David Wiles considers theatrical activity "happening" in churches, streets, pubs and galleries, as well as in buildings explicitly designed to be "theaters," in this historical account. Surveying performance space usage within the traditions of Western Europe, Wiles traces a diverse set of continuities, from Greece and Rome to the present, including many areas not included in standard accounts of theater history.
David Wiles considers theatrical activity "happening" in churches, streets, pubs and galleries, as well as in buildings explicitly designed to be "the...
This book provides a detailed analysis of the conventions and techniques of performance characteristic of the Greek theatre of Menander and the subsequent Roman theatre of Plautus and Terence. Drawing on literary and archaeological sources, and on scientific treatises, David Wiles identifies the mask as crucial to the actor's art, and shows how sophisticated the art of the mask-maker became. He also examines the other main elements which the audience learned to decode: costume, voice, movement, etc. In order to identify features that were unique to Hellenistic theatre he contrasts Greek New...
This book provides a detailed analysis of the conventions and techniques of performance characteristic of the Greek theatre of Menander and the subseq...
In this book, David Wiles introduces ancient Greek theater to students and enthusiasts interested in knowing how the plays were performed. Theater was a ceremony bound up with fundamental activities in ancient Athenian life and Wiles explores those elements that created the theater of the time. Actors rather than writers are the book's main concern and Wiles examines how the actor used the resources of story-telling, dance, mask, song and visual action to create a large-scale event that would shape the life of the citizen community.
In this book, David Wiles introduces ancient Greek theater to students and enthusiasts interested in knowing how the plays were performed. Theater was...
David Wiles explores the performance of tragedy as a spatial practice specific to Athenian culture, at once religious and political. After reviewing controversies and archaeological data regarding the fifth-century performance space, Wiles turns to the chorus and shows how dance mapped out the space for the purposes of any given play. He shows how performance as a whole was organized and, through informative diagrams and accessible analyses, brings the theater of Greek tragedy to life.
David Wiles explores the performance of tragedy as a spatial practice specific to Athenian culture, at once religious and political. After reviewing c...
This book argues that a professional Elizabethan theatre company always contained one actor known as ???the clown???. Its focus is Will Kemp, clown to the Chamberlain??'s Men from 1594 to 1599 and famed for his solo dance from London to Norwich in 1600. David Wiles combines textual, theatrical and biographical lines of research in order to map out Kemp??'s career. He shows how Shakespeare and other dramatists made use of Kemp??'s talents and wrote specific roles as vehicles for him. He discerns a perpetual and productive tension between the ambitions of a progressive writer and the...
This book argues that a professional Elizabethan theatre company always contained one actor known as ???the clown???. Its focus is Will Kemp, clown to...
Why did Greek actors in the age of Sophocles always wear masks? In this book, first published in 2007, David Wiles provided the first book-length study of this question. He surveys the evidence of vases and other monuments, arguing that they portray masks as part of a process of transformation, and that masks were never seen in the fifth century as autonomous objects. Wiles goes on to examine experiments with the mask in twentieth-century theatre, tracing a tension between the use of masks for possession and for alienation, and he identifies a preference among modern classical scholars for...
Why did Greek actors in the age of Sophocles always wear masks? In this book, first published in 2007, David Wiles provided the first book-length stud...
Robin Hood was the subject of many fifteenth and sixteenth century folk-plays, of which only traces remain. As a result, the ballads, many of which have survived, have usually been regarded as the main-spring of traditions about the famous outlaw. David Wiles however, argues that the dramatic tradition was equally, if not more, important. He sees the plays, associated with Whitsun revels, died out much earlier, and so must be reconstructed from fragmentary scripts and the tantalising glimpses afforded by sources such as churchwardens' accounts. Robin Hood emerges as an emblem both of the...
Robin Hood was the subject of many fifteenth and sixteenth century folk-plays, of which only traces remain. As a result, the ballads, many of which ha...
