Download or read book A History of the American Musical Theatre written by Nathan Hurwitz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-27 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the diverse proto-theatres of the mid-1800s, though the revues of the ‘20s, the ‘true musicals’ of the ‘40s, the politicisation of the ‘60s and the ‘mega-musicals’ of the ‘80s, every era in American musical theatre reflected a unique set of socio-cultural factors. Nathan Hurwitz uses these factors to explain the output of each decade in turn, showing how the most popular productions spoke directly to the audiences of the time. He explores the function of musical theatre as commerce, tying each big success to the social and economic realities in which it flourished. This study spans from the earliest spectacles and minstrel shows to contemporary musicals such as Avenue Q and Spiderman. It traces the trends of this most commercial of art forms from the perspective of its audiences, explaining how staying in touch with writers and producers strove to stay in touch with these changing moods. Each chapter deals with a specific decade, introducing the main players, the key productions and the major developments in musical theatre during that period.
Download or read book Theatre in the United States Volume 1 1750 1915 Theatre in the Colonies and the United States written by Barry Witham and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-02-23 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the growth and development of theatre in the United States. Documents and commentary are arranged into chapters on business practice, acting, theatre buildings, drama, design, and audience behavior.
Download or read book Inkface written by Miles P. Grier and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2023-12-28 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Inkface, Miles P. Grier traces productions of Shakespeare's Othello from seventeenth-century London to the Metropolitan Opera in twenty-first-century New York. Grier shows how the painted stage Moor and the wife whom he theatrically stains became necessary types, reduced to objects of interpretation for a presumed white male audience. In an era of booming print production, popular urban theater, and increasing rates of literacy, the metaphor of Black skin as a readable, transferable ink became essential to a fraternity of literate white men who, by treating an elastic category of marked people as reading material, were able to assert authority over interpretation and, by extension, over the state, the family, and commerce. Inkface examines that fraternity’s reading of the world as well as the ways in which those excluded attempted to counteract it.
Download or read book Theatre Magazine written by and published by . This book was released on 1919 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Representative American Plays written by Arthur Hobson Quinn and published by . This book was released on 1921 with total page 996 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book When Romeo was a Woman written by Lisa Merrill and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the life of the androgynous nineteenth-century American actress and her work on the Anglo-American stage
Download or read book James Nelson Barker 1784 1858 written by Paul Howard Musser and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2017-01-30 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life of the first champion of American independence in literature and art and a Philadelphia political figure, with a reprint of what is considered the best American play written before 1825.
Download or read book Civil War America 1850 To 1875 written by Richard F. Selcer and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Features essays, statistical data, period photographs, maps, and documents.
Download or read book George Henry Boker written by Sculley Bradley and published by 清华大学出版社有限公司. This book was released on 1927 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Women on Southern Stages 1800 1865 written by Robin O. Warren and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-10-24 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women played an integral role in the theater of the Antebellum and Civil War South. Yet their contributions have largely been overlooked by history. Southern actresses were important public figures who helped mold gender identity through their theatrical performances. Although cast in parts written by men, they subverted the norms of femininity in their public personas and in their personal lives. Educated and often wealthy but never accepted by the landed elite, women distinguished themselves by carving out an in-between class status, and many proved to be sophisticated entrepreneurs. Southern actresses also helped shape racial perceptions and regional politics as the South entered the Civil War.
Download or read book The Life and Times of Elizabeth Upham Yates written by Shannon M. Risk and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-03-20 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elizabeth Upham Yates (1857–1942) was a nationally known reformer in the United States in the fields of temperance, women’s suffrage, simple living, and missionary work. The Life and Times of Elizabeth Upham Yates: A Crusader for Women’s Suffrage, Temperance, and Missionary Work documents Yates’s life from her coastal Maine origins through her missionary activities in China in the 1880s to her political career in the 1920s. Upon her return from China to the United States, Yates’s reputation grew as a master orator who stirred the suffrage spirit on campaign trails across the country. In 1920, the first year that women could campaign for office in Rhode Island, she ran for the Democratic ticket for lieutenant governor, earning 50,000 votes. She railed against jingoists like Theodore Roosevelt in the New York Times and chastised male political leadership for ignoring the lynching crisis. During her long career, her suffrage sisters memorialized her as a “prophet and a dreamer.” Shannon M. Risk draws on sources ranging from regional histories and shipping passenger manifests to archival papers at the Library of Congress and Yates’s own writing to shed new light on this suffragist’s life and work.
Download or read book Restricting Freedoms written by Eric Beasley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-28 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, freedom is so closely associated with the United States that most people still view America as the ultimate symbol of freedom. This is one reason why the desire to immigrate to the United States from almost anywhere in the world has not waned for more than a century. Because of this image, the idea that Americans are constrained by restrictive ordinances and rules seems contrary and therefore difficult for most citizens to accept.Vladimir Shlapentokh and Eric Beasley argue that the idea of basing American society upon unadulterated freedom in all spheres of life is both unrealistic and simplistic. The authors define freedom as the ability to choose one of many available alternatives. They note that this concept of freedom sometimes leads to a paradox: occasionally, freedoms are expanded through the creation of additional restrictions because the restrictions provide people with more alternatives. Thus, being free or restricted is not an all or nothing proposition, but rather a question of degrees.Many works discuss restrictions in relation to a particular area of life, but none of them explore the magnitude of how limitations shape people's everyday lives. Restricting Freedoms is unique in that the authors provide case studies that illustrate a wide variety of social contexts in relation to religious activity, noise-making, and sexual activities, among others. This overview of the role of restrictions in American life will be of interest to all American readers.
Download or read book Passionate Politics written by Ralph J. Poole and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-03-26 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new collection of essays on American stage and film melodrama assesses the multifarious and contradictory uses to which melodrama has been put in American culture from the late 18th century to the present. It focuses on the various ways in which the genre has periodically intervened in debates over race, class, gender and sexuality and, in this manner, has also persistently contributed to the formation and transformation of American nationhood: from the debates over who constitutes the newborn nation in the Early Republic, to the subsequent conflict over abolition and the discussion of gender roles at the turn of the 19th century, to the fervent class struggles of the 1930s and the critiques of domestic containment in the 1950s, as well as to ongoing debates of gender, race, and sexuality today. Addressing these issues from a variety of different angles, including historical, aesthetic, cultural, phenomenological, and psychological approaches, these essays present a complex picture of the cultural work and passionate politics accomplished by melodrama over the course of the past two centuries, particularly at times of profound social change.
Download or read book Twas Only an Irishman s Dream written by W. H. A. Williams and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The image of the Irish in the United States changed drastically over time, from that of hard-drinking, rioting Paddies to genial, patriotic working-class citizens. In 'Twas Only an Irishman's Dream, William H. A. Williams traces the change in this image through more than 700 pieces of sheet music--popular songs from the stage and for the parlor--to show how Americans' opinions of Ireland and the Irish went practically from one extreme to the other. Because sheet music was a commercial item it had to be acceptable to the broadest possible song-buying public. "Negotiations" about their image involved Irish songwriters, performers, and pressured groups, on the one hand, and non-Irish writers, publishers, and audiences on the other. Williams ties the contents of song lyrics to the history of the Irish diaspora, suggesting how ethnic stereotypes are created and how they evolve within commercial popular culture.
Download or read book Church and Stage written by Claudia Durst Johnson and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout nineteenth century America, religious officials often condemned the theatre as an inversion of the house of God, similar to the church in architectural structure and organization but wholly different in purpose and values. This book explores the many ways in which religious institutions supported by capitalism profoundly affected the early development of American theatre. The author analyzes the church's critical view toward common theatre practices, including the use of female and child performers, and the lower class alliance with the stage. Three appendices provide period correspondence, including an excerpt from Mark Twain's February 1871 "Memoranda," in which Twain criticizes an Episcopalian reverend for denying church burial to a popular stage comedian.
Download or read book Catalogue written by Bernard Quaritch (Firm) and published by . This book was released on 1920 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book America s Longest Run written by Andrew Davis and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America&’s Longest Run: A History of the Walnut Street Theatre traces the history of America&’s oldest theater. The Philadelphia landmark has been at or near the center of theatrical activity since it opened, as a circus, on February 2, 1809. This book documents the players and productions that appeared at this venerable house and the challenges the Walnut has faced from economic crises, changing tastes, technological advances, and competition from new media. The Walnut&’s history is a classic American success story. Built in the early years of the nineteenth century, the Walnut responded to the ever-changing tastes and desires of the theatergoing public. Originally operated as a stock company, the Walnut has offered up every conceivable form of entertainment&—pageantry and spectacle, opera, melodrama, musical theater, and Shakespeare. It escaped the wrecking ball during the Depression by operating as a burlesque house, a combination film and vaudeville house, and a Yiddish theater, before becoming the Philadelphia headquarters for the Federal Theatre Project. Because Philadelphia is located so close to New York City, the Walnut has served as a tryout house for many Broadway-bound shows, including A Streetcar Named Desire, The Diary of Anne Frank, and A Raisin in the Sun. Today, the Walnut operates as a nonprofit performing arts center. It is one of the most successful producing theaters in the country, with more than 350,000 attending performances each year.
