The Female Gaze in Documentary Film
The Female Gaze in Documentary Film - an International Perspective makes a timely contribution to the recent rise in interest in the status, presence, achievements and issues for women in contemporary screen industries. It examines the works, contributions and participation of female documentary directors globally. The central preoccupation of the book is to consider what might constitute a 'female gaze', an inquiry that has had a long history in filmmaking, film theory and women's art. It fills a gap in the literature which to date has not substantially examined the work of female documentary directors. Moreover, research on sex, gender and the gaze has infrequently been the subject of scholarship on documentary film, particularly in comparison to narrative film or television drama. A distinctive feature of the book is that it is based on interviews with significant female documentarians from Europe, Asia and North America.
A History of East African Theatre, Volume 2
This second volume of A History of East African Theatre focuses on central East Africa; on Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. The first chapter is concerned with francophone theatres, comparatively studying work coming out of Burundi and Rwanda alongside a focus on French language theatre in Djibouti. The chapter is particularly concerned to explore how French and Belgian cultural policies impacted theatre during the colonial period and how the French ideas of Francafrique and promotion of elite, French language art have continued to resonate in the post-colonial present. Chapters Two and Three look comparatively at the rich theatre histories of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and are divided between a study of British East African colonial impact and an analysis of the post-colonial period illustrating how divergent political thought and societal make-up led to exponential differentiation in national theatres. The final chapter, on Theatre for Development and related social action theatre, covers the whole East African region, offering the first ever historicised analysis of this mode of theatre making which, since the 1980s, has come to dominate funding and opportunity in performance arts.
Radio for the Millions
Winner, 2024 Columbia University Press Distinguished Book Award Winner, 2024 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for South Asian Studies, Modern Language Association Co-winner, 2023 AIPS Book Prize, American Institute of Pakistan Studies Finalist, 2023 Richard Wall Memorial Award, Theatre Library Association From news about World War II to the broadcasting of music from popular movies, radio played a crucial role in an increasingly divided South Asia for more than half a century. Radio for the Millions examines the history of Hindi-Urdu radio during the height of its popularity from the 1930s to the 1980s, showing how it created transnational communities of listeners. Isabel Huacuja Alonso argues that despite British, Indian, and Pakistani politicians' efforts to usurp the medium for state purposes, radio largely escaped their grasp. She demonstrates that the medium enabled listeners and broadcasters to resist the cultural, linguistic, and political agendas of the British colonial administration and the subsequent independent Indian and Pakistani governments. Rather than being merely a tool of nation building in South Asia, radio created affective links that defied state agendas, policies, and borders. It forged an enduring transnational soundscape, even after the 1947 Partition had made a united India a political impossibility. Huacuja Alonso traces how people engaged with radio across news, music, and drama broadcasts, arguing for a more expansive definition of what it means to listen. She develops the concept of "radio resonance" to understand how radio relied on circuits of oral communication such as rumor and gossip and to account for the affective bonds this "talk" created. By analyzing Hindi film-song radio programs, she demonstrates how radio spurred new ways of listening to cinema. Drawing on a rich collection of sources, including newly recovered recordings, listeners' letters to radio stations, original interviews with broadcasters, and archival documents from across three continents, Radio for the Millions rethinks assumptions about how the medium connects with audiences.
Small Explosions
Over ninety searing new monologues from acclaimed playwright Adam Szymkowicz, traversing the extremes of heartbreak and joy across a range of moods and voices
Sam and Friends - The Story of Jim Henson's First Television Show
Long before Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, college students Jim Henson and Jane Nebel created a long-running daily local Washington, D.C. television program called Sam and Friends, where Jim developed his unique approach to comedy and introduced the world to a puppet named Kermit.In this book, President of The Jim Henson Legacy and author of The Muppets Character Encyclopedia, Craig Shemin, explores the story behind Sam and Friends and creates an episode guide from surviving scripts and recordings.Includes a foreword by longtime Henson collaborator Frank Oz, several complete scripts and more than 150 rare photos from The Jim Henson Company Archives.
Sam and Friends - The Story of Jim Henson's First Television Show (hardback)
Long before Sesame Street and The Muppet Show, college students Jim Henson and Jane Nebel created a long-running daily local Washington, D.C. television program called Sam and Friends, where Jim developed his unique approach to comedy and introduced the world to a puppet named Kermit.In this book, President of The Jim Henson Legacy and author of The Muppets Character Encyclopedia, Craig Shemin, explores the story behind Sam and Friends and creates an episode guide from surviving scripts and recordings.Includes a foreword by longtime Henson collaborator Frank Oz, several complete scripts and more than 150 rare photos from The Jim Henson Company Archives.
Theater of Lockdown
Offering one of the first scholarly examinations of digital and distanced performance since the global shutdown of theaters in March 2020, Barbara Fuchs provides both a record of the changes and a framework for thinking through theater's transformation. Though born of necessity, recent productions offer a new world of practice, from multi-platform plays on Zoom, WhatsApp, and Instagram, to enhancement via filters and augmented reality, to urban distanced theater that enlivens streetscapes and building courtyards. Based largely outside the commercial theater, these productions transcend geographic and financial barriers to access new audiences, while offering a lifeline to artists. This study charts how virtual theater puts pressure on existing assumptions and definitions, transforming the conditions of both theater-making and viewership. How are participatory, site-specific, or devised theater altered under physical-distancing requirements? How do digital productions blur the line between film and theater? What does liveness mean in a time of pandemic? In its seven chapters, Theater of Lockdown focuses on digital and distanced productions from the Americas, Europe, and Australia, offering scholarly analysis and interviews. Productions examined include Theater in Quarantine's "closet work" in New York; Forced Entertainment's (Sheffield, UK), End Meeting for All, I, II, and III; the work of Madrid-based company Grumelot; and the virtuosic showmanship of EFE Tres in Mexico City.
Artists Under Fire
International entertainers of every color and creed are besieged by pressure to boycott Israel with an antisemitic smear tactic that spans the globe. Behind it all is the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, an intimidation network masquerading as a human rights movement.In Artists Under Fire, industry insider and activist Lana Melman puts BDS on trial. She exposes its strategy of using celebrities like Scarlett Johansson, Alicia Keys, Rihanna, the Rolling Stones, and more as pawns in its destructive crusade.She calls out a vocal group of artists, led by Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters, who has joined the attack and created a star-studded battle between themselves and the thousands of musicians, filmmakers, and authors who refuse to be cowed. Melman sounds the alarm about antisemitism's newest weapon and provides Israel's supporters with a step-by-step action plan to take it on. She also prods BDS followers to question the motives of their leaders, the company they are keeping, and the consequences of their actions.
Artists Under Fire
International entertainers of every color and creed are besieged by pressure to boycott Israel with an antisemitic smear tactic that spans the globe. Behind it all is the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, an intimidation network masquerading as a human rights movement.In Artists Under Fire, industry insider and activist Lana Melman puts BDS on trial. She exposes its strategy of using celebrities like Scarlett Johansson, Alicia Keys, Rihanna, the Rolling Stones, and more as pawns in its destructive crusade.She calls out a vocal group of artists, led by Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters, who has joined the attack and created a star-studded battle between themselves and the thousands of musicians, filmmakers, and authors who refuse to be cowed. Melman sounds the alarm about antisemitism's newest weapon and provides Israel's supporters with a step-by-step action plan to take it on. She also prods BDS followers to question the motives of their leaders, the company they are keeping, and the consequences of their actions.
Mime Into Physical Theatre: A UK Cultural History 1970-2000
This is the first book to investigate the social, political, cultural, artistic and economic forces which created conditions for the rise, success and decline of mime and physical theatre in the United Kingdom, from the 1970s to 2000.
Re-Performance, Mourning and Death
This book examines the recent trend for re-performance and how this impacts on the relationship between live performance and death. Focusing specifically on examples of performance art the text analyses the relationship between performance, re-performance and death, comparing the process of re-performance to the process of mourning and arguing that both of these are processes of adaptation and survival. Using a variety of case studies, including performances by Ron Athey, Julie Tolentino, Martin O'Brien, Sheree Rose, Jo Spence and Hannah Wilke, the book explores performances which can be considered acts of re-performance, as well as performances which examine some of the critical concerns of re-performance, including notions of illness, loss and death. By drawing upon both philosophical and performance studies discourses the text takes a novel approach to the relationship between re-performance, mourning and death.
Chris Wade and Rik Mayall
For fans of the cult comedy audiobook CUTEY AND THE SOFAGUARD, here is Chris Wade's essential companion book. It features a diary of the recording, Chris's personal memories of working with Rik Mayall, photos, scans of work notes, plus a 2010 interview conducted by Chris with Rik at the same studio where they recorded the audiobook. The book also features additional material, including an essay on Rik's career, and interviews with directors Ate De Jong (Drop Dead Fred) and Jane Spencer (Little Noises). The book is both a personal memoir and an appreciation of Rik Mayall's talent.
Infinite Quest - A Checklist Of Doctor Who Audio & Video Releases
Infinite Quest is the ultimate guide to the ever-expanding universe of Doctor Who's adventures on video and audio. With complete guides to the BBC TV broadcasts and DVDs, the Big Finish range of adventures, Target dramatisations, fan productions, audiobooks and more, it lists 2,000-plus different stories, released in a multitude of formats, between 1963 and today. All thirteen Doctors (to date) are included, alongside a wealth of related spin-offs, sidelines and, of course, the Doctor's greatest friends and foes - K-9, UNIT, Torchwood, Davros and the Daleks, the Cybermen, Class, Sarah Jane Smith, Bernice Summerfield, Charlie Pollard, the Autons, the Zygons, Lady Christina, River Song and many others.
Papa Bois
Papa Bois: King of Paradise is a play about a contemporary Caribbean society, battling against the detrimental effects of globalisation, its fruits of prosperity from returning Caribbean Diaspora migrants, and the consequences for their Caribbean-heritage children. Based on the Caribbean folktale, Papa Bois, this play satirises social conventions and practices held dear by an aged, local Caribbean community, that clash with modern perspectives among the youth, that lead to tragic consequences. In this Play, Novelist, Poet and Playwright, Roselle Thompson, boldly turns conventions and institutions upside down, by exploring characters who embrace foreign cultural mores, social class separation, 'legitimised' debauchery, drug and human trafficking and government impropriety. However, these lifestyles encounter resistance, based on the standards of propriety and belief in the existence of Papa Bois; an African-derived folktale character in the Caribbean region. This framework is set against a multitude of issues that range from Caribbean migrants' pursuit of the American Dream, the Caribbean returnee's creation of 'new' social classes, which are at odds with the cultural and traditional 'backhome' environment. Themes explored include religion, social inequality, owning land, identity, violence, poverty, exploitation and political corruption; versus long-held cultural and traditional practices. Ms Thompson uses her artform to expose the reader to society's arbitrary and often hypocritical, moral and political structures, as well as human/societal flaws, that provoke and challenge viewpoints.
Houdini's Fabulous Magic
Incredible escapes, fantastic sleight-of-hand-Houdini's most challenging performances are dramatically portrayed in Houdini's Fabulous Magic. Walter Gibson, co-author, was in close touch with Harry Houdini for a number of years before his death and worked with the master magician in preparing material for the book. It is with the aid of Houdini's own scrapbooks and notes that this book was written.The spectacular highlights of Houdini's career are described-and explained-here. Included are the famous escapes: escapes from a padlocked milk can filled with water; from locked jail cells; from a water-filled Chinese torture cell while suspended upside down; from packing cases weighted under water. Again, in this book, Houdini walks through a brick wall, vanishes a 10,000-pound elephant and is buried alive. Once more, Houdini and his wife Bessie mysteriously exchange places in a locked trunk-in three seconds!And Houdini the man is not ignored. His impact on the world in the early years of the twentieth century was enormous. He was a public hero who, in his own way, helped sweep out the cobwebs of nineteenth-century thinking. While doing so, he distinguished himself as a patriot, writer, collector of magic, aviator, movie idol, philanthropist, and crusader against fraudulent spiritualistic practices.This is a technical manual for magicians, complete with illustrations and diagrams, but it is also an astute analysis of the best of Houdini's magic and a readable biography of a man who turned himself into a legend. It is a book for would-be conjurers, for professional necromancers, for those curious about the methods and means of one of the most enchanting men of our century.
Radio for the Millions
Winner, 2024 Columbia University Press Distinguished Book Award Winner, 2024 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for South Asian Studies, Modern Language Association Co-winner, 2023 AIPS Book Prize, American Institute of Pakistan Studies Finalist, 2023 Richard Wall Memorial Award, Theatre Library Association From news about World War II to the broadcasting of music from popular movies, radio played a crucial role in an increasingly divided South Asia for more than half a century. Radio for the Millions examines the history of Hindi-Urdu radio during the height of its popularity from the 1930s to the 1980s, showing how it created transnational communities of listeners. Isabel Huacuja Alonso argues that despite British, Indian, and Pakistani politicians' efforts to usurp the medium for state purposes, radio largely escaped their grasp. She demonstrates that the medium enabled listeners and broadcasters to resist the cultural, linguistic, and political agendas of the British colonial administration and the subsequent independent Indian and Pakistani governments. Rather than being merely a tool of nation building in South Asia, radio created affective links that defied state agendas, policies, and borders. It forged an enduring transnational soundscape, even after the 1947 Partition had made a united India a political impossibility. Huacuja Alonso traces how people engaged with radio across news, music, and drama broadcasts, arguing for a more expansive definition of what it means to listen. She develops the concept of "radio resonance" to understand how radio relied on circuits of oral communication such as rumor and gossip and to account for the affective bonds this "talk" created. By analyzing Hindi film-song radio programs, she demonstrates how radio spurred new ways of listening to cinema. Drawing on a rich collection of sources, including newly recovered recordings, listeners' letters to radio stations, original interviews with broadcasters, and archival documents from across three continents, Radio for the Millions rethinks assumptions about how the medium connects with audiences.
Alternative Comedy Now and Then
Alternative Comedy Now and Then: Critical Perspectives is the first academic collection focusing on the history and legacy of the alternative comedy movement in Britain that began in 1979 and continues to influence contemporary stand-up comedy. The collection examines the contexts, performances and reception of alternative comedy in order to provide a holistic approach to examining the socio-political impact and significance of alternative comedy from its historical roots through to present day performances. As alternative comedy celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2019, critically reflecting on its impact and significance is a timely endeavour. The book adopts a distinctive interdisciplinary approach, synthesizing theory, concepts and methodologies from comedy studies, theatre and performance, communication and media studies, sociology, political sciences and anthropology. This approach is taken in order to fully understand and examine the dynamics and nuances of the alternative comedy movement which would not be possible with a single-discipline approach.
Perils of the Victorian Stage
In Victorian times the performing space, be it stage, music hall platform, or circus ring could be as dangerous as mine, mill or factory. Behind the spectacle and splendour lurked disaster, destitution and death. Falling scenery, open trapdoors, collapsing rostrums, explosions and fire were everyday hazards as was the excessive use of guns, swords and knives. Surprisingly, female dancers were major sufferers as their flimsy costumes were prone to catching fire - 160 such cases with some 40+ fatalities. Circus acts were hugely popular especially when performed by young children, while high-wire walkers like Blondin the 'Hero of Niagara' inspired lesser artistes to attempt stunts beyond their capabilities. Mid-century, L矇otard invented the flying trapeze and from that moment artistes risked their lives to outdo whatever had gone before. This book is a miscellany of life-threatening dangers and fatal accidents during performance to acrobats, magicians, variety acts etc, as well as singers, dancers, musicians, comedians, and a plethora of actors and actresses.
Acting The Australian Way
Acting The Australian Way is your complete guide to becoming a working actor. - Have you always wanted to know why Australian actors do so well around the world? - Do you struggle with connecting with your lines? - Are you concerned with what to do with your body? - Do you know how and why your breath is very important to you as an actor? And do you know how to use it for affect?- Do you cringe or not like the sound of your own voice?- Do you know how to cry on cue or at least be emotionally vulnerable? - Do you know what classical training is? - Do you know how to make an impact in auditions? - Do you know how to make compelling characters?- Do you know what to expect when being trained by teachers or coaches? This book by Paul Parker will empower you and answer all those questions and more. A qualified teacher, Paul will walk you through exercises, step by step, on how to become a working actor. In the book you will also receive the learning points at the end of each section and be given tangible examples of how you should be taught as an actor.
The Third Rendition
My Third Rendition of the "...way of the world." Definitely a "fun" book! There are no redeeming qualities in the stories, they are just stories - written for the fun of it. The book should have had a hole drilled into the upper left-hand corner, for you to be able to "...hang it from a nail on the outhouse door." (NOTE: Starting with the first edition of the Farmers' Almanac in 1818, readers used to drill nail holes into the corners of the almanac to hang it up in their homes, barns, and outhouses (to provide both reading material and toilet paper). In 1919, the Almanac's publishers began pre-drilling holes in the corners to make it even easier for readers to keep all of that invaluable information (and paper) handy.) Plenty of silliness, a plethora of weirdness, and an explosion of insanity are all the attributes I can think of. Even my staunchest critics had to smirk when they read it and, in the immortal words of my wife: "Don't you have something better to do with your time?"
Bonaparte’s Wedding
In the early years of Kazakhstan's independence, a village is getting ready to celebrate a wedding - until a shameful secret about the groom is brought to light. As the groom's hapless parents and sharp-tongued relatives try to save face, all hell breaks loose. With cameos from a spiky village elder, a concussed poet, a TV hypnotist and someone who may or may not be a doctor, Dulat Issabekov's play Bonaparte's Wedding is a caustic and entertaining look at how Kazakhs tried to reclaim their customs and politics at the end of the Soviet era.
Either Everything Was Wrong from the Git Go or Right From the Start
"We never know who, what, and when our lives will be touched. What impact it will have after It's been touched... Things that happened and didn't happen in the past, with the things happening in my present was starting to bring sadness and grief to my heart. I believe in Love, beating the odds and letting things go to see will they return to me; but that doesn't mean time will stand still for us to capture all our dreams. I've made my decisions in life and I'm all right, but it's okay to dream and to ask "What If " I had one more try? Well, I did that, now I'm writing about the "one more chance" in life to do something else. The question is what will you do? I'm doing my "What If ", I'm writing. I hope you enjoy my precious gift to you from above with continuous LOVE.. There's no greater gift without Thee.D.L.L."
Pillars of Society. Ibsen, Shaw, Brecht
Pillars of Society: Ibsen, Shaw, Brecht is a collection of essays on the plays Pillars of Society (1877), Ghosts (1881), A Dolls House (1879), and Hedda Gabler (1890), by Henrik Ibsen; The Philanderer (1893), Candida (1894), The Doctor's Dilemma (1906), Androcles and the Lion (1912), Major Barbara (1905), Misalliance (1910), Saint Joan (1923), and Pygmalion (1913), by George Bernard Shaw; A Man's a Man (1926), Mother Courage and Her Children (1941), The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1945), Life of Galileo (1939), Saint Joan of the Stockyards (1929), The Trial of Joan of Arc at Rouen, 1431 (1934), and The Visions of Simone Machard (1943), by Bertolt Brecht; and on the subjects of tragedy, comedy, realism, theatricalism, feminism, and adaptation. Pillars of Society thus features close analysis of individual plays by Ibsen, Shaw, and Brecht, plus readable, comparative surveys of these writers' dramatic oeuvres and production careers. Shaw wrote about Ibsen's incipient influence on him in The Quintessence of Ibsenism; early in his career, Brecht wrote an essay about Shaw titled "Three Cheers for Shaw." These three modern dramatists are linked, in this way, in their common moral, social, and political concerns, as well as in their bridging of such artistic movements as naturalism, symbolism, epic theater, even absurdism. James R. Russo is an independent researcher who holds graduate degrees, including the doctorate, from the University of Richmond and Louisiana State University. He has taught at those schools as well as Tulane. Russo's primary scholarly interests are the cinema and comparative literature. He has edited or authored the following published books: Film Nation: William Troy on the Cinema, 1933-1935; The Bookman: William Troy on Literature and Criticism, 1927-1950; Drama According to Alexander Bakshy, 1916-1946; and Analyzing Film: A Student Casebook.
Evolution on British Television and Radio
This book charts the history of how biological evolution has been depicted on British television and radio, from the first radio broadcast on evolution in 1925 through to the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species in 2009. Going beyond science documentaries, the chapters deal with a broad range of broadcasting content to explore evolutionary themes in radio dramas, educational content, and science fiction shows like Doctor Who. The book makes the case that the dominant use in science broadcasting of the 'evolutionary epic', a narrative based on a progressive vision of scientific endeavour, is part of the wider development of a standardised way of speaking about science in society during the 20th century. In covering the diverse range of approaches to depicting evolution used in British productions, the book demonstrates how their success had a global influence on the genres and formats of science broadcasting used today.
The Vagrant Trilogy: Three Plays by Mona Mansour
"The [Vagrant Trilogy] extends far beyond the timeline of devastating events, and instead shows us something greater: humanity." - Broadway World The Vagrant Trilogy is a set of three plays by award-winning Arab American playwright Mona Mansour which explores the Palestinian condition prior to, during, and after the infamous Six-Day War. It sketches the devastating effect this conflict had on members of the Palestinian diaspora scattered in Europe and in Lebanese refugee camps. With productions in Washington DC, New York, and Abu Dhabi, this trilogy has moved audiences across both America and the Arabic-speaking world. The Hour of Feeling, The Vagrant, and Urge for Going offer a deep exploration of the Palestinian struggle for home and identity, a powerful glimpse into a reality that many face and few understand. The volume includes a foreword by director Mark Wing-Davey; an introduction by Arab American theatre scholars Hala Baki and Michael Malek Najjar; the three plays in their final performance versions; an interview with playwright Mona Mansour; and a critical essay by literary scholar Diya Abdo. This collection of Mansour's outstanding plays is another important contribution to the Arab American theatrical canon and the larger body of American drama.
Revolutionary Becomings
Winner, 2025 Lionel Trilling Book Award, Columbia College Winner, 2024 Book Award, History Division, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Honorable Mention, 2024 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for East Asian Studies, Modern Language Association From the toppling of the Qing Empire in 1911 to the political campaigns and mass protests in the Mao and post-Mao eras, revolutionary upheavals characterized China's twentieth century. In Revolutionary Becomings, Ying Qian studies documentary film as an "eventful medium" deeply embedded in these upheavals and as a prism to investigate the entwined histories of media and China's revolutionary movements. With meticulous historical excavation and attention to intermedial practices and transnational linkages, Qian discusses how early media practitioners at the turn of the twentieth century intermingled with rival politicians and warlords as well as civic and business organizations. She reveals the foundational role documentary media played in the Chinese Communist Revolution as a bridge between Marxist theories and Chinese historical conditions. In considering the years after the Communist Party came to power, Qian traces the dialectical relationships between media practice, political relationality, and revolutionary epistemology from production campaigns during the Great Leap Forward to the "class struggles" during the Cultural Revolution and the reorganization of society in the post-Mao decade. Exploring a wide range of previously uninvestigated works and intervening in key debates in documentary studies and film and media history, Revolutionary Becomings provides a groundbreaking assessment of the significance of media to the historical unfolding and actualization of revolutionary movements.
Credibility
Acting is a subjective, idiosyncratic art. One actor's sensibilities and specific performance methodology or process may, and typically does, differ considerably from that of another actor. However, there are inherent objectives and considerations that are common to anyone who steps on stage. In Credibility: A Recipe for the Beginning Actor these considerations, as well as strategies and specific tactics designed to achieve an honest, life-like, credible performance are explored using the metaphor of a chef's carefully-planned, meticulously and incrementally-executed meal.
So Say We All
Battlestar Galactica (BSG) has been praised for its ongoing relevance as a cultural commentary over the past two decades. Fans have explored the science, the politics, and the extraordinary special effects of the series. One theme continues to surface in blogs, podcasts, and convention interviews--BSG's focus on religion. BSG is a series that believes in its religion. In it, the human and Cylon characters face existential crises, do missional work, and attempt to convert one another to religious value systems. So Say We All tells the story of each season with particular focus on the values held by characters in the series, and their individual journeys toward enlightenment. The religious aspects of BSG paint a picture of how religion shapes values of life, free will, and acceptance, and influences how and why people live their lives.
Credibility
Acting is a subjective, idiosyncratic art. One actor's sensibilities and specific performance methodology or process may, and typically does, differ considerably from that of another actor. However, there are inherent objectives and considerations that are common to anyone who steps on stage. In Credibility: A Recipe for the Beginning Actor these considerations, as well as strategies and specific tactics designed to achieve an honest, life-like, credible performance are explored using the metaphor of a chef's carefully-planned, meticulously and incrementally-executed meal.
The Art & Science of Performer Flying
This book is about creating manual performer flying effects for theatrical productions and the systems required to create them. It includes a little about history of performer flying (starting in the late 1800s), a lot of the design of different types of manually operated performer flying systems, a good deal on harnesses, some information on operating those systems and creating flying effects, information on components, safety, and working with professional performer flying companies. It documents much of what I have learned about performer flying in the past 40 plus years.
Love Is Love Is Love
Love Is Love Is Love: Broadway Musicals and LGBTQ Politics, 2010-2020 looks to the Broadway musicals of the past decade for help understanding the current state of LGBTQ politics in the United States.
Staging History from the Shoah to Palestine
This book is a contribution to the emerging field of research-based performance, which seeks to gain a wider audience for issues that are crucial to our understanding of history and to informing our future actions. The book examines the role of theater in portraying the Shoah in France, the French Resistance, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Each of the three chapters consists of an original dramatic work by the author and an accompanying critical essay.
Johnny Green & the Greenmen
In many ways the tale of Johnny Green and the Greenmen is an inside and personalized chronicle of American show business. Few performers have experienced such a varied and unbelievable career; whether it's touring with Bob Hope, playing on the television series "Batman", opening for the Rolling Stones, hanging out with Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles or running Liberace's publishing company, this book is a singular odyssey through the peaks and valleys of American entertainment. More importantly, it examines the pathway and vision of a musician, bass player, promoter, producer, booking agent, and undeniable innovator who rubbed shoulders with the biggest names in the entertainment industry, from a level of experience that is often overlooked when the spotlight shines on the main stage.
Doing Dramaturgy
This book explores how doing dramaturgy is informed by today's highly diverse field of theatre, dance and performance. It does so in dialogue with fourteen performances and their makers, tracing the thinking-through-practice that underlies these creations. The first part of the book looks at how dramaturgs participate in practices of thinking-making and introduces a dramaturgical mode of looking at performances and the processes in which they are created. The second part of the book discusses the performances and creative processes of Manuela Infante, Julian Hetzel, Ivo van Hove, Anouk van Dijk, Falk Richter, Milo Rau, Kris Verdonck, Death Centre, Hotel Modern, Jr.cE.sA.r, Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten, Dries Verhoeven, the LGB Society of Mind, Sanja Mitrovic, and Amanda Pi簽a. Showing how ways of making and ways of doing dramaturgy mutually inform each other, this book is an essential resource for students and others aspiring to develop their own dramaturgical practice.
The Methuen Drama Handbook of Interculturalism and Performance
The Methuen Drama Handbook of Interculturalism and Performance explores ground-breaking new directions and critical discourse in the field of intercultural theatre and performance while surveying key debates concerning interculturalism as an aesthetic and ethical series of encounters in theatre and performance from the 1960s onwards. The handbook's global coverage challenges understandings of intercultural theatre and performance that continue to prioritise case studies emerging primarily from the West and executed by elite artists. By building on a growing field of scholarship on intercultural theatre and performance that examines minoritarian and grassroots work, the volume offers an alternative and multi-vocal view of what interculturalism might offer as a theoretical keyword to the future of theatre and performance studies, while also contributing an energized reassessment of the vociferous debates that have long accompanied its critical and practical usage in a performance context. By exploring anew what happens when interculturalism and performance intersect as embodied practice, The Methuen Drama Handbook of Interculturalism and Performance offers new perspectives on a seminal theoretical concept still as useful as it is controversial. Featuring a series of indispensable research tools, including a fully annotated bibliography, this is the essential scholarly handbook for anyone working in intercultural theatre and performance, and performance studies.
Aural/Oral Dramaturgies
This book focuses on the 'aural turn' in contemporary theatre-making, examining a number of seemingly disparate trends that foreground speech and sound - 'post-verbatim' theatre, 'amplified storytelling (works using microphones and headphones), and 'gig theatre' that incorporates live music performance.
The Cultural Politics of One-to-One Performance
This monograph is the first study to critically examine works of performance made for an audience of one. Despite being a prolific feature of the performance scene since the turn of the millennium, critical writing about this area of contemporary practice remains scarce. This book proposes a genealogy of the curious relationship between solo performer and lone spectator through lineages in the histories of live art, visual art and theatre practices. Drawing on one-to-one performances by artists including Marilyn Arsem, Oreet Ashery, Franko B, Rosana Cade, Jess Dobkin, Karen Finley, David Hoyle, Adrian Howells, Kira O'Reilly, Barbara T Smith and Julie Tolentino, Rachel Zerihan produces research that is both affective and critical. This performance analysis proposes four frameworks through which to examine the significance and challenge of this work: cathartic, social, explicit and economic. One-to-one performance is proposed as a rich portal for examining the cultural politics of contemporary society. The book will appeal to students and scholars from performance studies, theatre, visual art and cultural studies.
The Anthologies
During a career of thirty years, Tahir Shah has published dozens of books on travel, exploration, topography, and research, as well as a large body of fiction.Through this extraordinary series of Anthologies, selections from the corpus are arranged by theme, allowing the reader to follow certain threads that are of profound interest to Shah.Spanning a number of distinct genres - in both fiction and non-fiction work - the collections incorporate a wealth of unpublished material. Prefaced by an original introduction, each Anthology provides a lens into a realm that has shaped Shah's own outlook as a bestselling author.Regarded as one of the most prolific and original writers working today, Tahir Shah has a worldwide following. Published in hundreds of editions and in more than thirty languages, his books turn the world back to front and inside out. Seeking to make sense of the hidden underbelly, he illuminates facets of life most writers hardly even realize exist.
The Apology
I exist now. Don't tell me that I didn't exist before. How should a nation apologise for the crimes of its past? Seoul, 1991. She kept her silence for over forty years. Then Sun-Hee spoke out, igniting a fire that burns to this day. Yuna is about to uncover a shameful family secret. Priyanka, the first United Nations investigator into Violence Against Women, probes the harrowing circumstances of the WWII "comfort women". Three women's lives intertwine as they speak truth to power and confront the atrocity of Japanese military sexual slavery during wartime. Based on true accounts by survivors and historical documents, The Apology is a play about what it takes to forgive. This edition is published to coincide with the world premiere at the Arcola Theatre, UK, in September 2022.
Curious Plays
Dive into this "introspectacle" and weird world of the Curious! This anthology of eight plays offers readers irreverent and iconoclastic narratives by playwrights with a keen ear for the eccentricities and homespun quirks of language. The Curious Theater Branch offers an ensemble of diverse creators with plays ranging from experiments in form to character-driven stories exploring the absurdity of human nature and the banality of personal relationships. Curious Plays is a celebration of Chicago's beloved Curious Theater Branch and The Rhinoceros Theater Festival, a mainstay of Chicago's experimental theater. Curious Plays reflects the theater company it is: a team of creatives who put writing and originality first. With an introduction by playwright Barrie Cole and historical reference materials, the anthology showcases Curious' 35-year history of making diverse, experimental theater while flagrantly flouting the ordinary.
I Am the Bullet
This is an intimate and cathartic journal about a man with a bullet stuck in his brain. The concept of this book came from a main character in a screenplay that filmmaker Gabriel Carrer created during the 2020 pandemic. In doing so, this fictional character called "Bunker Lupton" took a life of his own. This book consists of poetry, sketches and short stories from the mind of Bunker and translated by Gabriel.
The Stepford Wives
The Stepford Wives (1975) occupies an unusual position in cinematic history. As is often the case with cult texts, the film was both a box office flop and widely misunderstood on release. Intended as a feminist diatribe, it was derided by Betty Friedan, whose 1963 book The Feminine Mystique it literalised. Even Ira Levin, author of the novel from which the film was adapted, concedes he was less than enthused with the filmed version. Despite this, the term 'Stepford wife' has become idiolect for a particular kind of one-dimensional, upper-middle class woman who is figuratively, and to some extent literally, an automation. Indeed, one does not need to have seen or even heard of the film or Levin's book to be familiar with the concept. This timely study finally gives The Stepford Wives the serious scholarly attention it deserves. In doing so, the significance of the film as a socio-cultural and socio-political document in its own right is underscored. While the intention of this book is to pay homage to Bryan Forbes' film, it goes far beyond this, locating it in the traditions of the gothic, the histories of feminism and fictional imaginings about artificial women, and the futures of social robots and AI, both real and imagined.
The Stepford Wives
The Stepford Wives (1975) occupies an unusual position in cinematic history. As is often the case with cult texts, the film was both a box office flop and widely misunderstood on release. Intended as a feminist diatribe, it was derided by Betty Friedan, whose 1963 book The Feminine Mystique it literalised. Even Ira Levin, author of the novel from which the film was adapted, concedes he was less than enthused with the filmed version. Despite this, the term 'Stepford wife' has become idiolect for a particular kind of one-dimensional, upper-middle class woman who is figuratively, and to some extent literally, an automation. Indeed, one does not need to have seen or even heard of the film or Levin's book to be familiar with the concept. This timely study finally gives The Stepford Wives the serious scholarly attention it deserves. In doing so, the significance of the film as a socio-cultural and socio-political document in its own right is underscored. While the intention of this book is to pay homage to Bryan Forbes' film, it goes far beyond this, locating it in the traditions of the gothic, the histories of feminism and fictional imaginings about artificial women, and the futures of social robots and AI, both real and imagined.
Romantic Actors, Romantic Dramas
This book reinterprets British dramas of the early-nineteenth century through the lens of the star actors for whom they were written. Unlike most playwrights of previous generations, the writers of British Romantic dramas generally did not work in the theatre themselves. However, they closely followed the careers of star performers. Even when they did not directly know actors, they had what media theorists have dubbed "para-social interactions" with those stars, interacting with them through the mediation of mass communication, whether as audience members, newspaper and memoir readers, or consumers of prints, porcelain miniatures, and other manifestations of "fan" culture. This study takes an in-depth look at four pairs of performers and playwrights: Sarah Siddons and Joanna Baillie, Julia Glover and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edmund Kean and Lord Byron, and Eliza O'Neill and Percy Bysshe Shelley. These charismatic performers, knowingly or not, helped to guide the development of a character-based theatre--from the emotion-dominated plays made popular by Baillie to the pinnacle of Romantic drama under Shelley. They shepherded in a new style of writing that had verbal sophistication and engaged meaningfully with the moral issues of the day. They helped to create not just new modes of acting, but new ways of writing that could make use of their extraordinary talents.
Basilicata and Southern Italy Between Film and Ecology
This volume offers an open, transdisciplinary living space (also green) through which to explore the different connections between Basilicata and Southern Italy, cinema, and ecology, and thus to reflect on the different forms through which the historical, cultural, and social contexts of Southern Italian regions have been variously identified and represented. In order to explore these connections, the volume embraces a wide range of perspectives that may all be grouped under the key term film ecocriticism, offering the reader a thorough analysis not only of the different ways of representing reality but also of the processes of signification through which reality itself can be understood, rethought, and transformed. This is the general framework within which the authors consider film as a proper, effective medium for ecocritical and ecophilosophical reflections concerning not only Basilicata (to which the greater part of the volume is dedicated) but also Southern Italy and, therefore, its history and its territories, communities, and identities. Furthermore, in an even more general sense, Basilicata and Southern Italy reconnects with the very idea of the South, and of all Souths, to which this volume is dedicated.
The Red Shift
Five short plays for five actors, connected by a turn of phrase, that together make up an evening of theatre: Premorial - a sculptor faces a challenging commissionNew York Artist - How to make a difference in your fieldAbout the Dress - An obsession takes a man to new heightsLucked - The local baseball team is facing a humiliating defeatSwift-Tuttle - A midnight outing to see shooting stars leads to unexpected discoveries
