Download or read book A Treatise on Acting from Memory and by Improvisation 1699 written by Andrea Perrucci and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 1699 Italian acting treatise includes chapters on all kinds of staged productions, scripted or improvised, sacred or secular, tragic or comic. It also addresses enunciation, diction, memorization, gestures, and stage comportment, and it describes the details important to a successful commedia dell'arte performance.
Download or read book Semiotics and Pragmatics of Stage Improvisation written by Domenico Pietropaolo and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-09-22 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analysis of improvisation as a compositional practice in the Commedia dell'Arte and related traditions from the Renaissance to the 21st century. Domenic Pietropaolo takes textual material from the stage traditions of Italy, France, Germany and England, and covers comedic drama, dance, pantomime and dramatic theory, and more. He shines a light onto 'the signs of improvised communication'. The book is comprehensive in its analysis of improvised dramatic art across theatrical genres, and is multimodal in looking at the spoken word, gestural and non-verbal signs. The book focusses on dramatic text as well as: - The semiotics of stage discourse, including semantic, syntactic and pragmatic aspects of sign production - The physical and material conditions of sign-production including biomechanical limitations of masks and costumes. Semiotics and Pragmatics of Stage Improvisation is the product of an entire career spent researching the semiotics of the stage and it is essential reading for semioticians and students of performance arts.
Download or read book The Commedia dell Arte written by Domenico Pietropaolo and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-07-14 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What were the origins of commedia dell'arte and how did it evolve as a dramatic form over time and as it spread from Italy? How did its relationship to the ruling ideology of the day change during the Enlightenment? What is its legacy today? These are just some of the questions addressed in this authoritative overview of the dramatic, ideological and aesthetic form of commedia dell'arte. The book's 3 sections examine the changing role of performers and playwrights, improvisatory scenarios and scripted performance, and its function as a vehicle for social criticism, to offer readers a clear understanding of commedia dell'arte's evolution in Renaissance Italy and beyond. This study throws new light on the role of women performers; on the changing ideological discourse of commedia dell'arte, which included social reform and, later, conservatism as well as the alienation of ethnic minorities in complicity with its audience; and on its later adaptation into hybrid forms including grotesque dance and the giullarata typified by the work of Dario Fo.
Download or read book The Rise of the Diva on the Sixteenth Century Commedia dell Arte Stage written by Rosalind Kerr and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2015-02-26 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Rise of the Diva on the Sixteenth-Century Commedia dell’Arte Stage examines the emergence of the professional actress from the 1560s onwards in Italy. Tracing the historical progress of actresses from their earliest appearances as sideshow attractions to revered divas, Rosalind Kerr explores the ways in which actresses commodified their sexual and cultural appeal. Newly translated archival material, iconographic evidence, literary texts, and theatrical scripts provide a rich repertoire through which Kerr demonstrates how actresses skillfully improvised roles such as the maidservant, the prima donna, and the transvestite heroine. Following the careers of early stars such as Flaminia of Rome, Vincenza Armani, Vittoria Piissimi, and Isabella Andreini, Kerr shows how their fame arose from the combination of dazzling technical mastery and eloquent powers of persuasion. Seamlessly integrating the Italian and English scholarly literature on the subject, The Rise of the Diva is an insightful analysis of one of the modern world’s first celebrity cultures.
Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Commedia dell Arte written by Judith Chaffee and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-11-20 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Commedia dell’Arte came archetypal characters that are still with us today, such as Harlequin and Pantalone, and the rediscovered craft of writing comic dramas and masked theatre. From it came the forces that helped create and influence Opera, Ballet, Pantomime, Shakespeare, Moliere, Lopes de Vega, Goldoni, Meyerhold, and even the glove puppet, Mr Punch. The Routledge Companion to Commedia dell’Arte is a wide-ranging volume written by over 50 experts, that traces the history, characteristics, and development of this fascinating yet elusive theatre form. In synthesizing the elements of Commedia, this book introduces the history of the Sartori mask studio; presents a comparison between Gozzi and Goldoni’s complicated and adversarial approaches to theatre; invites discussions on Commedia’s relevance to Shakespeare, and illuminates re-interpretations of Commedia in modern times. The authors are drawn from actors, mask-makers, pedagogues, directors, trainers and academics, all of whom add unique insights into this most delightful of theatre styles. Notable contributions include: • Donato Sartori on the 20th century Sartori mask • Rob Henke on form and freedom • Anna Cottis on Carlo Boso • Didi Hopkins on One Man, Two Guv’nors • Kenneth Richards on acting companies • Antonio Fava on Pulcinella • Joan Schirle on Carlo Mazzone-Clementi and women in Commedia • and M.A. Katritzky on images Olly Crick is a performer, trainer and director, having trained in Commedia under Barry Grantham and Carlo Boso. He is founder of The Fabulous Old Spot Theatre Company. Judith Chaffee is Associate Professor of Theatre at Boston University, and Head of Movement Training for Actors. She trained in Commedia with Antonio Fava, Julie Goell, Stanley Allen Sherman, and Carlos Garcia Estevez.
Download or read book Performing Commedia dell Arte 1570 1630 written by Natalie Crohn Schmitt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-23 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Performing Commedia dell’Arte, 1570-1630 explores the performance techniques employed in commedia dell’arte and the ways in which they served to rapidly spread the ideas that were to form the basis of modern theatre throughout Europe. Chapters include one on why, what, and how actors improvised, one on acting styles, including dialects, voice and gesture; and one on masks and their uses and importance. These chapters on historical performance are followed by a coda on commedia dell’arte today. Together they offer readers a look at both past and present iterations of these performances. Suitable for both scholars and performers, Performing Commedia dell’Arte, 1570-1630 bears on essential questions about the techniques of performance and their utility for this important theatrical form.
Download or read book The Diva s Gift to the Shakespearean Stage written by Pamela Allen Brown and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-25 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Diva's Gift traces the far-reaching impact of the first female stars on the playwrights and players of the all-male stage. When Shakespeare entered the scene, women had been acting in Italian troupes for two decades, traveling in Italy and beyond and performing in all genres, including tragedy. The ambitious actress reinvented the innamorata, making her more charismatic and autonomous, thrilling audiences with her skills. Despite fervent attacks, some actresses became the first international stars, winning royal and noble patrons and literary admirers in France and Spain. After Elizabeth and her court caught wind of their success in Paris, Italian troupes with actresses crossed the Channel to perform. The Italians' repeat visits and growing fame posed a radical challenge to English professionals just as they were building their first paying theaters. Some writers treated the actress as a whorish threat to their stage, which had long minimized female roles. Others saw a vital new model full of promise. Lyly, Marlowe, and Kyd endowed innamorata parts with hot-blooded, racialized passions, but made them self-aware agents, not counters traded between men. Shakespeare, Jonson, Webster and others followed, ringing changes on the new type in comedy, tragedy, and romance. Like the comici they recycled actress-linked theatergrams and star scenes, such as cross-dressing, the mad scene, and the sung lament. In this way, the diva's prodigious virtuosity and stardom altered the horizons of playmaking even on the womanless stage. Capitalizing on the talents of boy players, the best playwrights created bold new roles endowed with her alien glamour, such as Lyly's Sapho and Pandora, Marlowe's Dido, Kyd's Bel-Imperia, Webster's Vittoria, and Shakespeare's Beatrice, Viola, Portia, Juliet, and Ophelia. Cleopatra is not alone in her superb theatricality and dazzling strangeness. As this book demonstrates, the diva's gifts mark them all.
Download or read book Theatre History Studies 2017 Vol 36 written by Sara Freeman and published by University of Alabama Press. This book was released on 2017-12-12 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theatre History Studies is a peer-reviewed journal of theatre history and scholarship published annually since 1981 by the Mid-American Theatre Conference (MATC), a regional body devoted to theatre scholarship and practice.
Download or read book Europ ische Musiker in Venedig Rom und Neapel 1650 1750 written by Anne-Madeleine Goulet and published by Bärenreiter-Verlag. This book was released on 2018-11-07 with total page 723 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Der Abschlussband des deutsch-französischen ANR-DFG-Projekts MUSICI widmet sich der Musikermigration im Europa der Frühen Neuzeit mit einem kultur- und musikgeschichtlichen Blick auf Venedig, Rom und Neapel als Reiseziele und Wirkungsorte von Instrumentalisten, Sängern, Komponisten und Instrumentenbauern, die nicht von der italienischen Halbinsel stammten. Im Sinne einer "histoire croisée" werden Netzwerke, Integrations- und Austauschprozesse aufgedeckt, mit denen fremde Musiker zwischen musikalischem Alltag und herausragenden Festlichkeiten konfrontiert waren. Auf dieser Grundlage wird eine systematische Betrachtung der frühneuzeitlichen Musikermigration sowie eine Untersuchung musikalischer Stile jenseits nationaler Forschungstraditionen möglich.
Download or read book Musical Islands written by Katelyn Barney and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2009-05-05 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The island is a powerful metaphor in everyday speech which extends almost naturally into several academic disciplines, including musicology. Islands are imagined as isolated and unique places where strange, exotic, different and unexpected treasures can be found by daring adventurers. The magic inherent within this positioning of islands as places of discovery is an aspect which permeates the theoretical, methodological and analytical boundaries of this edited book. Showcasing the breadth of current musicological research in Australia and New Zealand, this edited collection offers a range of subtle and innovative reflections on this concept both in established and well-charted territories of music research.
Download or read book Transnational connections in early modern theatre written by M. A. Katritzky and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-25 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the transnationality and interculturality of early modern performance in multiple languages, cultures, countries and genres. Its twelve essays compose a complex image of theatre connections as a socially, economically, politically and culturally rich tissue of networks and influences. With particular attention to itinerant performers, court festival, and the Black, Muslim and Jewish impact, they combine disciplines and methods to place Shakespeare and his contemporaries in the wider context of performance culture in English, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Czech and Italian speaking Europe. The authors examine transnational connections by offering multidisciplinary perspectives on the theatrical significance of concrete historical facts: archaeological findings, archival records, visual artefacts, and textual evidence.
Download or read book Gilbert Austin s Chironomia Revisited written by Sara Newman and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2020-03-16 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first book-length study of Irish educator, clergyman, and author Gilbert Austin as an elocutionary rhetor investigates how his work informs contemporary scholarship on delivery, rhetorical history and theory, and embodied communication. Authors Sara Newman and Sigrid Streit study Austin’s theoretical system, outlined in his 1806 book Chironomia; or A Treatise on Rhetorical Delivery—an innovative study of gestures as a viable, independent language—and consider how Austin’s efforts to incorporate movement and integrate texts and images intersect with present-day interdisciplinary studies of embodiment. Austin did not simply categorize gesture mechanically, separating delivery from rhetoric and the discipline’s overall goals, but instead he provided a theoretical framework of written descriptions and illustrations that positions delivery as central to effective rhetoric and civic interactions. Balancing the variable physical elements of human interactions as well as the demands of communication, Austin’s system fortuitously anticipated contemporary inquiries into embodied and nonverbal communication. Enlightenment rhetoricians, scientists, and physicians relied on sympathy and its attendant vivacious and lively ideas to convey feelings and facts to their varied audiences. During the seventeenth and eighteenth-centuries, as these disciplines formed increasingly distinct, specialized boundaries, they repurposed existing, shared communication conventions to new ends. While the emerging standards necessarily diverged, each was grounded in the subjective, embodied bedrock of the sympathetic, magical tradition.
Download or read book The Ancient Dancer in the Modern World written by Fiona Macintosh and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first systematic study of the impact of ideas about ancient Greek and Roman dance on modern theatrical and choreographic practices. With contributions from experts in a range of fields, the volume presents a wide conspectus on an under-explored but central aspect of classical reception, dance and theatre history, and the history of ideas.
Download or read book The Routledge Companion to Jacques Lecoq written by Mark Evans and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-09-13 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Companion to Jacques Lecoq presents a thorough overview and analysis of Jacques Lecoq's life, work and philosophy of theatre. Through an exemplary collection of specially commissioned chapters from leading writers, specialists and practitioners, it draws together writings and reflections on his pedagogy, his practice, and his influence on the wider theatrical environment. It is a comprehensive guide to the work and legacy of one of the major figures of Western theatre in the second half of the twentieth century. In a four-part structure over fifty chapters, the book examines: The historical, artistic and social context out of which Lecoq's work and pedagogy arose, and its relation to such figures as Jacques Copeau, Antonin Artaud, Jean-Louis Barrault, and Dario Fo. Core themes of Lecoq's International School of Theatre, such as movement, play, improvisation, masks, language, comedy, and tragedy, investigated by former teachers and graduates of the School. The significance and value of his pedagogical approaches in the context of contemporary theatre practices. The diaspora of performance practice from the School, from the perspective of many of the most prominent artists themselves. This is an important and authoritative guide for anyone interested in Lecoq's work.
Download or read book What Was Tragedy written by Blair Hoxby and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-10-01 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twentieth century critics have definite ideas about tragedy. They maintain that in a true tragedy, fate must feel the resistance of the tragic hero's moral freedom before finally crushing him, thus generating our ambivalent sense of terrible waste coupled with spiritual consolation. Yet far from being a timeless truth, this account of tragedy only emerged in the wake of the French Revolution. What Was Tragedy? demonstrates that this account of the tragic, which has been hegemonic from the early nineteenth century to the present despite all the twists and turns of critical fashion in the twentieth century, obscured an earlier poetics of tragedy that evolved from 1515 to 1795. By reconstructing that poetics, Blair Hoxby makes sense of plays that are "merely pathetic, not truly tragic," of operas with happy endings, of Christian tragedies, and of other plays that advertised themselves as tragedies to early modern audiences and yet have subsequently been denied the palm of tragedy by critics. In doing so, Hoxby not only illuminates masterpieces by Shakespeare, Calderón, Corneille, Racine, Milton, and Mozart, he also revivifies a vast repertoire of tragic drama and opera that has been relegated to obscurity by critical developments since 1800. He suggests how many of these plays might be reclaimed as living works of theater. And by reconstructing a lost conception of tragedy both ancient and modern, he illuminates the hidden assumptions and peculiar blind-spots of the idealist critical tradition that runs from Schelling, Schlegel, and Hegel, through Wagner, Nietzsche, and Freud, up to modern post-structuralism.
Download or read book Seventeenth Century Opera and the Sound of the Commedia Dell Arte written by Emily Wilbourne and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-11-21 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Emily Wilbourne boldly traces the roots of early opera back to the sounds of the commedia dell’arte. Along the way, she forges a new history of Italian opera, from the court pieces of the early seventeenth century to the public stages of Venice more than fifty years later. Wilbourne considers a series of case studies structured around the most important and widely explored operas of the period: Monteverdi’s lost L’Arianna, as well as his Il Ritorno d’Ulisse and L’incoronazione di Poppea; Mazzochi and Marazzoli’s L’Egisto, ovvero Chi soffre speri; and Cavalli’s L’Ormindo and L’Artemisia. As she demonstrates, the sound-in-performance aspect of commedia dell’arte theater—specifically, the use of dialect and verbal play—produced an audience that was accustomed to listening to sonic content rather than simply the literal meaning of spoken words. This, Wilbourne suggests, shaped the musical vocabularies of early opera and facilitated a musicalization of Italian theater. Highlighting productive ties between the two worlds, from the audiences and venues to the actors and singers, this work brilliantly shows how the sound of commedia performance ultimately underwrote the success of opera as a genre.
Download or read book Pulcinella s Brood written by Karen T. Raizen and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2024-10-01 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulcinella, a Neapolitan clown born of the commedia dell’arte tradition, went viral in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He was an unlikely hero, grotesque in his mannerisms, with a bulging belly, occasional hunchback, and an insatiable desire for macaroni. Still, this bulbous misfit took his place next to kings, caliphs, and intellectual heavyweights. Pulcinella’s Brood traces the transnational arc of the Enlightenment-era Pulcinella, from his native Naples to Paris, from Rome to London. The book explores how Pulcinella was inserted into discourses about social order, aesthetics, and politics – how he became a revolutionary, a critic of the Catholic Church, and a champion of education. It examines how Pulcinella, along with his transnational brood, was a constant, pervasive presence during the Enlightenment and a squeaky-voiced participant in the ideological and theoretical debates that defined the era. Exploring the diffusion of Italian popular comedy throughout Europe, Pulcinella’s Brood proposes that Pulcinella, a grotesque, food-obsessed clown, can be wielded as a historical disruptor and a rich and dynamic source for casting both the Enlightenment and our contemporary world in a different light.
