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Choreographing Dirt: Movement, Performance, and Ecology in the Anthropocene (Routledge Studies in Theatre, Ecology, and Performance)
by Angenette SpalinkThis book is an innovative study that places performance and dance studies in conversation with ecology by exploring the significance of dirt in performance. Focusing on a range of 20th- and 21st-century performances that include modern dance, dance-theatre, Butoh, and everyday life, this book demonstrates how the choreography of dirt makes biological, geographical, and cultural meaning, what the author terms "biogeocultography". Whether it’s the Foundling Father digging into the earth’s strata in Suzan-Lori Park’s The America Play (1994), peat hurling through the air in Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring (1975), dancers frantically shovelling out fistfuls of dirt in Eveoke Dance Theatre’s Las Mariposas (2010), or Butoh performers dancing with fungi in Iván-Daniel Espinosa’s Messengers Divinos (2018), each example shows how the incorporation of dirt can reveal micro-level interactions between species – like the interplay between microscopic skin bacteria and soil protozoa – and macro-level interactions – like the transformation of peat to a greenhouse gas. By demonstrating the stakes of moving dirt, this book posits that performance can operate as a space to grapple with the multifaceted ecological dilemmas of the Anthropocene. This book will be of broad interest to both practitioners and researchers in theatre, performance studies, dance, ecocriticism, and the environmental humanities.
Choreomata: Performance and Performativity after AI
by Roberto Alonso TrilloIs artificial intelligence (AI) becoming more and more expressive, or is human thought adopting more and more structures from computation? What does it mean to perform oneself through AI, or to construct one’s subjectivity through AI? How does AI continue to complicate what it means to have a body? Has the golden age of AI, especially with regards to creative applications, already ended? Choreomata: Performance and Performativity after AI is a book about performance and performativity, but more specifically, it is a book about the performance of artificiality and the performance of intelligence. Both humans and human-designed computational forces are thoroughly engaged in an entangled, mutual performance of AI. Choreomata spins up a latticework of interdisciplinary thought, pairing theoretical inquiry from philosophy, information theory, and computer science with practical case studies from visual art, dance, music, and social theory. Through cross-disciplinary proportions and a diverse roster of contributors, this book contains insights for computer scientists, social scientists, industry professionals, artists, and beyond.
Commercial Dance: An Essential Guide
by Anthony R. TrahearnThis is an exploration of the vital and rapidly evolving world of Commercial Dance, tracing the evolution and merging of Hip-Hop, Club and Jazz dance styles from the music videos of the early 1980s, to today's huge influence on pop music and dance in a multi-media culture. Chapters including ‘Iconic Moments’ and ‘Main Movers’ contextualise and analyse culturally significant works and choreographers. With direct contributions from an international array of industry leading dancers, choreographers and creatives - including JaQuel Knight (Beyonce’s choreographer), Rich + Tone Talauega (Madonna & Michael Jackson collaborators), Rebbi Rosie (Rihanna’s dancer), Dean Lee (Janet Jackson’s choreographer) and Kiel Tutin (BLACKPINK’s choreographer) - this book shines a light on the creatives in the Commercial Dance industry who have made significant impacts, not just on the world of dance but on popular culture itself. Chapters discussing dance history, copyright law, inclusivity and dance class culture as well as additional contributions from dance scholars enable this book to give credence to Commercial Dance as a legitimate academic area of study. This is a complete and comprehensive textbook for all dance students at any level of study on college, university or conservatory courses.
Conceptual Performance: Enacting Conceptual Art
by Nick KayeConceptual Performance explores how the radical visual art that challenged material aesthetics in the 1960s and 1970s tested and extended the limits, character and concept of performance. Conceptual Performance sets out the history, theoretical basis, and character of this genre of work through a wide range of case studies. The volume considers how and why principal modes and agendas in Conceptual art in the 1960s and 1970s necessitated new engagements with performance, as well as expanded notions of theatricality. In doing so, this book reviews and challenges prevailing histories of Conceptual art through critical frameworks of performativity and performance. It also considers how Conceptual art adopted and redefined terms and tropes of theatre and performance: including score, document, embodiment, documentation, relic, remains, and the narrative recuperation of ephemeral work. While showing how performance has been integral to Conceptual art’s critiques of prevailing assumptions about art’s form, purpose, and meaning, this volume also considers the reach and influence of Conceptual performance into recent thinking and practice. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of theatre, performance, contemporary art, and art history.
Contemporary Dance Choreography and Spectatorship: Embodied Emotion
by Lucía Piquero ÁlvarezThis book offers an approach which unites choreographic and spectatorial perspectives, and argues for dance itself—its materials, its structures—as a medium of emotional communication. Contemporary dance often seems to contend with issues of understanding, regularly being “read” in “languages” which alienate it. Even if emotion seems a significant part of people’s engagement with dance, its workings are often surrounded by an air of mysticism. Engaging with these issues, this study investigates the experience of emotion in Euro-American contemporary dance theatre. It questions its dependence on the artist’s personal emotions, and the assumption that it is mediated by representational meaning. Instead, this book proposes that the emotional import of dance emerges from an interplay between perceptual properties and symbolic elements in an embodied affective cognitive experience. This experience includes the background of the spectator as well as the context of work, choreographer, performer(s) and other creative agents.
Contemporary Farce on the Global Stage: or, Serious Laughter
by David GramContemporary Farce on the Global Stage provides audiences and practitioners a detailed survey of how the genre of farce has evolved in the 21st century. Often dismissed as frivolous, farce speaks a universal language, with the power to incisively interrogate our world through laughter.Unlike farces of the past, where a successful resolution was a given and we could laugh uproariously at adulterous behaviour, farce no longer guarantees an audience a happy ending where everything works out. Contemporary farce is no longer ‘diverting us’ with laughter. It is reflecting the fractured world around us. With a foreword by award-winning playwright Ken Ludwig, the book introduces readers to the Mechanics of Farce, and the ‘Four Ps,’ which are key elements for understanding, appreciating, and exploring the form. The Five Doors to Contemporary Farce identify five major categories into which farces fall. Behind each door are a wide selection of plays, modern and contemporary examples from all over the world, written by a diverse group of playwrights who traverse gender, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Supplementing each section are comments, observations, and reflections from award-winning playwrights, directors, actors, designers, dramaturgs, and scholars.Designed specifically to give theatre-makers a rounded understanding that will underpin their own productions, this book will also be of use to theatre and performance studies students.
Contemporary Francophone African Plays: An Anthology (Scènes francophones: Studies in French and Francophone Theater)
by Edited by Judith G. MillerBringing together in English translation eleven Francophone African plays dating from 1970 to 2021, this essential collection includes satirical portraits of colonizers and their collaborators (Bernard Dadié’s Béatrice du Congo; Sony Labou Tansi’s I, Undersigned, Cardiac Case; Sénouvo Agbota Zinsou’s We’re Just Playing) alongside contemporary works questioning diasporic identity and cultural connections (Koffi Kwahulé’s SAMO: A Tribute to Basquiat and Penda Diouf’s Tracks, Trails, and Traces…). The anthology memorializes the Rwandan genocide (Yolande Mukagasana’s testimony from Rwanda 94), questions the status of women in entrenched patriarchy (Werewere Liking’s Singuè Mura: Given That a Woman…), and follows the life of Elizabeth Nietzsche, who perverted her brother’s thought to colonize Paraguay (José Pliya’s The Sister of Zarathustra). Gustave Akakpo’s The True Story of Little Red Riding Hood and Kossi Efoui’s The Conference of the Dogs offer parables about what makes life livable, while Kangni Alem’s The Landing shows the dangers of believing in a better life, through migration, outside of Africa.
Conversations with Women in Musical Theatre Leadership
by Amanda Wansa MorganMost writers, composers, librettists, and music directors who make their careers in musical theatre do so without specific training or clear pathways to progress through the industry. Conversations with Women in Musical Theatre Leadership addresses that absence by drawing on the experiences of these women to show the many and varied routes to successful careers on, off, and beyond Broadway. Conversations with Women in Musical Theatre Leadership features 15 interviews with Broadway-level musical theatre music directors, directors, writers, composers, lyricists, stage managers, orchestrators, music arrangers, and other women in positions of leadership. Built around extensive interviews with women at the top of their careers in the creative and leadership spheres of musical theatre, these first-hand accounts offer insight into the jobs themselves, the skills that they require, and how those skills can be developed. Any students of musical theatre and stagecraft, no matter what level and in what setting from professional training to university and conservatory study, will find this a valuable asset.
Coward the Dramatist: Morals and Manners (Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries)
by Roger KojeckyDiscussions of Coward’s achievement in the theatre between 1920 and 1966 have tended to stay with the colourful biography. The more analytical literary approach adopted here places Coward’s success in its wider theatrical context, making the connections with the work of other dramatists. He developed his technique according to what worked with theatre audiences. Taking up the well-made play, he brought in a more colloquial dialogue, explored, for instance, the morality and psychology of marriage and free love, and frequently exploited the dramatic possibilities of characters grouped into two camps. The book considers both the ‘pleasant’ and ‘unpleasant’ plays (to use the Shavian terms), and the episodic patriotic plays. It Includes Coward’s ambivalent approach to the ‘theatre of war’ in the 20th century. (123)
Crisis Theatre and The Living Newspaper (Elements in Theatre, Performance and the Political)
by null Sarah Jane Mullan null Sarah BartleyCrisis Theatre and The Living Newspapers traces a history of the living newspaper as a theatre of crisis from Soviet Russia (1910s), through the Federal Theatre Project of the Great Depression in America (1930s), to Augusto Boal's teatro jornal in Brazil (1970s), and its resonance with documentary forms deployed in the final years of apartheid in South Africa (1990s), up until the present day in the UK (2020s). Across this Element, the author is interested in what a transnational and transhistorical examination of the living newspaper through the lens of crisis reveals about the ways in which theatre can intervene in our collective social, economic and political life. By holding these diverse examples together, the author asserts the Living Newspaper as a form of Crisis Theatre.
Dance Production: Design and Technology
by Jeromy HopgoodDance Production: Design and Technology, Second Edition is an introduction to the skills needed to plan, design, and execute the technical aspects of a dance production.Covering a broad range of topics, author Jeromy Hopgood takes the reader through the process of producing dance from start to finish. Part I addresses the collaborative process, business and organizational concerns for dance companies, planning the production, and the relationship between dance and performance spaces/staging methods. In Part II, each unique production area is examined, including production and stage management, sound, costume and makeup, scenery and props, lighting, and projection/video design. Each design area is divided into two chapters – the first introducing key concepts, and the second focusing on the process of creating the design. Part III brings back the popular quick reference guides from the first edition, providing an expanded and revised tool to bridge the language gap between the worlds of theatrical production and dance, and ensure productive communication across the different fields. This second edition features updated information on technology and processes, two new chapters on touring and non-traditional productions, more information on arts management within dance production, a comprehensive look at dance and video (including remote/streaming performances, as well as dance film), and additional chapter projects throughout the book.This unique book approaches the process of staging a dance production from a balanced perspective, making it an essential resource for choreographers, theatre designers, dancers, and management personnel alike, including for use in Dance and Dance Production courses.
Decentered Playwriting: Alternative Techniques for the Stage
by Carolyn M. DunnDecentered Playwriting investigates new and alternative strategies for dramatic writing that incorporate non-Western, Indigenous, and underrepresented storytelling techniques and traditions while deepening a creative practice that decenters hegemonic methods. A collection of short essays and exercises by leading teaching artists, playwrights, and academics in the fields of playwriting and dramaturgy, this book focuses on reimagining pedagogical techniques by introducing playwrights to new storytelling methods, traditions, and ways of studying, and teaching diverse narratological practices. This is a vital and invaluable book for anyone teaching or studying playwriting, dramatic structure, storytelling at advanced undergraduate and graduate levels, or as part of their own professional practice.
The Different Faces of Politics in the Visual and Performative Arts
by Mario Thomas Vassallo André P. DeBattistaThis book highlights the linkages between politics and governance and the arts. The essays in the volume show how visual and performative arts have challenged those in power — or conversely patronised by them — been used for propaganda, stir up national fervour and found themselves at the receiving end of political censure. They focus on the tension and symbiosis between the politician and the artist foregrounding how they have always tried to influence, challenge, and, in some cases, undermine one another. This volume will serve as an indispensable source for researchers and academics in political science, the humanities and performing arts.
Digital Expressions of the Self(ie): The Social Life of Selfies in India
by Avishek Ray Ethiraj Gabriel Dattatreyan Usha Raman Martin Web Neha Gupta Sai Amulya Komarraju Anuja Premika Riad Azam Farhat Salim Pranavesh SubramanianThe book examines the social and cultural role of selfies in India. It looks at how the selfie, unlike the photograph, which was a gesture towards an external reality, remains intimately self-referential, yet reconfigures social ordering, identity formation, agency, and spaces in curious ways. This volume approaches questions about the construction and performance of the self through the digital selfie and uses this situated, contextualized, and culturally specific phenomenon as a site to explore the themes of self-making, place-making, gender, subjectivity, and power. Highlighting the specific contexts of production, the authors examine the array of self-expressive capabilities realized in a multitude of uses of the selfie that simultaneously reconfigure the self, the space, and the world. An important study of visual social media culture, the volume will be useful for interpreting everyday media experiences and will be of interest to students and researchers of image studies, visual studies, photography studies, visual culture, media studies, culture studies, cultural anthropology, digital humanities, popular culture, sociology of technology, and South Asian studies.
Digital Painting and Rendering for Theatrical Design: Using Digital Tools to Create Scenic, Costume, and Media Renderings
by Jen GilletteDigital Painting and Rendering for Theatrical Design explores the tools and techniques for creating dazzling, atmospheric, and evocative digitally painted renderings for scenic, costume, and projection/integrated media design. By focusing on technique rather than the structure of a particular software, this book trains theatrical designers to think and paint digitally, regardless of the software or hardware they choose. The text begins with the construction of the artist’s physical and digital workspace, then delves into an explanation of tool functionality, technique-building exercises, and examples from professional theatrical designers to help contextualize the concepts presented. Each chapter gradually progresses in complexity through skill-building exercises and advanced tool functionality, covering concepts like brush construction, various forms of masking, and layer interaction. The book explores various methods of constructing a digital rendering, including producing digital paintings that look like traditional media and photo bashing – the practice of using extant photographs to create a collaged image. Concepts are contextualized throughout the text using illustrations, quotes, and interviews with working professional designers. This beautifully illustrated guide is written for professional theatrical artists, students of theatrical design, and other visual artists looking to broaden their digital painting skillset.
Dramatherapy and Recovery: The CoActive Therapeutic Theatre Model and Manual (ISSN)
by Laura L. Wood Dave MowersDramatherapy and Recovery offers a comprehensive and groundbreaking approach to harnessing the power of theater in the recovery process through the use of playmaking and performance.This manual is based on the CoActive Therapeutic Theater (CoATT) model, the first of its kind to be meticulously documented and standardized. With its emphasis on replicability and measurable outcomes, the CoATT model is brought to life through annotated scripts and progress notes extracted from past productions involving diverse populations, including those with eating disorders, aphasia, schizophrenia, and substance abuse disorder. The authors illuminate the six principles that distinguish CoATT from other therapeutic and applied theater approaches. The chapters provide a structured framework compromising seven defined movements that act as attainable milestones for participants guided towards producing a powerful and transformative public performance.Dramatherapy and Recovery equips practitioners of dramatherapy, counseling arts in health, applied theater, community theater, and other mental health disciplines with the tools needed to create transformative performances with individuals reconnecting with the community after treatment.
Dramaturgies of War: Institutional Dramaturgy, Politics, and Conflict in 20th-Century Germany
by Anselm Heinrich Ann-Christine SimkeThis book examines the institutional contexts of dramaturgical practices in the changing political landscape of 20th century Germany. Through wide-ranging case studies, it discusses the way in which operationalised modes of action, legal frameworks and an established profession have shaped dramaturgical practice and thus links to current debates around the “institutional turn” in theatre and performance studies. German theatre represents a rich and well-chosen field as it is here where the role of the dramaturg was first created and where dramaturgy played a significantly politicised role in the changing political systems of the 20th century. The volume represents an important addition to a growing field of work on dramaturgy by contributing to a historical contextualisation of current practice. In doing so, it understands dramaturgy not only as a process which occurs in rehearsal rooms and writers’ studies, but one that has far wider institutional and political implications.
The Dramaturgy of History (Focus on Dramaturgy)
by Tom BryantIn this book, dramaturg Tom Bryant shares with readers and writers his insights into the process of historical adaptation. The book uses case studies from Bryant's collaborations with playwrights on successful Broadway and regional productions to work through the fundamental questions of historical adaptation: Why do you want to adapt history? For what purpose? What is your approach? How does that approach affect the portrayal of events? How does that choice by the playwright and the dramaturg then determine the framing and focus in the story, the selection of the key events and the choice of characters? What is the meaning you want the audience to take away from the events? How is your adaptation of past events relevant to contemporary times? In addition, the author explores the moral and ethical responsibilities involved for the dramaturg and the playwright in the adaptation of history and how issues of diversity, equity and inclusion impact the presentation of historical material. This is an indispensable resource for anyone whose craft brings them to the task of adapting historical material for the stage—in postgraduate work, teaching or professional practice.
Dramaturgy of Sex on Stage in Contemporary Theatre (Focus on Dramaturgy)
by Kate MulleyDramaturgy of Sex on Stage in Contemporary Theatre explores the dramaturgy of sex in contemporary works for the stage in the social, cultural and historical context of the time and place during which they were written and performed. Comprising chapters by writers from across North America and Europe, the book covers an expansive range of plays, musicals and dance performances, from Broadway to the Fringe, from post-AIDS epidemic to post-COVID-19 pandemic. Analysing these intimate moments—both textually and as staged—through an intersectional and critical lens illuminates the way power structures are maintained and codified, and how they can be queered and dismantled onstage and off. This examination of depictions of sex on stage attempts to understand from a dramaturgical and sociological perspective how these depictions have developed over time, and how the rise of intimacy directors has responded to the changes within the contemporary theatrical landscape and in the world at large. This is an essential companion for any scholar or practitioner looking to stage, discuss or understand intimacy in performance.
DreamWork: A Training for Directors
by David ZinderDreamWork: A Training for Directors provides a theoretical basis and a highly detailed, practical, step-by-step blueprint for developing a directorial concept for a play.Directing is a complex, multi-staged artistic process which, for the most part, is a collaborative work of art. The director works with designers, composers, choreographers and actors to create the performance that is eventually shown to an audience. In this process, there is one stage of the director’s work which is uniquely personal and individual: the creation of a directorial concept. This book concentrates on this crucial stage of the director’s work, offering a template for the creation of a directorial concept prior to embarking on the collaborative stage of the director’s work. The book follows the process from the choice of the text, through a series of clearly documented and structured sets of strategies with attendant examples, up to the creation of the director’s version of the original play - the adaptation - that is the starting point for the director’s dialogue with designers, composers, choreographers and actors.DreamWork: A Training for Directors is intended for directing students at universities or theatre academies, both at undergraduate and graduate levels, as well as directors at the beginning of their careers.
Dyeing for Entertainment: Dyeing, Painting, Breakdown, and Special Effects for Costumes
by Erin CarignanDyeing for Entertainment encompasses a wide range of methods of theatrical painting and dyeing to create beautiful artistic products for theatre, film, TV, opera, and themed entertainment. Featuring examples from renowned international artisans in the field, this book provides a wealth of information on creating and changing colors, prints, and surface textures of fabric using traditional and nontraditional costume, scenic, fine-art, and metal-smithing techniques. It also includes new, safer materials and methods to minimize exposure to toxic materials and fumes. With more than 250 full-color images, this technical manual is designed to guide and inspire new artists in the collaborative art of painting, dyeing, ageing, and slinging blood and bling on costumes that is an essential part of creating characters for the entertainment industry. Written for undergraduate and graduate students of costume design and technology, professional dyers and breakdown artists, and cosplayers, this book can be used as a reference and springboard to create your own magical processes, custom fabrics, and unforgettable costumes. To access the online materials, including printable swatch sheets, a collection of relevant safety data sheets, and a source guide with links, visit www.routledge.com/9780815352327.
Early American Children’s Clothing and Textiles: Clothing a Child 1600-1800
by Carey Blackerby HansonEarly American Children’s Clothing and Textiles: Clothing a Child 1600–1800 explores the life experiences of Indigenous, Anglo-European, African, and mixed-race children in colonial America, their connections to textile production, the process of textile production, the textiles created, and the clothing they wore. The book examines the communities and social structure of early America, the progression of the colonial textile industry, and the politics surrounding textile production beginning in the 1600's, with particular focus on the tasks children were given in the development of the American textile industry. The book discusses the concept of childhood in society during this time, together with documented stories of individual children. The discussion of early American childhood and textile production is followed by extant clothing samples for both boys and girls, ranging from Upper-class children's wear to children's wear of those with more humble means. With over 180 illustrations, the book includes images of textile production tools, inventions, and practices, extant textile samples, period portraits of children, and handmade extant clothing items worn by children during this time period. Early American Children’s Clothing and Textiles: Clothing a Child 1600–1800 will be of interest to working costume designers and technicians looking for primary historical and visual information for Early American productions, costume design historians, early American historians, students of costume design, and historical re-enactment costume designers, technicians, and hobbyists.
Early Modern Authorship and the Editorial Tradition: Shakespeare, Donne, Herbert, and Milton (Routledge Studies in Early Modern Authorship)
by Aleida AuldThis volume adds a new dimension to authorship studies by linking the editorial tradition to the transformative reception of early modern authors and their works across time. Aleida Auld argues that the editorial tradition provides privileged access to the reception of early modern literature, informing our understanding of certain reconfigurations and sometimes helping to produce them between their time and our own. At stake are reconfigurations of oeuvre and authorship, the relationship between the author and work, the relationship between authors, and the author’s own role in establishing an editorial tradition. Ultimately, this study recognizes that the editorial tradition is a stabilizing force while asserting that it may also be a source of strange and provocative reconceptions of early modern authors and their works in the present day. Scholars and students of early modern literature will benefit from this approach to editing as a form of reception that encompasses all the editorial decisions that are necessary to ‘put forth’ a text.
Erotic Resistance: The Struggle for the Soul of San Francisco
by Gigi Otalvaro-HormillosaErotic Resistance celebrates the erotic performance cultures that have shaped San Francisco. It preserves the memory of the city's bohemian past and its essential role in the development of American adult entertainment by highlighting the contributions of women of color, queer women, and trans women who were instrumental in the city's labor history, as well as its LGBT and sex workers' rights movements. In the 1960s, topless entertainment became legal in the city for the first time in the US, though cross-dressing continued to be criminalized. In the 1990s, stripper-artist-activists led the first successful class action lawsuits and efforts to unionize. Gigi Otálvaro-Hormillosa uses visual and performance analysis, historiography, and ethnographic research, including participant observation as both performer and spectator and interviews with legendary burlesquers and strippers, to share this remarkable story.
Ethisches Theater: Grundlagen des ethischen Managements und der strukturellen Transformation des Theaters
by Thomas SchmidtMit dem Konzept des Ethischen Theaters wird ein ganzheitliches Zukunftsmodell vorgestellt. Ausgangspunkt ist die Analyse der gegenwärtigen Krisen und der Komplexität in den deutschsprachigen Theatern, um die Grundlagen für ihren Transformationsprozess zu entwickeln. Mit dem Ethischen Theater wird ein Ziel dieses Prozesses vorgestellt: das ganzheitliches Zukunftsmodell einer Theater-Organisation des 21. Jahrhunderts, in der ethische Überlegungen erstmals in allen Prozessen handlungsleitend sind. Das Modell ist kompatibel mit den Interessen der Stakeholder und den wichtigen Reformprozessen, es ermöglicht die anstehende strukturelle Modernisierung der Theaterbetriebe. Unterstützt wird es durch das Konzept des Ethischen Theatermanagements, das erstmals über die klassischen Funktionen hinaus auch Aspekte der Diversität, der Nachhaltigkeit, der Ethik und der Zukunftsfähigkeit adressiert. Mit den erweiterten Funktionen des ethischen Managements werden auch weitere Möglichkeitsräume für die Zukunft der Kultur-Organisationen eröffnet.