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The Secret Life of Theater: On the Nature and Function of Theatrical Representation
by Brian KulickWhat is the secret DNA of theater? What makes it unique from its sister arts? Why was it invented? Why does it persist? And now, in such an advanced technological age, why do we still feel compelled to return to a mode of expression that was invented over two thousand years ago? These are some of the foundational questions that are asked in this study of theater from its inception to today. The Secret Life of Theater begins with a look at theater’s origins in Ancient Greece. Next, it moves on to examine the history and nature of theater, from Agamenon to Angels in America, through theater’s use of stage directions, revealing the many unspoken languages that are employed to communicate with its audiences. Finally, it looks at theater’s ever-shifting strategies of engendering fellow-feeling through the use of emotion, allowing the form to become a rare space where one can feel a thought and think a feeling. In an age when many studies are concerned with the "how" of theater, this work returns us to theatre’s essential "why." The Secret Life of Theater suggests that by reframing the question we can re-enchant this unique and ever-vital medium of expression.
The Secret Life of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows Are Built
by Jack ViertelNew York Times Bestseller: “Both revelatory and entertaining . . . Along the way, Viertel provides some fascinating Broadway history.” —The New York Times Book ReviewAmericans invented musicals—and have a longstanding love affair with them. But what, exactly, is a musical? In this book, longtime theatrical producer and writer Jack Viertel takes them apart, puts them back together, sings their praises, and occasionally despairs over their more embarrassing shortcomings. In the process, he shows us how musicals happen, what makes them work, how they captivate audiences, and how one landmark show leads to the next—by design or by accident, by emulation or by rebellion—from Oklahoma! to Hamilton and onward.Beginning with an overture and concluding with a curtain call, with stops in between for “I Want” songs, “conditional” love songs, production numbers, star turns, and finales, Viertel shows us patterns in the architecture of classic shows and charts the inevitable evolution that has taken place in musical theater as America itself has evolved socially and politically. The Secret Life of the American Musical makes you feel like you’re there in the rehearsal room, the front row, and the offices of theater owners and producers as they pursue their own love affair with that rare and elusive beast—the Broadway hit.“A valuable addition to the theater lover’s bookshelf. . . . fans will appreciate the dips into memoir and Viertel’s takes on original cast albums.” —Publishers Weekly“Even seasoned hands will come away with a clearer understanding of why some shows work while others flop.” —Commentary“A showstopper . . . infectiously entertaining.” —John Lahr, author of Notes on a Cowardly Lion“Thoroughly interesting.” —The A.V. Club“The best general-audience analysis of musical theater I have read in many years.” —The Charlotte Observer“Delightful . . . a little bit history, a little bit memoir, a little bit criticism and, for any theater fan, a whole lot of fun.” —The Dallas Morning News
The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham: A Biography
by Selina HastingsHe was a brilliant teller of tales, one of the most widely read authors of the twentieth century, and at one time the most famous writer in the world, yet W. Somerset Maugham’s own true story has never been fully told. At last, the fascinating truth is revealed in a landmark biography by the award-winning writer Selina Hastings. Granted unprecedented access to Maugham’s personal correspondence and to newly uncovered interviews with his only child, Hastings portrays the secret loves, betrayals, integrity, and passion that inspired Maugham to create such classics as The Razor’s Edge and Of Human Bondage.Hastings vividly presents Maugham’s lonely childhood spent with unloving relatives after the death of his parents, a trauma that resulted in shyness, a stammer, and for the rest of his life an urgent need for physical tenderness. Here, too, are his adult triumphs on the stage and page, works that allowed him a glittering social life in which he befriended and sometimes fell out with such luminaries as Dorothy Parker, Charlie Chaplin, D. H. Lawrence, and Winston Churchill.The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham portrays in full for the first time Maugham’s disastrous marriage to Syrie Wellcome, a manipulative society woman of dubious morality who trapped Maugham with a pregnancy and an attempted suicide. Hastings also explores Maugham’s many affairs with men, including his great love, Gerald Haxton, an alcoholic charmer and a cad. Maugham’s courageous work in secret intelligence during two world wars is described in fascinating detail—experiences that provided the inspiration for the groundbreaking Ashenden stories. From the West End to Broadway, from China to the South Pacific, Maugham’s restless and remarkably productive life is thrillingly recounted as Hastings uncovers the real stories behind such classics as “Rain,” The Painted Veil, Cakes & Ale, and other well-known tales.An epic biography of a hugely talented and hugely conflicted man, The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham is the definitive account of Maugham’s extraordinary life.From the Hardcover edition.
The Secret Mask
by Rick ChafeThis heartwarming and often hilarious play tells the story of Ernie and George, an estranged father and son who are reunited when a debilitating stroke leaves Ernie with a speech disorder and memory loss. While George is undeniably hurt and betrayed by the man who abandoned him as a child, Ernie can't remember his words, or where he lives. Together they must find a way to make sense of their past and their future through fractured memories and muddled language.
The Secret Rapture and Other Plays: Fanshen - A Map Of The World - Saigon - The Bay At Nice (Books That Changed the World)
by David HareA collection of five plays fromthe Tony Award–winning playwright and screenwriter, &“the premiere political dramatist writing in English&” (The Washington Post). David Hare, &“Britain&’s leading contemporary playwright,&” has established a unique reputation for plays that are at once personal and political, deeply serious and incredibly funny (The Times). He is the author of seventeen plays, many of which have been presented on Broadway. Included in this collection are Fanshen; A Map of the World; Saigon: Year of the Cat; The Bay at Nice; and The Secret Rapture. Of the title play, Frank Rich of The New York Times said, &“The Secret Rapture has gone further than before in marrying political thought to the compelling drama of lives that refuse to conform to any ideology&’s utopian plan . . . Mr. Hare embraces the human, messy though it may be.&” Praise for David Hare Fanshen &“The nearest any English contemporary writer has come to emulating Brecht.&” —Financial Times A Map of the World &“Mr. Hare&’s A Map of the World, which passionately embraces utopia without arrogantly presuming to annex it, is original and provocative.&” —The New York Times Saigon &“An impressive new film which vividly captures the last desperate days in Vietnam as the Reds laid siege to the sweltering city.&” —Daily Express The Bay at Nice &“Witty, cerebral, and full of fine-spun ironies.&” —The Guardian The Secret Rapture &“His writing, as always, is smart, and this time, glorious. The characters are unhackneyed and complex; the insights are tough and hard to ignore.&” —New York Newsday
The Seduction Business
by Charlotte LambSeducing the boss?Bianca Milne looks the part of the ambitious femal executive, with her sleek, touch-me-not looks and her cool, controlled manner. But there's another Bianca underneath she never lets the business world see. Until she's assigned to buy out Matt Hearne's company.Matt has hear rumors about Bianca-so how far will she go to clinch this deal? When he's called home to look after his little daughter, Bianca impulsively offers him her help, not anticipating that the enforced proximity will only ignite the smoldering physical attraction between them....
The Seduction Scheme
by Kim LawrenceAn unexpected encounter with Ben Arden had caused Rachel many sleepless nights. She couldn’t get him out of her mind—then she discovered he was her new boss! And this sexy, dynamic man clearly wanted to continue their relationship after hours....Rachel hadn’t been looking for a man—her young daughter was her priority. But Ben seemed more than happy to become a father—and there was no doubt he would make an irresistible husband!
The Selected Plays of Hélène Cixous
by Hélène CixousCixous' work as a playwright - working mainly with Theatre du Soleil and their director Ariane Mnouchkine - establishes her as a participant in some of the most adventurous European theatre making of the last 40 years.This collection brings together for the first time, four translations into English of Helene Cixous' plays. It is a unique and extraordinary resource for scholars, students and theatre-makers. The collection includes: *The Perjured City, translated by Bernadette Fort*Black Sail, White Sail, translated by Donald Watson*Portrait of Dora, translated by Ann Liddle*Drums on the Dam, translated by Judith G. Miller and Brian J. MalletThis exciting new anthology will disseminate her work to a wide and receptive English-speaking audience.
The Self in Performance: Autobiographical, Self-Revelatory, and Autoethnographic Forms of Therapeutic Theatre
by Susana Pendzik, Renée Emunah and David Read JohnsonThis book is the first to examine the performance of autobiographical material as a theatrical form, a research subject, and a therapeutic method. Contextualizing personal performance within psychological and theatrical paradigms, the book identifies and explores core concepts, such as the function of the director/therapist throughout the creative process, the role of the audience, and the dramaturgy involved in constructing such performances. It thus provides insights into a range of Autobiographic Therapeutic Performance forms, including Self-Revelatory and Autoethnographic Performance. Addressing issues of identity, memory, authenticity, self-reflection, self-indulgence, and embodied self-representation, the book presents, with both breadth and depth, a look at this fascinating field, gathering contributions by notable professionals around the world. Methods and approaches are illustrated with case examples that range from clients in private practice in California, through students in drama therapy training in the UK, to inmates in Lebanese prisons.
The Self-Centred Art: Ben Jonson's Parts in Performance (Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama)
by Jakub BoguszakThe Self-Centred Art is a study of the plays of Ben Jonson and the actors who first performed in them. Jakub Boguszak shows how the idiosyncrasies of Jonson’s comic characters were thrown into relief in actors’ part-scripts—scrolls containing a single actor’s lines and cues—some five hundred of which are reconstructed here from Jonson’s seventeen extant plays. Reading Jonson’s spectating parts, humorous parts, apprentice parts, and plotting parts, Boguszak argues that the kind of self-absorption which defines so many of Jonson’s famous comic creations would have come easily to actors relying on these documents. Jonson’s actors would have moreover worked on their cues, studied their speeches, and thought about the information excluded from their parts differently, depending on the type they had to play. Boguszak thus shows that Jonson brilliantly adapted his comedies to the way the actors worked, making the actors’ self-centredness serve his art. This book addresses Jonson’s dealings with the actors as well as the printers of his plays and supplements the discussion of different types of parts with a colourful range of case studies. In doing so, it presents a new way of understanding not just Ben Jonson, but early modern theatre at large.
The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama (New Accents)
by Keir ElamThe late twentieth century saw an explosion of interest in semiotics, the science of the signs and processes by which we communicate. In this study, the first of its kind in English, Keir Elam shows how this new 'science' can provide a radical shift in our understanding of theatrical performance, one of our richest and most complex forms of communication. Elam traces the history of semiotic approaches to performance, from 1930s Prague onwards, and presents a model of theatrical communication. In the course of his study, he touches upon the 'logic' of the drama and the analysis of dramatic discourse. This edition also includes a new post-script by the author, looking at the fate of theatre semiotics since the publication of this book, and a fully updated bibliography. Much praised for its accessibility, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama remains a 'must-read' text for all those interested in the analysis of theatrical performance.
The Senator Wore Pantyhose
by Jane Milmore Billy Van ZandtComedy / 7m, 3f / Interior / Seething with political and religious scandals, this comedy revolves around the failing presidential campaign of "Honest" Gabby Sandalson, a regular guy whose integrity has all but crippled his bid for the White House. His sleazy campaign manager trumps up an implausible sex scandal to garner votes, a scheme that gloriously backfires.
The Sense-Ability Ensemble’s Guide to Creating Theatre for Audiences that are Neurodiverse
by Dionne O'DellThe Sense-Ability Ensemble’s Guide to Creating Theatre for Audiences that are Neurodiverse is a practical handbook that explores how to create theatre for audiences that are neurodiverse.This book explores the journey of the Sense-Ability Ensemble in its quest to create theatre from the ground up for audiences that are neurodiverse. It demonstrates how to embark on this work, and how to move from a sensory-friendly model that adapts work to make it inclusive to a model that designs work with this specific audience in mind.This is accomplished through highlighting recommended practices, such as using live music, puppetry, and one-on-one audience member/actor interaction, exploring design considerations, sensory engagement, length, actor/staff training, non-linear storytelling, and the use of social narratives, as well as partnering with special education and occupational therapy professionals. It also offers practical suggestions for touring this theatre model, providing sample forms and methods of communication.Part case study, part how-to guide, this book will be of interest to theatre educators, practitioners, and students enrolled in courses on children’s theatre, devising, applied theatre, theatre for young audiences, and drama in education.
The Senses in Performance (Worlds of Performance)
by Sally Banes André LepeckiThis ground-breaking anthology is the first to be dedicated to assessing critically the role of the human sensorium in performance. Senses in Performance presents a multifaceted approach to the methodological, theoretical, practical and historical challenges facing the scholar and the artist. This volume examines the subtle actions of the human senses including taste, touch, smell and vision in all sorts of performances in Western and non-Western traditions, from ritual to theatre, from dance to interactive architecture, from performance art to historical opera. With eighteen original essays brought together by an international ensemble of leading scholars and artists including Richard Schechner and Philip Zarrilli. This covers a variety of disciplinary fields from critical studies to performance studies, from food studies to ethnography from drama to architecture. Written in an accessible way this volume will appeal to scholars and non-scholars interested in Performance/Theatre Studies and Cultural Studies.
The Sensuous Senator
by Michael ParkerComedy / 4m, 5f / Interior / Senator Douglas is running for President on a "morality" platform, but when his wife Lois leaves to attend a conference in Chicago he does not hesitate to invite Veronica, his secretary and lover, over. Finding her unavailable, he has an escort agency send voluptuous Fiona. All seems well until his elderly Congressional colleague and neighbor locks himself out and asks to spend the night. Then Congressman Jack Maguire drops in unexpectedly and Fiona, unsure who her client is, zeros in on him. Meanwhile, Veronica changes her plans and appears on the scene. Before Lois reaches the airport, her fashionable Washington townhouse is swarming with libidinous politicians, scantily dressed women, security police and a muckraking reporter from The National Intruder! When snow closes the airport and she returns home, the bedlam crescendos to a surprise ending in this outrageous farce by the author of The Amorous Ambassador.
The Sentient Archive: Bodies, Performance, and Memory
by Bill Bissell and Linda Caruso HavilandThe Sentient Archive gathers the work of scholars and practitioners in dance, performance, science, and the visual arts. Its twenty-eight rich and challenging essays cross boundaries within and between disciplines, and illustrate how the body serves as a repository for knowledge. Contributors include Nancy Goldner, Marcia B. Siegel, Jenn Joy, Alain Platel, Catherine J. Stevens, Meg Stuart, André Lepecki, Ralph Lemon, and other notable scholars and artists.Hardcover is un-jacketed.
The Sentimental Theater of the French Revolution (Performance In The Long Eighteenth Century: Studies In Theatre, Music, Dance Ser.)
by Cecilia FeillaSmoothly blending performance theory, literary analysis, and historical insights, Cecilia Feilla explores the mutually dependent discourses of feeling and politics and their impact on the theatre and theatre audiences during the French Revolution. Remarkably, the most frequently performed and popular plays from 1789 to 1799 were not the political action pieces that have been the subject of much literary and historical criticism, but rather sentimental dramas and comedies, many of which originated on the stages of the Old Regime. Feilla suggests that theatre provided an important bridge from affective communities of sentimentality to active political communities of the nation, arguing that the performance of virtue on stage served to foster the passage from private emotion to public virtue and allowed groups such as women, children, and the poor who were excluded from direct political participation to imagine a new and inclusive social and political structure. Providing close readings of texts by, among others, Denis Diderot, Collot d'Herbois, and Voltaire, Feilla maps the ways in which continuities and innovations in the theatre from 1760 to 1800 set the stage for the nineteenth century. Her book revitalizes and enriches our understanding of the significance of sentimental drama, showing that it was central to the way that drama both shaped and was shaped by political culture.
The Set-Up: An Anatomy of the English Theatre Today (Routledge Revivals)
by Ronald HaymanOriginally published in 1973, this book investigates the power and the pressures behind English theatre in the late 20th Century, analysing its structure and systems, and the way that money and motives flow through it. On the one hand there are the organisations: the big national companies, the West End managements, the regional repertory theatres, the ‘fringe’ groups, the trade unions, the Arts Council. On the other are the individuals: actors, directors, playwrights, agents, administrators. Ronald Hayman’s challenging book illuminates the conflicts and contradictions in the set-up. It is a mine of information about how theatres are run, how shows pay their way, and what happens when they don’t.
The Seven Against Thebes
by AeschylusThird play of a trilogy (the other two are lost) about the doomed family of Laius and Oedipus and his sons. After the city of Thebes has banished Oedipus, the former ruler's sons vie for the crown. The victor, Eteocles, expels his brother, Polyneices, who then recruits 7 champions to lead an assault on Thebes, with a tragic results.
The Seven Against Thebes
by AeschylusAeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays can still be read or performed, the others being Sophocles and Euripides. He is often described as the father of tragedy: our knowledge of the genre begins with his work and our understanding of earlier tragedies is largely based on inferences from his surviving plays. Only seven of his estimated seventy to ninety plays have survived into modern times. Fragments of some other plays have survived in quotes and more continue to be discovered on Egyptian papyrus, often giving us surprising insights into his work.
The Seven Against Thebes: When A Man's Willing And Eager The God's Join In (Dover Thrift Editions Ser.)
by AeschylusThird play of a trilogy (the other two are lost) about the doomed family of Laius and Oedipus and his sons. After the city of Thebes has banished Oedipus, the former ruler's sons vie for the crown. The victor, Eteocles, expels his brother, Polyneices, who then recruits 7 champions to lead an assault on Thebes, with a tragic results.
The Shadow of an Ass: Philosophical Choice and Aesthetic Experience in Apuleius' Metamorphoses
by Jeffrey P. UlrichJeffrey Ulrich’s The Shadow of an Ass addresses fundamental questions about the reception and aesthetic experience of Apuleius’ Metamorphoses, popularly known as The Golden Ass, by situating the novel in a contemporaneous literary and philosophical discourse emerging in the Second Sophistic. This unique Latin novel follows a man who is accidentally turned into a donkey because of his curiosity, viewing the world through a donkey’s eyes until he is returned to human form by the Egyptian goddess Isis. In the end, he chooses to become a cult initiate and priest instead of a debased and overindulgent ass. On the one hand, the novel encourages readers to take pleasure in the narrator’s experiences, as he relishes food, sex, and forbidden forms of knowledge. Simultaneously, it challenges readers to reconsider their participation in the story by exposing its donkey-narrator as a failed model of heroism and philosophical investigation. Ulrich interprets the Metamorphoses as a locus of philosophical inquiry, positioning the act of reading as a choice of how much to invest in this tale of pleasurable transformation and unanticipated conversion. The Shadow of an Ass further explores how Apuleius, as a North African philosopher translating an originally Greek novel into a Latin idiolect, transforms himself into an intermediary of Platonic philosophy for his Carthaginian audience. Situating the novel in a long history of philosophical and literary conversations, Ulrich suggests that the Metamorphoses anticipates much of the philosophical burlesque we tend to associate with early modern fiction, from Don Quixote to Lewis Carroll.
The Shadow of the Empress: Fairy-Tale Opera and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy
by Larry WolffA beguiling exploration of the last Habsburg monarchs' grip on Europe's historical and cultural imagination. In 1919 the last Habsburg rulers, Emperor Karl and Empress Zita, left Austria, going into exile. That same year, the fairy-tale opera Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow), featuring a mythological emperor and empress, premiered at the Vienna Opera. Viennese poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal and German composer Richard Strauss created Die Frau ohne Schatten through the bitter years of World War I, imagining it would triumphantly appear after the victory of the German and Habsburg empires. Instead, the premiere came in the aftermath of catastrophic defeat. The Shadow of the Empress: Fairy-Tale Opera and the End of the Habsburg Monarchy explores how the changing circumstances of politics and society transformed their opera and its cultural meanings before, during, and after the First World War. Strauss and Hofmannsthal turned emperors and empresses into fantastic fairy-tale characters; meanwhile, following the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy after the war, their real-life counterparts, removed from political life in Europe, began to be regarded as anachronistic, semi-mythological figures. Reflecting on the seismic cultural shifts that rocked post-imperial Europe, Larry Wolff follows the story of Karl and Zita after the loss of their thrones. Karl died in 1922, but Zita lived through the rise of Nazism, World War II, and the Cold War. By her death in 1989, she had herself become a fairy-tale figure, a totem of imperial nostalgia. Wolff weaves together the story of the opera's composition and performance; the end of the Habsburg monarchy; and his own family's life in and exile from Central Europe, providing a rich new understanding of Europe's cataclysmic twentieth century, and our contemporary relationship to it.
The Shadow of the Hummingbird
by Athol Fugard Paula Fourie"The greatest active playwright in the English-speaking world."--Time"If there is a more urgent and indispensable playwright in world theater than South Africa's Athol Fugard, I don't know who it could be."--Newsweek"Athol Fugard can say more with a single line than most playwrights convey in an entire script."--VarietyLegendary theatre artist Athol Fugard returns to the stage for the first time in fifteen years in this, his latest work. The Shadow of the Hummingbird tells the story of an ailing man in his eighties and the afternoon spent with his ten year-old grandson. In a charming meditation on the beauty and transience of the world around us, Fugard continues to mine the depths of the human spirit with profound empathy and heart. The text of the play includes an introductory Prelude by Paula Fourie with extracts from Fugard's unpublished notebooks.Athol Fugard has been working in the theater as a playwright, director, and actor for more than fifty years. In 2011, he received a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre, and he was the inaugural Humanitas Visiting Professor of Drama at Oxford University. His plays include Blood Knot, Boesman and Lena, Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act, Sizwe Banzi Is Dead, 'Master Harold' . . . and the Boys, The Road to Mecca, My Children! My Africa! and The Blue Iris.
The Shakespeare Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained (DK Big Ideas)
by DKLearn the entire works of one of the greatest writers of the English language in The Shakespeare Book.Part of the fascinating Big Ideas series, this book tackles tricky topics and themes in a simple and easy to follow format. Learn about the works of William Shakespeare in this overview guide, great for beginners looking to learn and experts wishing to refresh their knowledge alike! The Shakespeare Book brings a fresh and vibrant take on the topic through eye-catching graphics and diagrams to immerse yourself in. This captivating book will broaden your understanding of Shakespeare, with:- Every play and poem from Shakespeare&’s canon, including lost plays and less well-known works of poetry- Packed with facts, charts, timelines and graphs to help explain core concepts- A visual approach to big subjects with striking illustrations and graphics throughout- Easy to follow text makes topics accessible for people at any level of understandingThe Shakespeare Book is the perfect introduction to the entire canon of Shakespeare&’s plays, sonnets, and other poetry, aimed at adults with an interest in the subject and students wanting to gain more of an overview. Here you&’ll discover the complete works, from The Comedy of Errors, to the great tragedies of Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth.Your Shakespeare Questions, Simply ExplainedThis is a brilliant, innovative exploration of the entire canon of Shakespeare plays, sonnets, and other poetry with detailed plot summaries and a full analysis of the major characters and themes. If you thought it was difficult to learn about the works of one of the greatest writers in the English language, The Shakespeare Book presents key information in a simple layout. Every work is covered, from the comedies of Twelfth Night and As You Like It to the tragedies of Julius Caesar and Hamlet, with easy-to-understand graphics and illustrations bringing the themes, plots, characters, and language of Shakespeare to life.The Big Ideas SeriesWith millions of copies sold worldwide, The Shakespeare Book is part of the award-winning Big Ideas series from DK. The series uses striking graphics along with engaging writing, making big topics easy to understand.