Download or read book Radical Black Theatre in the New Deal written by Kate Dossett and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2020-01-29 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1935 and 1939, the United States government paid out-of-work artists to write, act, and stage theatre as part of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), a New Deal job relief program. In segregated "Negro Units" set up under the FTP, African American artists took on theatre work usually reserved for whites, staged black versions of "white" classics, and developed radical new dramas. In this fresh history of the FTP Negro Units, Kate Dossett examines what she calls the black performance community—a broad network of actors, dramatists, audiences, critics, and community activists—who made and remade black theatre manuscripts for the Negro Units and other theatre companies from New York to Seattle. Tracing how African American playwrights and troupes developed these manuscripts and how they were then contested, revised, and reinterpreted, Dossett argues that these texts constitute an archive of black agency, and understanding their history allows us to consider black dramas on their own terms. The cultural and intellectual labor of black theatre artists was at the heart of radical politics in 1930s America, and their work became an important battleground in a turbulent decade.
Download or read book The Play That Goes Wrong written by Henry Lewis and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-04-23 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Good evening. I'm Inspector Carter. Take my case. This must be Charles Haversham! I'm sorry, this must've given you all a damn shock. After benefitting from a large and sudden inheritance, the inept and accident-prone Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society embark on producing an ambitious 1920s murder mystery. They are delighted that neither casting issues nor technical hitches currently stand in their way. However, hilarious disaster ensues and the cast start to crack under the pressure, but can they get the production back on track before the final curtain falls? The Play That Goes Wrong is a farcical murder mystery, a play within a play, conceived and performed by award-winning company Theatre Mischief. It was first published as a one-act play and is published in this new edition as a two-act play.
Download or read book The Chinese Lady written by Lloyd Suh and published by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.. This book was released on 2019 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Afong Moy is fourteen years old when she’s brought to the United States from Guangzhou Province in 1834. Allegedly the first Chinese woman to set foot on U.S. soil, she has been put on display for the American public as “The Chinese Lady.” For the next half-century, she performs for curious white people, showing them how she eats, what she wears, and the highlight of the event: how she walks with bound feet. As the decades wear on, her celebrated sideshow comes to define and challenge her very sense of identity. Inspired by the true story of Afong Moy’s life, THE CHINESE LADY is a dark, poetic, yet whimsical portrait of America through the eyes of a young Chinese woman.
Download or read book Performing New Lives written by Jonathan Shailor and published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. This book was released on 2011 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book will provide valuable reading for drama therapists, theatre artists, probation workers, prison educators, psychologists, and anyone else interested in the role of the performing arts in criminal justice. --Book Jacket.
Download or read book Working on a Song written by Anaïs Mitchell and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Working On A Song is one of the best books about lyric writing for the theater I've read."—Lin-Manuel Miranda Anaïs Mitchell named to TIME's List of the 100 Most Influential People in the World of 2020 An illuminating book of lyrics and stories from Hadestown—the winner of eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical—from its author, songwriter Anaïs Mitchell with a foreword by Steve Earle On Broadway, this fresh take on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice has become a modern classic. Heralded as “The best new musical of the season,” by The Wall Street Journal, and “Sumptuous. Gorgeous. As good as it gets,” by The New York Times, the show was a breakout hit, with its poignant social commentary, and spellbinding music and lyrics. In this book, Anaïs Mitchell takes readers inside her more than decade’s-long process of building the musical from the ground up—detailing her inspiration, breaking down the lyrics, and opening up the process of creation that gave birth to Hadestown. Fans and newcomers alike will love this deeply thoughtful, revealing look at how the songs from “the underground” evolved, and became the songs we sing again and again.
Download or read book New Broadways written by Gerald M. Berkowitz and published by Applause Theatre & Cinema. This book was released on 1997 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book charts the development of the regional theatres in America and how they have replaced Broadway as the starting point for most new work in the theatre. It also offers insights into what the future might hold for these regional theatres.
Download or read book The Critics Say written by Matt Windman and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-04-27 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What will happen to the theater when there are no more critics? With the decline of print media and the rise of online journalism, theater critics are facing hard times. As their influence fades, will the industry they cover be adversely affected or can bloggers and message boards fill the void? Can a new economic model be created for theater criticism? How can critics lucky enough to still have jobs stay relevant in the age of social media? Speaking of which, what does a theater critic really do, and how do you become one? In this book, Matt Windman, a theater critic himself, interviews more than 50 critics from New York and around the country, including Ben Brantley, Charles Isherwood, John Lahr, Terry Teachout, Linda Winer, Chris Jones, David Cote, John Simon and Peter Filichia. They discuss their long careers and the nightly process of evaluating plays and musicals, and offer their thoughts on the future of the profession.
Download or read book New Downtown Now written by Mac Wellman and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book New Theatre Quarterly 60 Volume 15 Part 4 written by Clive Barker and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-02-24 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New Theatre Quarterly provides an international forum where theatrical scholarship and practice can meet, and where prevailing dramatic assumptions can be subjected to vigorous critical questioning.
Download or read book The Theatre of Tennessee Williams written by Tennessee Williams and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 1971 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume III of the series includes Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Orpheus Descending (1957), and Suddenly Last Summer (1958). The first, which won both the Pulitzer Prize and Drama Critics Award, has proved every bit as successful as William's earlier A Streetcar Named Desire. The other two plays, though different in kind, both have something of the quality of Greek tragedy in 20th-century settings, bringing about catharsis through ritual death.
Download or read book Theatre Games written by Clive Barker and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2010-05-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A practical guide to using theatre games for actor training which includes a DVD with original footage of the author putting the techniques into action.
Download or read book Towards a New Theatre written by Robert Edmond Jones and published by Amadeus Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Raisin in the Sun written by Lorraine Hansberry and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-11-02 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Never before, in the entire history of the American theater, has so much of the truth of Black people's lives been seen on the stage," observed James Baldwin shortly before A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway in 1959. This edition presents the fully restored, uncut version of Hansberry's landmark work with an introduction by Robert Nemiroff. Lorraine Hansberry's award-winning drama about the hopes and aspirations of a struggling, working-class family living on the South Side of Chicago connected profoundly with the psyche of Black America—and changed American theater forever. The play's title comes from a line in Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem," which warns that a dream deferred might "dry up/like a raisin in the sun." "The events of every passing year add resonance to A Raisin in the Sun," said The New York Times. "It is as if history is conspiring to make the play a classic."
Download or read book Laughter on the 23rd Floor written by Neil Simon and published by Concord Theatricals. This book was released on 1995 with total page 87 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by the playwright's youthful experience as a staff writer on Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, with all the attendant comic drama as the harried writing staff frantically scramble to top each other with gags while competing for the attention of star madman "Max Prince."
Download or read book Harry Potter and the Cursed Child written by J. K. Rowling and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband, and a father, Harry Potter struggles with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs while his youngest son, Albus, finds the weight of the family legacy difficult to bear.
Download or read book Steppenwolf Theatre Company of Chicago written by John Mayer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-08-11 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1974, a group of determined, young high school actors started doing plays under the name of Steppenwolf Theatre Company, eventually taking residence in the basement of a church in Highland Park, a suburb of Chicago. Thus began their unlikely journey to become one of the most prominent theatre companies in the world. Steppenwolf Theatre Company has changed the face of American Theatre with its innovative approach that blends dynamic ensemble performance, honest, straightforward acting, and bold, thought-provoking stories to create compelling theatre. This is the first book to chronicle this iconic theatre company, offering an account of its early years and development, its work, and the methodologies that have made it one of the most influential ensemble theatres today. Through extensive, in-depth interviews conducted by the author with ensemble members, this book reveals the story of Steppenwolf's miraculous rise from basement to Broadway and beyond. Interviewees include co-founders Jeff Perry, Gary Sinise and Terry Kinney, along a myriad of ensemble, staff, board members and others.
Download or read book Theatre of the Unimpressed written by Jordan Tannahill and published by Coach House Books. This book was released on 2015-05-11 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How dull plays are killing theatre and what we can do about it. Had I become disenchanted with the form I had once fallen so madly in love with as a pubescent, pimple-faced suburban homo with braces? Maybe theatre was like an all-consuming high school infatuation that now, ten years later, I saw as the closeted balding guy with a beer gut he’d become. There were of course those rare moments of transcendencethat kept me coming back. But why did they come so few and far between? A lot of plays are dull. And one dull play, it seems, can turn us off theatre for good. Playwright and theatre director Jordan Tannahill takes in the spectrum of English-language drama – from the flashiest of Broadway spectacles to productions mounted in scrappy storefront theatres – to consider where lifeless plays come from and why they persist. Having travelled the globe talking to theatre artists, critics, passionate patrons and the theatrically disillusioned, Tannahill addresses what he considers the culture of ‘risk aversion’ paralyzing the form. Theatre of the Unimpressed is Tannahill’s wry and revelatory personal reckoning with the discipline he’s dedicated his life to, and a roadmap for a vital twenty-first-century theatre – one that apprehends the value of ‘liveness’ in our mediated age and the necessity for artistic risk and its attendant failures. In considering dramaturgy, programming and alternative models for producing, Tannahill aims to turn theatre from an obligation to a destination. ‘[Tannahill is] the poster child of a new generation of (theatre? film? dance?) artists for whom "interdisciplinary" is not a buzzword, but a way of life.’ —J. Kelly Nestruck, Globe and Mail ‘Jordan is one of the most talented and exciting playwrights in the country, and he will be a force to be reckoned with for years to come.’ —Nicolas Billon, Governor General's Award–winning playwright (Fault Lines)
