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Ludics in Surrealist Theatre and Beyond (Studies in Surrealism)

by Vassiliki Rapti

Taking as its point of departure the complex question about whether Surrealist theatre exists, this book re-examines the much misunderstood artistic medium of theatre within Surrealism, especially when compared to poetry and painting. This study reconsiders Surrealist theatre specifically from the perspective of ludics-a poetics of play and games-an ideal approach to the Surrealists, whose games blur the boundaries between the 'playful' and the 'serious.' Vassiliki Rapti's aims are threefold: first, to demystify André Breton's controversial attitude toward theatre; second, to do justice to Surrealist theatre, by highlighting the unique character that derives from its inherent element of play; and finally, to trace the impact of Surrealist theatre in areas far beyond its generally acknowledged influence on the Theatre of the Absurd-an impact being felt even on the contemporary world stage. Beginning with the Surrealists' 'one-into-another' game and its illustration of Breton's ludic dramatic theory, Rapti then examines the traces of this kind of game in the works of a wide variety of Surrealist and Post-Surrealist playwrights and stage directors, from several different countries, and from the 1920s to the present: Roger Vitrac, Antonin Artaud, Günter Berghaus, Nanos Valaoritis, Robert Wilson, and Megan Terry.

Luigi Pirandello, 1867 - 1936, 3rd Edition

by Walter Starkie

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1965.

Luigi Pirandello in the Theatre

by Susan Bassnett Jennifer Lorch

First Published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Lulu the Broadway Mouse (The Broadway Mouse Series)

by Jenna Gavigan

Ratatouille meets Broadway in this charming new middle grade novel about a little mouse with big dreams. Lulu is a little girl with a very big dream: she wants to be on Broadway. She wants it more than anything in the world. As it happens, she lives in Broadway's Shubert Theatre; so achieving her dream shouldn't be too tricky, right? Wrong. Because the thing about Lulu? She's a little girl mouse.When a human girl named Jayne joins the cast of the show at the Shubert as an understudy, Lulu becomes Jayne's guide through the world of her theatre and its wonderfully kooky cast and crew. Together, Jayne and Lulu learn that sometimes dreams turn out differently than we imagined; sometimes they come with terms and conditions (aka the company mean girl, Amanda). But sometimes, just when we've given up all hope, bigger and better dreams than we'd ever thought could come true, do.

Lulu the Broadway Mouse: The Show Must Go On (The Broadway Mouse series)

by Jenna Gavigan

Lulu's show has just received its closing notice. Lulu and the rest of the company are devastated. Lulu takes readers back in time to just after she made her onstage debut and of Lulu and Jayne rising in popularity and esteem. However, there is one critic who is determined to break Lulu's career. With additional casting drama happening with Jayne, Amanda, and new girl Olivia, the news about the show closing comes as a real blow to everyone. When Benji, Lulu's brother, comes up with an idea on how to boost ticket sales, the company members hit the streets, desperate to save the show from closing. But will Lulu and Stella be able to stop the nasty critic from completely ruining Lulu's dreams and those of the rest of the cast?

Luna Park

by Donald Margulies

Drawing from his own, specific experience, Margulies has indeed created what he calls "a window to the world" at large. The bits and pieces and detritus of our culture have been used to construct a powerful drama about a new and devastating age of anxiety in the United States. July 7, 1994 ranks as an important work by a gifted and growing American playwright."--Chicago Tribune This new anthology by Donald Margulies collects his best short plays and monologues written over the past 24 years. Taken as a whole, the work is an extraordinary representation of a particularly American reality of the twentieth century. His language is exquisite and deceptive in its simplicity, wherein the larger questions of our daily existence emerge and are clarified. The volume contains three major one-act plays including July 7, 1994, the hit of the 1995 Humana Festival at the Actors Theatre of Louisville; Pitching to the Stars, a darkly comic look at the writers lot in Hollywood; and Luna Park, an elegiac look at the American past and the immigrant experience, based on a short story by Delmore Schwartz. The volume also includes fifteen other short plays and monologues.Donald Margulies is the author of numerous plays, including Dinner with Friends and Collected Stories, both being filmed for television by HBO and PBS. Mr. Margulies lives with his wife and son in New Haven, Connecticut, where he teaches playwriting at Yale University. Also available by Donald Margulies Dinner with FriendsPB $11.95 1-55936-194-8 * USA Collected StoriesPB $11.95 1-55936-152-2 * USA Sight Unseen and Other PlaysPB $16.95 1-55936-103-4 * USA

The Lure of Perfection: Fashion and Ballet, 1780-1830

by Judith Bennahum

THE LURE OF PERFECTION: FASHION AND BALLET, 1780-1830 offers a unique look at how ballet influenced contemporary fashion and women's body image, and how street fashions in turn were reflected by the costumes worn by ballet dancers. Through years of research, the author has traced the interplay between fashion, social trends, and the development of dance. During the 18th century, women literally took up twice as much space as men; their billowing dresses ballooned out from their figures, sometimes a full 55 inches, to display costly jewelry and fine brocade work; similar costumes appeared on stage. But clothing also limited her movement; it literally disabled them, making the dances themselves little more than tableaux. Movement was further inhibited by high shoes and tight corsets; thus the image of the rigidly straight, long-lined dancer is as much a product of clothing as aesthetics. However, with changing times came new trends. An increased interest in natural movement and the common folk led to less-restrictive clothing. As viewers demanded more virtuosic dancers, women literally danced their way to freedom. THE LURE OF PERFECTION will interest students of dance and cultural history, and women's studies. It is a fascinating, well-researched look at the interplay of fashion, dance, and culture-still very much a part of our world today.

Lust 'N' Rust: The Trailer Park Musical

by Frank Haney

Newly Revised! The intriguing loves and heartaches of residents at the Red Bud Mobile Estates in Twister Plaines, Illinois are revealed in an appealing story with quirky characters and fourteen original alternative country songs. Can the new manager of the AgriBig Plant find love with the soon to be divorced waitress at Smittie's Diner? Falling for the waitress who serves your patty melt... Telling your boss to go to hell... Living paycheck to paycheck, while you still can... It's Lust 'n' Rust: The Trailer Park Musical!

Lusting After Pipino's Wife

by Sam Henry Kass

This cleverly constructed comedy about the never ending war between the sexes centers around a restaurant owner and his best friend. Vinnie and Patsy like to sit around talking about women and about life in general. A favorite topic is the restaurant dishwasher's gorgeous wife. Vinnie can't understand how a nobody like Pipino can have such a wife. In fact, he doesn't understand why women won't give him the time of day, especially tough as nails Lorraine whose friend Rita dates Patsy. Patsy decides he can find success selling shoes on the street and he proposes to Rita. Their wedding is disrupted by a gun welding Lorraine who rescues Rita from the altar, leaving Vinnie and Patsy to speculate and commiserate again about the mysteries of women. Note: This play contains some wonderful monologue and scene material, much of which has been anthologized elsewhere.

Lutz

by Ryan Griffith

Thinking to find peace from his troubles, Christian realizes his brother still resents him for leaving with their mother years ago, and he struggles to fight those haunting memories. But the past has ways of coming back, and soon Christian finds himself struggling to separate memory from reality. As two interlaced stories become one, the courtship and marriage of Joe and Marty Miller and the reunion of their two sons, the haunting reality of childhood and loss strikes with a vengeance.

Lycurgan Athens and the Making of Classical Tragedy

by Johanna Hanink

Through a series of interdisciplinary studies this book argues that the Athenians themselves invented the notion of 'classical' tragedy just a few generations after the city's defeat in the Peloponnesian War. In the third quarter of the fourth century BC, and specifically during the 'Lycurgan Era' (338-322 BC), a number of measures were taken in Athens to affirm to the Greek world that the achievement of tragedy was owed to the unique character of the city. By means of rhetoric, architecture, inscriptions, statues, archives and even legislation, the 'classical' tragedians (Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides) and their plays came to be presented as both the products and vital embodiments of an idealised Athenian past. This study marks the first account of Athens' invention of its own theatrical heritage and sheds new light upon the interaction between the city's literary and political history.

Lydia

by Octavio Solis

Drama / 4m, 3f Set in the 1970s on the Texas border separating the United States and Mexico, Lydia is an intense, lyrical, and magical new play. The Flores family welcomes Lydia, an undocumented maid, into their El Paso home to care for their daughter Ceci, who was tragically disabled in a car accident on the eve of her quincea era, her fifteenth birthday. Lydia's immediate and seemingly miraculous bond with the girl sets the entire family on a mysterious and shocking journey of discovery.

Lydia Thompson: Queen of Burlesque (Forgotten Stars of the Musical Theatre)

by Kurt Ganzl

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Lydie Breeze

by John Guare

An extensive reworking of two earlier (1981) plays by John Guare about a nineteenth-century commune in Nantucket, Lydie Breeze is a two-play, six-hour cycle about four seekers who come to the island to create a special model for a better world in the ashes of the Civil War and end up as a model for the corruption of twentieth-century idealism. The result is an almost surreal saga of American life, with allegorical meditations on the contradictions and interconnectedness of all things and the chaotic nature of the universe.

Lying in the Middle: Musical Theater and Belief at the Heart of America (Music in American Life)

by Jake Johnson

The local and regional shows staged throughout America use musical theater’s inherent power of deception to cultivate worldviews opposed to mainstream ideas. Jake Johnson reveals how musical theater between the coasts inhabits the middle spaces between professional and amateur, urban and rural, fact and fiction, fantasy and reality, and truth and falsehood. The homegrown musical provides a space to engage belief and religion—imagining a better world while creating opportunities to expand what is possible in the current one. Whether it is the Oklahoma Senior Follies or a Mormon splinter group’s production of The Sound of Music, such productions give people a chance to jolt themselves out of today’s post-truth malaise and move toward a world more in line with their desires for justice, reconciliation, and community. Vibrant and strikingly original, Lying in the Middle discovers some of the most potent musical theater taking place in the hoping, beating hearts of Americans.

The Lyons

by Nicky Silver

"Comedy nirvana . . . satisfyingly mean and funny."-New York Post"Without sacrificing his mordant wit or bleak worldview, this distinctive dramatist shows a new maturity and empathy in."?The New York Times"Nicky Silver's terrific play is filled with moments when you can't stop laughing even though the circumstances indicate you really shouldn't. . . . A wonderful little riff on family dysfunction."?Associated Press"Silver finds plenty of fresh bite, and the sheer savagery of his observation here is breathtaking. Watching it brings the dueling sensations of wicked mirth and squirming discomfort at being trapped in the hell of someone else's family horrors. That these are exaggerations of our own is what gives the play its teeth."-The Hollywood ReporterThis vicious, hilarious black comedy opened on Broadway in April 2012 to rave reviews.Nicky Silver, that "strange progeny of a coupling between Mr. Neil Simon and Edward Albee" (The New York Times), has cornered the market on deliciously savage dysfunctional family comedies. Following an acclaimed run Off-Broadway, this intimate and frightening examination of how we cope with loneliness and disappointment currently delights audiences on Broadway.Rita Lyons is the matriarch of a family facing a major crossroads. Her husband, Ben, is dying and her grown children are struggling. As the family gathers in Ben's hospital room, they discover that they're as terrified of being together as they are of being alone.

Lyric Incarnate: The dramas of Aleksandr Blok

by Timothy Westphalen

Lyric Incarnate examines the plays of Aleksandr Blok, the pre-eminent poet of Russian Symbolism and one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. Blok's plays have received less attention than his poetry in the West, and this book is the first and only English-language monograph devoted to Blok the playwright. In chronological succession, each of Blok's major plays is examined in detail. Special attention is accorded to Blok's relations with the major directors of his time, particularly Meyerhold and Stanislavsky. Blok's role, for instance, in Meyerhold's formulation of the theatre of the grotesque proved to be critical, and his relation to the Moscow Art Theatre just before the October Revolution helped to define the future course of that theatre. Blok's innovative dramatic technique is carefully studied at each stage in his career, from his earliest "lyric dramas" , such as A Puppet Show and The Stranger, to his great tragedy The Rose and the Cross.

Lysistrata

by Aristophanes

Aristophanes' play, Lysistrata, takes place toward the end of the Peloponnesian War and centers on the lives of the soldiers' wives. One woman, Lysistrata, under the impression that a man's libido is ultimately his driving force in life, comes up with an interesting peace solution: to deny their husbands sexual relations until they can settle on a peace agreement that will end the war. However, Lysistrata's strategy effectively creates even more war than before as the sexes begin to feud with each other. Aristophanes' play is both comic and poignant as it reveals the relationship between men and women in classical Athens society.

Lysistrata

by Aristophanes

First presented in 411 B.C., this ancient comedy concerns the efforts of Lysistrata, an Athenian woman, to persuade other woman to join together in a strike against the men of Greece, denying them sex until they've agreed to put down their arms and end the disastrous wars between Athens and Sparta.When the strike begins, and the men respond, the comedic battle of the sexes that ensues makes this spirited play one of the most enjoyable of the classics. In it, Aristophanes employs a mixture of shrewd logic and raffish humor that fully exploits the rich comic potential of the story and its underlying antiwar sentiment. Always a favorite of audiences, Lysistrata, because of its pointed feminist sympathies, is studied and performed today more than ever.

Lysistrata: A New Verse Translation

by Aristophanes

Aristophanes, a native Athenian and the leading exponent of Greek comedy, was born c. 450 BCE. Today forty-three of his plays are known by title; eleven survive. The most famous of these is the whimsical fantasy Lysistrata. A perennial classroom and stage favorite as well as the basis of Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq, the play is as relevant today as it was 2,500 years ago. The premise is simplicity itself: to end the Peloponnesian War, women decide to withhold sex from their husbands until the fighting stops. The play is by turns raucous, bawdy, frantic, and funny. David Mulroy’s exciting new translation retains the original’s verse format, racy jokes, and vibrancy—setting it apart from previous efforts, which are typically reproduced as prose or depart from meaning and meter. His introduction offers a concise summary of Aristophanes’ life and social milieu, including a brief overview of the Peloponnesian War, which took place during the playwright’s lifetime. The appendices include guides on translating meter and Greek pronunciation for aspiring thespians.

Lysistrata: Clouds, Birds, Lysistrata, Women Of The Assembly (The Norton Library #0)

by Aristophanes

About Aaron Poochigian’s translation “Aristophanes was a funny, often obscene social commentator, and he was also a brilliantly fluent, wide-ranging poet, whose lyric rhythms were recited and sung to music, with dancing. It’s very rare for modern translators to convey his poetic virtuosity or make any attempt to bring his meters to life. But Aaron Poochigan has achieved this feat, crafting polymetric translations that convey the whole range of Aristophanes’ larger-than-life characters and provocative, alternative reality scenarios. This new translation is zany, sharp, inventive, vivacious, and surprisingly relevant for our times.” (Emily Wilson, translator of Homer’s Odyssey)

Lysistrata

by Aristophanes Jeffrey Henderson

This English translation of Aristophanes' most popular comedy will appeal to the modern reader because of its lively and imaginative plot, memorable heroine, good jokes, and appeal for peace and tolerance between nations and between the sexes. This edition includes background material on the historical and cultural context of this work, suggestions for further reading, notes, and a map. The Focus Classical Library provides close translations with notes and essays to provide access to understanding Greek culture and the roots of contemporary thought.

Lysistrata

by Aristophanes Sarah Ruden

This rollicking new translation of Aristophanes' comic masterpiece is rendered in blank verse for dialogue and in lyric meters and free verse for the songs. Appended commentary essays--on Athenian democracy, ancient Greek warfare, Athenian women, and Greek Comedy--offer lively and informative discussions not only of Aristophanes, but of the broader fifth-century social, political, and cultural context as well.

Lysistrata and Other Plays: The Acharnians, The Clouds, Lysistrata

by Aristophanes

The Acharnians/The Clouds/Lysistrata'We women have the salvation of Greece in our hands'Writing at a time of political and social crisis in Athens, the ancient Greek comic playwright Aristophanes was an eloquent, yet bawdy, challenger to the demagogue and the sophist. In Lysistrata and The Acharnians, two pleas for an end to the long war between Athens and Sparta, a band of women on a sex strike and a lone peasant respectively defeat the political establishment. The darker comedy of The Clouds satirizes Athenian philosophers, Socrates in particular, and reflects the uncertainties of a generation in which all traditional religious and ethical beliefs were being challenged. Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Alan H. Sommerstein

Lysistrata and Other Plays

by Aristophanes Alan H. Sommerstein

Three plays by the comedian of Ancient Greece Writing at the time of political and social crisis in Athens, Aristophanes was an eloquent yet bawdy challenger to the demagogue and the sophist. The Achanians is a plea for peace set against the background of the long war with Sparta. In Lysistrata a band of women tap into the awesome power of sex in order to end a war. The darker comedy of The Clouds satirizes Athenian philosophers, Socrates in particular, and reflects the uncertainties of a generation in which all traditional religious and ethical beliefs were being challenged. <P><P> For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

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Showing 4,551 through 4,575 of 9,423 results