Download or read book The Birth of Modern Theatre written by Norman S. Poser and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-09-20 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Birth of Modern Theatre: Rivalry, Riots, and Romance in the Age of Garrick is a vivid description of the eighteenth-century London theatre scene—a time when the theatre took on many of the features of our modern stage. A natural and psychologically based acting style replaced the declamatory style of an earlier age. The theatres were mainly supported by paying audiences, no longer by royal or noble patrons. The press determined the success or failure of a play or a performance. Actors were no longer shunned by polite society, some becoming celebrities in the modern sense. The dominant figure for thirty years was David Garrick, actor, theatre manager and playwright, who, off the stage, charmed London with his energy, playfulness, and social graces. No less important in defining eighteenth-century theatre were its audiences, who considered themselves full-scale participants in theatrical performances; if they did not care for a play, an actor, or ticket prices, they would loudly make their wishes known, sometimes starting a riot. This book recounts the lives—and occasionally the scandals—of the actors and theatre managers and weaves them into the larger story of the theatre in this exuberant age, setting the London stage and its leading personalities against the background of the important social, cultural, and economic changes that shaped eighteenth-century Britain. The Birth of Modern Theatre brings all of this together to describe a moment in history that sowed the seeds of today’s stage.
Download or read book Theatre A Very Short Introduction written by Marvin Carlson and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-10-23 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From before history was recorded to the present day, theatre has been a major artistic form around the world. From puppetry to mimes and street theatre, this complex art has utilized all other art forms such as dance, literature, music, painting, sculpture, and architecture. Every aspect of human activity and human culture can be, and has been, incorporated into the creation of theatre. In this Very Short Introduction Marvin Carlson takes us through Ancient Greece and Rome, to Medieval Japan and Europe, to America and beyond, and looks at how the various forms of theatre have been interpreted and enjoyed. Exploring the role that theatre artists play — from the actor and director to the designer and puppet-master, as well as the audience — this is an engaging exploration of what theatre has meant, and still means, to people of all ages at all times. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism written by Toril Moi and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-02-14 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) is the founder of modern theater, and his plays are performed all over the world. Yet in spite of his unquestioned status as a classic of the stage, Ibsen is often dismissed as a fuddy-duddy old realist, whose plays are of interest only because they remain the gateway to modern theater. In Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism , Toril Moi makes a powerful case not just for Ibsen's modernity, but for his modernism. Situating Ibsen in his cultural context, she shows how unexpected his rise to world fame was, and the extent of his influence on writers such Shaw, Wilde, and Joyce who were seeking to escape the shackles of Victorianism. Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism also rewrites nineteenth-century literary history; positioning Ibsen between visual art and philosophy, the book offers a critique of traditional theories of the opposition between realism and modernism. Modernism, Moi argues, arose from the ruins of idealism, the dominant aesthetic paradigm of the nineteenth century. She also shows why Ibsen still matters to us today, by focusing on two major themes-his explorations of women, men, and marriage and his clear-eyed chronicling of the tension between skepticism and the everyday. This radical new account places Ibsen in his rightful place alongside Baudelaire, Flaubert, and Manet as a founder of European modernism.
Download or read book The Art of Light on Stage written by Yaron Abulafia and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-16 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Art of Light on Stage is the first history of theatre lighting design to bring the story right up to date. In this extraordinary volume, award-winning designer Yaron Abulafia explores the poetics of light, charting the evolution of lighting design against the background of contemporary performance. The book looks at the material and the conceptual; the technological and the transcendental. Never before has theatre design been so vividly and excitingly illuminated. The book examines the evolution of lighting design in contemporary theatre through an exploration of two fundamental issues: 1. What gave rise to the new directions in lighting design in contemporary theatre? 2. How can these new directions be viewed within the context of lighting design history? The study then focuses on the phenomenological and semiotic aspects of the medium for light – the role of light as a performer, as the medium of visual perception and as a stimulus for imaginative representations – in selected contemporary theatre productions by Robert Wilson, Romeo Castellucci, Heiner Goebbels, Jossi Wieler and David Zinder. This ground-breaking book will be required reading for anyone concerned with the future of performance.
Download or read book The Making of Modern Drama written by Richard Gilman and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This critical exploration of modern drama begins with Büchner and Ibsen and then discusses the major playwrights who have shaped modern theater. A new introduction by the author assesses developments of recent years.
Download or read book The Norton Anthology of Drama written by J. Ellen Gainor and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 1792 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comprehensive and up-to-date, now with more instructor resources
Download or read book The World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre written by Katherine Brisbane and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-05-31 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new paperback edition provides a unique examination of theatre in Asia and the Pacific and is written by leading experts from within the countries covered. Its far-reaching scope and broad interpretation of theatre (to include all types of performance) set it apart from any other similar publication. Entries on 33 Asian countries are featured in this volume, preceded by introductory essays on Asian Theatre, Theatre in the Pacific, History and Culture, Cosmology, Music, Dance, Theatre for Young Audiences, Mask Theatre and Puppetry. The volume contains approximately 300,000 words and includes national essays of up to 25,000 words each. The countries include: Afghanistan * Australia * Bangladesh * Bhutan * Brunei * Cambodia * India * Indonesia * Iran * Japan * Kazakhstan *Kirghizia * Laos * Malaysia * Myanmar * Mongolia * Nepal *New Zealand * Pakistan * Papua New Guinea * PhilippinesNew Zealand * Pakistan * Papua New Guinea * Philippines *Singapore * South Korea * South Pacific * Sri Lanka * Tadjikistan * Thailand * Turkmenistan * Vietnam
Download or read book World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre written by Peter Nagy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-03 with total page 1082 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre:Europe covers theatre since World War II in forty-seven European nations, including the nations which re-emerged following the break-up of the former USSR, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Each national article is divided into twelve sections - History, Structure of the National Theatre Community, Artistic Profile, Music Theatre, Theatre for Young Audiences, Puppet Theatre, Design, Theatre, Space and Architecture, Training, Criticism, Scholarship and Publishing and Further Reading - allowing the reader to use the book as a source for both area and subject studies.
Download or read book The World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre written by Don Rubin and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2001 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new in paperback edition of World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre covers the Americas, from Canada to Argentina, including the United States. Volume 5 covers Asia/Pacific. Entries are preceded by specialist introductions on Theatre in Post-Colonial Latin America, Theatres of North America, Puppet Theatre, Theatre for Young Audiences, Music Theatre and Dance Theatre. The essays follow the series format, allowing for cross-referring across subjects, both within the volume and between volumes. Each country entry is written by specialists in the particular country and the volume has its own teams of regional editors, overseen by the main editorial team based at the University of York in Canada headed by Don Rubin.
Download or read book Commedia dell Arte in Context written by Christopher B. Balme and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-05 with total page 709 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The commedia dell'arte, the improvised Italian theatre that dominated the European stage from 1550 to 1750, is arguably the most famous theatre tradition to emerge from Europe in the early modern period. Its celebrated masks have come to symbolize theatre itself and have become part of the European cultural imagination. Over the past twenty years a revolution in commedia dell'arte scholarship has taken place, generated mainly by a number of distinguished Italian scholars. Their work, in which they have radically separated out the myth from the history of the phenomenon remains, however, largely untranslated into English (or any other language). The present volume gathers together these Italian and English-speaking scholars to synthesize for the first time this research for both specialist and non-specialist readers. The book is structured around key topics that span both the early modern period and the twentieth-century reinvention of the commedia dell'arte.
Download or read book Irony and the Modern Theatre written by William Storm and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-05 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Irony and theatre share intimate kinships, not only regarding dramatic conflict, dialectic or wittiness, but also scenic structure and the verbal or situational ironies that typically mark theatrical speech and action. Yet irony today, in aesthetic, literary and philosophical contexts especially, is often regarded with skepticism - as ungraspable, or elusive to the point of confounding. Countering this tendency, William Storm advocates a wide-angle view of this master trope, exploring the ironic in major works by playwrights including Chekhov, Pirandello and Brecht, and in notable relation to well-known representative characters in drama from Ibsen's Halvard Solness to Stoppard's Septimus Hodge and Wasserstein's Heidi Holland. To the degree that irony is existential, its presence in the theatre relates directly to the circumstances and the expressiveness of the characters on stage. This study investigates how these key figures enact, embody, represent and personify the ironic in myriad situations in the modern and contemporary theatre.
Download or read book The Theory of the Modern Stage written by Eric Bentley and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 1997 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Applause Books). Including Antoin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, E. Gordon Craig, Luigi Pirandello, Konstantin Stanislavsky, W. B. Yeats, and Emile Zolaing.
Download or read book World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre written by Arthur Holmberg and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 640 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second volume of the World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre covers the Americas, from Canada to Argentina, including the United States. Entries on twenty-six countries are preceded by specialist introductions on Theatre in Post-Colonial Latin America, Theatres of North America, Puppet Theatre, Theatre for Young Audiences, Music Theatre and Dance Theatre. The essays follow the series format, allowing for cross-referring across subjects, both within the volume and between volumes. Each country entry is written by specialists in the particular country and the volume has its own teams of regional editors, overseen by the main editorial team based at the University of York in Canada headed by Don Rubin. Each entry covers all aspects of theatre genres, practitioners, writers, critics and styles, with bibliographies, over 200 black & white photographs and a substantial index. This is a unique volume in its own right; in conjunction with the other volumes in this series it forms a reference resource of unparalleled value.
Download or read book Spectral Characters written by Sarah Balkin and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2019-07-31 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theater’s materiality and reliance on human actors has traditionally put it at odds with modernist principles of aesthetic autonomy and depersonalization. Spectral Characters argues that modern dramatists in fact emphasized the extent to which humans are fictional, made and changed by costumes, settings, props, and spoken dialogue. Examining work by Ibsen, Wilde, Strindberg, Genet, Kopit, and Beckett, the book takes up the apparent deadness of characters whose selves are made of other people, whose thoughts become exteriorized communication technologies, and whose bodies merge with walls and furniture. The ghostly, vampiric, and telepathic qualities of these characters, Sarah Balkin argues, mark a new relationship between the material and the imaginary in modern theater. By considering characters whose bodies respond to language, whose attempts to realize their individuality collapse into inanimacy, and who sometimes don’t appear at all, the book posits a new genealogy of modernist drama that emphasizes its continuities with nineteenth-century melodrama and realism.
Download or read book Gaming the Stage written by Gina Bloom and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2018-07-10 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illuminates the fascinating, intertwined histories of games and the Early Modern theater
Download or read book The Theatre of the Absurd written by Martin Esslin and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-04-02 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1953, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot premiered at a tiny avant-garde theatre in Paris; within five years, it had been translated into more than twenty languages and seen by more than a million spectators. Its startling popularity marked the emergence of a new type of theatre whose proponents—Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, Pinter, and others—shattered dramatic conventions and paid scant attention to psychological realism, while highlighting their characters’ inability to understand one another. In 1961, Martin Esslin gave a name to the phenomenon in his groundbreaking study of these playwrights who dramatized the absurdity at the core of the human condition. Over four decades after its initial publication, Esslin’s landmark book has lost none of its freshness. The questions these dramatists raise about the struggle for meaning in a purposeless world are still as incisive and necessary today as they were when Beckett’s tramps first waited beneath a dying tree on a lonely country road for a mysterious benefactor who would never show. Authoritative, engaging, and eminently readable, The Theatre of the Absurd is nothing short of a classic: vital reading for anyone with an interest in the theatre.
Download or read book Shakespeare and Modern Theatre written by Michael Bristol and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-07-08 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book gathers together a particularly strong line-up of contributors from across the literary-performative divide to examine the relationship between Shakespeare, the 'culture industries', modernism and live performance.
