Theater Enough

Theater Enough PDF Author: Jeffrey H. Richards
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822311072
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
The early settlers in America had a special relationship to the theater. Though largely without a theater of their own, they developed an ideology of theater that expressed their sense of history, as well as their version of life in the New World. Theater Enough provides an innovative analysis of early American culture by examining the rhetorical shaping of the experience of settlement in the new land through the metaphor of theater. The rhetoric, or discourse, of early American theater emerged out of the figures of speech that permeated the colonists' lives and literary productions. Jeffrey H. Richards examines a variety of texts--histories, diaries, letters, journals, poems, sermons, political tracts, trial transcripts, orations, and plays--and looks at the writings of such authors as John Winthrop and Mercy Otis Warren. Richards places the American usage of theatrum mundi--the world depicted as a stage--in the context of classical and Renaissance traditions, but shows how the trope functions in American rhetoric as a register for religious, political, and historical attitudes.

Theater Enough

Theater Enough PDF Author: Jeffrey H. Richards
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822311072
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book

Book Description
The early settlers in America had a special relationship to the theater. Though largely without a theater of their own, they developed an ideology of theater that expressed their sense of history, as well as their version of life in the New World. Theater Enough provides an innovative analysis of early American culture by examining the rhetorical shaping of the experience of settlement in the new land through the metaphor of theater. The rhetoric, or discourse, of early American theater emerged out of the figures of speech that permeated the colonists' lives and literary productions. Jeffrey H. Richards examines a variety of texts--histories, diaries, letters, journals, poems, sermons, political tracts, trial transcripts, orations, and plays--and looks at the writings of such authors as John Winthrop and Mercy Otis Warren. Richards places the American usage of theatrum mundi--the world depicted as a stage--in the context of classical and Renaissance traditions, but shows how the trope functions in American rhetoric as a register for religious, political, and historical attitudes.

The Color of Theater

The Color of Theater PDF Author: Roberta Uno
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9780826456380
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
The Color of Theater presents a range of essays, interviews and performance texts that illustrate and examine the process, evolution and dynamics of making theater in the dawning moments of the 21st century. It brings together writings by artists, intellectuals and art activists exploring contemporary practices within multicultural, intercultural and ethnically specific theaters. This provocative and dynamic resource brings forth critical issues of cultural aesthetics engaging theater as a crucial site for examining the intricate intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality and national and global politics.Contributors include: Rustom Bharucha, Thulani Davis, Harry Elam, Guillermo Gomez-Pea, Velina Hasu Huston, Cherrfe Moraga, David Romn, Sekou Sundiata, Diana Taylor, Una Chaudhuri, Alberto Sandoval-Snchez and lO thi diem thy.

Theater in a Post-Truth World

Theater in a Post-Truth World PDF Author: William C. Boles
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350215864
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
This is the first book to examine how the concept and disagreements around post-truth have been explored in the world of theater and performance. It covers a wide spectrum of manifestations and expressions-from the plays of Caryl Churchill, Anne Washburn, and David Henry Hwang, to the inherent theatricality of press conferences, FBI interviews and protests that embrace the confusion created by post-truth rhetoric to muddy issues and deflect blame, to theatrical performance, where the nature of truth is challenged through staged visuals which run counter to what the audience hears, provoking a debate about where the truth actually lies. With contributions by scholars from around the world, Theater in a Post-Truth World considers a wide array of examples from American and British drama and politics, Australian theater, and the work of performance artist Marina Abramovic. Together these provide a glimpse into how the theater in its many forms provides a venue to raise awareness and encourage critical thinking about the contemporary ubiquity of post-truth.

An Ideal Theater

An Ideal Theater PDF Author: Todd London
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
ISBN: 1559364254
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 600

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Book Description
An inspiring collection of the dreams and visions of the founders of the American theatre movement.

The Theater Will Rock

The Theater Will Rock PDF Author: Elizabeth L. Wollman
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472034022
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
"A much-needed study of the impact of rock music on the musical theater and its resulting challenges, complexities, failures, and successes. Anyone interested in Broadway will learn a great deal from this book." ---William Everett, author of The Musical: A Research Guide to Musical Theatre "As Wollman weaves her historical narrative, she compellingly returns to . . . the conflict between the aesthetics and ideologies of rock music and the disciplined and commercial practices of the musical stage." ---Theatre Research International "This well-written account puts the highs and lows of producing staged rock musicals in New York City into perspective and is well worth reading for the depth of insight it provides." ---Studies in Musical Theatre The tumultuous decade of the 1960s in America gave birth to many new ideas and forms of expression, among them the rock musical. An unlikely offspring of the performing arts, the rock musical appeared when two highly distinctive and American art forms joined onstage in New York City. The Theater Will Rock explores the history of the rock musical, which has since evolved to become one of the most important cultural influences on American musical theater, and a major cultural export. Despite the genre’s influence and fame, there are still some critics who claim that the term “rock musical” is an oxymoron. The relationship between rock and the musical theater has been stormy from the start, and even the comparatively recent success of Rent has done little to convince theater producers that rock musicals are anything but highly risky ventures. Elizabeth L. Wollman explores the reasons behind these problematic connections and looks at the socioeconomic forces that underlie aesthetic decisions. She weighs the influence on the rock musical by mass media, sound, and recording technology, and the economic pressures that have affected New York theater in general over the past three decades. Finally, Wollman offers a meditation on the state of the musical, its relation to rock, and, ultimately, its future. Packed with candid commentary by members of New York's vibrant theater community, The Theater Will Rock traces the rock musical’s evolution over nearly fifty years, in popular productions such as Hair, The Who's Tommy, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Little Shop of Horrors, Rent, and Mamma Mia!—and in notable flops such as The Capeman. Elizabeth L. Wollman is Assistant Professor of Music at Baruch College of the City University of New York.

The Theater Will Rock

The Theater Will Rock PDF Author: Elizabeth Lara Wollman
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 047202700X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
The tumultuous decade of the 1960s in America gave birth to many new ideas and forms of expression, among them the rock musical. An unlikely offspring of the performing arts, the rock musical appeared when two highly distinctive and American art forms joined onstage in New York City. The Theater Will Rock explores the history of the rock musical, which has since evolved to become one of the most important cultural influences on American musical theater and a major cultural export. Packed with candid commentary by members of New York's vibrant theater community, The Theater Will Rock traces the rock musical's evolution over nearly fifty years, in popular productions such as Hair, The Who's Tommy, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Little Shop of Horrors, Rent, and Mamma Mia!---and in notable flops such as The Capeman. "A much-needed study of the impact of rock music on the musical theater and its resulting challenges, complexities, failures, and successes. Anyone interested in Broadway will learn a great deal from this book." ---William Everett, author of The Musical: A Research Guide to Musical Theatre "This well-written account puts the highs and lows of producing staged rock musicals in New York City into perspective and is well worth reading for the depth of insight it provides." ---Studies in Musical Theatre Elizabeth L. Wollman is Assistant Professor of Music at Baruch College, City University of New York.

The First Oscar Hammerstein and New York's Golden Age of Theater and Music

The First Oscar Hammerstein and New York's Golden Age of Theater and Music PDF Author: Adolph S. Tomars
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476639132
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Oscar Hammerstein I came to New York in the 1860s, a Prussian runaway with $1.50 in his pocket, and found work at a cigar factory. A decade later he was publishing the nation's leading tobacco trade journal and held dozens of patents for cigar-rolling machinery. He made a fortune and turned his efforts to theater. He built eight of them, including four around Longacre Square--later Times Square--which became a thriving theater district. A daring impresario, he was involved at all levels, from booking to composition to stagecraft. Throughout the Gay Nineties and early 20th century, he billed the world's top actors, prima donnas and vaudeville acts. Then, as now, show business was speculation and high adventure, with rivalries fought in the headlines. Always a storm center, Hammerstein played a skillful chess game with both partners and performers while staging first-class shows for capacity crowds. This biography--from an unfinished manuscript by the son of one of his stage managers--recounts the heyday of his bold productions, his often turbulent relationships with associates, and the birth of Broadway.

The Theater

The Theater PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 502

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Book Description


Brecht, Broadway and United States Theater

Brecht, Broadway and United States Theater PDF Author: J. Chris Westgate
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443810185
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
Not long after the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City, Bertolt Brecht’s name was on the lips of many writing about Broadway. Invoked knowingly—but not always knowledgeably—“Brecht” became something between marketing strategy and erudite justification for another season of Broadway musicals, another ignominy endured by the German playwright whose epic theater has only seldom been understood in the United States. To say that Brechtian and Broadway theatrical traditions represent divergence of philosophy, method, or ambition is to indulge—with the whimsy of Mark Twain—in understatement. Nevertheless, many references to Brecht since 2001 imply compatibility instead of contradiction—a confusion or corruption that suggested the need of looking closely at what Brecht wrote and intended in his epic theater more than seventy years after his first—and, unfortunately, typical—experience with United States theater. Beginning with the 1935 production of The Mother and moving through recent productions of political theater, including The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Urinetown: The Musical, and My Name is Rachel Corrie, this anthology considers the encounters of Brecht and Broadway in terms of dramaturgy, performance, and reception. The essays in this anthology explore the political, cultural, and economic constraints shaping many of the encounters of Brecht and Broadway in U.S. theater history. This means looking at how, in many cases, epic theater has been co-opted and commodified by Broadway and what that commodification reveals about the culture of theater. Simultaneously, this means theorizing how epic theater finds—or can find—ways of providing a necessary bulwark against Broadway escapism, and what this suggests for the future of political theater in the U.S. What results is a dialectical history tracing Brecht’s encounters with Broadway, a history that opens-up and debates the complicated and often conflicted influence of Bertolt Brecht on United States theater. “Dr. Westgate's book on Brecht and Broadway is an excellent study of the reception of Brecht's work in the American theater and academe. Brecht, along with Moliere; Ibsen and Chekhov, is one of the most frequently performed playwrights in translation in America. A thorough investigation of the trajectory of Brecht stagings on Broadway has long been overdue. I am very grateful that Dr. Westgate has taken on the task and arrived at such a splendid result. The book is a must reading for any serious Brecht scholar.” —Carl Weber, Stanford Drama Department, Collaborator with Brecht at the Berliner Ensemble, Director of many Brecht stagings in the U.S. “This is a provocative collection of essays outlining the sometimes unexpected connections between Brecht and the Broadway theatre. Like Brecht himself, these essays are playful, argumentative, and productively dialectical in their contradictions. The book is both entertaining and educational, and bound to provoke healthy debate. I recommend it as a demonstration of the ongoing relevance of Brechtian theories of theatre to the analysis of mainstream commercial theatre." —Sean Carney, Associate Professor, McGill University

Theater Planning

Theater Planning PDF Author: Gene Leitermann
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317496884
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
This book introduces the concepts of theater planning, and provides a detailed guide to the process and the technical requirements particular to theater buildings. Part I is a guide to the concepts and practices of architecture and construction, as applied to performing arts buildings. Part II is a guide to the design of performing arts buildings, with detailed descriptions of the unique requirements of these buildings. Each concept is illustrated with line drawings and examples from the author’s extensive professional practice. This book is written for students in Theatre Planning courses, along with working practitioners.