In 2005 literary and film critic Edward Turk immersed himself in New York City s ACT FRENCH festival, a bold effort to enhance American contact with the contemporary French stage. This dizzying crash course on numerous aspects of current French theatre paved the way for six months of theatregoing in Paris and a month s sojourn at the 2006 Avignon Festival. In "French Theatre Today" he turns his yearlong involvement with this rich topic into an accessible, intelligent, and comprehensive overview of contemporary French theatre. Situating many of the nearly 150 stage pieces he attended within...
In 2005 literary and film critic Edward Turk immersed himself in New York City s ACT FRENCH festival, a bold effort to enhance American contact wit...
The Theatrical Event discusses the objectives of theatre studies by focusing on the communicative encounter between performer and spectator -- the theatrical event. A theatrical event includes the presentation of a performance and the attention of an audience; in this sense, every performance -- on stage or in the street, historical or contemporary -- that is watched by an audience is a theatrical event. The concept underlines the "eventness" of all encounters between performers and spectators.
In the first part of the book, Willmar Sauter presents various models for the analysis of...
The Theatrical Event discusses the objectives of theatre studies by focusing on the communicative encounter between performer and spectator -- the the...
Throughout the nineteenth century, people heard more music in the theatreaccompanying popular dramas such as "Frankenstein," "Oliver Twist," "Uncle Tom s Cabin," "Lady Audley s Secret," "The Corsican Brothers," "The Three Musketeers," as well as historical romances by Shakespeare and Schillerthan they did in almost any other area of their lives. But unlike film music, theatrical music has received very little attention from scholars and so it has been largely lost to us. In this groundbreaking study, Michael V. Pisani goes in search of these abandoned sounds. Mining old manuscripts and...
Throughout the nineteenth century, people heard more music in the theatreaccompanying popular dramas such as "Frankenstein," "Oliver Twist," "Uncle To...
In early twentieth-century U.S. culture, sex sold. While known mainly for its social reforms, the Progressive Era was also obsessed with prostitution, sexuality, and the staging of women s changing roles in the modern era. By the 1910s, plays about prostitution (or brothel dramas ) had inundated Broadway, where they sometimes became long-running hits and other times sparked fiery obscenity debates. In "Sex for Sale," Katie N. Johnson recovers six of these plays, presenting them with astute cultural analysis, photographs, and production histories. The result is a new history of U.S. theatre...
In early twentieth-century U.S. culture, sex sold. While known mainly for its social reforms, the Progressive Era was also obsessed with prostitution,...
The story of America s earliest extant play begins with a petty crimea crime that would have passed largely unnoticed had it not been for one fact: it prompted a beleaguered royal governor of one of Britain s colonies to lash out at his enemies by writing a biting satire. Androboros, A Bographical sic] Farce in Three Acts (1715), is universally acknowledged as the first play both written and printed in America. Its significance stems not simply from its publication but from its eventual impact. The play inadvertently laid the foundation for one of the defining rights of the...
The story of America s earliest extant play begins with a petty crimea crime that would have passed largely unnoticed had it not been for one fact: it...
Whereas previous studies of poverty and early modern theatre have concentrated on England and the criminal rogue, "Poverty and Charity in Early Modern Theatre and Performance "takes a transnational approach, which reveals a greater range of attitudes and charitable practices regarding the poor than state poor laws and rogue books suggest. Close study of German and Latin beggar catalogues, popular songs performed in Italian piazzas, the Paduan actor-playwright Ruzante, the commedia dell arte in both Italy and France, and Shakespeare demonstrate how early modern theatre and performance could...
Whereas previous studies of poverty and early modern theatre have concentrated on England and the criminal rogue, "Poverty and Charity in Early Modern...
From 1918's Tickless Time through Waiting for Lefty, Death of a Salesman, A Streetcar Named Desire, A Raisin in the Sun, and The Prisoner of Second Avenue to 2005's The Clean House, domestic labor has figured largely on American stages. No dramatic genre has done more than the one often dismissively dubbed "kitchen sink realism" to both support and contest the idea that the home is naturally women's sphere. But there is more to the genre than even its supporters suggest. In analyzing kitchen sink realisms, Dorothy Chansky reveals the ways...
From 1918's Tickless Time through Waiting for Lefty, Death of a Salesman, A Streetcar Named Desire, A Raisin in the Sun...
What does it mean to perform whiteness in the postcolonial era? To answer this question crucial for understanding the changing meanings of race in the twenty-first century Megan Lewis examines the ways that members of South Africa s Afrikaner minority have performed themselves into, around, and out of power from the colonial period to the postcolony. The nation s first European settlers and in the twentieth century the architects of apartheid, since 1994 Afrikaners have been citizens of a multicultural, multilingual democracy. How have they enacted their whiteness in the past, and how...
What does it mean to perform whiteness in the postcolonial era? To answer this question crucial for understanding the changing meanings of race...
Traveler, There Is No Road offers a compelling and complex vision of the decolonial imagination in the United States from 1931 to 1943 and beyond. By examining the ways in which the war of interpretation that accompanied the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) circulated through Spanish and English language theatre and performance in the United States, Lisa Jackson-Schebetta demonstrates that these works offered alternative histories that challenged the racial, gender, and national orthodoxies of modernity and coloniality. Jackson-Schebetta shows how performance in the US used histories of...
Traveler, There Is No Road offers a compelling and complex vision of the decolonial imagination in the United States from 1931 to 1943 and beyo...
If one went looking for the tipping point in the prelude to the American Revolution, it would not be the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor, or the blockade of Boston by British warships, or even the gathering of the first Continental Congress; rather, it was the Congress's decision in late October of 1774 to close the theatres. In this remarkable feat of historical research, Odai Johnson pieces together the surviving fragments of the story of the first professional theatre troupe based in the British North American colonies. In doing so, he tells the story of how colonial elites came to...
If one went looking for the tipping point in the prelude to the American Revolution, it would not be the destruction of the tea in Boston Harbor, or t...