Download or read book Rethinking Chinese Socialist Theaters of Reform written by Xiaomei Chen and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2021-03-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The profound political, economic, and social changes in China in the second half of the twentieth century have produced a wealth of scholarship; less studied however is how cultural events, and theater reforms in particular, contributed to the dynamic landscape of contemporary Chinese society. Rethinking Chinese Socialist Theaters of Reform fills this gap by investigating the theories and practice of socialist theater and their effects on a diverse range of genres, including Western-style spoken drama, Chinese folk opera, dance drama, Shanghai opera, Beijing opera, and rural theater. Focusing on the 1950s and ’60s, when theater art occupied a prominent political and cultural role in Maoist China, this book examines the efforts to remake theater in a socialist image. It explores the unique dynamics between official discourse, local politics, performance practice, and audience reception that emerged under the pressures of highly politicized cultural reform as well as the off-stage, lived impact of rapid policy change on individuals and troupes obscured by the public record. This multidisciplinary collection by leading scholars covers a wide range of perspectives, geographical locations, specific research methods, genres of performance, and individual knowledge and experience. The richly diverse approach leads readers through a nuanced and complex cultural landscape as it contributes significantly to our understanding of a crucial period in the development of modern Chinese theater and performance.
Download or read book George Bernard Shaw and the Socialist Theatre written by Tracy C. Davis and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1994-07-30 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biographically based study of George Bernard Shaw and his milieu, this book offers a non-laudatory reading of Shaw's economic practices and theories, augments feminist and postcolonial critiques that preoccupy the study of literary history in the 1990s, and provides a long overdue revisionist reading of Shaw for an undergraduate readership. It traces the theatrical and political influences on Shaw from his earliest days in London; tracks his interest in socialism as an activist and author of tracts, novels, and plays emphasizing certain polemical traits; and follows his career as a major literary figure into the mid-20th century. The overarching themes of theatre and politics are narrated in relation to attempts by Shaw and his contemporaries to identify an audience and aesthetic for socialist theatre. The bibliographic essay that concludes the book is particularly helpful for student readers, who can benefit from a manageably-sized orientation to the mountain of Shavian scholarship.
Download or read book Churchill s Socialism written by Siân Adiseshiah and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2020-06-12 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although now celebrated as a world-leading playwright, Caryl Churchill has received little attention for her socialism, which has been frequently overlooked in favour of emphasising gendered identities and postmodernist themes. Churchill’s Socialism examines eight of Churchill’s plays with reference to socialist theories and political movements. This well-researched and dynamic new book reframes Churchill’s work, positioning her plays within socialist discourses, and producing persuasive political readings of her drama that reflect much more of the political challenge that the plays pose. It additionally explores her uneasy relationship with postmodernism, which presents itself particularly in Churchill’s later plays. The book contains a very helpful chapter on socialist contexts, which outlines some of the key events, debates, and movements during the late 1960s up until the early 2000s. This chapter also offers an incisive critique of the easy acceptance by some socialists of a postmodernist rejection of grand narratives and political agency. An in depth examination of the rarely explored interconnections of utopianism and theatre, forms another chapter, where all eight of Churchill’s plays, Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, Vinegar Tom, Top Girls, Fen, Serious Money, Mad Forest, The Skriker, and Far Away, are introduced. The plays are then discussed in pairs in a further four chapters with reference to communist historiography, the class/gender intersection, the end-of-history thesis, ecocritical challenges and postmodernism.
Download or read book Socialist Ensembles written by Randy Martin and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most discussions of socialist development within nation-states focus exclusively on the state, leaving civil society out of the picture. By looking into the realm of theater in two socialist countries, the author broadens this view.
Download or read book Popular Music Theatre Under Socialism written by Wolfgang Jansen and published by . This book was released on 2020-12-11 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Performing the Socialist State written by Xiaomei Chen and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2023-02-07 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Performing the Socialist State offers an innovative account of the origins, evolution, and legacies of key trends in twentieth-century Chinese theater. Instead of seeing the Republican, high socialist, and postsocialist periods as radically distinct, it identifies key continuities in theatrical practices and shared aspirations for the social role and artistic achievements of performance across eras. Xiaomei Chen focuses on the long and remarkable careers of three founders of modern Chinese theater and film, Tian Han, Hong Shen, and Ouyang Yuqian, and their legacy, which helped shape theater cultures into the twenty-first century. They introduced Western plays and theories, adapted traditional Chinese operas, and helped develop a tradition of leftist theater in the Republican period that paved the way for the construction of a socialist canon after 1949. Chen investigates how their visions for a free, democratic China fared in the initial years after the founding of the People’s Republic, briefly thriving only to founder as artists had to adapt to the Communist Party’s demand to produce ideologically correct works. Bridging the faith play and “antiparty plays” of the 1950s, the “red classics” of the 1960s, and their reincarnations in the postsocialist period, she considers the transformations of the depictions of women, peasants, soldiers, scientists, and revolutionary history in plays, operas, and films and examines how the market economy, collective memories, star culture, social networks, and state sponsorship affected dramatic productions. Countering the view that state interference stifles artistic imagination, Chen argues that theater professionals have skillfully navigated shifting ruling ideologies to create works that are politically acceptable yet aesthetically ingenious. Emphasizing the power, dynamics, and complexities of Chinese performance cultures, Performing the Socialist State has implications spanning global theater, comparative literature, political and social histories, and Chinese cultural studies.
Download or read book Passionate Amateurs written by Nicholas Ridout and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2013-10-14 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rich, historically grounded exploration of why theater and performance matter in the modern world
Download or read book British Socialist and Workers Theatre written by Robert Leach and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-07-07 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides an overview of the inception, development and achievements of British socialist and workers theatre – a feat which has not been attempted before. It explores the connections between politics and culture (specifically theatre) and between political theory and cultural (theatrical) expression. The book is organized chronologically and uncovers much in labour and theatre history which is in danger of being lost. It can also be seen as a way into different moments in its subject’s story (e.g. post-Ibsen naturalism; agitprop theatre; ‘fringe’ theatre of the 1970s) and the relationship of such forms to specific political events and ideas at specific points in history.
Download or read book The Intelligent Homosexual s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures written by Tony Kushner and published by Theatre Communications Group. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gus Marcantonio, a retired longshoreman, summons his adult children home to the family's Brooklyn brownstone to discuss his recent decision to commit suicide. With his trademark mix of soaring intellect, searing emotion, and biting wit, legendary playwright Tony Kushner unfurls an epic tale of revolution, radicalism, family, love, sex, politics, real estate, unions and debts both unpaid and unpayable. With sweeping themes as hefty as its title, "IHo" (as it has been nicknamed) explores the dense and vexing issues that stem from the betrayal of a failed ideology and the challenges of family connectedness. This cerebral mammoth of a play asks what is left when the long-held belief systems that construct and inform one's identity prove to be empty.
Download or read book Staging Postcommunism written by Vessela S. Warner and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2020-01-01 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theatre in Eastern and Central Europe was never the same after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In the transition to a postcommunist world, “alternative theatre” found ways to grapple with political chaos, corruption, and aggressive implementation of a market economy. Three decades later, this volume is the first comprehensive examination of alternative theatre in ten former communist countries. The essays focus on companies and artists that radically changed the language and organization of theatre in the countries formerly known as the Eastern European bloc. This collection investigates the ways in which postcommunist alternative theatre negotiated and embodied change not only locally but globally as well. Contributors: Dennis Barnett, Dennis C. Beck, Violeta Decheva, Luule Epner, John Freedman, Barry Freeman, Margarita Kompelmakher, Jaak Rahesoo, Angelina Ros ̧ca, Ban ̧uta Rubess, Christopher Silsby, Andrea Tompa, S. E. Wilmer
Download or read book George Bernard Shaw and the Socialist Theatre written by Tracy C. Davis and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1994-07-21 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biographically based study of George Bernard Shaw and his milieu, this book offers a non-laudatory reading of Shaw's economic practices and theories, augments feminist and postcolonial critiques that preoccupy the study of literary history in the 1990s, and provides a long overdue revisionist reading of Shaw for an undergraduate readership. It traces the theatrical and political influences on Shaw from his earliest days in London; tracks his interest in socialism as an activist and author of tracts, novels, and plays emphasizing certain polemical traits; and follows his career as a major literary figure into the mid-20th century. The overarching themes of theatre and politics are narrated in relation to attempts by Shaw and his contemporaries to identify an audience and aesthetic for socialist theatre. The bibliographic essay that concludes the book is particularly helpful for student readers, who can benefit from a manageably-sized orientation to the mountain of Shavian scholarship.
Download or read book Political Symbolism in Modern Europe written by Seymour Drescher and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-07-24 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By collectively concentrating on the theme of political symbolism in modern Europe, the contributors to this volume have chosen to honor a revered teacher and colleague by developing a set of variations on one of his primary scholarly concerns. The essays deal with familiar domains in the history of European culture: religion, science, philosophy, theater, popular culture, and social ideologies. They attempt to focus on their individual subjects as studies of the ways in which the terms of cultural discourse have been shaped and elaborated by social position and the inherently political nature of such discourse. The essays also trace attempts to capture assent or compliance to particular world views which have had profound cultural and political consequences. Many es-says deal with the vocabularies of strategically located elites con-sciously or unconsciously shap-ing discourse to enhance their role in the Eruopean social hierar-chy. Others turn to the problem of the dynamics of symbolic recep-tion and reception by popular au-diences. A third group of thematic essays deals with case studies of world views dominated by political metaphors of group identityand differentiation which became dominant in Western Europe to-ward the end of the nineteenth century—class, nation, sex, age, and race. The essays in the volume deal with: George Mosse and political symbolism; the medical model of cultural crisis in fin de siecle France; cultural uses of "fatigue" in the nineteenth century; Mar-burg neo-Kantian thought and German popular culture; the Ostjude as a cultural symbol in German anti-Semitism; the func-tion of myth and symbol in Georges Sorel; feminism and eugenics in Edwardian England; Darwinism and the working class in Germany; science and religion in early modern Europe; popular theater and socialism in fin de siecle France; political symbolism in the paintings of the German war of liberation; generational discourse in pre-World War I France; and cultural implications of national-socialist religion.
Download or read book Popular Music Theatre under Socialism written by Wolfgang Jansen and published by Waxmann Verlag. This book was released on 2020 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theatre scholars and musicologists from Russia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, the Czech Republic, Austria and Germany came together in spring 2017 at the Center for Popular Culture and Music for a symposium, where they discussed for the first time the topic “Popular Music Theatre under Socialism: Operettas and Musicals in the Eastern European States 1945 to 1990”. This involved general questions such as: Did the uniform (prescribed) worldview lead to identical plays, or are there – in spite of a transnational ideology – national specific differences? And what did these differences possibly look like? The authors of this volume describe the phases of development, the national productions went through, and what influence the import of plays from abroad had on it, whether from the “fraternal socialist countries” or the “capitalistic West”. They examine the government guidelines for authors and composers over the decades. Who were the most important authors and composers? Was there any “socialist operetta”, any “socialist musical”? And what political, social and ideological topics were negotiated on stage? The volume demonstrates the importance of a topic that has so far received little attention in research on European theatre and music history.
Download or read book Drama was a Weapon written by Morgan Yale Himelstein and published by Greenwood. This book was released on 1976 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Passionate Amateurs written by Nicholas Ridout and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2013-10-14 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Passionate Amateurs tells a new story about modern theater: the story of a romantic attachment to theater’s potential to produce surprising experiences of human community. It begins with one of the first great plays of modern European theater—Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in Moscow—and then crosses the 20th and 21st centuries to look at how its story plays out in Weimar Republic Berlin, in the Paris of the 1960s, and in a spectrum of contemporary performance in Europe and the United States. This is a work of historical materialist theater scholarship, which combines a materialism grounded in a socialist tradition of cultural studies with some of the insights developed in recent years by theorists of affect, and addresses some fundamental questions about the social function and political potential of theater within modern capitalism. Passionate Amateurs argues that theater in modern capitalism can help us think afresh about notions of work, time, and freedom. Its title concept is a theoretical and historical figure, someone whose work in theater is undertaken within capitalism, but motivated by a love that desires something different. In addition to its theoretical originality, it offers a significant new reading of a major Chekhov play, the most sustained scholarly engagement to date with Benjamin’s “Program for a Proletarian Children’s Theatre,” the first major consideration of Godard’s La chinoise as a “theatrical” work, and the first chapter-length discussion of the work of The Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, an American company rapidly gaining a profile in the European theater scene. Passionate Amateurs contributes to the development of theater and performance studies in a way that moves beyond debates over the differences between theater and performance in order to tell a powerful, historically grounded story about what theater and performance are for in the modern world.
Download or read book Heiner M ller s Democratic Theater written by Michael Wood and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2017 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzes not just Müller's texts but also the theatrical events that emerged from them, showing that from the beginning of his career Müller tried to create democracy both within and outside the theater.
Download or read book Rethinking Chinese Socialist Theaters of Reform written by Xiaomei Chen and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2021-03-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The profound political, economic, and social changes in China in the second half of the twentieth century have produced a wealth of scholarship; less studied however is how cultural events, and theater reforms in particular, contributed to the dynamic landscape of contemporary Chinese society. Rethinking Chinese Socialist Theaters of Reform fills this gap by investigating the theories and practice of socialist theater and their effects on a diverse range of genres, including Western-style spoken drama, Chinese folk opera, dance drama, Shanghai opera, Beijing opera, and rural theater. Focusing on the 1950s and ’60s, when theater art occupied a prominent political and cultural role in Maoist China, this book examines the efforts to remake theater in a socialist image. It explores the unique dynamics between official discourse, local politics, performance practice, and audience reception that emerged under the pressures of highly politicized cultural reform as well as the off-stage, lived impact of rapid policy change on individuals and troupes obscured by the public record. This multidisciplinary collection by leading scholars covers a wide range of perspectives, geographical locations, specific research methods, genres of performance, and individual knowledge and experience. The richly diverse approach leads readers through a nuanced and complex cultural landscape as it contributes significantly to our understanding of a crucial period in the development of modern Chinese theater and performance.
