Broadway Books Database

This is the first book-length study, in any language, of the influence of Mei Lanfang - the internationally known Chinese actor who specialized in female roles - on the twentieth-century international stage. Focusing on Mei Lanfang's tours of Japan, the United States, and the Soviet Union, Min Tian investigates - in the twentieth-century transnational political, ideological, cultural as well as theatrical contexts - the presence and placement of Mei Lanfang and the Chinese theatre on the intern...

A feel-good play that tackles some serious issues. A perfect play choice for amateur or semi-professional drama societies. The stage is set for a happy weekend as Chris Hedges takes his girlfriend, Tanya, home to meet his mother and announce their engagement. Things start to go wrong when the identity of Tanya's father is revealed. It seems that he and Chris's mother knew each other many years before. As the weekend unravels Tanya's father is drawn in to enlist his support. It looks as if every...

In studying performances of marriage in modern and contemporary British and American drama, Clum highlights the fact that - paradoxically - at a time when theatre was both popular entertainment and high culture, many of the most commercially and artistically successful plays about marriage were written by homosexual men. Beginning with Oscar Wilde and focusing on some of the most successful British and American playwrights of the past century, including Somerset Maugham, Noël Coward, Terence Ra...

The theatre director is one of the most critical roles in a successful drama company, yet there are no formal qualifications required for entry into this profession. This practical guide for emerging theatre directors answers all the key questions from the very beginning of your career to key stages as you establish your credentials and get professionally recognized. It analyzes the director's role through relationships with the actors, author, designer, production manager and creative teams an...

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1840. Excerpt: ... LECTURE XII. Comparison of the English and Spanish theatres.--Spirit of the romantic drama--Shakspeare.--His age and the circumstances of his life.--How far costume is necessary, or may be dispensed with.--Shakspeare the greatest drawer of characters.--Vindication of the genuineness of his pathos.--Play on words.-- M...

Shakespeare, Cervantes, Middleton and Fletcher. The giants of 16th-century literature are all involved in the mystery surrounding Cardenio; a play 'lost' for centuries, which many believe to be the work of England's greatest dramatist. With his incredible passion for, and understanding of, the work of William Shakespeare, director and author Gregory Doran takes the reader on a unique journey; a fascinating search through the fog of literary history for a glint of dramatic gold, and a thrilling a...

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1915. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... PROPERTIES AND HOW TO MAKE THEM Use care in the selection of your properties. Study your text. Avoid anachronisms. Do not use muskets and pipes in a scene that is laid before muskets were invented and tobacco discovered. Do not use modern lamps to light a mediaeval scene. Do not use mod...

In Darkening Mirrors, Stephanie Leigh Batiste examines how African Americans participated in U.S. cultural imperialism in Depression-era stage and screen performances. A population treated as second-class citizens at home imagined themselves as empowered, modern U.S. citizens and transnational actors in plays, operas, ballets, and films. Many of these productions, such as the 1938 hits Haiti and The "Swing" Mikado recruited large casts of unknown performers, involving the black community not on...

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1880. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XI. FOREIGN ACTORS ON OUR STAGE. THAT our drama is extinct as literature, and our stage is in a deplorable condition of decline, no one ventures to dispute; but there are two opinions as to whether a revival is possible, or even probable; and various opinions as to the avenues ...

Updated it its 8th edition, Mastering Public Speaking equips readers with a firm grounding in the “hows” and “whys” of public speaking by providing an ideal balance of theory and skills while placing important emphases on critiquing, ethics, and critical thinking. Written in a casual, lively style and clearly organized, the eighth edition of Mastering Public Speaking builds on its previous success. The first public speaking book to devote an entire chapter to ethics, the eighth edition continue...

Updated in this 11th edition, Brockett and Hildy’s History of Theatre, is the most comprehensive and widely used survey of theatre history in the market. This eleventh edition retains all of the traditional features that have made History of the Theatre the most successful text of its kind including worldwide coverage, extensive illustrations – many now in color! --useful maps, and the expertise of Oscar G. Brockett and Franklin J. Hildy, two of the most widely respected theatre historians in t...

Indian Popular Theatres foregrounds an aspect of contemporary performance that has for some time warranted but not received serious study. It explores the living traditions of Indian Theatre in terms of its audience and the specific circumstances that surround them, focusing on four key forms: Bengali Jatra epics The Pandavani and storytellers of Central India The progressive New Marathi Theatre of Pune Safdar Hashmi’s JANAM street theatre Each of these styles of ...

Most readers nowadays encounter the plays of Aristophanes in the classroom, not the theater. Yet the “father of comedy” wrote his plays for the stage, not as literary texts. Many English translations of the plays were written decades ago, and in their outdated language they fail to capture the dramatic liveliness of the original comedies. Here Michael Ewans offers new and lively translations of three of Aristophanes’ earliest surviving plays: Acharnians, Knights, and Peace. While remaining fa...

The seven plays that comprise Chiori Miyagawa’s Thousand Years Waiting and Other Plays explore themes of memory and identity.Her plays combine poetic language with harsh reality, and time and space are fluid in the worlds she creates—they converge and separate while the characters inhabit many dimensions at once with ease. In one way or another, the heroes and heroines of these plays are outsiders—emotionally (as in Awakening), physically (as in Comet Hunter) or socially (as in Broken Morning), ...

Scene Design: Rendering and Media is intended to help students or practitioners improve their skills at making finished renderings of scene designs for theater. The book demonstrates the process of creating the renderings through real world methods and techniques. Chapters are dedicated to a detailed discussion of various tools including drawing, light and shadow, color mixing, painting, figures, and other media, and the book is rife with colorful and inspirational examples.

Performance in the Time of Terror is an important investigation of the ways in which performance has given shape and form to "wars of terror," past and present, and as a strategy and tactic of violence. Focusing on an array of performances that caused a stir during the "war on terror" of the first decade of the twenty-first century, Hughes also explores the use of performance by counterinsurgents during the "war on terrorism" in Northern Ireland (1969-1998). Offering original discussions of the...

The Cultural Politics of Twentieth-Century Spanish Theater argues that twentieth-century artists used the Golden Age Eucharist plays called autos sacramentales to reassess the way politics and the arts interact in the Spanish nation’s past and present, and to posit new ideas for future relations between the state and the national culture industry. The book traces the phenomenon of the twentieth-century auto to show how theater practitioners revisited this national genre to manifest different, of...

Stanislavski: The Basics is an engaging introduction to the life, thought and impact of Konstantin Stanislavski. Regarded by many as a great innovator of twentieth century theatre, this book examines Stanislavski's: life and the context of his writings major works in English translation ideas in practical contexts impact on modern theatre With further reading throughout, a glossary of terms and a comprehensive chronology, this text makes the ideas and theories of Stanislavski available to an und...

This bookranges from refugee camps in Palestine to halting sites of the Irish Travellers and elsewhere in search of a new politics practiced through performance. Written through the intersection of performance and philosophy, the book refutes neoliberalism's depoliticizing and strategic uses of humanitarianism, human rights, and development.

The concentration camp and Jewish ghetto at Terezín, or Theresienstadt, in what is now the Czech Republic, was a site of enormous suffering, fear, and death; but in the midst of this was a thriving and desperately vibrant cultural life. While the children’s drawings and musical pieces created in the ghetto have become justly famous, the prisoners’ theatrical works, though a lesser-known aspect of their artistic endeavors, deserves serious attention as well. Performing Captivity collects ele...

"A brilliant and daring book on how art reveals life, how it illuminates childhood beyond what the sciences of development can tell us." ---Jerome Bruner, University Professor, New York University "Combining the surgical precision of a psychoanalytically informed critic with the oracular eloquence of a brilliant close reader, Ellen Handler Spitz reads our cultural fortunes about childhood and parenting through works of art. Moving us (in both senses of the term) from the serene plenitude of...

J. C. Gottsched, who reformed early Enlightenment German theater, claimed for comedy the ability to transform morality. The new literary comedies of the 1740s, among the other moral goals that they pursued, propagated a new sentimental discourse promoting marriage based on love while devaluing its traditional socioeconomic foundations. Yet in comedies by well-known dramatists of the period such as Gottsched, Gellert, J. E. Schlegel, Lessing, and Quistorp, alternative gender roles and sexual beh...

The work of an outstanding Georgian theatre director and teacher Mikhail Tumanishvili (1921-1996) was first published in Georgia in 1976 and is now made available for the first time in an English translation. Before the Rehearsal Begins is a precise and demanding exploration of the director's creative process. The book is richly illustrated with diagrams and drawings sketched by the author and is inspiring in its simplicity and imaginative freedom. Tumanishvili is acknowledged worldwide as a...

Critical Essays on British South Asian Theatre marks a major contribution to the understanding of one of the most remarkable examples of diasporic artistic activity in recent history. The second volume on British South Asian theater compiled by Graham Ley and Sarah Dadswell, this volume provides detailed critical analyses of theater practice and performance from the last thirty years.

The Study of Drama by Harley Granville-Barker was published as part of the Cambridge Miscellany series in 1934. It contains the text of a lecture delivered by the author in Cambridge in 1934 on the study of 'drama as drama, considered in relation to the theatre'. The lecture is printed together with extensive notes, which were added subsequently.

The Art of Clowning is the first book on clowning technique and offers a step-by-step process for actors and other theatrical enthusiasts to discover their "inner clown." This fun and accessible guide expands on theories and exercises to help students and beginners develop solo and group performances. Using twenty years of teaching experience, Simon reveals a complete system of clowning that is a must-have for amateurs and experts alike. Now with even MORE ways to find your inner clown!

Mae West, Sarah Bernhardt, Ethel Barrymore and Helen Keller are perhaps among the best known women to appear on vaudeville stages. Each came to vaudeville by a different path and with a different offering: Mae West entered vaudeville with a song and dance routine when she was 13 years old. Ethel Barrymore dropped in on the Palace Theater to present one-act plays. Sarah Bernhardt was being celebrated by the British for her fifty years on the dramatic stage when she agreed to appear in the U.S. H...

British South Asian theater has been one of the most significant features of diasporic artistic activity throughout the world in the last thirty years, yet its remarkable achievements have been largely ignored by mainstream media and scholars. With British South Asian Theatres, Graham Ley and Sarah Dadswell aim to reverse such neglect. Drawing on unpublished archives and an extensive series of interviews on the history of British theater, these essays document the presence of South Asians on th...

The Brecht Yearbook is a venue for discussion about aspects of theater and literature that were of particular interest to Bertolt Brecht, especially the politics of literature and the politics of theater in a global context. The Volume Brecht in / and Asia contains twenty-six essays based on presentations given at “Brecht in/and Asia,” the thirteenth Symposium of the International Brecht Society (IBS), which was held at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa in 2010. Themes covered include Bre...

In 1979, Scarecrow Press published J. P. Wearing’s American and British Theatrical Biography: A Directory, which enabled users to quickly locate biographical information about figures—both major and minor—who are or were connected with British and American theatre. In American and British Theatrical Biographies: An Index, Wearing has revised and extensively expanded the previous work. This edition draws upon more than 130 sources and 500 volumes that have been surveyed and indexed, prov...

How does class get 'cast' and made performative? What modes are there for people to wrestle-back their forms of representation? And how should we understand this intense manipulation of feeling? This bookexamines why class politics matter against much political and academic rhetoric which refract inequality through other means.

One of the most comprehensive handbooks available on Kabuki theatre provides readers with all the information they need to understand and appreciate this exciting amalgam of dramatic and musical arts. A clear and thoughtfully written text describes the theater’s development in the context of Japanese history, with detailed analyses of actors’ techniques, music and dance, plays and playwrights, the playhouse’s design evolution, and six representative Kabuki plays. Includes glossary of Japanese t...

From Komisarjevsky in the 1920s, to Cheek by Jowl’s Russian ‘sister company’ almost a century later, Russian actor training has had a unique influence on modern British theatre. Russians in Britain, edited by Jonathan Pitches, is the first work of its type to identify a relationship between both countries’ theatrical traditions as continuous as it is complex. Unravelling new strands of transmission and translation linking the great Russian émigré practitioners to the second and third generat...

Artful Stories tells the story of four arts practitioners from Trinidad and Tobago—a lighting designer, a dancer, a jazz musician and a choreographer—who have made a name for themselves internationally. The work also centers on their role as educators in their fields. Their unique and individual journeys exemplify the classic role artists have (always) played as teachers. Artful Stories is a timely and profound work that captures the teacher-student dynamic. It fills a void in terms of recogniz...

The Wild West was popular with American audiences long before the appearance of the Hollywood western. From 1829 to 1881, playgoers throughout the nation applauded frontier dramas that celebrated conventional American values like rugged individualism and the ideology of Manifest Destiny. Yet, as Pioneer Performances shows, a more subversive cultural agenda often worked within the orthodox framework of this popular drama. Drawing on a range of plays and public entertainments, Matthew Rebhorn unc...

Get professional techniques usually known only by Hollywood makeup artists in this full-color, comprehensive book from accomplished makeup pros Gretchen Davis and Mindy Hall. The two come to you with impressive backgrounds in film and television industries--their projects have included Pearl Harbor, Rent, Stuart Little, and The Nanny Diaries, and Mindy Hall is fresh off her Academy Award win for her work on 2009's Star Trek. This new edition of The Makeup Artist Handbook offers even more illustr...

In Rehearsal is a clear and accessible how-to approach to the rehearsal process. Author Gary Sloan brings more than thirty years' worth of acting experience to bear on the question of how to rehearse both as an individual actor and as part of the team of professionals that underpins any successful production. Interviews with acclaimed actors, directors, playwrights, and designers share a wealth of knowledge on dynamic collaboration. The book is divided in to three main stages, helping the re...

Wonder is a highly ambivalent word and idea which can denote woe, horror, or terror on one hand and delight, jubilation, or ecstasy on the other. In the first part of this book, Adam Max Cohen embraces the many meanings of wonder in order to challenge the generic divides between comedy, tragedy, history, and romance to suggest that Shakespeare's primary goal in crafting each of his play worlds was the evocation of one or more varieties of wonder. In the second part of this book, seven esteemed ...

Exploring the relationship between dramatic language and its theatrical aspects, Reading Modern Drama provides an accessible entry point for general readers and academics into the world of contemporary theatre scholarship. This collection promotes the use of diverse perspectives and critical methods to explore the common theme of language as well as the continued relevance of modern drama in our lives. Reading Modern Drama offers provocative close readings of both canonical and lesser-known ...