The Dark Side of Stand-Up Comedy
This book focuses on the "dark side" of stand-up comedy, initially inspired by speculations surrounding the death of comedian Robin Williams. Contributors, those who study humor as well as those who perform comedy, join together to contemplate the paradoxical relationship between tragedy and comedy and expose over-generalizations about comic performers' troubled childhoods, addictions, and mental illnesses. The book is divided into two sections. First, scholars from a variety of disciplines explore comedians' onstage performances, their offstage lives, and the relationship between the two. The second half of the book focuses on amateur and lesser-known professional comedians who reveal the struggles they face as they attempt to hone successful comedy acts and likable comic personae. The goal of this collection is to move beyond the hackneyed stereotype of the sad clown in order to reveal how stand-up comedy can transform both personal and collective tragedies by providing catharsis through humor.
Beckett’s Laboratory
Offering fresh studies of Samuel Beckett in pre-production, in rehearsal, as an innovator of the script form, and as a speculative director and designer, Beckett's Laboratory reconsiders Beckett's stringent approach to stage direction through the lens of the laboratory and reveals his experimentalism with stage representation and composition. Wakeling argues that acknowledging Beckett's experimental processes, from their composition to their reception, is crucial to understanding the innovative representations of humanity that emerged at different stages in Beckett's practice. Repositioning Beckett's performance oeuvre in relation to philosophy, Wakeling draws upon post-dramatic, symbolist, materialist and post-structural understandings of theatre performance to reappraise Beckett's plays as a composition for performance. The philosophical underpinnings of Beckett's practices are explored through an eclectic mix of familiar and unexplored contemporary theatre productions and films of Beckett's works, including Not I, Nacht und Tr瓣ume, Happy Days, Footfalls and Catastrophe. Beckett's Laboratory is a provocative examination of Beckett's experimentalism with the human spectacle and his playful reliance upon the interpretative powers of the actors and audience.
The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays
Finalist in the 2022 Lambda Literary Awards for the LGBTQ Anthology categoryThe Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays for the Stage is the first play anthology to offer eight new plays by trans playwrights featuring trans characters. This edited collection establishes a canon of contemporary American trans theatre which represents a variety of performance modes and genres. From groundbreaking new work from across America's stages to unpublished work by new voices, these plays address themes such as gender identity and expression to racial and religious attitudes toward love and sex. Edited by Lindsey Mantoan, Angela Farr Schiller and Leanna Keyes, the plays selected explicitly call for trans characters as central protagonists in order to promote opportunities for trans performers, making this an original and necessary publication for both practical use and academic study. Sagittarius Ponderosa by MJ Kaufman The Betterment Society by Mashuq Mushtaq Deen how to clean your room by j. chavez She He Me by Rapha禱l Amahl Khouri The Devils Between Us by Sharifa Yasmin Doctor Voynich and Her Children by Leanna Keyes Firebird Tattoo by Ty Defoe Crooked Parts by Azure Osborne-Lee
Acoustics of Multi-Use Performing Arts Centers
Multi-use performing arts centers are among the most complex of all building types and require excellent and flexible acoustics in order to suit the facility's varied programming needs. This technical and practical book by renowned acoustician Mark Holden delivers a full discussion of the challenges and solutions that arise in the concept,
Stage Management
Now in its twelfth edition, Stage Management is the comprehensive go-to manual on stage management in all theatre environments.Revered as the authoritative resource for stage management, this text is rich with practical resources, including checklists, diagrams, examples, forms, and step-by-step directions. In addition to sharing their own expertise, Stern and Gold have gathered practical advice from working stage managers of Broadway, off-Broadway, touring companies, regional, community, and 99-seat Equity waiver theatres. This new edition has been fully updated with new technology and best practices, including: New websites for stage management tools and software Updated Equity rules Additional safety and emergency protocols New voices from practicing stage managers in text boxes and case studies scattered throughout the book This practical guide is written for students of Stage Management in Theatre programs, as well as early career stage managers.The companion website features paperwork templates, downloadable checklists, suggested readings, a list of websites and apps with today's cutting-edge stage management technology, and a list of over 500 internships and apprenticeships available across the United States.
Nordic Noir, Adaptation, Appropriation
This book argues that adaptation is an underrecognized yet constitutive element of Nordic noir. In so doing, it reframes the prevailing critical view. Now celebrated for its global sweep, Nordic noir is equally a transmedial phenomenon. Nordic Noir, Adaptation, Appropriation deploys the tools of current adaptation studies to undertake a wide-ranging transcultural, intermedial exploration, adding an important new layer to the rich scholarship that has arisen around Nordic noir in recent years.
Touring Variety in the Asia Pacific Region, 1946-1975
Aviation extended the horizon of international touring across Asia and the Pacific in the 1950s and 1960s. Nightclubs in Hong Kong, Manila, Melbourne, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, and Taipei presented an international array of touring acts. This book investigates how this happened. It explores the post-war formation of the Asia Pacific region through international touring and the transformation of entertainment during the 'jet age' of aviation. Drawing on archival research across the region, Bollen investigates how touring variety forged new relations between artists, audiences, and nations. Mapping tours and tracing networks by connecting fragments, he reveals how versatile artists translated repertoire in circulation as they toured, and how entrepreneurial endeavours harnessed the production of national distinction to government agendas. He argues that touring variety on commercial circuits diversified the repertoire in regional circulation, anticipating the diversity emerging in state-sanctioned multiculturalisms, and driving the government-construction of national theatres for cultural diplomacy.
Wanda’s Wizardry
Set in Pittsburgh in May 1919, this vaudevillian farce is filled with idiosyncratic showbiz personalities from the golden age of stage shows. It takes place backstage at the Pitts Theatre (It ain't the Ritz. No, it's the Pitts). Rising stars and an over-the-hill magician, theater crews, and backstage geeks attempt to pool expertise (often contradictory) in helping Wanda (the protagonist) morph from a na簿ve but bright-eyed young woman, filled with hope but no magic skills, into a true prodigious purveyor of prestidigitation. Her metamorphosis occurs at multiple levels. Wanda's magic skills emerge from a rookie amateur to a full-fledged professional over a six month period. Her self-image transforms from a shy, bashful kid to a female bursting over with self-confidence (sometimes a bit much). Perhaps more important, her backstage buddies toss out some chauvinistic characterizations (especially antagonist Frack) filled with snide and caustic comments that become shattered as gender equity is finally achieved and she doesn't have to get the coffee any more. Instead, she becomes the leading female magician of the 1920s.
Squall
The original screenplay written by Sean Costello that the novel SQUALL was based upon. Bush pilot and family man Tom Stokes is about to face the worst day of his life. On a clear winter morning he sets out in his Cessna 180 to do some repairs on a remote hunt camp, leaving his five year old son and very pregnant wife snug in their beds. On the return trip, a squall forces him into an emergency landing and he winds up--quite literally--in the lap of petty criminal Dale Knight. Dale, now a fugitive from the law--and worse, from a merciless drug lord who just happens to be his brother--draws Tom into a web of mayhem and treachery that puts not only his life at risk, but the lives of his wife, son...and unborn child. SQUALL is a fast-paced, darkly-comic tale of murder and gang-style retribution that grabs the reader on page one and simply does not let go. WARNING: This book contains adult language and violence.
Integrated Access in Live Performance
Live performances are increasingly being made accessible to people with sensory impairments not only to satisfy equality laws and the requirements of funding bodies, but also in the interest of diversity and as a catalyst for creativity. Directors can help build audiences as diverse as the population at large by making their art accessible.
Acting Action
"What is it that we're doing, when we're acting well?" This is the question famously posed by Earle Gister, the legendary head of the acting department at Yale School of Drama from 1979 to 1999. In Acting Action, actor, director, and teaching artist Hugh O'Gorman invites readers to explore the question in detail. Focusing on playing action--one of the essential components of acting passed on to renowned acting teachers Earle Gister and Lloyd Richards by Paul Mann--Acting Action is divided into two parts: context and practice. The first section provides a thorough examination of the theory behind the core elements of playing action. The second section presents a step-by-step rehearsal guide for actors to integrate playing action into their preparation process. Acting Action offers a foundation for how to get started and build the core of a performance. More precisely, it provides a practical guide for actors, directors, and teachers in the technique of playing action, addressing a void in the world of actor training by illuminating what exactly to do in the moment-to-moment act of acting.
Passing the Buck
Welcome to Metaphysical Science Theater 3000. This collection is the first comprehensive attempt to place Traditionalism within a major field of modern popular culture-cinema, good and bad - and to recognize how each can clarify and illuminate the other. Although Hollywood classics are included here (from Sitting Pretty to Touch of Evil) along with popular hits like Groundhog Day, Manhunter, and Silence of the Lambs, the emphasis is on movies small and personal, forgotten, or just plain weird (Psychomania). There's Manos, of course, but the real standout is an extended examination of autistic auteur Coleman Francis and his trilogy of boredom and postwar despair. All are minutely examined until they reveal evidence of cyclical time, karma, reincarnation, and ultimately the amoral attainment of enlightenment by what the author calls "passing the buck."
Musical Theatre Choreography
This book is a compilation of all aspects of performing arts from costumes, to music, to characterization. The book takes a critical look at the similarities and differences between dance and theater choreography from the perspective of the author and their own experiences with both of these art forms. The book is filled with pictures from a variety of different shows as well as an included viewer's guide written by the author for those interested in learning more about dance or theatre.
AutoCAD for Theatrical Drafting
AutoCAD for Theatrical Drafting provides an introduction to the software AutoCAD, specifically focusing on how to navigate the commands most commonly used when creating design, construction and installation drafting plates for theatrical use. Beginning with a step-by-step tutorial of how to download the program and a review of theatrical drafting standards, the text details commands used in 2D drafting and 3D modeling and how to create theatrical drafting plates using AutoCAD that meet those drafting standards. It also provides guidance on how to transition from 2D drafting to 3D modeling, how to use 3D models to create camera views and animations and how to use 3D models for production and engineering purposes.Intended as a resource for the beginning and intermediate AutoCAD user, AutoCAD for Theatrical Drafting provides easy-to-follow instructions that readers can refer to while using the AutoCAD software.
Siting Futurity
Siting Futurity: The "Feel Good" Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna shows how cultural practitioners in and around Vienna draw on their historical knowledge of locality to create rousing productions designed to get audiences to inform themselves about useful aspects of history, to get them to engage their presents, and to help make possible more socially equitable futures. Analyses of politically engaged works of contemporary theatre, film, and photography set in and around Vienna help to identify a historically oriented mechanism that enables artists to tap into Vienna's extraordinary, and extraordinarily under-appreciated, tradition of protest culture that dates back to the action that brought about the Wiener Neustadt "Blood Court" in the 16th century, but really came into its own with the city's most influential occupation of an abandoned slaughterhouse for 100 days in the late summer of 1976. It also shows how work with a connection to Vienna by international stars like David Bowie, Wes Anderson, and Christoph Schlingensief has absorbed the same principles.While the overwhelming scale of technological development and the ensuing problems and crises may not have been deliberately designed to induce resignation, passivity, and despair, those who benefit from the related hyperobjects of financialization and climate change must find it convenient that they do, as demoralization reduces resistance to their profit-making machinations. It is in this context that Red Vienna's proud tradition of social engagement and long tradition of resistance and radicality deserves to be better known.Susan Ingram is Professor in the Department of Humanities at York University, Toronto, where she coordinates the Graduate Diploma for Comparative Literature and is affiliated with the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies and the Research Group on Language and Culture Contact. She is the general editor of Intellect Book's Urban Chic series and the co-author of the volumes on Berlin, Vienna, and Los Angeles. A past president of the Canadian Comparative Literature Association, her research interests revolve around the institutions of European cultural modernity and their legacies.
Monologues for Teens II
Teenage drama student tired of playing middle-aged grownups? Find stage pieces tailored to the real-world in this amazing new collection.Monologues for Teens II is the latest installment in The Young Actor Series and the long-awaited follow-up to the award-winning Monologues for Teens. Full voting member of the National Television Academy and longtime NBC Tonight Show sketch comedy performer Mike Kimmel has been writing, acting, producing, and teaching for decades. Now he's here to share a curated collection of the best comedy and drama monologues for 2020. This is a collection with depth, heart, and pathos to challenge young actors and bring out their very best performances. These are monologues they've never heard before - and monologues they'll remember you by!No props. No costumes. No entrances. No exits. No fluff. No bad language. No snarky, mean-spirited scenarios. No talking down to you - or your audience. Gender-neutral monologues that can be performed equally well by all actors.If you're searching for fresh, emotionally rich performance material with a positive, optimistic viewpoint presenting ethical questions for our youth - then order this clear and definitive new resource - Monologues for Teens II - today. Nail your next audition tomorrow.
Fractals
Fractals are patterns, infinitely reiterating, self-similar in shape. Benoit Mandelbrot coined the term in the 1970s, but scientists and mathematicians had been exploring the concept for centuries. Mandelbrot developed a geometry to express things found in the natural rather than the man-made world - coastlines, galaxies, anatomy, clouds, trees, snowflakes, and the like. Fractals are intrinsic to Chaos Theory - the science of surprises, of the non-linear and unpredictable. They reveal the order governing the seemingly chaotic in our world. As we learn to recognize them, we gain insight into our world, our selves, one another. Especially at this cultural moment, when the whole world has changed and we must re-imagine the ways in which we make art and the ways we educate, Fractals provides resources and approaches for collaborative art and for locating the intersection of arts and academics in ways that illuminate both.
After In-Yer-Face Theatre
This book revisits In-Yer-Face theatre, an explosive, energetic theatrical movement from the 1990s that introduced the world to playwrights Sarah Kane, Martin McDonagh, Mark Ravenhill, Jez Butterworth, and many others. Split into three sections the book re-examines the era, considers the movement's influence on international theatre, and considers its lasting effects on contemporary British theatre. The first section offers new readings on works from that time period (Antony Neilson and Mark Ravenhill) as well as challenges myths created by the Royal Court Theatre about the its involvement with In-Yer-Face theatre. The second section discusses the influence of In-Yer-Face on Portuguese, Russian and Australian theater, while the final section discusses the legacy of In-Yer-Face writers as well as their influences on more recent playwrights, including chapters on Philip Ridley, Sarah Kane, Joe Penhall, Martin Crimp, Dennis Kelly, and Verbatim Drama.
Horror Films for Children
Children and horror are often thought to be an incompatible meeting of audience and genre, beset by concerns that children will be corrupted or harmed through exposure to horror media. Nowhere is this tension more clear than in horror films for adults, where the demonic child villain is one of the genre's most enduring tropes. However, horror for children is a unique category of contemporary Hollywood cinema in which children are addressed as an audience with specific needs, fears and desires, and where child characters are represented as sympathetic protagonists whose encounters with the horrific lead to cathartic, subversive and productive outcomes. Horror Films for Children examines the history, aesthetics and generic characteristics of children's horror films, and identifies the 'horrific child' as one of the defining features of the genre, where it is as much a staple as it is in adult horror but with vastly different representational, interpretative and affective possibilities. Through analysis of case studies including blockbuster hits (Gremlins), cult favourites (The Monster Squad) and indie darlings (Coraline), Catherine Lester asks, what happens to the horror genre, and the horrific children it represents, when children are the target audience?
Exploring the Orville
This is the first book to take a deep dive into the philosophical, social, moral, political, and religious issues tackled by Seth MacFarlane's marvelous space adventure, The Orville. These new essays explore what The Orville has to say on everything from climate change, artificial intelligence, and sexual assault, to gender, feminism, love, and care. Divided into six "acts" (just like every episode ofThe Orville), with the show as its backdrop, the book asks questions about the dangers of democracy and social media, the show's relationship to Star Trek and the puzzle of time travel.
The Church on British Television
This book will be the first systematic and comprehensive text to analyze the many and contrasting appearances of the Church of England on television. It covers a range of genres and programs including crime drama, science fiction, comedy, including the specific genre of 'ecclesiastical comedy', zombie horror and non-fiction broadcasting. Readers interested in church and political history, popular culture, television and broadcasting history, and the social history of modern Britain will find this to be a lively and timely book. Programs that year after year sit enshrined as national favourites (for example Dad's Army and Midsomer Murders) foreground the Church. From the Queen's Christmas Message to royal weddings and Coronation Street, the clergy and services of England's national church abound in television. This book offers detailed analysis of landmark examples of small screen output and raises questions relating to the storytelling strategies of program makers, the way the established Church is delineated, and the transformation over decades of congregations into audiences.
Liz Estrada
In 411 BC, Greek playwright Aristophanes penned Lysistrata. The play tells the story of a group of courageous women who devise a unique strategy for dealing with their government's fiscal mismanagement and for ending the Peloponnesian War, which had been going on for 20 years at the time the play was first produced.Now, more than 2,400 years later, have things really changed or can we still learn from this tale? Can uppity women in the era that gave us Trump and the endless Afghan conflict pick up any tricks from their ancient Greek sisters?
Musical, The, Second Edition
A complete introduction to musical theater from its roots in the eighteenth century through today, written by a master historian.The Musical, Second Edition, introduces students and general readers to the entire scope of the history of musical theater, from eighteenth-century ballad operas to nineteenth-century operettas, to the Golden Age of Broadway to today. In this comprehensive history, master theater historian Kurt G瓣nzl draws on his vast knowledge of the productions, the actors, the music and dance, and the reception of the central repertory of the musical theater. Focus boxes on key shows are included in every chapter, along with a chronology of the major musical productions described in the text. Production photographs from around the world enhance the descriptions of the costumes and staging. This book is an ideal introduction for college-level courses on the History of Musical Theater and will also appeal to the general theatergoer who wants to learn more about how today's musical developed from its earliest roots.
Improv and the Actor's Imagination
B/W INTERIOR - ALSO AVAILABLE IN LIMITED EDITION FULL-COLOR MY GOAL IS TO GET YOU INTO TROUBLE. Written for actors, IMPROV AND THE ACTOR'S IMAGINATION brings to life the skills of improvisation through practical exercises, games, and scenes, and applies those skills to the craft of acting and beyond. Actor and teacher Robert Z Grant shares his improvised approach for scripted and unscripted work alike, curated from decades of experience as a professional actor, improviser and human being. Actors (and everyone) looking to expand their possibilities are encouraged to generously give themselves permission to follow their own instincts, to respond simply and truthfully, and to release the awesome power of their imaginations. Get yourself into trouble and see what happens!
The Eleventh Hour
"The Monsters Have Risen"A story about family, faith, monsters, and prophecy.After a series of peculiar earthquakes across the Pacific Ocean, Professor Joseph Crowe begins a search into their origins, discovering an ancient species which has begun to reappear as the world shows signs of their resurgence.The first entry into the Chevah Mythos series.
Mugabe, My Dad and Me
Something strange happens when the past comes crushing into you, right in the present. April, 1980. The British colony of Rhodesia becomes the independent nation of Zimbabwe. A born-free, Tonderai Munyevu is part of the hopeful next generation from a country with a new leader, Robert Mugabe. Mugabe, My Dad and Me charts the rise and fall of one of the most controversial politicians of the 20th century through the lens of Tonderai's family story and his relationship with his father. Interspersing storytelling with Mugabe's unapologetic speeches, this high-voltage one man show is a blistering exploration of identity and what it means to return 'home'.
Lords and Ladies
It's Midsummer Night - no time for dreaming. Because sometimes, when there's more than one reality at play, too much dreaming can make the walls between them come tumbling down. Unfortunately there's usually a damned good reason for there being walls between them in the first place - to keep things out. Things who want to make mischief and play havoc with the natural order. Granny Weatherwax and her tiny coven of witches are up against real elves. And they're spectacularly nasty creatures. Even in a world of dwarves, wizards, trolls, Morris dancers - and the odd orang-utan - this is going to cause trouble... Adapted by Terry Pratchett's long-time collaborator Stephen Briggs, this play text version of Pratchett's bestselling Discworld novel Lords and Ladies wittily and faithfully reimagines the story for the stage.
History of Theater on Cape Cod
Theater on the Cape began in 1916 when a group of artists and writers in Provincetown mounted a production of a one-act play, Bound East for Cardiff, by a little-known playwright, Eugene O'Neill. They staged the play in a rickety old theater on a wharf in what was then little more than a sleepy fishing village. From that artists' colony--and others like it across the Cape and Islands--it grew into the constantly expanding theater universe it is today. The theatrical descendants of O'Neill and the Provincetown Players continue to present classical drama, contemporary hits and new, experimental works to audiences that have come to expect the best. In her tour of the theaters from Provincetown to Falmouth, author and entertainment columnist Sue Mellen reveals the rich past behind a unique cultural treasure.
Alex Torres 聶Y D籀nde Est獺 El Chiste?
聶Y d籀nde est獺 el chiste? Alex Torres nos brinda la oportunidad de leer una serie de chistes que alegrar獺n nuestros d穩as y nos har獺n olvidar las situaciones dif穩ciles por la que toda la humanidad estamos padeciendo en estos tiempos. Es como si 矇l quisiera que mientras todo pasa, disfrutemos en la sala de la risa para recrearnos hasta pasar a la sala mayor de la realidad de la vida. Este libro es mi homenaje a un ser humano que lo 繳nico que quiere, es que todos se r穩an, por lo tanto, aporta alegr穩a con su sentido del humor, apuesta a que nos olvidemos de las adversidades y no tomemos tan en serio nuestro paso por la vida. Encontraremos la mayor穩a de los chistes de Alex que pudimos recopilar, de situaciones cotidianas, que salen de su imaginaci籀n y creatividad.
Alex Torres 聶Y D籀nde Est獺 El Chiste?
聶Y d籀nde est獺 el chiste? Alex Torres nos brinda la oportunidad de leer una serie de chistes que alegrar獺n nuestros d穩as y nos har獺n olvidar las situaciones dif穩ciles por la que toda la humanidad estamos padeciendo en estos tiempos. Es como si 矇l quisiera que mientras todo pasa, disfrutemos en la sala de la risa para recrearnos hasta pasar a la sala mayor de la realidad de la vida. Este libro es mi homenaje a un ser humano que lo 繳nico que quiere, es que todos se r穩an, por lo tanto, aporta alegr穩a con su sentido del humor, apuesta a que nos olvidemos de las adversidades y no tomemos tan en serio nuestro paso por la vida. Encontraremos la mayor穩a de los chistes de Alex que pudimos recopilar, de situaciones cotidianas, que salen de su imaginaci籀n y creatividad.
Amateur and Proletarian Theatre in Post-Revolutionary Russia
This is the first collection of primary sources that addresses the amateur theatre produced by the workers in the first decade after the Russian Revolution. Newly translated from the Russian, the essays capture both theoretical articulations on the scene - by luminaries such as Alexander Bogdanov, Platon Kerzhentsev, Valerian Pletnev, Alexander Mgebrov and Valentin Smyshliaev - and the more fleeting descriptions and first-hand accounts of the productions staged, accounts and voices which are typically harder to capture. The essays tell a story of unabashed optimism in the creativity of the working classes. They speak of the use of theatre to carve a public and political role in the construction of a new world. The sources, however, also exhibit the flipside of the scene, or the sombre difficulties faced by the amateur actors and the incessant calls to raise standards through professional help. The narrative developed is that of an amateur theatre which began as an autonomous and heterogeneous activity but which by the mid-to-late 1920s was transformed into a regulated practice and a space for cultural programming. The collection makes an important contribution to our understanding of modern theatre: scholarship conventionally tackles the canonical names from the professional world but gives little attention to the more down-to-earth forms of performance taking place in factories, clubs and amateur circles. An introductory essay also highlights the range and significance of the collection and draws links between the essays.
Marriage and Late-Victorian Dramatists
​This book examines plays produced in England in the 1890s and early 1900s and the ways in which these plays responded to changing perceptions of marriage. Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, and other late-Victorian dramatists challenged romanticized ideals of love and domesticity, and, in the process, these authors appropriated and rewrote the genre conventions that had dominated English drama for much of the nineteenth century. In their plays, theater became a forum for debating the problems of traditional marriage and envisioning alternative forms of partnership. This book is written for scholars specializing in the areas of Victorian studies, dramatic literature, theater history, performance studies, and gender studies.
Inclusivity and Equality in Performance Training
Inclusivity and Equality in Performance Training focuses on neuro and physical difference and dis/ability in the teaching of performance and associated studies. It offers nineteen practitioners' research-based teaching strategies, aimed to enhance equality of opportunity and individual abilities in performance education.
A Supernatural Politics
What makes a horror television drama interesting? Like any other drama, it is often the character development or plot, and this certainly applies to the dramatically-resonant Supernatural and its beloved characters. However, Supernatural has achieved a dedicated fandom and a record-breaking 15-season run by skillfully engaging with the social reality inhabited by the show's audience. Additionally, the show plays with the fourth wall by having an in-world fandom for the main characters. Supernatural's many layers have garnered the attention of academics who analyzed the show's engagement with diverse topics such as the #MeToo movement, consumerism, and the American Dream. This collection of essays studies the topical issues and politics that added depth and maturity to Supernatural, separated it from X-Files knock-offs, and garnered the show its own cult following.
Women, Method Acting, and the Hollywood Film
This is the first study dedicated to understanding the work of female Method actors on film, analyzing performances such as Kim Hunter's in A Streetcar Named Desire, Julie Harris's in The Member of the Wedding, Geraldine Page's in Sweet Bird of Youth, and Jane Fonda's in Coming Home.
Action
From New York's hottest showcase for new poets, playwrights, and performers comes a dynamic collection of more than 30 original works of drama--all published here for the first time. All of the pieces--produced at the Nuyorican Poets' Cafe and other off-Broadway venues--offer readers a front-row seat for the best, most interesting theater in America today.
Yay!
You know how it is when the summer comes, and you have an album which you play over and over, which seems to sum up a very particular time and place? In which each song seems to sing of life and the very joy of living it? Yay!Is a collection of upbeat poems for uncertain times, poems of imagination and escape, whimsy and warmth, humanity and honesty. From a man trapped in a toilet in a motorbike museum with a cistern which refuses to flush, to a small town in West Virginia in which absolutely everything has a suddenly erotic undertone, via Scratch'n'Sniff hieroglyphs and the world's most mediocre circus, these poems are a veritable celebration of life from the Professor of Whimsy.
Individuals, Journalism, and Society
Nefarious people have joined in a new battle for your mind. They believe your individuality doesn't matter, that journalism serves them alone, and that society expects them to rule. While most schooling leaves people defenseless against their words, this synthesis will help defend against their bold misuse of ideas.
Spoken Word in the UK
Spoken Word in the UK is a comprehensive and in-depth introduction to spoken word performance in the UK - its origins and development, its performers and audiences, and the vast array of different styles and characteristics that make it unique.
Dramatism and Musical Theater; Experiments in Rhetorical Performance
Dramatism and Musical Theater: Experiments in Rhetorical Performance is an innovative workbook for both students and teachers in advanced communication performance. Meeting at the nexus of English composition, advanced rhetoric, theater, music, and drama, this book utilizes Kenneth Burke's method of dramatism to discover the motives inherent in performance practices, whether they be in the classroom or on the stage. In this book Kimberly Eckel Beasley and James P. Beasley take the five corners of the dramatistic pentad (act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose) and demonstrate their utilization in performance analysis. The authors then correlate those performance practices with the production of five contemporary musicals: Little Women, Aida, Street Scene, Into the Woods, and Children of Eden in order to emphasize the use of the dramatistic pentad in character, scene, and staging direction. By doing so, the book highlights dramatism as a performance practice necessary for effective participation in artistic communities. Dramatism and Musical Theater: Experiments in Rhetorical Performance is also an indispensable guide for teachers and directors to successfully navigate the challenges of collegiate theatrical production.
George Fitzmaurice: ’Wild in His Own Way’
This biography delves into Fitzmaurice's creative identity by reconstructing the regional roots of his themes, characters and dialect.
The Life and Adventures of Toby, the Sapient Pig
Those seeking inspiration or guidance often look to respected authors, philosophers, inventors, world leaders, and other famous people.But few, if any, look to a pig.The swine race, however, should not be so easily discarded. A look back into the history of the species reminds us of its shining star, Toby, the Sapient Pig.Toby was a learned pig who achieved great fame in England in the early 1800s. Billed as "The only scholar of his race in the world," Toby could spell, read, play cards, tell time and guess people's ages.Fortunately for us, he could also write. And with that glorious talent, he wrote his autobiography, The Life and Adventures of Toby, the Sapient Pig; With His Opinions on Men and Manners. Thus, his tale has been preserved through the centuries, allowing us all to marvel at his genius.
The Master Key to Acting Freedom
Graham Dixon has been involved in the work of Michael Chekhov as a professional actor, director and teacher for nearly 50 years, having studied with and met many of Chekhov's original students. As the director of the Michael Chekhov Studio London, he's recognised internationally as one of the most important teachers in this imaginative approach to acting. In The Master Key to Acting Freedom, Graham explores the basic principles of Michael Chekhov's approach to a new way of acting. Over the course of a four-day workshop with twelve participants from varying backgrounds, he shows how Chekhov's approach is radically different from many of the practices currently taught to actors and directors. Chekhov's approach is an 'open system' enabling the actor to access directly - 'to tap into' - an objective, creative world by using a heightened ability to imagine and sense. The resultant feelings, thoughts and will impulses are natural, unforced, true and joyous!
The White House Boys The Screenplay
Roger Dean Kiser and Andrew F. Puel write the movie script for The White House Boys-An American Tragedy from the book The White House Boys-An American Tragedy by Roger Dean Kiser. The rape, molestation, bloody beatings and the murders of hundreds of young boys took place at the former Florida School for Boys at Marianna.
Debbie Tucker Green
This long-awaited book is the first full-length study of the work of the extraordinary contemporary black British playwright, debbie tucker green. Covering the period from 2000 (Two Women) to 2017 (a profoundly affectionate, passionate devotion to someone (-noun)), it offers scholars and students the opportunity to engage in cutting-edge critical debate engendered by tucker green's innovative dramatic works for stage, television, and radio. This groundbreaking book includes contributions by a range of outstanding scholars, including black playwriting specialists, world-leading contemporary theatre scholars and some of the very best emerging researchers in the field. While always focused on the precision and detail of tucker green's work, this book simultaneously reframes broader debates around contemporary drama and its politics, poses new questions of theatre, and provokes scholarly thinking in ways that, however obliquely, contribute to the change for which the plays agitate.
The Master Key to Acting Freedom
Graham Dixon has been involved in the work of Michael Chekhov as a professional actor, director and teacher for nearly 50 years, having studied with and met many of Chekhov's original students. As the director of the Michael Chekhov Studio London, he's recognised internationally as one of the most important teachers in this imaginative approach to acting.In The Master Key to Acting Freedom, Graham explores the basic principles of Michael Chekhov's approach to a new way of acting. Over the course of a four-day workshop with twelve participants from varying backgrounds, he shows how Chekhov's approach is radically different from many of the practices currently taught to actors and directors. Chekhov's approach is an 'open system' enabling the actor to access directly - 'to tap into' - an objective, creative world by using a heightened ability to imagine and sense. The resultant feelings, thoughts and will impulses are natural, unforced, true and joyous!
A Lad in Knaphill
A Lamp that is a bit damp, and does not always produce the genie you expect, an evil magician who talks in verse, characters dressed in clothes from the wrong pantomime, and of course the Principal Boy who falls in love with the lovely princess - despite the Dame.
