All roads lead to London - and to the West End theatre. This book presents a new history of the beginnings of the modern world of London entertainment. Putting female-centred, gender-challenging managements and styles at the centre, it redraws the map of performance history in the Victorian capital of the world. Bratton argues for the importance in Victorian culture of venues like the little Strand Theatre and the Gallery of Illustration in Regent Street in the experience of mid-century London, ...
Alan Hughes presents a new complete account of production methods in Greek comedy. The book summarises contemporary research and disputes, on such topics as acting techniques, theatre buildings, masks and costumes, music and the chorus. Evidence is re-interpreted and traditional doctrine overthrown. Comedy is presented as the pan-Hellenic, visual art of theatre, not as Athenian literature. Recent discoveries in visual evidence are used to stimulate significant historical revisions. The author ha...
This volume analyzes major French plays of the 1830s, focusing on their theatricality, and on the ways in which they expose the workings of the theatre rather than conceal them. Through an examination of performance within these plays, the study posits that the stage is a privileged site of demonstration, a literal "proving ground" that lends a physical reality to abstract values announced in the text and shared or questioned by the audience. Negotiating between the literary study of drama and p...
While award-winning author Rudolfo Anaya is known primarily as a novelist, his genius is also evident in dramatic works performed regularly in his native New Mexico and throughout the world. Billy the Kid and Other Plays collects seven of these works and offers them together for the first time.
Like his novels, many of Anaya’s plays are built from the folklore of the Southwest. This volume opens with The Season of La Llorona, in which Anaya fuses the Mexican legend of the dreaded “crying wom...
Stage technicians or “teckies” traditionally apprentice for knowledge about their craft. This is a new, unique practical guide for teckies that can be read or used as a reference manual for all aspects of stage lighting, from equipment to lighting a performance space to special effects and design.
Information is easily accessed through tabbed sections and keywords. The information in each chapter is presented at three levels: “A Quick Start,” enough basic information to get started; “More In...
Provides a comparative approach to the internationally wide-spread phenomenon of the contemporary director-auteur in the theatre, urging a historical and theoretical exploration of the visions, methods, and stage idioms in the work of established artists. Sidiropoulou examines prominent examples of both older and more recent director-auteur work, aiming at re-asserting – to its artistic and academic audience – the value of balancing the established emphasis on the diegetic aspects of theatre wit...
In the early 1890s, black performer Bob Cole turned blackface minstrelsy on its head with his nationally recognized whiteface creation, a character he called Willie Wayside. Just over a century later, hiphop star Busta Rhymes performed a whiteface supercop in his hit music video "Dangerous." In this sweeping work, Marvin McAllister explores the enduring tradition of "whiting up," in which African American actors, comics, musicians, and even everyday people have studied and assumed white racial i...
Claire Cochrane maps the experience of theatre across the British Isles during the twentieth century through the social and economic factors which shaped it. Three topographies for 1900, 1950 and 2000 survey the complex plurality of theatre within the nation-state which at the beginning of the century was at the hub of world-wide imperial interests and after one hundred years had seen unprecedented demographic, economic and industrial change. Cochrane analyses the dominance of London theatre, bu...
Presenting an innovative approach to performance studies and literary history, Soyica Colbert argues for the centrality of black performance traditions to African American literature, including preaching, dancing, blues and gospel, and theatre itself, showing how these performance traditions create the 'performative ground' of African American literary texts. Across a century of literary production using the physical space of the theatre and the discursive space of the page, W. E. B. Du Bois, Zo...
This volume offers transdisciplinary approaches to discuss acting in moving-image culture. It assembles international scholars from dance, theatre, film, media and cultural studies, art and philosophy, who scrutinie both the actor’s presence and art in analog and digital film from historical, generic, and particularly theoretical perspectives: phenomenology, Deleue studies, new media theory to cognitive research, along with re-animated classical approaches and case studies. Each perspective inte...
Over the past two decades, theatre practitioners across the West have turned to documentary modes of performance-making to confront new socio-political realities. This has led to an astonishing range of performance styles, ways of working and modes of intervention in varied sites of theatrical production. The essays in this collection place this work in context, exploring historical and contemporary examples of documentary and 'verbatim' theatre, and applying a range of critical perspectives tha...
Over the last hundred years, musical theatre artists--from Berlin to Rodgers and Hammerstein to Sondheim--have developed a form that corresponds directly to the Americanization of the increasingly Jewish New York audience; and that audience’s aspirations and concerns have played out in the shows themselves. Musicals thus became a paradigm which instructed newcomers in how to assimilate while correspondingly envisioning "American Dream" America as democratic and inclusive. Broadway musicals still...
Stephen Sondheim returns with the second volume of his collected lyrics, giving us another remarkable glimpse into his life’s work, and into his life.
As he did in the acclaimed and best-selling Finishing the Hat (one of The New York Times 10 Best Books of 2010), Sondheim richly annotates his lyrics with personal and theater history, discussions of his collaborations, and exacting, charming dissections of his work — both the successes and the failures. Picking up where he left off in Finishi...
This is the first book-length survey of tragic costume to be published for over forty years. The core of the book focuses on tragic costume in its original performance context of fifth-century Athens, but the implications of subsequent uses in Roman and more recent performances are also taken into consideration. Most importantly, the reader is invited to think about how tragic costume worked as a language in ancient performance and was manipulated physically and verbally in order to create meani...
Theater is the room where performance happens. Where people sit and watch other people. The moment to moment event that unfolds hinges on our imperfect-ness. . . . Theatre for Beginners is a manual for the actor based in the belief that the person is interesting before the performing happens, and the essence of good stage work is rooted in a constant state of beginning.
Richard Maxwell, the downtown writer and director with a deadpan aesthetic and an ever-innovative body of work, has written ...
A unique contribution to an emerging field, Composed Theatre explores musical strategies of organization as viable alternative means of organizing theatrical work. In addition to insightful essays by a stellar group of international contributors, this volume also includes interviews with important practitioners, shedding light on historical and theoretical aspects of composed theatre.
As stage and screen artists explore new means to enhance their craft, a new wave of interest in expressive movement and physical improvisation has developed. And in order to bring authenticity and believability to a character, it has become increasingly vital for actors to be aware of movement and physical acting. Stage and screen artists - including dancers, clowns, puppeteers, singers, and other performers who combine acting with their art - must now call upon physical presence, movement on st...
Acting Together II continues where the first volume left off, presenting more inspiring examples of peace-building performances in conflict-ridden regions. Where the first volume emphasizes theater and ritual's potential for resistance and catharsis in the midst of direct violence and in the aftermath of mass violence, the second volume focuses on performance's ability to bridge gaps and create inclusion in the more subtle context of structural violence and social exclusion. Drawing examples fro...
This is a book for all fans of Chinese theater arts, from Kunqu and Peking Opera to Chinese and Western plays, operas, and stage or variety shows; from the smallest, most intimate neighborhood theaters to China's cutting edge or avante-garde playhouses to its grandest concert halls. Hongfan Zhao examines themes, plots, characters, and all aspects of stagecraft (artistic and technical) in China from the twentieth century to the present. This is the definitive history and appreciation of stage dra...
Nahuatl drama, one of the most surprising results of the Catholic presence in colonial Mexico, merges medieval European religious theater with the language and performance traditions of the Aztec (Nahua) people of central Mexico. Franciscan missionaries, seeking effective tools for evangelization, fostered this new form of theater after observing the Nahuas’ enthusiasm for elaborate performances. The plays became a controversial component of native Christianity, allowing Nahua performers to pres...
The theatrical works of Millay, Cummings, and Dos Passos, which have largely been marginalized in discussions of theater history and literary scholarship, offer a hybrid theater that integrates the popular with the formal, the mainstream with the experimental. Fahy examines the integration of and challenges to popular culture found in their works and offers new readings with an eye to American cultural studies and the impact of mass entertainment on modern life.
Contemporary Irish drama communicates not only through words but also through the non-verbal use of space – both the geographical places in which plays are set and the ways stage space is used. The work of cultural and physical geographers, brought to bear on plays by Friel, McPherson, Carr, and McGuinness, illuminates the extent to which perceptions of themes and characters are determined by the plays’ uses of space. The plays shape reactions to issues of belonging and not belonging, home and h...
In Exercises for Rebel Artists, Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Roberto Sifuentes use their extensive teaching and performance experience with La Pocha Nostra to help students and practitioners to create ‘border art’.
Designed to take readers right into the heart of radical performance, the authors use a series of crucial practical exercises, honed in workshops worldwide, to help create challenging theatre which transcends the boundaries of nation, gender, and racial identity.
The book features:
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After a meteoric ascent on Broadway that began with Ziegfeld's 1910 Follies, Lillian Lorraine went on to become one of the most famous entertainers in America. Her passionately lived life made her a prime target for the tabloid gossip doyens of the day. This biography recounts the early West Coast life of this superstar as well as her coronation on Broadway, her work in silent film, and her sexual liaisons that helped her gain her notoriety. It also covers her eventual disappearance from public ...
This is the indispensable career guide for anyone interested in the theatre: the complete A to Z culled from industry expert Jim Volz's experience and interviews with many voices in the theatre community. This guide is your first port of call from how to get your foot in the door to where, when and how to advance your career. In addition to advice, inspiration and strategies for all working practitioners, not just actors, it also features extensive listings and directories for regional companie...
Theatre in Pieces: politics, poetics and interdisciplinary collaboration is an innovative compilation of seven highly acclaimed productions by key practitioners of non-playwright-driven theatre. Each playtext is reproduced in full and accompanied by extensive notes from members of the original producing theatre. A substantial introduction by Anna Furse provides an overview of the works and contextualizes their reading by revealing how a script can emerge from or provoke a collaborative devising ...
This book examines laughter in the Shakespearean theater, in the context of a cultural history of early modern laughter. Aimed at an informed readership, as well as graduate students and scholars in the field of Shakespeare studies, it is the first study to focus specifically on laughter, not comedy. It looks at various strands of the early modern discourse on laughter, ranging from medical treatises and courtesy manuals to Puritan tracts and jestbook literature. It argues that few cultural phen...
This book explores automata or early robots as performers on the stage of theatre history. Automata are precursors to our digital culture, demonstrating that our spectacular culture of machine-based entertainments has numerous historical precedents. Automata are surprisingly saturated with intellectual and cultural history. Chapters examine topics like English Reformation Iconoclasm's fear that art might surpass God's nature in Elizabethan moving statues; the influence that hydraulic garden auto...
A design tech portfolio showcases a theatre designer/technician's most prized accomplishments in stage design, lighting, costuming, or makeup. The ability to make a winning portfolio is essential to getting into choice colleges, obtaining scholarships, and getting new jobs in the field. Unfortunately the process can become time consuming and challenging if you don't know where to start. Show Case offers students, teachers, and aspiring professionals the information they need to know to create, m...
Current market forces in the performing arts, such as aging audiences, electronic media, and HD broadcasts, have changed the operatic landscape. Young opera singers entering the workforce find themselves navigating difficult and highly competitive waters. Previously ignored skill sets become assets - and, in many cases, requirements - in casting. But most singers graduate from college having never taken a formal acting class and knowing little about acting technique as it pertains to their craft...
Many of the people who work on Broadway keep scrapbooks of their experiences: photos, signed posters, ticket stubs, and, of course the Playbills. Playbill Books, a division of the iconic 127-year-old company that designs the programs for every show on Broadway, has expanded this idea into an annual project that has become a Broadway institution: The Playbill Broadway Yearbook. Taking the form of a college yearbook, the seventh edition is packed with photos - more than 4,000 of them, many in colo...
Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890–1930 demonstrates that popular lynching plays were mechanisms through which African American communities survived actual and photographic mob violence. Often available in periodicals, lynching plays were read aloud or acted out by black church members, schoolchildren, and families. Koritha Mitchell shows that African Americans performed and read the scripts in community settings to certify to each other tha...
Pantomime is a much-loved institution, but how is it created? What tools and processes are used? Working from purely a title, this practical book explains how scripts and a design can develop together through the creative processes to culminate in the wonder and excitement of a unique production on opening night.
Every year, Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, and the National Hockey League name a Most Valuable Player - an MVP. The Broadway musical community doesn't. Oh, there are the Tony Awards, the Drama Desk Awards, and the Theatre World Awards. But what if Broadway selected a MVP each season? In Broadway Musical MVPs: 1960-2010, The Most Valuable Players of the Past 50 Seasons, Peter Filichia names his choices for the MVPs of each of the past 50 ...
On December 4, 1963 four young musicians by the names of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins recorded together at Sun Records in Memphis, creating one of the most amazing all-star jams in music history. Our matching songbook to the exciting new musical about this unforgettable night features smash hits from all four legends, including: Blue Suede Shoes * Fever * Folsom Prison Blues * Great Balls of Fire * Hound Dog * I Hear You Knocking * I Walk the Line * Sixteen Tons ...
In this lively book, Stacy Wolf illuminates the women of American musical theater--performers, creators, and characters--from the start of the cold war to the present day, creating a new, feminist history of the genre, which finds often overlooked moments of empowerment for female audience members. Moving from decade to decade, Wolf first highlights the assumptions that circulated about gender and sexuality at the time, and then looks at the leading musicals, stressing the key aspects of the pla...
The only official companion book to the Tony Award winner for Best Musical from the creators of South Park and the co-creator of Avenue Q. Features the complete script and song lyrics, with 4-color spot illustrations throughout, an original introduction by the creators, and a foreword by Mark Harris.
The Book of Mormon, which follows a pair of mismatched Mormon boys sent on a mission to a place that's about as far from Salt Lake City as you can get, features book, music, and lyrics by Trey Pa...
The Federal Theatre Project stands alone as the only national theatre in the history of the United States. This study re-imagines this vital moment in American history, considering the Federal Theatre Project on its own terms – as a “federation of theatres” designed to stimulate new audiences and create locally-relevant theatre during the turbulent 1930s. It integrates a wealth of previously undiscovered archival materials with cultural history, delving into regional activities in Chicago, Bosto...
Celebrating its 66th year, Theatre World is the most comprehensive record of the theatrical season on Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway, and in regional theatre. Each of the 1,000-plus entries includes photos, a complete cast listing, producers, directors, authors, composers, opening and closing dates, song titles, and plot synopses. Theatre World also features the year's obituaries, a listing of all nominees and winners of the major theatrical awards, the longest-running shows on and Of...
"I am your accompanist. You do not know me. I am the guy who sits behind the upright in the unflattering fluorescent light of the dance studio, a bottle of water on the floor, a half-eaten Power Bar on the bench, and your audition in my hands." Award-winning New York theatre composer and pianist Andrew Gerle pulls no punches in this irreverent, fly-on-the-wall guide to everything you've never been taught about auditioning for musical theatre. From the unique perspective of the pianist's bench, ...
Mark Ravenhill is the first book to provide a detailed analysis of the work of arguably the most important dramatist to have emerged from the British theatre over the past twenty years.
Shopping and F***ing (1996), with its unrelenting representation of dysfunctional youth, dark humour and graphic sex and violence, was seen by many to uniquely capture the social and political fallout of a decade, and Ravenhill fast attained a status as the ‘rude boy’ of British theatre. However, the numerous ...
The winner of seven Tonys, seven Grammys, an Oscar, and a Pulitzer Prize, Stephen Sondheim has become synonymous with the best in musical theatre. Now, in Finishing the Hat, he has not only collected his lyrics for the first time, he's giving readers a rare, personal look into his extraordinary shows and life. Along with the lyrics for all of his productions from 1954 to 1981 - including West Side Story, Company, Follies, A Little Night Music, and Sweeney Todd, which have starred some of the mo...
Broadway legend LuPone, a five-time Tony nominee and two-time Tony winner, raises the curtain on her life and career in this engaging memoir. Detailing both her travails and her triumphs, she takes the reader on a guided tour recalling some memorable moments in musical theater. She began in her teens when she and her twin brothers performed on Long Island as the LuPone Trio. On a 1968 scholarship at John Houseman's Juilliard Drama Division, she was "overwhelmed with fear," but then toured with H...
Arthur Miller is regarded as one of the most important playwrights of the twentieth century, and his work continues to be widely performed and studied around the world. This updated Companion includes Miller's work since the publication of the first edition in 1997 - the plays Mr Peters' Connections, Resurrection Blues, and Finishing the Picture - and key productions of his plays since his death in 2005. The chapter on Miller and the cinema has been completely revised to include new films, and d...
Theatregoers' favorite history of Broadway is back in an updated and expanded 2010 edition including more than 500 color production photos, vintage archival photos, and Playbill covers from all forty currently operating Broadway theatres. Thirty-eight of the original chapters have been expanded to cover all the shows that have opened in the ten years since the popular 2000 edition, with two new chapters added to include Broadway theatres recently refurbished and returned to life. This unique chr...
Applause Theatre and Cinema Books is pleased to make this venerable continuing series complete by publishing Theatre World Volume 63. Theatre World remains the authoritative pictorial and statistical record of the season on Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway, and for regional theatre companies. Volume 63 features Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater's Tony Award-winning Best Musical Spring Awakening, which also earned a Theatre World Award for actor Jonathan Groff. Tom Stoppard's The Coast of Uto...
This is the long-awaited biography of one of the twentieth century's greatest playwrights whose postwar decade of work earned him international critical and popular acclaim. Arthur Miller was a prominent figure in American literature and cinema for over sixty years, writing a wide variety of plays - including The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, All My Sons, and Death of a Salesman - which are still performed, studied and lauded throughout the world. Born in 1915 to moderately affluent Jewish-A...
Rock of Ages tells the tale of a rock star who meets his dream girl at a Los Angeles club performance in the '80s. This Tony Award -nominated Broadway musical features the hits of bands including Journey, Night Ranger, REO Speedwagon, Pat Benatar, Twisted Sister, and others. Our songbook includes 30 piano/vocal selections: Any Way You Want It * Can't Fight This Feeling * Come On Feel the Noize * Every Rose Has Its Thorn * Heaven * Here I Go Again * Hit Me with Your Best Shot * I Hate Myself for ...
