Kategoria BISAC: Performing Arts >> Theater - Stagecraft & Scenography

Planning a school or amateur Shakespeare production? The best way to experience the plays is to perform them, but getting started can be a challenge: The complete plays are too long and complex, while scene selections or simplified language are too limited.

"The 30-Minute Shakespeare" is a new series of abridgements that tell the "story" of each play from start to finish while keeping the beauty of Shakespeare's language intact. Specific stage directions and character suggestions give even inexperienced actors the tools to perform Shakespeare with confidence, understanding, and fun...

A premier playwright, Edward Albee is also a gifted director. Albee in Performance details Albee's directorial vision and how that vision animates his plays. Having had extraordinary access to Albee as director, Rakesh H. Solomon reveals how Albee has shaped his plays in performance, the attention he pays to each aspect of theater, and how his conception of the key plays he has directed has evolved over a five-decade career. Solomon pays careful attention to the major works, from The American Dream and Zoo Story to Albee's best-known work, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, as well as to...

As You Like It: The 30-Minute Shakespeare presents seven captivating scenes from this merry play. Rosalind, disguised as a man ("Ganymede"), "teaches" the art of romantic wooing to Orlando.

The cutting includes Jaques' timeless "Seven Ages of Man" speech; Touchstone the Fool's courtship of Audrey; and the hilarious love triangle between Silvius, Phebe, and Rosalind (as Ganymede). The entire cast joins in the delightful song "A Lover and His Lass" to bring a rousing end to this charming comedy.

The edition includes helpful advice by Nick Newlin on how to put on a...

Love's Labor's Lost: The 30-Minute Shakespeare plays three action-packed scenes from this tale of King Navarre and his three lords, who have vowed to retire from women for three years. Naturally, the Princess of France and her three ladies arrive, and comedic courtship ensues.

The cutting includes the ridiculous dance of the lords disguised as Russians, the hysterical "Pageant of the Nine Worthies," and a dramatic, bittersweet ending that leaves the King and the three lords laboring for love.

The edition includes a preface by Nick Newlin containing helpful advice on how...

The Comedy of Errors: The 30-Minute Shakespeare offers five raucous scenes from this extravaganza of mistaken identity.

The abridgement begins with a dramatic physical enactment of the twins' separation at sea. The play continues with a series of foibles featuring Antipholus of Ephesus, Dromio of Ephesus, and their identical twin counterparts from Antipholus.

Adriana and Luciana receive hysterically misguided attention from the twins. Emilia and Egeon as the long-lost parents, and the riotous conjurer Dr. Pinch round out the cast of characters in Shakespeare's most...

King Lear: The 30-Minute Shakespeare renders six powerful scenes from this enduring tragedy. Starting with Lear's banishment of Cordelia, the plot advances irresistibly, featuring scenes of brother Edmund's villainous plotting and the Fool's witty, weighty wordplay.

The action climaxes with the storm on the heath, where Lear and Poor Tom rail in exquisite madness. The abridgement concludes with moving scenes of Cordelia's tender reconciliation with King Lear and their heart-rending demise.

The edition includes helpful advice by Nick Newlin on how to put on a Shakespeare...

Othello: The 30-Minute Shakespeare is a gripping seven-scene interpretation of this Shakespearean masterpiece.

There is a dramatic build as each successive event draws Othello closer to jealous rage. Iago convinces Othello that Desdemona has been unfaithful to him with Cassio. He plants Desdemona's handkerchief in Cassio's chamber, orchestrating Othello's undoing.

The plot concludes with Othello outrageously smothering Desdemona, discovering the truth of his deception, and dying by his own hand. This is tragedy at its finest, and performable in just a half...

King Henry IV, Part I: The 30-Minute Shakespeare combines comedy, tragedy, and history into a rollicking six-scene drama performable in a half hour.

This adaptation includes tavern revelry, highway robbery, and the telling role-reversal scene between the inimitable Falstaff and young Prince Hal.

The play also features the rivalry between Glendower and Hotspur and the touching reconciliation between King Henry IV and his son Hal. The action climaxes with the riveting battle scene, and includes as a coda the new King Henry V's brutal rejection of his former friend...

Hamlet: The 30-Minute Shakespeare offers five scenes from this enduring tragedy. The Ghost of Hamlet's father calls for vengeance, and Hamlet uses the players to prove Claudius guilty. The cutting includes the murder of Polonius, Ophelia's mad scene, and the timeless "To be or not to be" speech, climaxing in the swordfight and poisoning that bring the story to its riveting end.

The edition includes helpful advice by Nick Newlin on how to put on a Shakespeare production in a high school class with novice actors, as well as tips for performing the specific play and...

The Two Gentlemen of Verona: The 30-Minute Shakespeare presents six captivating scenes from this high-spirited play. Proteus pledges his love to Julia, but then falls in love with Silvia, who had planned to elope with Proteus's bosom buddy Valentine. This classic story features hilarious cross-dressing, clever disguises, and intriguing mistaken identities. It also includes the uproarious monologue featuring Launce and his dog Crab.

The edition includes helpful advice by Nick Newlin on how to put on a Shakespeare production in a high school class with novice actors, as well as...

The term liminal refers to a marginalized space of fertile chaos and creative potential where nothing is fixed or certain.
Liminal performance is an emerging genre which has surfaced only in recent times and describes a range of interdisciplinary, highly experimental, performative works in theatre and performance, film and music-performances which can be seen to prioritize the body, the technological and the primordial. Broadhurst argues that traditional and contemporary critical and aesthetic theories are ultimately deficient in interpreting liminal performance. This...

Di Benedetto considers theatrical practice through the lens of contemporary neuroscientific discoveries in this provoking study, which lays the foundation for considering the physiological basis of the power of theatre practice to affect human behavior. He presents a basic summary of the ways that the senses function in relation to cognitive science and physiology, offering an overview of dominant trends of discussion on the realm of the senses in performance. Also presented are examples of how those ideas are illustrated in recent theatrical presentations, and how the different senses...