Download or read book The American Stage and the Great Depression written by Mark Fearnow and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-01-28 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American Stage and the Great Depression: A Cultural History of the Grotesque proposes a correlation between the divided "mind" of America during the depression and popular stage works of the era. Theatre works such as Jack Kirkland's comic-horrific adaptation of Tobacco Road, Olsen and Johnson's "scream-lined revue", Hellzapoppin, and successful plays by Robert E. Sherwood, Clare Boothe Luce, and S. N. Behrman are interpreted as theatrical reflections of depression culture's sense of being trapped between a discredited past and a nightmarish future. The author analyzes the America of the 1930s as an era of the "grotesque", in which the irreconcilable were forced into tense and dynamic coexistence, and by examining these works of theatre as products of particular historical circumstances, argues for a strong connection between cultural history and theatre history.
Download or read book Sex and War on the American Stage written by Emily Klein and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-24 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American adaptations of Aristophanes’ enduring comedy Lysistrata have used laughter to critique sex, war, and feminism for nearly a century. Unlike almost any other play circulating in contemporary theatres, Lysistrata has outlived its classical origins in 411 BCE and continues to shock and delight audiences to this day. The play’s "make love not war" message and bawdy humor render it endlessly appealing to college campuses, activist groups, and community theatres – so much so that none of Aristophanes’ plays are performed in the West as frequently as Lysistrata. Starting with the play’s first mainstream production in the U.S. in 1930, Emily B. Klein explores the varied iterations of Lysistrata that have graced the American stage, page, and screen since the Great Depression. These include the Federal Theatre’s 1936 Negro Repertory production, the 1955 movie musical The Second Greatest Sex and Spiderwoman Theater’s openly political Lysistrata Numbah!, as well as Douglas Carter Beane’s Broadway musical, Lysistrata Jones, and the international Lysistrata Project protests, which updated the classic in the contemporary context of the Iraq War. Although Aristophanes’ oeuvre has been the subject of much classical scholarship, Lysistrata has received little attention from feminist theatre scholars or performance theorists. In response, this book maps current debates over Lysistrata’s dubious feminist underpinnings and uses performance theory, cultural studies, and gender studies to investigate how new adaptations reveal the socio-political climates of their origins. Emily B. Klein is Assistant Professor of English and Drama at Saint Mary's College of California. Her work has appeared in Women and Performance and Frontiers as well as Political and Protest Theater After 9/11: Patriotic Dissent (Routledge, 2012).
Download or read book The Political Stage American Drama and Theater of the Great Depression written by Malcolm Goldstein and published by New York : Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1974 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First full study of American theatre of the 1930s, when playwrights and theatrical people were deeply concerned iwth social themes and events.
Download or read book Great North American Stage Directors Volume 2 written by Jonathan Chambers and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-01-25 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume assesses the accomplishments of three mid-20th century, North American stage directors: Harold Clurman, Orson Welles, and Margo Jones. Though their theatre-making endeavours were distinct, each produced work that challenged preconceived notions of theatre-making, all while working within the structure of a company. As directors drawn to the potential rewards of collaboration, all also were keenly adept at understanding how the relationship with a company of collaborators is often marked by struggle and crisis. The essays in this volume explore how these accomplished directors not only created bold work, but also drew on the complex energies of the theatre companies with which they worked to reimagine the shape and scope of theatre directing. The Great North American Stage Directors series provides an authoritative account of the art of directing in North America by examining the work of twenty-four major practitioners from the late 19th century to the present. Each of the eight volumes examines three directors and offers an overview of their practices, theoretical ideas, and contributions to modern theatre. The studies chart the life and work of each major North American theatre director, placing his or her achievement in the context of other important theatre practitioners and broader social history. Written by a team of leading experts, the series presents the genealogy of directing in North America while simultaneously chronicling crucial trends and championing contemporary interpretation.
Download or read book The Time of Your Life written by Catherine Mary McKimmey and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
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 with total page 626 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second volume of the authoritative, multi-volume Cambridge History of American Theatre, first published in 1999, begins in the post-Civil War period and traces the development of American theatre up to 1945. It covers all aspects of theatre from plays and playwrights, through actors and acting, to theatre groups and directors. Topics examined include vaudeville and popular entertainment, European influences, theatre in and beyond New York, the rise of the Little Theatre movement, changing audiences, modernism, the Federal Theatre movement, scenography, stagecraft, and architecture. Contextualising chapters explore the role of theatre within the context of American social and cultural history, and the role of American theatre in relation to theatre in Europe and beyond. This definitive history of American theatre includes contributions from the following distinguished academics - Thomas Postlewait, John Frick, Tice L. Miller, Ronald Wainscott, Brenda Murphy, Mark Fearnow, Brooks McNamara, Thomas Riis, Daniel J. Watermeier, Mary C. Henderson, and Warren Kliewer.
Download or read book A History of African American Theatre written by Errol G. Hill and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-07-17 with total page 652 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Table of contents
Download or read book Censorship of the American Theatre in the Twentieth Century written by John H. Houchin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-06-26 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Houchin explores the impact of censorship in twentieth-century American theatre. He argues that theatrical censorship coincides with significant challenges to religious, political and cultural traditions. Along with the well-known instance of the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s, other almost equally influential events shaped the course of the American stage during the century. The book is arranged in chronological order. It provides a summary of censorship in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America and then analyses key political and theatrical events between 1900 and 2000. These include a discussion of the 1913 riot after the Abbey Theatre touring produdtion of Playboy of the Western World; protests against Clifford Odet's Waiting for Lefty, performed by militant workers during the Depression; and reactions to the recent play Angels in America.
Download or read book Expressionism and Modernism in the American Theatre written by Julia A. Walker and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-06-30 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although often dismissed as a minor offshoot of the better-known German movement, expressionism on the American stage represents a critical phase in the development of American dramatic modernism. Situating expressionism within the context of early twentieth-century American culture, Walker demonstrates how playwrights who wrote in this mode were responding both to new communications technologies and to the perceived threat they posed to the embodied act of meaning. At a time when mute bodies gesticulated on the silver screen, ghostly voices emanated from tin horns, and inked words stamped out the personality of the hand that composed them, expressionist playwrights began to represent these new cultural experiences by disarticulating the theatrical languages of bodies, voices and words. In doing so, they not only innovated a new dramatic form, but redefined playwriting from a theatrical craft to a literary art form, heralding the birth of American dramatic modernism.
Download or read book The Facts on File Companion to American Drama written by Jackson R. Bryer and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 657 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Features a comprehensive guide to American dramatic literature, from its origins in the early days of the nation to the groundbreaking works of today's best writers.
Download or read book Great North American Stage Directors Volume 1 written by Cheryl Black and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2024-01-25 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume assesses the contributions of David Belasco, Arthur Hopkins, and Margaret Webster, whose careers shaped the artistic and specialist identity of the Broadway director. Their work spans almost a century and captures the rapidly changing social and cultural landscape of 20th-century America. While their aesthetic styles differed greatly, they were united in their mastery of theatre craft and their impact on theatrical collaboration. The essays in this volume explore how these directors established and exploited Broadway as the epicentre of theatre in the United States, blended the role of producer and director, and managed the tensions between commercial success and artistic ambition. The Great North American Stage Directors series provides an authoritative account of the art of directing in North America by examining the work of twenty-four major practitioners from the late 19th century to the present. Each of the eight volumes examines three directors and offers an overview of their practices, theoretical ideas, and contributions to modern theatre. The studies chart the life and work of each director, placing his or her achievement in the context of other important theatre practitioners and broader social history. Written by a team of leading experts, the series presents the genealogy of directing in North America while simultaneously chronicling crucial trends and championing contemporary interpretation.
Download or read book Early American Theatre from the Revolution to Thomas Jefferson written by Heather S. Nathans and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-07-17 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 2003 book examines the growth and influence of the theatre in the development of the young American Republic.
Download or read book A Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical written by Elizabeth L. Wollman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-09-21 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical provides the perfect introductory text for students of theatre, music and cultural studies. It traces the history and development of the industry and art form in America with a particular focus on its artistic and commercial development in New York City from the early 20th century to the present. Emphasis is placed on commercial, artistic and cultural events that influenced the Broadway musical for an ever-renewing, increasingly broad and diverse audience: the Gilded Age, the Great Depression, the World War II era, the British invasion in the 1980s and the media age at the turn of the twenty-first century. Supplementary essays by leading scholars provide detailed focus on the American musical's production and preservation, as well as its influence on daily life on the local, national, and international levels. For students, these essays provide models of varying approaches and interpretation, equipping them with the skills and understanding to develop their own analysis of key productions.
Download or read book A Grotesque Spectacle written by Mark Fearnow and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Cambridge Guide to American Theatre written by Don B. Wilmeth and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-09-13 with total page 13 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New and updated encyclopedic guide to American theatre, from its earliest history to the present.
Download or read book The Drama of Attack written by Sam Smiley and published by Columbia : University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 1972 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Great Depression and the New Deal A Very Short Introduction written by Eric Rauchway and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-03-10 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New Deal shaped our nation's politics for decades, and was seen by many as tantamount to the "American Way" itself. Now, in this superb compact history, Eric Rauchway offers an informed account of the New Deal and the Great Depression, illuminating its successes and failures. Rauchway first describes how the roots of the Great Depression lay in America's post-war economic policies--described as "laissez-faire with a vengeance"--which in effect isolated our nation from the world economy just when the world needed the United States most. He shows how the magnitude of the resulting economic upheaval, and the ineffectiveness of the old ways of dealing with financial hardships, set the stage for Roosevelt's vigorous (and sometimes unconstitutional) Depression-fighting policies. Indeed, Rauchway stresses that the New Deal only makes sense as a response to this global economic disaster. The book examines a key sampling of New Deal programs, ranging from the National Recovery Agency and the Securities and Exchange Commission, to the Public Works Administration and Social Security, revealing why some worked and others did not. In the end, Rauchway concludes, it was the coming of World War II that finally generated the political will to spend the massive amounts of public money needed to put Americans back to work. And only the Cold War saw the full implementation of New Deal policies abroad--including the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. Today we can look back at the New Deal and, for the first time, see its full complexity. Rauchway captures this complexity in a remarkably short space, making this book an ideal introduction to one of the great policy revolutions in history. About the Series: Oxford's Very Short Introductions offers concise and original introductions to a wide range of subjects--from Islam to Sociology, Politics to Classics, and Literary Theory to History. Not simply a textbook of definitions, each volume provides trenchant and provocative--yet always balanced and complete--discussions of the central issues in a given topic. Every Very Short Introduction gives a readable evolution of the subject in question, demonstrating how it has developed and influenced society. Whatever the area of study, whatever the topic that fascinates the reader, the series has a handy and affordable guide that will likely prove indispensable.
