary social, political, ethical, and aesthetic upheavals. The writers and composers concerned, including Schiller, Stravinsky, Strauss, Brecht and Weil, portrayed new artistic and ideological ideas that came into conflict with the expectations of their audiences. In a comparative perspective, Theodore Ziolkowski shows how theatrical scandals reflect or challenge cultural and ethical assumptions and asks whether theatre can still be, as Schiller wrote, a moral institution: one that successfully makes its audience think differently about social, political and ethical questions

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