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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.
Vic e Tim
by Mike Sims Alessandra MartinsO livro original que iniciou a série, a história de Vickie e Tim. Vickie é uma executiva por profissão, mas sua personalidade é incrivelmente esperta, criativa e letal. Com a bela aparência de uma rosa vermelha e olhos fascinantes como uma violeta, ela possui espinhos para aqueles não forem cuidadosos. As adversidades da vida a fizeram vítima, entretanto isso apenas fortaleceu suas aptidões para sair vitoriosa diante de pessoas e situações. Ela é fisicamente forte e possui um intelecto habilidoso, e aqueles que caem em suas garram recebem um método de tratamento específico. Em Vic e Tim nós acompanhamos sua jornada por territórios e relacionamentos de uma maneira diferente. Ela oferece seu humor pesado e muitas vezes seu tipo de justiça irônico para algumas pessoas, salvando-as no processo. Um heroína relutante, uma Valquíria que faz o que acha necessário sem a fama ou fortuna. No entanto, ela acaba descobrindo que as vidas que ela tenta mudar também a modificam.
Vic/Tim
by Mike Sims MARÍA GABRIELA GUZMÁN MIGUELVickie es una ejecutiva corporativa de carrera, con una personalidad brillante, creativa y letal. Es como una rosa roja, de apariencia hermosa, y ojos que se asemejan a la flor de la violeta, pero llena de espinas para los que no tienen cuidado. A pesar de que las adversidades de la vida la han convertido en víctima, también la ayudaron a fortalecer las habilidades que le permiten salir airosa de diferentes situaciones con otras personas. Ella es fuerte desde el punto de vista físico y brillante desde el punto de vista intelectural y aquellos que entran en su radar obtienen un tratamiento especial. VÍC-TIM-AS es un libro que recorre su viaje a través situaciones y relaciones nuevas. En él, ella despliega su humor negro y su paradógico estilo de justicia sobre algunos, mientras salva a otros en el proceso. Una heroína reacia, como una Valquiria que hace lo que piensa que es necesario sin sacar provecho ni hacer alarde de ello. Y aprende que las vidas que ella intenta modificar, también modifican la suya.
Victor Herbert: A Theatrical Life
by Neil GouldVictor Herbert is one of the giants of American culture. As a musician, conductor, and, above all, composer, he touched every corner of American musical life at the turn of the century, writing scores of songs, marches, concerti, and other works. But his most enduring legacy is on a different kind of stage, as one of the grandfathers of the modern musical theater.Now, Victor Herbert has the biography he deserves. Neil Gould draws on his own experience as a director, producer, and scholar to craft the first comprehensive portrait in fifty years of the Irish immigrant whose extraordinary talents defined the sounds of a generation and made contemporary American music possible.Mining a wealth of sources—many for the first time—Gould provides a fascinating portrait of Herbert and his world. Born in Dublin in 1859, Herbert arrived in the United States in 1886. From his first job in the orchestra pit of the Metropolitan Opera, Herbert went on to perform in countless festivals and concerts, and conduct the Pittsburgh Orchestra. In 1894, he composed his first operetta, Prince Ananias, and by the time of his death in 1924, he’d composed forty-two more—many of them, such as Naughty Marietta, spectacular Broadway hits. Along the way, he also wrote two operas, stage music for the Ziegfeld Follies, and the first full score for a motion picture, The Fall of a Nation.Gould brilliantly blends the musical and the theatrical, classical and popular, the public and the private, in this book. He not only gives a revealing portrait of Herbert the artist, entrepreneur, and visionary, but also recreates the vibrant world of the Herbert’s Broadway. Gould takes us inside the music itself—with detailed guides to each major work and recreations of great performances. He also makes strong connections between Herbert’s breakthrough compositions, such as the operetta Mlle. Modiste, and the later contributions of Rudolf Friml,Sigmund Romberg, Jerome Kern and other giants of the musical theater.As exuberant as Herbert himself, this book is also a chronicle of American popular culture during one of its most creative periods. For anyone enraptured by the sound of the American musical, this book is delightfully required reading.
Victoria Martin: Math Team Queen
by Kathryn WalatFull Length, Comedy Charaters 4 male, 1 female . Unit Set . When uber-popular Vickie Martin joins the all-male math team, chaos theory becomes the rule at Longwood High School. Can this goddess of Pi possibly make the mathletes victorious? Totally."The tale about overcoming odds is surprisingly touching." - Time Out New York"The biggest and best surprise of the season so far ... puts the nerds next to the popular kids as they join forces to prove their worth to the world. Victoria Martin leaves audiences both laughing and cheering." - NYTheatre.com
Victorian Dramatic Criticism (Routledge Library Editions: Victorian Theatre #5)
by George RowellOriginally published in 1971. The Victorian Age was one of popular theatre and increasingly popular journalism. One manifestation of this journalism was the emergence of the dramatic critic from the anonymity and brevity which had previously characterized periodical treatment of the theatre. If Victorian theatre is regarded as existing essentially thirty years before Victoria acceded and continuing until the outbreak of war in 1914, the names of Lamb, Leigh Hunt and Hazlitt at one end, and of Beerbohm and MacCarthy at the other, can be added to a list that includes Lewes, James, Archer, Walkley, Shaw and Montague. All these writers, and others less famous, are represented in this selection. By selecting the articles on the basis of the play in performance, rather than the play as literature, and by arranging them according to various aspects of the theatrical process, this book builds up a skilful and lively picture of the contemporary theatre at work, in the words of its leading commentators. The anthology successfully conveys the qualities of abundance and vitality to characteristic of Victorian theatre.
Victorian Pantomime: A Collection of Critical Essays
by Jim DavisFeaturing contributions by new and established nineteenth-century theatre scholars, this collection of critical essays is the first of its kind devoted solely to Victorian pantomime. It takes us through the various manifestations of British pantomime in the Victorian period and its ambivalent relationship with Victorian values.
Victorian Spectacular Theatre 1850-1910 (Routledge Library Editions: Victorian Theatre #3)
by Michael R. BoothOriginally published in 1981. This study concentrates on one aspect of Victorian theatre production in the second half of the nineteenth century – the spectacular, which came to dominate certain kinds of production during that period. A remarkably consistent style, it was used for a variety of dramatic forms, although surrounded by critical controversy. The book considers the theories and practice of spectacle production as well as the cultural and artistic movements that created the favourable conditions in which spectacle could dominate such large areas of theatre for so many years. It also discusses the growth of spectacle and the taste of the public for it, examining the influence of painting, archaeology, history, and the trend towards realism in stage production. An explanation of the working of spectacle in Shakespeare, pantomime and melodrama is followed by detailed reconstructions of the spectacle productions of Irving’s Faust and Beerbohm Tree’s King Henry VIII.
Victorian Theatrical Burlesques (Routledge Library Editions: The Victorian World)
by Richard W. SchochFirst published in 2003. Wildly popular in their own day, Victorian burlesques are now little read, scarcely studied, and never performed. Giving long overdue emphasis to an unjustly neglected theatrical tradition, this critical edition - the first to focus on Victorian burlesques of Victorian plays - represents a valuable scholarly tool for students and scholars of modern drama, theatre history, and nineteenth-century popular culture. Victorian Theatrical Burlesques includes a 'state-of-the-art' introduction which provides a general overview of theatrical burlesques in the Victorian era, emphasising performance history. Sustained reference is made to burlesques other than those presented in the anthology. Through its general introduction, prefaces and annotations to individual plays, checklist of burlesque plays, and bibliography, the unique volume allows both specialist and non-specialist readers to see Victorian burlesques as a rich historical record of shifting attitudes toward drama and the theatre.