Kategoria BISAC: Performing Arts >> Theater - History & Criticism

..". a ground-breaking contribution to the field of African literature... " -Research in African Literatures

"Anyone with the slightest interest in West African cultures, performance or theatre should immediately rush out and buy this book." -Leeds African Studies Bulletin

"A seminal contribution to the fields of performance studies, cultural studies, and popular culture. " -Margaret Drewal

"A fine book. The play texts are treasures." -Richard Bauman

African popular culture is an arena where the tensions and transformations of colonial and post-colonial society are...

"The book highlights the many possibilities of the innovative work of these dramatists, and this will, it is to be hoped, help the editors to achieve one of their other key goals: productions of the plays in English." --Times Literary Supplement

"This thoughtfully crafted book with its insightful and informative studies elucidates an overlooked, essential component of the Latin American literary canon." --Choice

Contributors discuss 15 works of Latin-American playwrights, delineate the artistic lives of women dramatists of the last half of the twentieth century--from countries...

..".engaging, richly illustrated, and well-reserached.... Part anthology, cultural studies, history, journalism and political science, it... manages to consistently engage the reader..." - African Studies Review

"Lindfors's book shows how the 'edutainment' of the 19th century perpetuated an ignorance of Africa that makes it easy for whites to stay racist and difficult for blacks to gain an accurate and dignified understanding of their heritage.... an unusually strong, readable collection." Boston Book Review

Ethnological show business that is, the displaying of foreign peoples...

This book traces a significant shift in 20th century Irish theatre from the largely national plays produced in Dublin to a more expansive international art form. Confirmed by the recent success outside of Ireland of the "third wave" of Irish playwrights writing in the 1990s, the new Irish drama has encouraged critics to reconsider both the early national theatre and the dramatic tradition it fostered.

On the occasion of the centenary of the first professional production of the Irish Literary Theatre, the contributors to this volume investigate contemporary Irish drama s aesthetic...

..". succeeds in conveying the exciting and fascinating character of the concert party genre, as well as showing clearly how this material can be used to rethink a number of contemporary theoretical themes and issues." --Karin Barber

Under colonial rule, the first concert party practitioners brought their comic variety shows to audiences throughout what was then the British Gold Coast colony. As social and political circumstances shifted through the colonial period and early years of Ghanaian independence, concert party actors demonstrated a remarkable responsiveness to changing...

In France, both political culture and theatrical performances have drawn upon melodrama. This "melodramatic thread" helped weave the country's political life as it moved from monarchy to democracy. By examining the relationship between public ceremonies and theatrical performance, James R. Lehning sheds light on democratization in modern France. He explores the extent to which the dramatic forms were present in the public performance of political power. By concentrating on the Republic and the Revolution and on theatrical performance, Lehning affirms the importance of examining the...

In Performance and Politics in Tanzania, Laura Edmondson examines how politics, social values, and gender are expressed on stage. Now a disappearing tradition, Tanzanian popular theatre integrates comic sketches, acrobatics, melodrama, song, and dance to produce lively commentaries on what it means to be Tanzanian. These dynamic shows invite improvisation and spontaneous and raucous audience participation as they explore popular sentiments. Edmondson asserts that these performances overturn the boundary between official and popular art and offer a new way of thinking about African popular...

First staged in 1892, the South Indian play Girls for Sale (Kanyasulkam) is considered the greatest modern work of Telugu literature and the first major drama written in an Indian language that critiqued British colonialism's effects on Indian society. Filled with humor, biting social commentary, parody, and masquerade, the plot revolves around a clever courtesan, a young widow, and a very old man who wants to buy as his wife a very young girl. Velcheru Narayana Rao has prepared the first idiomatic English translation, with notes and a critical essay. Itself a masterpiece of Indian...

"The book... succeeds at refining elements in the problem that semiotics and theater represent to and for one another." --Choice

"The Semiotics of Performance surprisingly retains its revelatory freshness, and actually opens up areas of reseach that could very well supply new incentives for further probing into what semiotics can offer to the study of theatre." --Theatre Survey

..". a thoughtful and important treatment of the international tensions of the period as they were embodied in theatre practice. It is the only book of its kind on the subject, and a valuable source of production information." --Theatre Journal

..". an excellent discussion of the aesthetics of theater." --Choice

The escalation of the war in Vietnam in the mid-1960s unleashed worldwide protest. Playwrights grappled with the complexities of post-imperialist politics and with the problems of creating effective political theatre in the television age. The ephemeral theatre these...

Empty Figure on an Empty Stage
The Theatre of Samuel Beckett and His Generation

Les Essif

An original and exciting approach to the theatre of the absurd.

This study considers the ways playwrights draw meaning from emptiness. With reference to actual performances of dramatic works, Les Essif examines drama associated with nonrealistic movement known as theatre of the absurd, focusing on the ways dramatists create an impression of emptiness not only on the stage but also in the body and mind of the central character. Essif makes a case for the meta-dramatic fusion of...

Within the rich tradition of Spanish theater lies an unexplored dimension reflecting themes from classical mythology. Through close readings of selected plays from early modern and twentieth-century Spanish literature with plots or characters derived from the Greco-Roman tradition, Michael Kidd shows that the concept of desire plays a pivotal role in adapting myth to the stage in each of several historical periods.

In Stages of Desire, Kidd offers a new way of looking at the theater in Spain. Reviewing the work of playwrights from Juan del Encina to Luis Riaza, he suggests...

Performance in the Texts of Mallarme offers a new theory of performance in the poetic and critical texts of Stephane Mallarme, a theory challenging the prevailing interpretation of his work as epitomizing literary purism and art for art's sake.

Following an analytical presentation of the concepts of ritual and performance generally applied, Mary Shaw shows that Mallarme perceived music, dance, and theater as ideal languages of the body and therefore as ideal forms of ritual through which to supplement and celebrate poetic texts. She focuses on previously unexplored...

From the dramatization of local legends to the staging of plays by Shakespeare and other canonical playwrights to the exploration of contemporary sociopolitical problems and their effects on women and children, Mayan theatre is a flourishing cultural institution in southern Mexico. Part of a larger movement to define Mayan self-identity and reclaim a Mayan cultural heritage, theatre in Mayan languages has both reflected on and contributed to a growing awareness of Mayans as contemporary cultural and political players in Mexico and on the world's stage.

In this book, Tamara Underiner...

The relationship between actors and spectators has been of perennial interest to playwrights. The Roman playwright Plautus (ca. 200 BCE) was particularly adept at manipulating this relationship. Plautus allowed his actors to acknowledge freely the illusion in which they were taking part, to elicit laughter through humorous asides and monologues, and simultaneously to flatter and tease the spectators.

These metatheatrical techniques are the focus of Timothy J. Moore's innovative study of the comedies of Plautus. The first part of the book examines Plautus' techniques in detail, while...

This invaluable guide to theatrical production includes up-to-date definitions of all technical aspects of stagecraft, including the many advances in the past decade, particularly in the areas of trusses, rigging, and automated lights and their control. More than 200 terms, along with 25 new drawings, have been added, many existing definitions have been expanded and drawings revised to include new technological developments, and World Wide Web addresses have been added to the List of Manufacturers and Distributors and to the Bibliography. At the same time, older terminology and definitions...