Download or read book Impossible Vacation written by Spalding Gray and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-11-02 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Having detailed the agonies of writing a book in his monologue Monster in a Box, Spalding Gray now gives us the monster itself: a convulsively funny, unexpectedly moving novel about a man eternally searching for a moment of protected pleasure even as he is permanently incapable of finding it. Brewster North witnesses his mother's madness but misses her suicide; searches frantically for enlightenment in the Poconos and zipless sex in India; suffers family ennui in Rhode Island and a nervous breakdown in Amsterdam. In the process he emerges as a hilariously complex everyman. And as Gray narrates his hero's free fall, he confirms his own stature as one of our funniest, most eccentric, and most engaging storytellers.
Download or read book Bodies in Commotion written by Carrie Sandahl and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2009-12-10 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A testament to the synergy of two evolving fields. From the study of staged performances to examinations of the performing body in everyday life, this book demonstrates the enormous profitability of moving beyond disability as metaphor. . . . It's a lesson that many of our cultural institutions desperately need to learn." -Martin F. Norden, University of Massachusetts-Amherst This groundbreaking collection imagines disabled bodies as "bodies in commotion"-bodies that dance across artistic and discursive boundaries, challenging our understanding of both disability and performance. In the book's essays, leading critics and artists explore topics that range from theater and dance to multi-media performance art, agit-prop, American Sign Language theater, and wheelchair sports. Bodies in Commotion is the first collection to consider the mutually interpretive qualities of these two emerging fields, producing a dynamic new resource for artists, activists, and scholars.
Download or read book Family Plots written by Dana Heller and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Family Plots traces the fault lines of the Freudian family romance and holds that the "family plot" is very much alive in post-World War II American culture. It cuts across all genres, insinuating, criticizing, reinforcing, and reinventing itself in all forms of cultural production and consumption. The family romance is everywhere because the family itself is nowhere.
Download or read book Theory Theatre An Introduction written by Mark Fortier and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-01-31 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theory/Theatre: An Introduction provides a unique and engaging introduction to literary theory as it relates to theatre and performance. Mark Fortier lucidly examines current theoretical approaches, from semiotics, poststructuralism, to cultural materialism, postcolonial studies and feminist theory. Drawing upon examples from Shakespeare and Aphra Behn, to Chekhov, Artaud, Cixous and Churchill, the author examines the specific realities of theatre in order to come to a richer understanding of the relations between performance and cultural theory. Theory/Theatre: An Introduction is the only study of its kind and will be invaluable reading for new students and scholars of performance studies.
Download or read book Theory Theatre written by Mark Fortier and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-07-08 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a new and enlarged edition of Mark Fortier's very successful and widely used essential text for students. Theory/Theatre provides a unique and engaging introduction to literary theory as it relates to theatre and performance. Fortier lucidly examines current theoretical approaches, from semiotics, poststructuralism, through cultural materialism, postcolonial studies and feminist theory. This new edition includes: * More detailed explanation of key ideas * New 'Putting it into practice' sections at the end of each chapter so you can approach performances from specific theoretical perspectives * Annotated further reading section and glossary. Theory/Theatre is still the only study of its kind and is invaluable reading for beginning students and scholars of performance studies.
Download or read book A Philosophical Autofiction written by Spencer Golub and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-01-04 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a book about what becomes of the truth when it succumbs to generational memory loss and to the fictions that intervene to cause and fill the gaps. It is a book about the impossibility of writing an autobiography when there is a prepossessing cultural and familial 'we' interfering with the 'I' and an 'I' that does not know itself as a self, except metastatically — as people and characters it has played but not actually been. A highly original combination of close readings and performative autobiography, this book takes performance philosophy to an alternative next step, by having its ideas read back to it by experience, and through assorted fictions. It is a philosophical thought experiment in uncertainty whose literary, theatrical, and cinematic trappings illustrate and finally become what this uncertainty is, the thought experiment having become the life that was, that came before, and that outlives the 'I am'.
Download or read book The Journals of Spalding Gray written by Spalding Gray and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Riveting, funny, heartbreaking, at once raw and lyrical: these journals reveal the extraordinary inner life of the actor-writer who invented the autobiographical monologue and perfected the form in such celebrated works as Swimming to Cambodia. Begun when he was twenty-five, Spalding Gray's journals reflect on his childhood; his craving for success; the downtown New York arts scene of the 1970s; his love affairs, marriages, and fatherhood; his travels in Europe and Asia; and throughout, his passion for the theater, where he worked to balance his compulsion to tell all with his fear of having his deepest secrets exposed. The Journals of Spalding Gray gives us a haunting portrait of a creative genius who we thought had told us everything about himself—until now.
Download or read book American Theatre Ensembles Volume 2 written by Mike Vanden Heuvel and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-28 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A companion to American Theatre Ensembles Volume 1, this volume charts the development and achievements of theatre companies working after 1995, bringing together the diffuse generation of ensembles working within a context of media saturation and epistemological and social fragmentation. Ensembles examined include Rude Mechs, The Builders Association, Pig Iron, Radiohole, The Civilians and 600 Highwaymen. Introductory chapters provide a sweeping overview of ensemble-based creation within the general historical and cultural contexts of the period, followed by a detailed study of the evolution of ensemble-based work. Contributors examine matters such as influence, funding, production and legacies, as well as the forms of collective devising and creation, while presenting close readings of the companies' most prominent works. The volume features detailed case studies of the 6 companies from the period and cover: * A history of development and methods * Key productions and projects * Critical reception * A chronology of significant productions US ensemble companies since 1995 have revolutionized the form and content of contemporary performance, influencing experimental as well as mainstream practice. This volume provides the first encompassing study of this vital development in contemporary American theatre by mapping its evolution and key developments.
Download or read book But God written by Herbert Cooper and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2015-01-06 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Herbert Cooper was headed down a very different road, living a reckless lifestyle that would have destroyed him in the end, but God had a different plan. He heard the gospel at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting, at which he wasn’t even supposed to be, and he gave his life to Christ. Two words changed Cooper’s life: But God. These two words can change every single person’s life— But God. Each word is only three letters long. The phrase is short, but the implications are huge. The path may look bleak, dim, and hopeless...but GOD changes everything... We’ve all sinned - whether it is sex outside of marriage, a bitter heart, alcohol or drug abuse, cheating, or lying. Maybe you’re at a place in your life where it just feels like things are falling apart. Perhaps you’re portraying one thing on the outside and living something else on the inside. Maybe you are simply going through the motions of a life that’s not quite what you hoped it would be. These moments drag us down - leaving us feeling hopeless and lost. You need something to happen in your life to change. You need a But God... moment. The But God moments are when God comes in and offers a new path and hope for our lives. These moments occur when we are at are lowest, and turn our down-trodden worlds around for the better. It is up to us to recognize and seize these moments when they occur and follow the renewed path God offers.
Download or read book Seven Visual Steps to Yes written by Janet Miller Wiseman and published by Outskirts Press. This book was released on 2016-08-26 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adnan wants to build an in-law apartment for Sherrie’s mother to live in. Sherrie wants no more mortgage debt. For vacation, Laura wants to hike Mount Katahdin to scatter her father’s ashes and to lose baby-belly-weight. Caleb, her husband, wants to rest on Martha’s Vineyard to recover from his exhausting work as environmental field engineer. You’ll read many real life vignettes while learning the SEVEN VISUAL STEPS which are engaging, sometimes hilarious and always instructive. Knowledge Empowers. “For over 30 years I have been sending couples who desire divorce mediation, but who are in various stages of confusion and ambivalence, to Janet Miller Wiseman, as decision-making mediator, so she can help them decide the future directions of their marriages. After another successful result, I asked her what she did when I send people to her. “We discover when they need a divorce or something more fundamental. When a divorce is what is needed, I send them back to you for divorce mediation” was her wise reply. —John Adams Fiske, Attorney, Cambridge, MA. “In the case of Bill and Sally, in the book, we were able to provide knowledge and clarity for the parties in the framework of the Seven Visual Steps, thereby addressing their deepest fears, and allowing them to reach mutually agreeable terms. Janet’s book should be read by everyone searching for a tried and true method of negotiation and decision-making.” —Chris Chen, CDFA, CFP, Insight Financial Strategists, Arlington, MA.
Download or read book Folklore Literature and Cultural Theory written by Cathy L. Preston and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-23 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1996. The need to write, particularly in pre-technological recording days, in order to preserve and to analyze, lies at the heart of folklore and yet to write means to change the medium in which much folk communication and art actually took and takes place. In Part I of the collection, the contributors address literary constructions of traditional and emergent cultures, those of Leslie Marmon Silko, Sandra Cisneros, Pat Mora, Carmen Tafolla, Julio Cortázar, Milan Kundera, Franz Kafka, Philip Roth, Thomas Hardy, and Dacia Maraini. The contributors to Part II of the collection offer readings of a variety of traditional, vernacular, and local performances.
Download or read book Performance and Authenticity in the Arts written by Salim Kemal and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-12-09 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings together a distinguished group of scholars from music, drama, poetry, performance art, religion, classics and philosophy to investigate the complex and developing interaction between performance and authenticity in the arts. The volume begins with a perspective on traditional understandings of that relation, examining the crucial role of performance in the Poetics, the marriage of art with religion, the experiences of religious and aesthetic authenticity, and modernist conceptions of authenticity. Several essays then consider music as a performative art. The final essays discuss the link of authenticity to sincerity and truth in poetry, explain how performance, as an authentic feature of poetry, embodies a collective effort, and culminate in a discussion of the dark side of performance - its constant susceptibility to inauthenticity. Together the essays suggest how issues of performance and authenticity enter into consideration of a wide range of the arts.
Download or read book The Art of Confession written by Christopher Grobe and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of a new style of art—and a new way of life—in postwar America: confessionalism. What do midcentury “confessional” poets have in common with today’s reality TV stars? They share an inexplicable urge to make their lives an open book, and also a sense that this book can never be finished. Christopher Grobe argues that, in postwar America, artists like these forged a new way of being in the world. Identity became a kind of work—always ongoing, never complete—to be performed on the public stage. The Art of Confession tells the history of this cultural shift and of the movement it created in American art: confessionalism. Like realism or romanticism, confessionalism began in one art form, but soon pervaded them all: poetry and comedy in the 1950s and ’60s, performance art in the ’70s, theater in the ’80s, television in the ’90s, and online video and social media in the 2000s. Everywhere confessionalism went, it stood against autobiography, the art of the closed book. Instead of just publishing, these artists performed—with, around, and against the text of their lives. A blend of cultural history, literary criticism, and performance theory, The Art of Confession explores iconic works of art and draws surprising connections among artists who may seem far apart, but who were influenced directly by one another. Studying extraordinary art alongside ordinary experiences of self-betrayal and -revelation, Christopher Grobe argues that a tradition of “confessional performance” unites poets with comedians, performance artists with social media users, reality TV stars with actors—and all of them with us. There is art, this book shows, in our most artless acts.
Download or read book Moving Violations written by John Hockenberry and published by Hyperion. This book was released on 1996-06-27 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A journalist for National Public Radio and ABC News recounts the challenges he has faced as a paraplegic at home and abroad, from the dangers of war-torn Iraq and Jerusalem to discrimination at home. Reprint.
Download or read book 5 Things Successful People Do Before 8 A M written by TERRI. SAVELLE FOY and published by . This book was released on 2019-09 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are you in a rut repeating the same story year after year? Have you got big dreams for your life but don't know where to start? Have you tried to adapt good habits in the past only to fall back time and time again? In 5 Things Successful People Do Before 8 a.m., you will get the insights, encouragement, and practical steps needed to create a powerful, life-changing daily routine. Terri Savelle Foy shares with you the habits of successful people as well as her own personal habits that took her from a mundane, undisciplined life to living a life filled with purpose, self-discipline and God-given success. This book will help you: * Seize each day by taking control of your mornings. * Become aware of (and change) your bad habits. * Establish realistic habits that will revolutionize your life. * Understand how to harness the power of self-discipline. * Discover your purpose so you stay driven. When you change your daily routine, you can change your life.
Download or read book Brightness Falls written by Jay McInerney and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-08-17 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining the lyrical observation of F. Scott Fitzgerald with the laser-bright social satire of Evelyn Waugh, Jay McInerney gives us a novel that is stunningly accomplished and profoundly affecting. As he maps the fault lines spreading through the once-impenetrable marriage of Russell and Corrine Calloway and chronicles Russell's wildly ambitious scheme to seize control of the publishing house at which he works, Jay McInerney creates an elegy for New York in the 1980s. From the literary chimeras and corporate raiders to those dispossessed by the pandemonium of money and power, Brightness Falls captures a rash era at its moment of reckoning and gives reality back to a time that now seems decidedly unreal.
Download or read book Mama Day written by Gloria Naylor and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1989-04-23 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful generational saga at once tender and suspenseful, overflowing with magic and common sense, this book "resonates with genuine excitement … a big, strong, admirable novel” (New York Times Book Review). On the island of Willow Springs, off the Georgia coast, the powers of healer Mama Day are tested by her great niece, Cocoa, a stubbornly emancipated woman endangered by the island's darker forces.
