Download or read book The Methuen Drama Amateur Theatre Handbook written by Keith Arrowsmith and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2009-01-01 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Amateur Theatre Handbook is the essential handbook for anyone involved in amateur dramatics. Keith Arrowsmith guides the reader through the potential pitfalls of putting on a production, from preliminary planning and choosing a play, through stage management, to first night. There are sections on staging a show, group organisation and special performances, covering legal rights and obligations, health and safety, budgeting, copyright law, choosing a venue, stage management and front-of-house, plus a comprehensive reference section. Using personal anecdotes, checklists and clear guidelines, this is a comprehensive and accessible handbook for all aspects of amateur production.

Download or read book The Methuen Drama Handbook of Theatre History and Historiography written by Claire Cochrane and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-31 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Methuen Drama Handbook of Theatre History and Historiography is an authoritative guide to contemporary debates and practices in this field. The book covers the key themes and methods that are current in theatre history research, with a particular focus on expanding the object of study to include engagement with theatre and performance practices and the development of theatre histories around the world. Central to the book are eighteen specially commissioned essays by established and emerging scholars from a wide range of international contexts, whose discussion of individual case studies is predicated on their understanding and experience of their 'local' landscape of theatre history. These essays reveal where important work continues to be done in the field and, most valuably, draws on academic contexts beyond the Western academy to expand our knowledge of the exciting directions that such an approach opens up. Prefaced by an introduction tracing the development of the discipline of theatre history and changing historiographical approaches, the Handbook explores current issues pertaining to theatre and performance history research, as well as providing up to date and robust introductions to the methods and historiographic questions being explored by researchers in the field. Featuring a series of essential research tools, including a detailed list of resources and an annotated bibliography of key texts, this is an indispensable scholarly handbook for anyone working in theatre and performance history and historiography.

Download or read book The Methuen Drama Book of New American Plays written by David Adjmi and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-05-23 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Methuen Drama Book of New American Plays is an anthology of six outstanding plays from some of the most exciting playwrights currently receiving critical acclaim in the States. It showcases work produced at a number of the leading theatres during the last decade and charts something of the extraordinary range of current playwriting in America. It will be invaluable not only to readers and theatergoers in the U.S., but to those around the world seeking out new American plays and an insight into how U.S. playwrights are engaging with their current social and political environment. There is a rich collection of distinctive, diverse voices at work in the contemporary American theatre and this brings together six of the best, with work by David Adjmi, Marcus Gardley, Young Jean Lee, Katori Hall, Christopher Shinn and Dan LeFranc. The featured plays range from the intimate to the epic, the personal to the national and taken together explore a variety of cultural perspectives on life in America. The first play, David Adjmi's Stunning, is an excavation of ruptured identity set in modern day Midwood, Brooklyn, in the heart of the insular Syrian-Jewish community; Marcus Gardley's lyrical epic The Road Weeps, The Well Runs Dry deals with the migration of Black Seminoles, is set in mid-1800s Oklahoma and speaks directly to modern spirituality, relocation and cultural history; Young Jean Lee's Pullman, WA deals with self-hatred and the self-help culture in her formally inventive three-character play; Katori Hall's Hurt Village uses the real housing project of "Hurt Village" as a potent allegory for urban neglect set against the backdrop of the Iraq war; Christopher Shinn's Dying City melds the personal and political in a theatrical crucible that cracks open our response to 9/11 and Abu Graib, and finally Dan LeFranc's The Big Meal, an inter-generational play spanning eighty years, is set in the mid-west in a generic restaurant and considers family legacy and how some of the smallest events in life turn out to be the most significant.

Download or read book The Methuen Drama Companion to Performance Art written by Bertie Ferdman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Methuen Drama Companion to Performance Art offers a comprehensive guide to the major issues and interdisciplinary debates concerning performance in art contexts that have developed over the last decade. It understands performance art as an institutional, cultural, and economic phenomenon rather than as a label or object. Following the ever-increasing institutionalization and mainstreaming of performance, the book's chapters identify a marked change in the economies and labor practices surrounding performance art, and explore how this development is reflective of capitalist approaches to art and event production. Embracing what we perceive to be the 'oxymoronic status' of performance art-where it is simultaneously precarious and highly profitable-the essays in this book map the myriad gestures and radical possibilities of this extreme contradiction. This Companion adopts an interdisciplinary perspective to present performance art's legacies and its current practices. It brings together specially commissioned essays from leading innovative scholars from a wide range of approaches including art history, visual and performance studies, dance and theatre scholarship in order to provide a comprehensive and multifocal overview of the emerging research trends and methodologies devoted to performance art.

Download or read book The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays written by Azure D. Osborne-Lee and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-04-22 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist in the 2022 Lambda Literary Awards for the LGBTQ Anthology category The Methuen Drama Book of Trans Plays for the Stage is the first play anthology to offer eight new plays by trans playwrights featuring trans characters. This edited collection establishes a canon of contemporary American trans theatre which represents a variety of performance modes and genres. From groundbreaking new work from across America's stages to unpublished work by new voices, these plays address themes such as gender identity and expression to racial and religious attitudes toward love and sex. Edited by Lindsey Mantoan, Angela Farr Schiller and Leanna Keyes, the plays selected explicitly call for trans characters as central protagonists in order to promote opportunities for trans performers, making this an original and necessary publication for both practical use and academic study. Sagittarius Ponderosa by MJ Kaufman The Betterment Society by Mashuq Mushtaq Deen how to clean your room by j. chavez She He Me by Raphaël Amahl Khouri The Devils Between Us by Sharifa Yasmin Doctor Voynich and Her Children by Leanna Keyes Firebird Tattoo by Ty Defoe Crooked Parts by Azure Osborne-Lee

Download or read book The Methuen Drama Handbook of Gender and Theatre written by Sean Metzger and published by Methuen Drama. This book was released on 2023-10-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An authoritative guide to contemporary debates and practices at a time when gender paradigms are both in flux and at the centre of explosive political battlegrounds. The confluence of gender and theatre has long created a site of intense debate about the roles of men, women, and other gendered identifications. Whether it's Shakespeare's cross-dressed boys or the banning of women in traditional kabuki or on-going reflections of two-spirit ontologies in American Indian and First Nations performances, the matter of gender has frequently taken centre stage. The Methuen Drama Handbook of Gender and Theatre examines how critical discourses on gender (understood through intersectional and transnational frames) intersect with key debates in the field of theatre studies, as a lens to illuminate the practices of both gender and theatre as well as the societies they inform and represent across space and time. Of interest to scholars in the interrelated areas of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, globalization studies, theatre and performance studies, cultural studies, and transnational and diasporic studies, its specially commissioned essays demonstrate how researchers are currently handling theatre about gender issues and gendered theatre practices. While synthesizing and summarizing foundational and evolving debates from a contemporary perspective, this is a collection that offers interpretations and analyses that do not simply look back at existing scholarship, but open up new possibilities, paradigms and understandings of gender and theatre. Featuring a series of essential research tools, including a detailed list of resources and an annotated bibliography of key texts, this is an indispensable scholarly handbook for anyone working in theatre and performance.

Download or read book The Methuen Drama Book of 21st Century British Plays written by Joe Penhall and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2010-02-26 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection showcases the five best new plays from the first decade of the twenty-first century and perfectly reflects why British theatre is regarded as the epicenter of vitality, relevance and innovation in drama and the performing arts. Blue/Orange, Elmina's Kitchen, Neilson's Realism, Gone Too Far! and Pornography.

Download or read book The Methuen Drama Book of New American Plays written by David Adjmi and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 526 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Methuen Drama Book of New American Plays is an anthology of six outstanding plays from some of the most exciting playwrights currently receiving critical acclaim in the States. It showcases work produced at a number of the leading theatres during the last decade and charts something of the extraordinary range of current playwriting in America. It will be invaluable not only to readers and theatergoers in the U.S., but to those around the world seeking out new American plays and an insight into how U.S. playwrights are engaging with their current social and political environment. There is a rich collection of distinctive, diverse voices at work in the contemporary American theatre and this brings together six of the best, with work by David Adjmi, Marcus Gardley, Young Jean Lee, Katori Hall, Christopher Shinn and Dan LeFranc. The featured plays range from the intimate to the epic, the personal to the national and taken together explore a variety of cultural perspectives on life in America. The first play, David Adjmi's Stunning, is an excavation of ruptured identity set in modern day Midwood, Brooklyn, in the heart of the insular Syrian-Jewish community; Marcus Gardley's lyrical epic The Road Weeps, The Well Runs Dry deals with the migration of Black Seminoles, is set in mid-1800s Oklahoma and speaks directly to modern spirituality, relocation and cultural history; Young Jean Lee's Pullman, WA deals with self-hatred and the self-help culture in her formally inventive three-character play; Katori Hall's Hurt Village uses the real housing project of "Hurt Village" as a potent allegory for urban neglect set against the backdrop of the Iraq war; Christopher Shinn's Dying City melds the personal and political in a theatrical crucible that cracks open our response to 9/11 and Abu Graib, and finally Dan LeFranc's The Big Meal, an inter-generational play spanning eighty years, is set in the mid-west in a generic restaurant and considers family legacy and how some of the smallest events in life turn out to be the most significant.

Download or read book The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary American Playwrights written by Christopher Innes and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-12-19 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unrivalled in its coverage of recent work and writers, The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary American Playwrights surveys and analyses the breadth, vitality and development of theatrical work to emerge from America over the last fifty years. This authoritative guide leads you through the work of 25 major contemporary American playwrights, discussing more than 140 plays in detail. Written by a team of 25 eminent international scholars, each chapter provides: · a biographical introduction to the playwright's work; · a survey and concise analysis of the writer's most important plays; · a discussion of their style, dramaturgical concerns and critical reception; · a bibliography of published plays and a select list of critical works. Among the many Tony, Obie and Pulitzer prize-winning playwrights included are Sam Shepard, Tony Kushner, Suzan-Lori Parks, August Wilson, Paula Vogel and Neil LaBute. The abundance of work analysed enables fresh, illuminating conclusions to be drawn about the development of contemporary American playwriting.

Download or read book The Methuen Drama Handbook of Interculturalism and Performance written by Daphne Lei and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-04-02 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Methuen Drama Handbook of Interculturalism and Performance explores ground-breaking new directions and critical discourse in the field of intercultural theatre and performance while surveying key debates concerning interculturalism as an aesthetic and ethical series of encounters in theatre and performance from the 1960s onwards. The handbook's global coverage challenges understandings of intercultural theatre and performance that continue to prioritise case studies emerging primarily from the West and executed by elite artists. By building on a growing field of scholarship on intercultural theatre and performance that examines minoritarian and grassroots work, the volume offers an alternative and multi-vocal view of what interculturalism might offer as a theoretical keyword to the future of theatre and performance studies, while also contributing an energized reassessment of the vociferous debates that have long accompanied its critical and practical usage in a performance context. By exploring anew what happens when interculturalism and performance intersect as embodied practice, The Methuen Drama Handbook of Interculturalism and Performance offers new perspectives on a seminal theoretical concept still as useful as it is controversial. Featuring a series of indispensable research tools, including a fully annotated bibliography, this is the essential scholarly handbook for anyone working in intercultural theatre and performance, and performance studies.

Download or read book Theatre in the Expanded Field written by Alan Read and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2013-12-05 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theatre in the Expanded Field is a fiercely original, bold and daring exploration of the fields of theatre and performance studies and the received narratives and histories that underpin them. Rich with interdisciplinary reference, international, eclectic and broad-ranging in its examples, it offers readers a compelling and provocative reassessment of the disciplines, one that spans pre-history to the present day. Sixty years ago, in 1962, Richard Southern wrote a remarkable book called The Seven Ages of the Theatre. It was unusual in its time for taking a trans-disciplinary, new-historical and avowedly internationalist approach to its subject - nothing less than a totalizing view of its field. Theatre in the Expanded Field does not attempt to mimic Southern's work but rather takes his spirit of adventure and ambition as its frame for the contemporary moment of performance and its diverse pasts. Identifying seven ways of exploring the performance field, from pre-history to postdramatic theatre the book presents studies of both contemporary and historical works not as a chronological succession, but in keeping with their coeval qualities, as movements or 'generations' of connection and interaction, dissensus and interruption. It does this with the same purpose as Richard Southern's original work: to provide for the planning of responsive performance spaces 'now'. Illustrated throughout with line-drawings, Theatre in the Expanded Field is as richly rewarding as it is ambitious and expansive in it vision.

Download or read book Audition Speeches for 6 16 Year Olds written by Jean Marlow and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2009-10-26 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intended for students and children taking part in speech and drama competitions and exams, this book contains a range of audition speeches. It includes female, male and unisex speeches selected from both plays and children's books. Where relevant the author has indicated how a speech could be shortened for younger children. There is also an introductory section with contributions from Alan Ayckbourn, Carol Schroder (teacher and examiner for the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art), Richard Carpenter (TV writer) and Ed Wilson (Director of the National Youth Theatre) and senior casting directors for the RSC, TV and film. This edition has been freshly revised to include 10 new speeches from well known recent productions as well as children's books including Harry Potter. 'A superb compilation' Amateur Stage

Download or read book Directing a Handbook for Emerging Theatre Directors written by Rob Swain and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theatre director is one of the most critical roles in a successful drama company, yet there are no formal qualifications required for entry into this profession. This practical guide for emerging theatre directors answers all the key questions from the very beginning of your career to key stages as you establish your credentials and get professionally recognized. It analyzes the director's role through relationships with the actors, author, designer, production manager and creative teams and provides vital advice for "on-the-job" situations where professional experience is invaluable. The book also provides an overview of the many approaches to acting methodology without focusing on any in particular to allow the director to develop their own unique methods of working with any actor's style. Each chapter includes these key features: * Introduces important theories, identifies practitioners and provides key reading to provide an overview of historic and current practice. * Interviews with leading practitioners and emerging directors. * Suggested exercises to develop the director's own approach and practical skills.

Download or read book Another Day s Begun written by Howard Sherman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A work of startling originality when it debuted in 1938, Thornton Wilder's Our Town evolved to be seen by some as a vintage slice of early 20th Century Americana, rather than being fully appreciated for its complex and eternal themes and its deceptively simple form. This unique and timely book shines a light on the play's continued impact in the 21st century and makes a case for the healing powers of Wilder's text to a world confronting multiple crises. Through extensive interviews with more than 100 artists about their own experience of the play and its impact on them professionally and personally – and including background on the play's early years and its pervasiveness in American culture – Another Day's Begun shows why this particular work remains so important, essential, and beloved. Every production of Our Town has a story to tell beyond Wilder's own. One year after the tragedy of 9/11, Paul Newman, in his final stage appearance, played the Stage Manager in Our Town on Broadway. Director David Cromer's 2008 Chicago interpretation would play in five more cities, ultimately becoming New York's longest-running Our Town ever. In 2013, incarcerated men at Sing Sing Correctional Facility brought Grover's Corners inside a maximum security prison. After the 2017 arena bombing in Manchester UK, the Royal Exchange Theatre chose Our Town as its offering to the stricken community. 80 years after it was written, more than 110 years after its actions take place, Our Town continues to assert itself as an essential play about how we must embrace and appreciate the value of life itself. Another Day's Begun explains how this American classic has the power to inspire, heal and endure in the modern day, onstage and beyond.

Download or read book The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary South African Theatre written by Martin Middeke and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: South Africa has a uniquely rich and diverse theatre tradition which has responded energetically to the country's remarkable transition, helping to define the challenges and contradictions of this young democracy. This volume considers the variety of theatre forms, and the work of the major playwrights and theatre makers producing work in democratic South Africa. It offers an overview of theatre pioneers and theatre forms in Part One, before concentrating on the work of individual playwrights in Part Two. Through its wide-ranging survey of indigenous drama written predominantly in the English language and the analysis of more than 100 plays, a detailed account is provided of post-apartheid South African theatre and its engagement with the country's recent history. Part One offers six overview chapters on South African theatre pioneers and theatre forms. These include consideration of the work of artists such as Barney Simon, Mbongeni Ngema, Phyllis Klotz; the collaborations of William Kentridge and the Handspring Puppet Company; the work of Magnet Theatre, and of physical and popular community theatre forms. Part Two features chapters on twelve major playwrights, including Athol Fugard, Reza de Wet, Lara Foot, Zakes Mda, Yaël Farber, Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom, Mike van Graan and Brett Bailey. It includes a survey of emerging playwrights and significant plays, and the book closes with an interview with Aubrey Sekhabi, the Artistic Director of the South African State Theatre in Pretoria. Written by a team of over twenty leading international scholars, The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary South African Theatre is a unique resource that will be invaluable to students and scholars from a range of different disciplines, as well as theatre practitioners.

Download or read book Beyond Broadway written by Stacy Ellen Wolf and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019-12-23 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea of American musical theatre often conjures up images of bright lights and big city, but its lifeblood is found in amateur productions at high schools, community theatres, afterschool programs, summer camps, and dinner theatres. In Beyond Broadway, author Stacy Wolf looks at thewidespread presence and persistence of musical theatre in U.S. culture, and examines it as a social practice - a live, visceral experience of creating, watching, and listening. Why does local musical theatre flourish in America? Why do so many Americans continue to passionately engage in acentury-old artistic practice that requires intense, person-to-person collaboration? And why do audiences still flock to musicals in their hometowns? Touring American elementary schools, a middle school performance festival, afterschool programs, high schools, summer camps, state park outdoortheatres, community theatres, and dinner theatres from California to Tennessee, Wolf illustrates musical theatre's abundance and longevity in the U.S. as a thriving social activity that touches millions of lives.

Download or read book Beyond Broadway written by Professor Stacy Wolf and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-15 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea of American musical theatre often conjures up images of bright lights and big city, but its lifeblood is found in amateur productions at high schools, community theatres, afterschool programs, summer camps, and dinner theatres. In Beyond Broadway, author Stacy Wolf looks at the widespread presence and persistence of musical theatre in U.S. culture, and examines it as a social practice--a live, visceral experience of creating, watching, and listening. Why does local musical theatre flourish in America? Why do so many Americans continue to passionately engage in a century-old artistic practice that requires intense, person-to-person collaboration? And why do audiences still flock to musicals in their hometowns? Touring American elementary schools, a middle school performance festival, afterschool programs, high schools, summer camps, state park outdoor theatres, community theatres, and dinner theatres from California to Tennessee, Wolf illustrates musical theatre's abundance and longevity in the U.S. as a thriving social activity that touches millions of lives.