Download or read book Childhood and Nineteenth Century American Theatre written by Shauna Vey and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2015-10-08 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This study of the daily work lives of five members of the Marsh Troupe, a nineteenth-century professional acting company composed primarily of children, sheds light on the construction of idealized childhood inside and outside the American theatre"--
Download or read book Spectacles of Reform written by Amy E. Hughes and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2012-12-17 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the nineteenth century, long before film and television brought us explosions, car chases, and narrow escapes, it was America's theaters that thrilled audiences, with “sensation scenes” of speeding trains, burning buildings, and endangered bodies, often in melodramas extolling the virtues of temperance, abolition, and women's suffrage. Amy E. Hughes scrutinizes these peculiar intersections of spectacle and reform, revealing the crucial role that spectacle has played in American activism and how it has remained central to the dramaturgy of reform. Hughes traces the cultural history of three famous sensation scenes—the drunkard with the delirium tremens, the fugitive slave escaping over a river, and the victim tied to the railroad tracks—assessing how these scenes conveyed, allayed, and denied concerns about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. These images also appeared in printed propaganda, suggesting that the coup de théâtre was an essential part of American reform culture. Additionally, Hughes argues that today’s producers and advertisers continue to exploit the affective dynamism of spectacle, reaching an even broader audience through film, television, and the Internet. To be attuned to the dynamics of spectacle, Hughes argues, is to understand how we see. Her book will interest not only theater historians, but also scholars and students of political, literary, and visual culture who are curious about how U.S. citizens saw themselves and their world during a pivotal period in American history.
Download or read book Nineteenth Century American Plays written by Myron Matlaw and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2001 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Applause Books). Seven hits that have been the staples of the American dramatic repertoire. Myron Matlaw's introduction provides a splendid survey of the development of American drama. Individual prefaces focus each work in the perspective of its historical context.
Download or read book It was Play Or Starve written by John Hanners and published by Popular Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unearths the personalities and experiences of touring and itinerant popular entertainers in 19th-century America. Drawing on both primary and secondary sources, describes life and work on the showboats, among the small towns, and in the big cities; and the financial difficulties, the physical dangers, the social prejudices, and cultural barriers. No index. Paper edition (unseen), $15.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Playing to the Gods written by Peter Rader and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The riveting story of the rivalry between the two most renowned actresses of the nineteenth century: legendary Sarah Bernhardt, whose eccentricity on and off the stage made her the original diva, and mystical Eleonora Duse, who broke all the rules to popularize the natural style of acting we celebrate today. Audiences across Europe and the Americas clamored to see the divine Sarah Bernhardt swoon—and she gave them their money’s worth. The world’s first superstar, she traveled with a chimpanzee named Darwin and a pet alligator that drank champagne, shamelessly supplementing her income by endorsing everything from aperitifs to beef bouillon, and spreading rumors that she slept in a coffin to better understand the macabre heroines she played. Eleonora Duse shied away from the spotlight. Born to a penniless family of itinerant troubadours, she disappeared into the characters she portrayed—channeling their spirits, she claimed. Her new, empathetic style of acting revolutionized the theater—and earned her the ire of Sarah Bernhardt in what would become the most tumultuous theatrical showdown of the nineteenth century. Bernhardt and Duse seduced each other’s lovers, stole one another’s favorite playwrights, and took to the world’s stages to outperform their rival in her most iconic roles. A scandalous, enormously entertaining history full of high drama and low blows, Playing to the Gods is the perfect “book for all of us who binge-watched Feud” (Daniel de Visé, author of Andy & Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show).
Download or read book Women s Contribution to Nineteenth century American Theatre written by Miriam López Rodríguez and published by Universitat de València. This book was released on 2011-11-28 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aquesta col·lecció d'assajos mostra els múltiples aspectes de la contribució que va fer la dona, al teatre americà del segle XIX. En aquest estudi s'ensenyen diversos tipus de dones i els rols que ocupen, així com reflecteix la manera que Susan Glaspell i Sophie Treadwell van ajudar a donar forma al teatre, entre moltes altres que escriurien dècades més tard.
Download or read book Spotlight on the Child written by Roger L. Bedard and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 1989-01-20 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although children's theatre has been a part of American culture from early times, historians have not always included it in the documentation of our theatrical heritage. Sometimes more the product of the educator and the social worker than the producer or the theatre artist, theatre with and for young people has been neglected in traditional theatre history studies; yet as early as 1792 Charles Stearns began creating his plays and dialogues for school children. The traditions and success of eighteenth-century school drama inspired social workers to explore similar activities in their playground and settlement house work, and at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, professional producers began experimenting more vigorously with the commercial possibilities of children as audience. This book is a collection of essays by leading authorities in the field on various aspects of the historical development of children's theatre in the United States. The discussions focus on the marked differences that have occurred from group to group and examine the ways in which children's theatre began to find definition, as theorists and writers such as Winifred Ward and Charlotte Chorpenning strove to articulate the differences between the child as participant in creative drama and the child as audience member. The introduction provides a review of early concepts and the evolution of present-day thought, and the essays illuminate facets of the rich and varied history of American theatre with and for children. This trailblazing study will serve as the beginning of a fuller understanding of the field and a challenge to others to document the missing pieces.
Download or read book Melodramatic Formations written by Bruce A. McConachie and published by Studies Theatre Hist & Culture. This book was released on 1992 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Ground on which I Stand written by August Wilson and published by Theatre Communications Grou. This book was released on 2001 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: August Wilson's radical and provocative call to arms.
Download or read book Bloody Tyrants and Little Pickles written by Marlis Schweitzer and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2020-11-02 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bloody Tyrants and Little Pickles traces the theatrical repertoire of a small group of white Anglo-American actresses as they reshaped the meanings of girlhood in Britain, North America, and the British West Indies during the first half of the nineteenth century. It is a study of the possibilities and the problems girl performers presented as they adopted the manners and clothing of boys, entered spaces intended for adults, and assumed characters written for men. It asks why masculine roles like Young Norval, Richard III, Little Pickle, and Shylock came to seem “normal” and “natural” for young white girls to play, and it considers how playwrights, managers, critics, and audiences sought to contain or fix the at-times dangerous plasticity they exhibited both on and off the stage. Schweitzer analyzes the formation of a distinct repertoire for girls in the first half of the nineteenth century, which delighted in precocity and playfulness and offered up a model of girlhood that was similarly joyful and fluid. This evolving repertoire reflected shifting perspectives on girls’ place within Anglo-American society, including where and how they should behave, and which girls had the right to appear at all.
Download or read book Performing the Progressive Era written by Max Shulman and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American Progressive Era, which spanned from the 1880s to the 1920s, is generally regarded as a dynamic period of political reform and social activism. In Performing the Progressive Era, editors Max Shulman and Chris Westgate bring together top scholars in nineteenth- and twentieth-century theatre studies to examine the burst of diverse performance venues and styles of the time, revealing how they shaped national narratives surrounding immigration and urban life. Contributors analyze performances in urban centers (New York, Chicago, Cleveland) in comedy shows, melodramas, Broadway shows, operas, and others. They pay special attention to performances by and for those outside mainstream society: immigrants, the working-class, and bohemians, to name a few. Showcasing both lesser-known and famous productions, the essayists argue that the explosion of performance helped bring the Progressive Era into being, and defined its legacy in terms of gender, ethnicity, immigration, and even medical ethics.
Download or read book Theatre Culture in America 1825 1860 written by Rosemarie K. Bank and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-01-28 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of pre-Civil War American theatre.
Download or read book The Cambridge History of American Theatre written by Don B. Wilmeth and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-02-28 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge History of American Theatre is an authoritative and wide-ranging history of American theatre in all its dimensions, from theatre building to play writing, directors, performers, and designers. Engaging the theatre as a performance art, a cultural institution, and a fact of American social and political life, the History recognizes changing styles of presentation and performance and addresses the economic context that conditions the drama presented. The History approaches its subject with a full awareness of relevant developments in literary criticism, cultural analysis, and performance theory. At the same time, it is designed to be an accessible, challenging narrative. Volume One deals with the colonial inceptions of American theatre through the post-Civil War period: the European antecedents, the New World influences of the French and Spanish colonists, and the development of uniquely American traditions in tandem with the emergence of national identity.
Download or read book Spectacles of Reform written by Amy E Hughes and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2012-12-17 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the nineteenth century, long before film and television brought us explosions, car chases, and narrow escapes, it was America's theaters that thrilled audiences, with “sensation scenes” of speeding trains, burning buildings, and endangered bodies, often in melodramas extolling the virtues of temperance, abolition, and women's suffrage. Amy E. Hughes scrutinizes these peculiar intersections of spectacle and reform, revealing the crucial role that spectacle has played in American activism and how it has remained central to the dramaturgy of reform. Hughes traces the cultural history of three famous sensation scenes—the drunkard with the delirium tremens, the fugitive slave escaping over a river, and the victim tied to the railroad tracks—assessing how these scenes conveyed, allayed, and denied concerns about the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. These images also appeared in printed propaganda, suggesting that the coup de théâtre was an essential part of American reform culture. Additionally, Hughes argues that today’s producers and advertisers continue to exploit the affective dynamism of spectacle, reaching an even broader audience through film, television, and the Internet. To be attuned to the dynamics of spectacle, Hughes argues, is to understand how we see. Her book will interest not only theater historians, but also scholars and students of political, literary, and visual culture who are curious about how U.S. citizens saw themselves and their world during a pivotal period in American history.
Download or read book Bloody Tyrants and Little Pickles written by Marlis Schweitzer and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2020-11-02 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bloody Tyrants and Little Pickles traces the theatrical repertoire of a small group of white Anglo-American actresses as they reshaped the meanings of girlhood in Britain, North America, and the British West Indies during the first half of the nineteenth century. It is a study of the possibilities and the problems girl performers presented as they adopted the manners and clothing of boys, entered spaces intended for adults, and assumed characters written for men. It asks why masculine roles like Young Norval, Richard III, Little Pickle, and Shylock came to seem “normal” and “natural” for young white girls to play, and it considers how playwrights, managers, critics, and audiences sought to contain or fix the at-times dangerous plasticity they exhibited both on and off the stage. Schweitzer analyzes the formation of a distinct repertoire for girls in the first half of the nineteenth century, which delighted in precocity and playfulness and offered up a model of girlhood that was similarly joyful and fluid. This evolving repertoire reflected shifting perspectives on girls’ place within Anglo-American society, including where and how they should behave, and which girls had the right to appear at all.
Download or read book Borderlands Children s Theatre written by Cecilia Josephine Aragón and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-03-03 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book chronicles the child performer as part of the Chicana/o/Mexican-American theatre experience. Borderlands Children’s Theatre explores the phenomenon of the Chicana/o/Mexican-American child performer at the center of Chicana/o and Latina/o theatre culture. Drawing from historical and contemporary theatrical traditions to finally the emergence of Latina/o Youth Theatre and Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences, it raises crucial questions about the role of the child in these performative contexts and about how childhood and adolescence was experienced and understood. Analyzing contemporary plays for Chicana/o/Mexican-American child performer, it introduces theorizations of "performing mestizaje" and "border crossing" borderlands performance, gender, and ethnic identity and investigates theatre as a site in which children and youth have the opportunity to articulate their emerging selfhoods. This book adds to the national and international dialogue in theatre and gives voice to Chicana/o/Mexican-American children and youth and will be of great interest to students and scholars of Theatre studies and Latina/o studies.
Download or read book Working with Children in Contemporary Performance written by Sarah Austin and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-06-13 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book outlines how an innovative ‘rights-based’ model of contemporary performance practice can be used when working with children and young people. This model, framed by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), challenges the idea of children as vulnerable and in need of protection, argues for the recognition of the child’s voice, and champions the creativity of children in performance. Sarah Austin draws on rich research and practitioner experience to analyse Youth Arts pedagogies, inclusive theatre practice, models of participation, the symbolic potential of the child in performance, and the work of contemporary theatre practitioners making work with children for adult audiences. The combined practical and written research reflected in this book offers a new, nuanced understanding of children as cultural agents, raising the prospect of a creative process that foregrounds deeper considerations of the strengths and capacities of children. This book would primarily appeal to scholars of theatre and performance studies, specifically those working in the field of applied theatre and theatre for children and young people. Additionally, the practice-based elements of the book are likely to appeal to theatre professionals working in youth arts or theatre for young audiences or associated fields.
