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Urban Children Distress
by Cristina Szanton BlancThis book describes how deprived urban children and their families and communities try to cope with scarcity, neglect and discrimination. It communicates the smell, the sweat, the agonies and the occasional triumphs of the poor in their day-to-day struggle for a rightful share of human dignity.
Urban Drama
by J. Chris WestgateIdentifying an apprehension about the nature and constitution of urbanism in North American plays, Westgate examines how cities like New York City and Los Angeles became focal points for identity politics and social justice at the end of the twentieth century, and how urban crises inform the dramaturgy of contemporary playwrights.
Urban Playmaking: Constructivist Teaching with a Radical Agenda
by Bethany NelsonThis book explores the concept of playmaking and activism through three research projects in which culturally and linguistically diverse high school students and young adults created original theatre around the issues that inform their lives and constrain their futures. Each study discussed by the author is considered through the lens of one or more best practices. The outcomes of the playmaking experiences, communicated through detailed ethnographic data and the voices of student participants, make a strong case for using what we already know about teaching to positively impact gross inequities of outcome for culturally and linguistically diverse students. This study will be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners in Applied Theatre, Theatre Education, and Art Therapy.
Urban Sensographies
by Nicolas WhybrowUrban Sensographies views the human body as a highly nuanced sensor to explore how various performance-based methods can be implemented to gather usable ‘felt data’ about the environment of the city as the basis for creating embodied mappings. The contributors to this fascinating volume seek to draw conclusions about the constitution, character and morphology of urban space as public, habitable and sustainable by monitoring the reactions of the human body as a form of urban sensor. This co-authored book is centrally concerned, as a symptom of the degree to which cities are evolving in the 21st century, to examine the effects of this change on the practices and behaviours of urban dwellers. This takes into account such factors as: defensible, retail and consumer space; legacies of modernist design in the built environment; the effects of surveillance technologies, motorised traffic and smart phone use; the integration of ‘wild’ as well as ‘domesticated’ nature in urban planning and living; and the effects of urban pollution on the earth’s climate. Drawing on three years of funded practical research carried out by a multi-medial team of researchers and artists, this book analyses the presence and movement of the human body in urban space, which is essential reading for academics and practitioners in the fields of dance, film, visual art, sound technology, digital media and performance studies.
Urinetown: The Musical
by Greg Kotis Mark HollmannWinner of three Tony Awards, including Best Book, Greg Kotis and Mark Hollmann's Urinetown: The Musical is a tale of greed, corruption, love, and revolution in a time when water is worth its weight in gold.After a twenty-year drought made water a scarce commodity, private toilets became outlawed. Now, all restroom necessaries are controlled by the Urine Good Company (UGC), a megacorporation that charges fees for using public toilets. Anyone unable to pay fees--or who dares to relieve themselves outside the commode--are arrested and banished to "Urinetown".When UGC employee Bobby Strong's father falls victim to this tyranny, he spearheads a revolution, inspiring the people to rise up and reclaim their own restroom duties--unaware of the realities and consequences of his actions...With a preface by David Auburn, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of ProofAnd an introduction by the authors
Using Open Scenes to Act Successfully on Stage and Screen
by Dan Carter Brant L. PopeUsing Open Scenes as a "way in" to scripted material, this book establishes a foundational actor training methodology that can be applied to the performance of film or television acting, commercials, and theatrical realism. Unlike other methodologies, this unique approach is devoid of casting considerations or imposed identity, providing actors opportunities that do not rely on nor are restricted by age, gender, race, ethnicity, regional accent, body type, identity, or other defining or delimiting aspects that come into play during the casting process. This allows the actor to focus on personal authenticity as they develop their skills. This book will appeal to undergraduate students, acting teachers, and the contemporary actor seeking a career in film, television, or other electronic media. Visit the companion website www.usingopenscenestoactsuccessful.godaddysites.com for additional Open Scenes and more.
Using Storytelling to Support Children and Adults with Special Needs: Transforming lives through telling tales
by Nicola GroveThis innovative and wide-ranging book shows how storytelling can open new worlds for learners with or without special educational needs. With sections that outline both therapeutic and educational approaches, the leading practitioners who contribute to this practical resource draw on their extensive experience, and distil their own approaches for the reader to use as inspiration for their own lessons. Providing a highly accessible combination of theory and practice, the contributors to this book: define their own approach to storytelling describe the principles and theory that underpin their practice demonstrate how they work with different types of story provide extensive case-studies and assessment frameworks for a range of different special needs and age ranges provide some ‘top tips’ for practitioners who want to start using stories in this way. Using Storytelling to Support Children and Adults with Special Needs will be of interest to all education professionals as well as therapists, youth workers, counsellors, and storytellers and theatre practitioners working in special education.
Utility
by Nicholas Wright Emily SchwendThe tenth winner of the Yale Drama Series centers on a young mother dealing with life’s many trials Marking the tenth anniversary of the Yale Drama Series for emerging playwrights, Emily Schwend’s powerful work centers on Amber, a young woman struggling to raise a family in East Texas. Amber is juggling two nearly full-time jobs and three kids. Her on-again, off-again husband Chris is eternally optimistic and charming as hell, but rarely employed. The house is falling apart and Amber has an eight-year-old’s birthday party to plan. Selected from more than 1,600 entries, Schwend’s newest play—produced by the Amoralists Theatre Company at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre in 2016—vividly captures the economic hardships and relationship difficulties faced by so many Americans today. “Utility is a remarkable play: beautifully written and effortlessly powerful,” said contest judge Nicholas Wright. “At every moment the happiness of human lives is put at risk: is there any greater dramatic theme?”
Utopia in Performance
by Jill DolanLive performance can provide people with inspiration for an improved world, Dolan argues, one that seems to be slipping further away since 9/11. As examples, she analyzes autobiographical performances by feminists Holly Hughes, Peggy Shaw, and Deb Margolin; multiple- character monologues by Lily Tomlin, Danny Hoch, and Anna Deavere Smith; the political suggestions of Russell Simmons Def Poetry Jam on Broadway and The Laramie Project; and radical humanism in Ann Carlson's Blanket, Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses, and Deborah Warner and Fiona Shaw's Medea. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR (booknews. com)
Utpal Dutt and Political Theatre in Postcolonial India (Elements in Theatre, Performance and the Political)
by Mallarika Sinha RoyAmong the most significant playwrights and theatre-makers of postcolonial India, Utpal Dutt (1929–1993), was an early exponent of rethinking colonial history through political theatre. Dutt envisaged political theatre as part of the larger Marxist project, and his incorporation of new developments in Marxist thinking, including the contributions of Antonio Gramsci, makes it possible to conceptualise his protagonists as insurgent subalterns. A decolonial approach to staging history remained a significant element in Dutt's artistic project. This Element examines Dutt's passionate engagement with Marxism and explores how this sense of urgency was actioned through the writing and producing of plays about the peasant revolts and armed anti-colonial movements which took place during the period of British rule. Drawing on contemporary debates in political theatre regarding the autonomy of the spectator and the performance of history, the author locates Dutt's political theatre in a historical frame.
Utpal Dutt's Theatre: Continuities and Disjunctions in His Politics and Aesthetics (Performance Studies & Cultural Discourse in South Asia #1)
by Uddalak DuttaThis book offers the reader an in-depth understanding of Utpal Dutt’s entire career in drama. Covering Dutt’s career in proscenium, street theatre and Jatra, it analyzes the interesting exchange of dramatic art with politics in his theatre. Owing to a plethora of unsubstantiated opinions, Dutt is either revered by his followers or dismissed by his opponents, but hardly ever studied with necessary objectivity and intellectual rigour. The book attempts to bust the myth that Dutt was primarily a political propagandist who used theatre only as a means to achieve his political end. The remarkable range of Dutt’s subject matter makes him as internationally significant as he is loved by Indian theatre enthusiasts. His work has been discussed on various reputed international platforms. Yet there is a stark lacuna when it comes to intellectual attention devoted to Dutt’s theatre. This is the first book which attempts to introduce Dutt’s theatre comprehensively to an international readership. The book looks briefly at Dutt’s life, the impact of his politics on his theatre, the art of his characterization, his dramaturgy and stage technique, and the legacy of his work in theatre. It also offers the reader with a chronological list of the first performances of his original theatrical works and an exhaustive bibliography, which, it is hoped, shall prove especially useful for researchers. The book is designed for lay theatre enthusiasts as well as advanced students of theatre.
Valley Song
by Athol FugardRarely has a playwright been so closely identified with his country and his people as Athol Fugard has with South Africa. Valley Song, is a work of healing and of envisioning the future. This coming-of-age story about a young girl seeking the courage to embrace the future while her grandfather searches for the wisdom to let go of the past .
Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (Books That Changed the World)
by Christopher DurangTony Award Winner, Best Play: “Hugely entertaining…deliciously madcap…offers some keen insights into the challenges and agonies of 21st-century life.”—USA TodayNominated for six Tony Awards, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike is one of the most lauded and beloved Broadway plays of recent years. Vanya and his adopted sister Sonia live a quiet life in the Pennsylvania farmhouse where they grew up, but their peace is disturbed when their movie star sister, Masha, returns unannounced with her twenty-something boy toy, Spike—and a weekend of rivalry, regret, and raucousness begins…Winner of the Outer Circle Critics Award for Best PlayWinner of the Drama League Award for Best Production of a PlayWinner of the Drama Desk Award for Best PlayWinner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best ProductionWinner of the Off-Broadway Alliance Award for Best Play
Varney the Vampire or the Feast of Blood
by Tim KellyMelodrama Spoof / 4m, 8f / Unit set / This wild and clever spoof is based on a melodramatic novel attributed to Thomas Prest, the creator of Sweeney Todd. In 1900 weary vampire Sir Francis Varney shows up at an inn in Italy. He plans to visit a haunted grotto and ask forgiveness from a lost love whose ghost is doomed to roam the landscape wearing a thin veil over her face. Varney forgets his mission and proceeds to snarl and snap at everyone in sight, especially an English damsel. Varney is shot, stabbed with a wooden stake and hanged. Still he survives! The action gets sillier and sillier (and funnier and funnier) as Inspector Balsadella seeks answers for the strange goings on. The tongue in cheek style is a howl, and there are many optional, corny stage effects as well as a zany cast of characters. Ultimately Varney manages to destroy himself.
Vaudeville and the Making of Modern Entertainment, 1890–1925
by David MonodToday, vaudeville is imagined as a parade of slapstick comedians, blackface shouters, coyly revealed knees, and second-rate acrobats. But vaudeville was also America's most popular commercial amusement from the mid-1890s to the First World War; at its peak, 5 million Americans attended vaudeville shows every week. Telling the story of this pioneering art form's rise and decline, David Monod looks through the apparent carnival of vaudeville performance and asks: what made the theater so popular and transformative? Although he acknowledges its quirkiness, Monod makes the case that vaudeville became so popular because it offered audiences a guide to a modern urban lifestyle. Vaudeville acts celebrated sharp city styles and denigrated old-fashioned habits, showcased new music and dance moves, and promulgated a deeply influential vernacular modernism. The variety show's off-the-rack trendiness perfectly suited an era when goods and services were becoming more affordable and the mass market promised to democratize style, offering a clear vision of how the quintessential twentieth-century citizen should look, talk, move, feel, and act.
Vectorworks for Entertainment Design: Using Vectorworks to Design and Document Scenery, Lighting, Rigging and Audio Visual Systems
by Kevin Lee AllenVectorworks for Entertainment Design is the first book in the industry tailored for the entertainment professional. This second edition has been extensively revised and updated, covering the most current details of the Vectorworks software for scenery, lighting, sound, and rigging. With a focused look at the production process from ideation to development to documentation required for proper execution, the book encourages readers to better create their own processes and workflows through exercises that build on one another. This new edition introduces Braceworks, SubDivision modeling, and scripting using the Marionette tool, and covers new tools such as Video Camera, Deform Tool, Camera Match, Schematic Views, and Object Styles. Fully illustrated with step-by-step instructions, this volume contains inspirational and aspirational work from Broadway, Concerts, Regional Theatre, Dance, and Experiential Entertainment. Exploring both the technical how-to and the art of design, this book provides Theatre and Lighting Designers with the tools to learn about the application and use it professionally. Vectorworks for Entertainment Design also includes access to downloadable resources such as exercise files and images to accompany projects discussed within the book.
Vectorworks for Entertainment Design: Using Vectorworks to Design and Document Scenery, Lighting, and Sound
by Kevin Lee AllenThe first book in the industry tailored specifically for the entertainment professional, Vectorworks for Entertainment Design covers the ins and outs of Vectorworks software for lighting, scenic, and sound design. With a detailed look at the design process, from idea to development, to the documentation necessary for execution, Vectorworks for Entertainment Design will encourage you to create your own process and workflow through exercises that build on one another. The text stresses the process of developing an idea, visualizing it, and evolving it for presentation, documentation, or drafting. The author focuses on both the technical how-to and the art of design, giving you the tools you need to learn and then use the application professionally. Fully illustrated with step-by-step instructions, it contains inspirational work from Broadway, major regional companies, and non-theatrical, entertainment design.
Ventriloquism, Performance, and Contemporary Art (Routledge Advances in Art and Visual Studies)
by Jennie Hirsh Isabelle Loring WallaceVentriloquism, Performance, and Contemporary Art volume calls attention to the unexpected prevalence of ventriloqual motifs and strategies within contemporary art. Engaging with issues of voice, embodiment, power, and projection, the case studies assembled in this volume span a range of media from painting, sculpture, and photography to installation, performance, architecture, and video. Importantly, they both examine and enact ventriloqual practices, and do so as a means of interrogating and performatively bearing out contemporary conceptions of authorship, subjectivity, and performance. Put otherwise, the chapters in this book oscillate seamlessly between art history, theory, and criticism through both analytical and performative means. Across twelve essays on ventriloquism in contemporary art, the authors, who are curators, historians, and artists, shine light on this outdated practice, repositioning it as a conspicuous and meaningful trend within a range of artistic practices today. This book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, contemporary art, media studies, performance, museum/curatorial studies, and theater.
Venue 2
by BrenkmanFirst Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Venus
by Suzan-Lori ParksSuzan-Lori Parks continues her examination of black people in history and stage through the life of the so-called "Hottentot Venus," an African woman displayed semi-nude throughout Europe due to her extraordinary physiognomy; in particular, her enormous buttocks. She was befriended, bought and bedded by a doctor who advanced his scientific career through his anatomical measurements of her after her premature death.
Venus’s Palace: Shakespeare and the Antitheatricalists (Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama)
by Reut BarzilaiThis book lays bare the dialogue between Shakespeare and critics of the stage, and positions it as part of an ongoing cultural, ethical, and psychological debate about the effects of performance on actors and on spectators. In so doing, the book makes a substantial contribution both to the study of representations of theatre in Shakespeare’s plays and to the understanding of ethical concerns about acting and spectating—then, and now. The book opens with a comprehensive and coherent analysis of the main early modern English anxieties about theatre and its power. These are read against 20th- and 21st-century theories of acting, interviews with actors, and research into the effects of media representation on spectator behaviour, all of which demonstrate the lingering relevance of antitheatrical claims and the personal and philosophical implications of acting and spectating. The main part of the book reveals Shakespeare’s responses to major antitheatrical claims about the powerful effects of poetry, music, playacting, and playgoing. It also demonstrates the evolution of Shakespeare’s view of these claims over the course of his career: from light-hearted parody in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, through systematic contemplation in Hamlet, to acceptance and dramatization in The Tempest. This study will be of great interest to scholars and students of theatre, English literature, history, and culture.
Vera: or, The Nihilists
by Oscar WildeMich. No, Father Peter, not yet; 'tis a good three miles to the post office, and she has to milk the cows besides, and that dun one is a rare plaguey creature for a wench to handle. Peter. Why didn't you go with her, you young fool? she'll never love you unless you are always at her heels; women like to be bothered. Mich. She says I bother her too much already, Father Peter, and I fear she'll never love me after all. Peter. Tut, tut, boy, why shouldn't she? you're young and wouldn't be ill-favoured either, had God or thy mother given thee another face. Aren't you one of Prince Maraloffski's gamekeepers; and haven't you got a good grass farm, and the best cow in the village? What more does a girl want? Mich. But Vera, Father Peter- Peter. Vera, my lad, has got too many ideas; I don't think much of ideas myself; I've got on well enough in life without 'em; why shouldn't my children? There's Dmitri! could have stayed here and kept the inn; many a young lad would have jumped at the offer in these hard times; but he, scatter-brained featherhead of a boy, must needs go off to Moscow to study the law! What does he want knowing about the law! let a man do his duty, say I, and no one will trouble him.
Verbatim Theatre Methodologies for Community Engaged Practice: Perspectives from Australian Theatre
by David Burton Sarah PetersVerbatim Theatre Methodologies for Community-Engaged Practice offers a framework for developing original community-engaged productions using a range of verbatim theatre approaches. This book's methodologies offer an approach to community-engaged productions that fosters collaborative artistry, ethically nuanced practice, and social intentionality. Through research-based discussion, case study analysis, and exercises, it provides a historical context for verbatim theatre; outlines the ethics and methods for community immersion that form the foundation of community-engaged best practice; explores the value of interviews and how to go about them; provides clear pathways for translating gathered data into an artistic product; and offers rehearsal room strategies for playwrights, producers, directors, and actors in managing the specific context of the verbatim theatre form. Based on diverse, real-world practice that spans regional, metropolitan, large-scale, micro, independent, commercial, and curriculum-based work, this is a practical and accessible guide for undergraduates, artists, and researchers alike.
Verdi's Shakespeare
by Garry WillsA dazzling study of the operas Verdi adapted from Shakespeare- and a spellbinding account of their creation. In Verdi's Shakespeare, Pulitzer Prize winner and lifelong opera devotee Garry Wills explores the writing and staging of Verdi's three triumphant Shakespearian operas: Macbeth, Othello, and Falstaff. An Italian composer who couldn't read a word of English but adored Shakespeare, Verdi devoted himself to operatic productions that authentically incorporated the playwright's texts. Wills delves into the fast-paced worlds of these men of the theater, focusing on the intense working relationships both Shakespeare and Verdi had with the performers and producers of their works. We see Verdi study the Shakespearean dramaturgy as he obsessively corresponds with his chosen librettists, handpicks the singers he feels are best- suited to the roles, and coaches them intensely. With fascinating portraits of these artistic giants and their entourages, sharp insights into music and theater, and telling historical details, Verdi's Shakespeare re-creates the conditions that allowed Verdi to complete his masterworks and illuminates the very nature of artistic creation. .
Verdict
by Agatha ChristieFull Length Play / Melodrama / 6m, 4f / Interior Set. The Hendryks, refugees in England, have lost everything. Karl with his talents, charm, and hard work rebuilds their lives. But Anya, his wife, is fatally ill and so her old friend, Lisa, who secretly loves karl, lives with them and runs the house. The three are very close. Their serenity is shattered when wealthy, brainless but headstrong Hellen Rolander bribes her way into taking private lessons from Karl. Her infatuation for him being unreturned she doesn't stop at murder to clear the way. But after Anya's dead, Hellen realizing her schemes were futile commits suicide. So Anya's death is pinned on Lisa backed by evidence from a scandal mongering char lady. Lisa's found not guilty and after their mutual agony she and Karl build a new life from the wreckage.