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Victorian Vocalists
by Kurt GanzlVictorian Vocalists is a masterful and entertaining collection of 100 biographies of mid- to late-19th-century singers and stars. Kurt Gänzl paints a vivid picture of the Victorian operatic and concert world, revealing the backgrounds, journeys, successes, failures and misdemeanours of these singers. This volume is not only an outstanding reference work for anyone interested in vocalists of the era, but also a compelling, meticulously researched picture of life in the vast shark tank that was Victorian music.
Victorian Writers and the Stage
by Richard PearsonThis book comprises a study of the plays of Dickens, Browning, Wilkie Collins and Tennyson, alongside the fiction and periodical writings of Thackeray and others. These major Victorian writers authored several professional plays, but why has their achievement been overlooked? Victorian Writers and the Stage brings together comprehensively, for the first time, the professionally performed plays of a group of well-known authors – some of which plays enjoyed long and successful seasons,but all of which have been largely forgotten. The author examines the goal of these writers to become part of an expanding theatrical industry and the problems they encountered in risking their reputations on a literature felt by many to be vulgar and illegitimate. A wealth of new detail carefully positions the plays within the context of the changing Victorian theatre industry and the great battle between the Major and Minor theatres for the future of the modern stage.
Victorians on Broadway: Literature, Adaptation, and the Modern American Musical
by Sharon Aronofsky WeltmanBroadway productions of musicals such as The King and I, Oliver!, Sweeney Todd, and Jekyll and Hyde became huge theatrical hits. Remarkably, all were based on one-hundred-year-old British novels or memoirs. What could possibly explain their enormous success? Victorians on Broadway is a wide-ranging interdisciplinary study of live stage musicals from the mid- to late twentieth century adapted from British literature written between 1837 and 1886. Investigating musical dramatizations of works by Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Christina Rossetti, Robert Louis Stevenson, and others, Sharon Aronofsky Weltman reveals what these musicals teach us about the Victorian books from which they derive and considers their enduring popularity and impact on our modern culture.Providing a front row seat to the hits (as well as the flops), Weltman situates these adaptations within the history of musical theater: the Golden Age of Broadway, the concept musicals of the 1970s and 1980s, and the era of pop mega-musicals, revealing Broadway’s debt to melodrama. With an expertise in Victorian literature, Weltman draws on reviews, critical analyses, and interviews with such luminaries as Stephen Sondheim, Polly Pen, Frank Wildhorn, and Rowan Atkinson to understand this popular trend in American theater. Exploring themes of race, religion, gender, and class, Weltman focuses attention on how these theatrical adaptations fit into aesthetic and intellectual movements while demonstrating the complexity of their enduring legacy.
Vicuña: A Play
by Jon Robin BaitzA play centering on the tensions between a political demagogue and the tailor who makes his suitIn his Upper East Side atelier, a bespoke tailor, Anselm Kassar, is persuaded by the vulgar real estate mogul turned presidential candidate Kurt Seaman to make him the perfect suit. A suit to “stun them” at the final debate before the election, a suit for him to wear while he takes on his unnamed female opponent. Kassar agrees to make Seaman a suit with magical powers of persuasion, to allow him to “close the deal with the American people.”Over the course of three fittings for this exorbitantly expensive and totemic vicuña suit, Seaman cajoles and spars with the tailor and his young Muslim apprentice, Amir. Amir’s challenges to Seaman and Seaman’s daughter Srilanka over the dangerously xenophobic and inflammatory rhetoric coming out of the campaign make the fittings increasingly volatile in the genteel atelier. Vulnerabilities are exploited masterfully by the candidate, in the manner of a true sociopath with a perfect instinct for other people’s weaknesses. Coming out of an election season that laid bare the rage in much of America, Jon Robin Baitz’s Vicuña is an astute satire of what—or who—it takes to bring those anxieties to the fore.
Vietgone
by Qui NguyenAn all-American love story about two very new Americans. It's 1975. Saigon has fallen. He lost his wife. She lost her fiancé. But now in a new land, they just might find each other. <p><p> Using his uniquely infectious style The New York Times calls "culturally savvy comedy" - and skipping back and forth from the dramatic evacuation of Saigon to the here and now - playwright Qui Nguyen gets up-close-and-personal to tell the story that led to the creation of...Qui Nguyen.
Vieux Carre
by Tennessee Williams Robert BrayBorn out of the journals the playwright kept at the time, Tennessee Williams's Vieux Carré is not emotion recollected in tranquility, but emotion re-created with all the pain, compassion, and wry humor of the playwright's own 1938-39 sojourn in the New Orleans French Quarter vividly intact. The drama takes it form from the shifting scenes of memory, and Williams's surrogate self invites us to focus, in turn, on the various inhabitants or his dilapidated rooming house in the Vieux Carré: the comically desperate landlady, Mrs. Wire; Jane, a properly brought-up young woman from New York making at last grab at pleasure with Tye, the vulgar but appealing strip-joint barker; two decayed gentlewomen politely starving in the garret; and the dying painter Nightingale, who tries to teach the young writer something about love--both of the body and of the heart. This is a play about the education of the artist, and education in loneliness and despair, in giving and not giving, but most of all in seeing, hearing, feeling, and learning that "writers are shameless spies," who pay dearly for their knowledge and who cannot forget. Building on two decades of Williams scholarship since Vieux Carré was originally published, Robert Bray, editor of The Tennessee Williams Annual Review, has provided a new introduction for this edition, giving the most authoritative account yet of its background and genesis.
Vigil
by Morris PanychA man returns after thirty years to sit with a relative on her deathbed. Kemp's problem is: she's not dying fast enough. Through Kemp's own errors and inattentiveness, the visit that he thinks will take a day or two stretches into a year. A play of mistaken identity, twisted circumstance, and surprising turns, this is one Vigil worth keeping.
Viktor Simov: Stanislavsky’s Designer
by Paul Fryer Anastasia TorosViktor Simov is the first English-language biography of Konstantin Stanislavsky’s principal scenic designer at the Moscow Art Theatre from the company’s formation in 1898. His ground-breaking work included the designs for the premieres of Anton Chekhov’s major stage plays, and his approach to theatre design still influences contemporary scenography. Translated from the original Russian text written by author, editor, and literary critic Yuri Ivanovich Nekhoroshev, the book provides a revealing insight into the staging and technical practices of one of the world’s most influential theatre companies. Supported by 60 illustrations representing the full range of Simov’s designs, this volume provides a historical account of Simov’s career and a vivid description and critical assessment of his work. The book traces the artist’s development from his early years as a painter to his later experiments in early silent film design, including his work for the classic Russian science fiction film Aelita, Queen of Mars (1924). Written for theatre scholars and students of Scenic Design and Drama courses, Viktor Simov: Stanislavsky’s designer re-establishes Simov as one of the most influential theatre designers of the 20th century.
Villainy and Vengeance, 1773-1799 (Kabuki Plays On-Stage #2)
by James R. Brandon Samuel L. LeiterKabuki Plays On Stage represents a monumental achievement in Japanese theatre studies, being the first collection of kabuki play translations to be published in twenty-five years. Fifty-one plays, published in four volumes, vividly trace kabuki's changing relations to Japanese society during the premodern era. <p><p>Volume 1 consists of thirteen plays that showcase early kabuki's scintillating and boisterous styles of performance and illustrates the contrasting dramatic techniques cultivated by actors in Edo (Tokyo) and Kamigata (Osaka and Kyoto). The twelve plays translated in Volume 2 cover a brief period, but one that saw important developments in kabuki architecture, acting, dance, and the manipulation of characters and themes. <p><p>As the series title indicates, the plays were translated to capture the vivacity of performances on stage. The translations, each accompanied by a thorough introduction that contextualizes the play, are based not only on published texts, but performance scripts and the study of the plays as they are performed in theatres today. <p><p>Each volume is lavishly illustrated with rare woodblock prints in full color of Tokugawa- and Meiji-period productions as well as color and black-and-white photographs of contemporary performances.
Vimy
by Vern ThiessenFrance, 1917. Four wounded Canadian soldiers recover in a field hospital in the wake of the battle for Vimy Ridge, waiting to find out where they’ll be sent next: back home or back to the front. Along with a young nurse from Nova Scotia, they share their stories, reasons for fighting, and treasured memories. In Vimy, Governor General’s Literary Award–winner Vern Thiessen brings us a classic play that is not about war, but a reflection of the everyday lives of soldiers—their hopes and their dreams—and how actions can define individuals and nations. In the brand-new piece Bluebirds, Thiessen brings to light the stories of three Canadian nurses who crossed oceans to take care of others in the war. Bonding over their duties and patients, the nurses keep up a positive atmosphere, even as the front line draws closer to their field hospital.
Vinyl Junkies: Adventures in Record Collecting
by Brett MilanoNot too far away from the flea markets, dusty attics, cluttered used record stores and Ebay is the world of the vinyl junkies. Brett Milano dives deep into the piles of old vinyl to uncover the subculture of record collecting. A vinyl junkie is not the person who has a few old 45s shoved in the cuboard from their days in high school. Vinyl Junkies are the people who will travel over 3,000 miles to hear a rare b-side by a German band that has only recorded two songs since 1962, vinyl junkies are the people who own every copy of every record produced by the favorite artist from every pressing and printing in existance, vinyl junkies are the people who may just love that black plastic more than anything else in their lives. Brett Milano traveled the U.S. seeking out the most die-hard and fanatical collectors to capture all that it means to be a vinyl junkie. Includes interviews with Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Peter Buck from R.E.M and Robert Crumb, creator of Fritz the cat and many more underground comics.
Violent Women in Contemporary Theatres
by Nancy Taylor PorterThis book brings together the fields of theatre, gender studies, and psychology/sociology in order to explore the relationships between what happens when women engage in violence, how the events and their reception intercept with cultural understandings of gender, how plays thoughtfully depict this topic, and how their productions impact audiences. Truthful portrayals force consideration of both the startling reality of women's violence -- not how it's been sensationalized or demonized or sexualized, but how it is -- and what parameters, what possibilities, should exist for its enactment in life and live theatre. These women appear in a wide array of contexts: they are mothers, daughters, lovers, streetfighters, boxers, soldiers, and dominatrixes. Who they are and why they choose to use violence varies dramatically. They stage resistance and challenge normative expectations for women. This fascinating and balanced study will appeal to anyone interested in gender/feminism issues and theatre.
Viral Dramaturgies: Hiv And Aids In Performance In The Twenty-first Century
by Alyson Campbell Dirk GindtThis book analyses the impact of HIV and AIDS on performance in the twenty-first century from an international perspective. It marks a necessary reaffirmation of the productive power of performance to respond to a public and political health crisis and act as a mode of resistance to cultural amnesia, discrimination and stigmatisation. It sets out a number of challenges and contexts for HIV and AIDS performance in the twenty-first century, including: the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry; the unequal access to treatment and prevention technologies in the Global North and Global South; the problematic division between dominant (white, gay, urban, cis-male) and marginalised narratives of HIV; the tension between a damaging cultural amnesia and a potentially equally damaging partner ‘AIDS nostalgia’; the criminalisation of HIV non-disclosure; and, sustaining and sustained by all of these, the ongoing stigmatisation of people living with HIV.This collection presents work from a vast range of contexts, grouped around four main areas: women’s voices and experiences; generations, memories and temporalities; inter/national narratives; and artistic and personal reflections and interventions.
Viral Shakespeare: Performance in the Time of Pandemic (Elements in Shakespeare Performance)
by Pascale AebischerThis Element offers a first-person phenomenological history of watching productions of Shakespeare during the pandemic year of 2020. The first section of the Element explores how Shakespeare 'went viral' during the first lockdown of 2020 and considers how the archival recordings of Shakespeare productions made freely available by theatres across Europe and North America impacted on modes of spectatorship and viewing practices, with a particular focus on the effect of binge-watching Hamlet in lockdown. The Element's second section documents two made-for-digital productions of Shakespeare by Oxford-based Creation Theatre and Northern Irish Big Telly, two companies who became leaders in digital theatre during the pandemic. It investigates how their productions of The Tempest and Macbeth modelled new platform-specific ways of engaging with audiences and creating communities of viewing at a time when, in the UK, government policies were excluding most non-building-based theatre companies and freelancers from pandemic relief packages.
Virtual Theatres: An Introduction
by Gabriella GiannachiThe first full-length book of its kind to offer an investigation of the interface between theatre, performance and digital arts, Virtual Theatres presents the theatre of the twenty-first century in which everything - even the viewer - can be simulated. In this fascinating volume, Gabriella Giannachi analyzes the aesthetic concerns of current computer-arts practices through discussion of a variety of artists and performers including: * blast Theory* Merce Cunningham* Eduardo Kac* forced entertainment* Lynn Hershman* Jodi Orlan* Guillermo Gómez-Peña* Marcel-lí Antúnez Roca* Jeffrey Shaw* Stelarc. Virtual Theatres not only allows for a reinterpretation of what is possible in the world of performance practice, but also demonstrates how 'virtuality' has come to represent a major parameter for our understanding and experience of contemporary art and life.
Vision 2020: Reordering Chaos For Global Survival
by Ervin LaszloThis revised edition of the classic text of the period provides both the student and the specialist with an informative account of post-Roman English society.
Visions of Venice in Shakespeare (Anglo-Italian Renaissance Studies)
by Laura Tosi Shaul BassiDespite the growing critical relevance of Shakespeare's two Venetian plays and a burgeoning bibliography on both The Merchant of Venice and Othello, few books have dealt extensively with the relationship between Shakespeare and Venice. Setting out to offer new perspectives to a traditional topic, this timely collection fills a gap in the literature, addressing the new historical, political and economic questions that have been raised in the last few years. The essays in this volume consider Venice a real as well as symbolic landscape that needs to be explored in its multiple resonances, both in Shakespeare's historical context and in the later tradition of reconfiguring one of the most represented cities in Western culture. Shylock and Othello are there to remind us of the dark sides of the myth of Venice, and of the inescapable fact that the issues raised in the Venetian plays are tremendously topical; we are still haunted by these theatrical casualties of early modern multiculturalism.
Visiting Edna and Good for Otto: Two Plays
by David RabeTwo plays exploring the struggle of mental illness by the Tony Award–winning “giant of American theater” and author of Hurlyburly (Chicago Tribune). Good for Otto, which premiered in October 2015 at the Gift Theatre in Chicago, is a “sprawling drama of mental illness” in which “Mr. Rabe digs into his subject with a depth that almost feels bottomless.” Drawing on material from Undoing Depression by psychotherapist Richard O’Connor, it explores the lives of a therapist and his many patients, all trying to navigate personal trauma (Charles Isherwood, The New York Times). Visiting Edna, which premiered in September 2016 at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, is a drama of “deeply searing power” about the bond between mother and son. As Edna faces a short future plagued by her many illnesses—and a cancer that looms so large it becomes another character—she and her adult son struggle to communicate about their shared past as they contemplate the future (Variety). Taken together, the plays offer a satisfying glimpse into “Rabe’s theatrical universe . . . at once vivid and mysterious, a pageant and a puzzle” of contemporary American life (John Lahr, The New Yorker). “Many would list [Rabe] among the very greatest of living playwrights.” —Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune
Vistas in Reading Literature (Gold Level)
by Mary Ann Trost Jacqueline L. Chaparro Judith L. Joyce Rena MoranVistas in Reading Literature, Gold Level will introduce you to a wide variety of literature. You will read stories, poems, plays, and works of nonfiction in their original forms. These works have been written by world-famous authors such as Lewis Carroll, Joan Aiken, Isaac Asimov, Jean Craighead, Langston Hughes, Yoshiko Uchida, Lloyd Alexander, and Nikki Giovanni. Some of the works may make you laugh and others may make you cry. All of them should make you think.
Visual Experiences in Cinquecento Theatrical Spaces (Toronto Italian Studies)
by Javier Berzal de DiosThrough an interdisciplinary examination of sixteenth-century theatrical spaces, Visual Experiences in Cinquecento Theatrical Spaces studies the performative aspects of the early modern stage, paying special attention to the overlooked complexities of audience experience. Examining the period’s philosophical and aesthetic ideas about space, place, and setting, the book shows how artists consciously moved away from traditional representations of real spaces on stages to conjure spectacles that pushed their collective audiences towards more imaginative, collaborative engagements no longer tethered to strict definitions of naturalism. In this way, Visual Experiences breaks with traditional interpretations of early modern staging techniques, arguing that the goal of early modern artists was not the creation of a naturalistically unified stage constructed for a single, privileged viewer, but rather a complex multimedia experience addressing a diverse set of viewers. In stressing the wider scenographic possibilities of the sixteenth-century stage, the book focuses on how space created various modes of audience engagement.
Visual Storytelling: Videography and Post Production in the Digital Age
by Ronald J. Osgood M. Joseph HinshawVISUAL STORYTELLING: VIDEOGRAPHY AND POST PRODUCTION IN THE DIGITAL AGE SECOND EDITION combines a thorough exploration of essential storytelling concepts with detailed instruction in practical technical skills. Without limiting its focus to a particular range of equipment, applications, or technology, this engaging text covers the key concepts, aesthetics, and techniques of single-camera field production and post production, and includes real-life stories and suggestions from working professionals.
Visualising Lost Theatres: Virtual Praxis and the Recovery of Performance Spaces (Cambridge Studies in Modern Theatre)
by Julie Holledge Jonathan Bollen Joanne Tompkins Liyang XiaThis pioneering study harnesses virtual reality to uncover the history of five venues that have been 'lost' to us: London's 1590s Rose Theatre; Bergen's mid-nineteenth-century Komediehuset; Adelaide's Queen's Theatre of 1841; circus tents hosting Cantonese opera performances in Australia's goldfields in the 1850s; and the Stardust showroom in 1950s Las Vegas. Shaping some of the most enduring genres of world theatre and cultural production, each venue marks a significant cultural transformation, charted here through detailed discussion of theatrical praxis and socio-political history. Using virtual models as performance laboratories for research, Visualising Lost Theatres recreates the immersive feel of venues and reveals performance logistics for actors and audiences. Proposing a new methodology for using visualisations as a tool in theatre history, and providing 3D visualisations for the reader to consult alongside the text, this is a landmark contribution to the digital humanities.
Vital Signs
by Jane MartinMonologues / Characters: 2 male (optional), 6 fScenery: Bare stage. The author of Talking With and other hits has never been funnier or more compelling than in this suite of theatrical miniatures over thirty two minute monologues. The two men in the cast are optional foils for the six compelling women who perform a collage about contemporary woman in all her warmth and majesty, her fear and frustration, her joy and sadness. Vital Signs wowed audiences at the Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville, where it was directed of Jon Jory whose notes are published with the play. . "Vital and original." N.Y. Times. . "Offers wonderful opportunities for actresses to show off their versatility." Washington Times. . "Martin's eye and ear for the texture of everyday life in this culture is as playfully accurate as Lily Tomlin and Jane Wagner's. She's a fine quipster; but she manages, too, to open little windows of sadness into women's souls." Detroit News.
Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and the Moscow Art Theatre (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
by Inna SolovyovaThis is an authorized translation of Nemirovich-Danchenko (Moscow, 1979) by Inna Solovyova, historian, author, and senior researcher of the Moscow Art Theatre Archives.Untranslated before now, it is the only comprehensive account of the life and work of Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (1858–1943), co-founder with Konstantin Stanislavsky of the Moscow Art Theatre and one of the pioneers of the art of directing. Nemirovich-Danchenko was one of the few prominent theatre practitioners who lived and worked from Russia’s Tsarist period through the inception and consolidation of its Soviet period. Thus, it is also a story about the development of Russian society and culture during the last half of the nineteenth century and the Soviet half of the twentieth century. Additionally, it explores the Moscow Art Theatre’s interpretive and production work on the plays of Chekhov, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky, and many others. The central theme of the book focuses on the contingent dialectical relationship between artists and their changing socio-political realities.The author’s narrative is stylistically informal and based on archival documents, most of which are referenced here for the first time in English and will be of great interest to students and scholars in theatre and performance studies.
Voice Lessons: A Sisters Story
by Cara Mentzel Idina MenzelVoice Lessons is the story of one younger sister growing up in the shadow of a larger-than-life older sister—looking up to her, wondering how they were alike and how they were different and, ultimately, learning how to live her own life and speak in her own voice on her own terms. As Cara Mentzel, studied, explored, married, gave birth (twice) and eventually became an elementary school teacher, she watched her sister, Idina Menzel, from the wings and gives readers a front row seat to opening night of Rent and Wicked, a seat at the Tonys, and a place on the red carpet when her sister taught millions more, as the voice of Queen Elsa in the animated musical Frozen, to “Let It Go.” Voice Lessons is the story of sisters—sisters with pig tails, sisters with boyfriends and broken hearts, sisters as mothers and aunts, sisters as teachers and ice-queens, sisters as allies and confidantes. As Cara puts it, “My big sister is Tony-Award-Winning, Gravity-Defying, Let-It-Go-Singing Idina Menzel who has received top billing on Broadway marquees, who has performed for Barbra Streisand and President Obama, at the Super Bowl and at the Academy Awards. The world knows her as 'Idina Menzel', but I call her 'Dee'.” Voice Lessons is their story.