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The Piano Lesson
by August WilsonAugust Wilson has already given the American theater such spell-binding plays about the black experience in 20th-century America as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Fences. In his second Pulitzer Prize-winner, The Piano Lesson, Wilson has fashioned perhaps his most haunting and dramatic work. <p><p> At the heart of the play stands the ornately carved upright piano which, as the Charles family's prized, hard-won possession, has been gathering dust in the parlor of Berniece Charles's Pittsburgh home. When Boy Willie, Berniece's exuberant brother, bursts into her life with his dream of buying the same Mississippi land that his family had worked as slaves, he plans to sell their antique piano for the hard cash he needs to stake his future. But Berniece refuses to sell, clinging to the piano as a reminder of the history that is their family legacy. This dilemma is the real "piano lesson," reminding us that blacks are often deprived both of the symbols of their past and of opportunity in the present.
The Piano Lesson (Drama, Plume Ser.)
by August WilsonWinner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and winner of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, this modern American classic is about family, and the legacy of slavery in America. August Wilson has already given the American theater such spell-binding plays about the black experience in 20th-century America as Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Fences. In his second Pulitzer Prize-winner, The Piano Lesson, Wilson has fashioned perhaps his most haunting and dramatic work. At the heart of the play stands the ornately carved upright piano which, as the Charles family's prized, hard-won possession, has been gathering dust in the parlor of Berniece Charles's Pittsburgh home. When Boy Willie, Berniece's exuberant brother, bursts into her life with his dream of buying the same Mississippi land that his family had worked as slaves, he plans to sell their antique piano for the hard cash he needs to stake his future. But Berniece refuses to sell, clinging to the piano as a reminder of the history that is their family legacy. This dilemma is the real "piano lesson," reminding us that blacks are often deprived both of the symbols of their past and of opportunity in the present.
Radio Golf
by August WilsonA real-estate developer sets about trying to redevelop the 'blighted' Hill District of Pittsburgh in the final part of August Wilson's Century Cycle, his epic dramatisation of the African American experience in the twentieth century. Ivy League-educated Harmond Wilks has a plan to redevelop Pittsburgh's Hill District and hopes to become the town's first black mayor. But an old mansion slated for demolition, 1839 Wylie Avenue, turns out to have a significant past. 'I would encourage people to rave in the nonlinearity of his well-made plots, to big up his quirky architecture, to honor guard the house at 1839 Wylie so that it will always remain standing' Suzan-Lori Parks, from her Foreword.
Seven Guitars
by August WilsonFull Length, Tragic comedy Characters: 4 male, 3 female Exterior Set The sixth in the author's decade by decade exploration of the black experience in America, two of which have won Pulitzer Prizes, Seven Guitars is part bawdy comedy, part dark elegy and part mystery. In the backyard of a Pittsburgh tenement in 1948, friends gather to mourn for a blues guitarist and singer who died just as his career was on the verge of taking off. The action that follows is a flashback to the busy week leading up to Floyd's sudden and unnatural death. "Displays a narrative sweep and almost biblical richness of language and character. . . . Mr. Wilson writes so vividly that the play seems to have the narrative scope and depth of a novel. "-The New York Times. "Impressive . . . with wild, untamed elements of symbolic fantasy, and the language . . . is used with the specific riff like fluency and emotional impact of jazz. "-New York Post. Winner of the N. Y. Drama Critics Award for Best Play.
Two Trains Running: 1969 (Drama, Plume Ser.)
by August WilsonFrom the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Fences and The Piano Lesson comes a “vivid and uplifting” (Time) play about unsung men and women who are anything but ordinary. August Wilson established himself as one of our most distinguished playwrights with his insightful, probing, and evocative portraits of Black America and the African American experience in the twentieth century. With the mesmerizing Two Trains Running, he crafted what Time magazine called “his most mature work to date.” It is Pittsburgh, 1969, and the regulars of Memphis Lee’s restaurant are struggling to cope with the turbulence of a world that is changing rapidly around them and fighting back when they can. The diner is scheduled to be torn down, a casualty of the city’s renovation project that is sweeping away the buildings of a community, but not its spirit. For just as sure as an inexorable future looms right around the corner, these people of “loud voices and big hearts” continue to search, to father, to persevere, to hope. With compassion, humor, and a superb sense of place and time, Wilson paints a vivid portrait of everyday lives in the shadow of great events.
Fences
by August Wilson Lloyd RichardsThe 1987 Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama From August Wilson, author of The Piano Lesson and the 1984-85 Broadway season's best play, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, is another powerful, stunning dramatic work that has won him numerous critical acclaim including the 1987 Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize. The protagonist of Fences (part of Wilson's ten-part "Pittsburgh Cycle" plays), Troy Maxson, is a strong man, a hard man. He has had to be to survive Troy Maxson has gone through life in an America where to be proud and black is to face pressures that could crush a man, body and soul. But the1950s are yielding to the new spirit of liberation in the 1960s. . . a spirit that is changing the world Troy Maxson has learned to deal with the only way he can. . . a spirit that is making him a stranger, angry and afraid, in a world he never knew and to a wife and son he understands less and less. . .
Jitney: A Play - Broadway Tie-In Edition
by August Wilson Ruben Santiago-HudsonRereleased in time for its first Broadway run, Jitney is the seventh in Wilson’s 10-play cycle on the black experience in 20th century America Only one of the plays in two-time Pulitzer Prize winner August Wilson’s masterful The American Century Cycle has never been seen on Broadway—until now. In his preface to this Broadway edition of Jitney, director Ruben Santiago-Hudson writes: “There had been nine jewels placed in August Wilson’s formidable crown, each had changed the landscape of Broadway in their respective seasons. Until now, only one gem was missing. With this production of Jitney at the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Samuel J. Friedman Theatre the final gem is in place.” Set in the 1970s, this richly textured piece follows a group of men trying to eke out a living by driving unlicensed cabs, or jitneys. When the city threatens to board up the business and the boss’s son returns from prison, tempers flare, potent secrets are revealed and the fragile threads binding these people together may come undone at last. In addition to the essential and insightful preface by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, this edition boasts production stills from the Manhattan Theatre Club’s Broadway production, directed by Santiago-Hudson and featuring Harvy Blanks, Anthony Chisholm, Brandon J. Dirden, André Holland, Carra Patterson, Michael Potts, Keith Randolph Smith, Ray Anthony Thomas, and John Douglas Thompson.
Making Publics in Early Modern Europe: People, Things, Forms of Knowledge (Routledge Studies in Renaissance Literature and Culture)
by Bronwen Wilson Paul YachninThe book looks at how people, things, and new forms of knowledge created "publics" in early modern Europe, and how publics changed the shape of early modern society. The focus is on what the authors call "making publics" — the active creation of new forms of association that allowed people to connect with others in ways not rooted in family, rank or vocation, but rather founded in voluntary groupings built on the shared interests, tastes, commitments, and desires of individuals. By creating new forms of association, cultural producers and consumers challenged dominant ideas about just who could be a public person, greatly expanded the resources of public life for ordinary people in their own time, and developed ideas and practices that have helped create the political culture of modernity. Coming from a number of disciplines including literary and cultural studies, art history, history of religion, history of science, and musicology, the contributors develop analyses of a range of cases of early modern public-making that together demonstrate the rich inventiveness and formative social power of artistic and intellectual publication in this period.
Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment
by Colin WilsonThe author devotes much thought to Shaw's formative years, 20-30, and how his novels built up the Shaw persona, and how his success changed him.
The Theater Experience (10th Edition)
by Edwin WilsonThe ideal theater appreciation text for courses focusing on theater elements, The Theater Experience encourages students to be active theater-goers as they learn about the fundamentals of a production. By addressing the importance of the audience, Wilson brings the art of performance to life for students who may have little experience with the medium.
The Theatre Experience Thirteenth Edition
by Edwin WilsonThe thirteenth edition of The Theatre Experience is students' ticket to the best seat in the house. From Broadway to makeshift theater spaces around the world, the author demonstrates the active and lively role they play as audience members by engaging them in the collaborative and creative processes behind and in front of the curtain. Wilson introduces students to the roles of the performers, directors, producers and designers, while emphasizing the insights they as audience members bring to any production. The thirteenth edition better accommodates today's teaching schedules, as well as improves accessibility for students by concise insight and up-to-date vibrant production visuals. Students join the creative process with The Theatre Experience, and rehearse for their role as life-long audience members.
The Theatre Experience, Thirteenth Edition
by Edwin WilsonThe Theatre Experience prepares students to be well-informed, well-prepared theatre audience members. With an audience-centered narrative that engages today's students, a vivid photo program that brings concepts to life, and features that teach and encourage a variety of skill sets students master core concepts and learn to think critically about theatre and the world around them.
Living Theatre: A History of Theatre
by Edwin Wilson Alvin GoldfarbFocused on the cultural relevance of theatre. Written in an engaging style. Designed to be accessible to undergraduates. Living Theatre is the most popular text for theatre history courses. The Seventh Edition builds on these strengths with “Past and Present”―a NEW feature that focuses on connections between theatre’s long history and the practice of theatre today―and with a brilliant NEW design that highlights the beauty and excitement of the art of theatre.
Theatre: The Lively Art
by Edwin Wilson Alvin GoldfarbIn its ninth edition, Theatre: The Lively Art remains the best-selling program for Theatre Appreciation courses. With its hallmark focus on preparing future audience members, students will learn how theatre functions, how it should be viewed and judged, and the tradition behind any performance they may attend.
Theatre: The Lively Art
by Edwin Wilson Alvin GoldfarbTheatre: The Lively Art remains the best-selling program for Theatre Appreciation courses. With its hallmark focus on preparing future audience members, students will learn how theatre functions, how it should be viewed and judged, and the transition behind any performance they may attend.
Theatre: The Lively Art (8th Edition)
by Edwin Wilson Alvin GoldfarbTheatre: The Lively Art will provide the background to theatre and it will encourage and inspire students to become lifelong audience members, if not actual theatre artists.
The Theatre Experience
by Edwin Wilson Alvin GoldfarbThe Theatre Experience, 15e prepares students to be well-informed, well-prepared theatre audience members. With an audience-centered narrative that engages today’s students, a vivid photo program that brings concepts to life, and features that teach and encourage a variety of skill sets, students master core concepts and learn to think critically about theatre and the world around them. As a result, students are better prepared for class and better prepared for theatregoing. The textbook is noted for its lively writing style and for helping students recognize how theatre relates to our everyday lives.
Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Performance, Race, and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance
by James WilsonBulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies shines the spotlight on historically neglected plays and performances that challenged early twentieth-century notions of the stratification of race, gender, class, and sexual orientation. On Broadway stages, in Harlem nightclubs and dance halls, and within private homes sponsoring rent parties, African American performers of the 1920s and early 1930s teased the limits of white middle-class morality. Blues-singing lesbians, popularly known as "bulldaggers," performed bawdy songs; cross-dressing men vied for the top prizes in lavish drag balls; and black and white women flaunted their sexuality in scandalous melodramas and musical revues. Race leaders, preachers, and theater critics spoke out against these performances that threatened to undermine social and political progress, but to no avail: mainstream audiences could not get enough of the riotous entertainment.<P> Many of the plays and performances explored here, central to the cultural debates of their time, had been previously overlooked by theater historians. Among the performances discussed are David Belasco's controversial production of Edward Sheldon and Charles MacArthur's Lulu Belle (1926), with its raucous, libidinous view of Harlem. The title character, as performed by a white woman in blackface, became a symbol of defiance for the gay subculture and was simultaneously held up as a symbol of supposedly immoral black women. African Americans Florence Mills and Ethel Waters, two of the most famous performers of the 1920s, countered the Lulu Belle stereotype in written statements and through parody, thereby reflecting the powerful effect this fictional character had on the popular imagination.<P> Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies is based on historical archival research including readings of eyewitness accounts, newspaper reports, songs, and playscripts. Employing a cultural studies framework that incorporates queer and critical race theory, it argues against the widely held belief that the stereotypical forms of black, lesbian, and gay show business of the 1920s prohibited the emergence of distinctive new voices. Specialists in American studies, performance studies, African American studies, and gay and lesbian studies will find the book appealing, as will general readers interested in the vivid personalities and performances of the singers and actors introduced in the book.
Failure, Fascism, and Teachers in American Theatre: Pedagogy of the Oppressors (Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History)
by James F. WilsonThis timely and accessible book explores the shifting representations of schoolteachers and professors in plays and performances primarily from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in the United States. Examining various historical and recurring types, such as spinsters, schoolmarms, presumed sexual deviants, radicals and communists, fascists, and emasculated men teachers, Wilson shines the spotlight on both well-known and nearly-forgotten plays. The analysis draws on a range of scholars from cultural and gender studies, queer theory, and critical race discourses to consider teacher characters within notable education movements and periods of political upheaval. Richly illustrated, the book will appeal to theatre scholars and general readers as it delves into plays and performances that reflect cultural fears, desires, and fetishistic fantasies associated with educators. In the process, the scrutiny on the array of characters may help illuminate current attacks on real-life teachers while providing meaningful opportunities for intervention in the ongoing education wars.
Richard III's Bodies from Medieval England to Modernity: Shakespeare and Disability History
by Jeffrey R. WilsonRichard III will always be central to English disability history as both man and myth—a disabled medieval king made into a monster by his nation’s most important artist. In Richard III’s Bodies from Medieval England to Modernity, Jeffrey Wilson tracks disability over 500 years, from Richard’s own manuscripts, early Tudor propaganda, and x-rays of sixteenth-century paintings through Shakespeare’s soliloquies, into Samuel Johnson’s editorial notes, the first play produced by an African American Theater company, Freudian psychoanalysis, and the rise of disability theater. For Wilson, the changing meanings of disability created through shifting perspectives in Shakespeare’s plays prefigure a series of modern attempts to understand Richard’s body in different disciplinary contexts—from history and philosophy to sociology and medicine. While theorizing a role for Shakespeare in the field of disability history, Wilson reveals how Richard III has become an index for some of modernity’s central concerns—the tension between appearance and reality, the conflict between individual will and external forces of nature and culture, the possibility of upward social mobility, and social interaction between self and other, including questions of discrimination, prejudice, hatred, oppression, power, and justice.
Shakespeare and Trump
by Jeffrey R. WilsonShould we draw an analogy between Shakespeare’s tyrants—Richard III, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and King Lear—and Donald Trump? In Shakespeare and Trump, Jeffrey Wilson applies literary criticism to real life, examining plot, character, villainy, soliloquy, tragedy, myth, and metaphor to identify the formal features of the Trump phenomenon, and its hidden causes, structure, and meanings. Wilsonapproaches his comparison prismatically. He first considers two high-concept (read: far-fetched) Shakespeare adaptations penned by Trump’s former chief political strategist Steve Bannon. He looks at University of Pennsylvania students protesting Trump by taking down a monument to Shakespeare. He reads Trump’s first 100 days in office against Netflix’s House of Cards. Wilson also addresses the summer 2017 Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar wherein an assassination of a Trump-ian leader caused corporations to withdraw sponsorship. These stories reveal a surprising—and bizarre—relationship between the provincial English playwright and the billionaire President of the United States, ostensibly a medieval king living in a modern world. The comparison reveals a politics that blends villainy and comedy en route to tragedy.
Shakespeare’s Sugared Sonnets (Routledge Library Editions: Study of Shakespeare)
by Katharine M. WilsonIn the course of some research into the musical element in English poetry, Dr Wilson read the work of the Elizabethan sonneteers chronologically and was struck by a suspicion that Shakespeare’s sonnets were parodies. Later she carried out a more thorough investigation, and this book, originally published in 1974, is the product: her early impressions had been justified beyond all expectation. Her investigation involved examining the background of each of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and this in itself is a contribution to scholarship. A surprising number of them are shown to be direct parodies of particular sonnets; all of them guy the sonnet convention, and the more difficult ones are easily explained by this hypothesis. Fresh correspondences between Shakespeare and his predecessors have come to light and his relationship with them is seen to be mocking. This is demonstrated in his borrowings from Ovid also, while the opening seventeen sonnets gain point as parody of Erasmus on marriage. The book opens with a short note on the origin of the sonnet in song, chivalric love and Plato. The sonnet theme in Shakespeare’s early comedies is treated freshly and the author throws light on the plays from a new angle. In the final chapter, among other themes, the implication of dating is considered, and here too some new material is discussed. However, Dr Wilson is aiming at a wider readership than that of scholars alone. She has a view of Shakespeare as a young man catering for "young-man laughter", as she puts it, and she never loses sight of this aspect in her study. Although the academic basis is there, the presentation is not academic. Her aim is clearly to share the joke with her readers.
Crown Of Life - Wilson Knight: Essays In Interpretation Of Shakespeare's Final Plays (University Paperbacks Ser.)
by G. Wilson KnightFirst published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Shakespearian Production V 6: With Especial Reference To The Tragedies
by G. Wilson KnightThis part of the G. Wilson Knight collected works, Volume VI looks at his view on Shakespearian production with special reference to the Tragedies.
Sweet Bird of Youth
by Landford Wilson Tennessee WilliamsNow with an insightful new introduction, the author's original Foreword, and the one-act play, The Enemy: Time, on which Sweet Bird of Youth was based. Tennessee Williams knew how to tell a good tale, and this steamy, wrenching play about a faded movie star, Alexandra Del Lago, and about the lost innocence and corruption of Chance Wayne, reveals the dark side of the American dreams of youth and fame. Distinguished American playwright Lanford Wilson has written an insightful Introduction for this edition. Also included are Williams' original Foreword to the play; the one-act play The Enemy: Time--the germ for the full-length version, published here for the first time; an essay by Tennessee Williams scholar, Colby H. Kullman; and a chronology of the author's life.