Download or read book French Theatre Today written by Edward Baron Turk and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2011-06-15 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2005 literary and film critic Edward Turk immersed himself in New York City’s ACT FRENCH festival, a bold effort to enhance American contact with the contemporary French stage. This dizzying crash course on numerous aspects of current French theatre paved the way for six months of theatregoing in Paris and a month’s sojourn at the 2006 Avignon Festival. In French Theatre Today he turns his yearlong involvement with this rich topic into an accessible, intelligent, and comprehensive overview of contemporary French theatre. Situating many of the nearly 150 stage pieces he attended within contexts and timeframes that stretch backward and forward over a number of years, he reveals French theatre during the first decade of the twenty-first century to be remarkably vital, inclined toward both innovation and concern for its audience, and as open to international influence as it is respectful of national tradition. French Theatre Today provides a seamless mix of critical analysis with lively description, theoretical considerations with reflexive remarks by the theatremakers themselves, and matters of current French and American cultural politics. In the first part, “New York,” Turk offers close-ups of French theatre works singled out during the ACT FRENCH festival for their presumed attractiveness to American audiences and critics. The second part, “Paris,” depicts a more expansive range of French theatre pieces as they play out on their own soil. In the third part, “Avignon,” Turk captures the subject within a more fluid context that is, most interestingly, both eminently French and resolutely international. The Paris and Avignon chapters contain valuable and well-informed contextual and background information as well as descriptions of the milieus of the Avignon Festival and the various neighborhoods in Paris where he attended performances, information that readers cannot find easily elsewhere. Finally, in the spirit of inclusiveness that characterizes so much new French theatre and to give a representative account of his own experiences as a spectator, Turk rounds out his survey with observations on Paris’s lively opera scene and France’s wealth of circus entertainments, both traditional and newly envisioned. With his shrewd assessments of contemporary French theatre, Turk conveys an excitement and an affection for his topic destined to arouse similar responses in his readers. His book’s freshness and openness will reward theatre enthusiasts who are curious about an aspect of French culture that is inadequately known in this country, veteran scholars and students of contemporary world theatre, and those American theatre professionals who have the ultimate authority and good fortune to determine which new French works will reach audiences on these shores.

Download or read book The Making of Theatre History written by Paul Kuritz and published by PAUL KURITZ. This book was released on 1988 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Daughters of Eve written by Lenard R. Berlanstein and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Famous and seductive, female stage performers haunted French public life in the century before and after the Revolution. This pathbreaking study delineates the distinctive place of actresses, dancers, and singers within the French erotic and political imaginations. From the moment they became an unofficial caste of mistresses to France's elite during the reign of Louis XIV, their image fluctuated between emasculating men and delighting them. Drawing upon newspaper accounts, society columns, theater criticism, government reports, autobiographies, public rituals, and a huge corpus of fiction, Lenard Berlanstein argues that the public image of actresses was shaped by the political climate and ruling ideology; thus they were deified in one era and damned in the next. Tolerated when civil society functioned and demonized when it faltered, they finally passed from notoriety to celebrity with the stabilization of parliamentary life after 1880. Only then could female fans admire them openly, and could the state officially recognize their contributions to national life. Daughters of Eve is a provocative look at how a culture creates social perceptions and reshuffles collective identities in response to political change.

Download or read book Occupying the Stage written by Kate Bredeson and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Occupying the Stage: the Theater of May '68 tells the story of student and worker uprisings in France through the lens of theater history, and the story of French theater through the lens of May '68. Based on detailed archival research and original translations, close readings of plays and historical documents, and a rigorous assessment of avant-garde theater history and theory, Occupying the Stage proposes that the French theater of 1959–71 forms a standalone paradigm called "The Theater of May '68." The book shows how French theater artists during this period used a strategy of occupation-occupying buildings, streets, language, words, traditions, and artistic processes-as their central tactic of protest and transformation. It further proposes that the Theater of May '68 has left imprints on contemporary artists and activists, and that this theater offers a scaffolding on which to build a meaningful analysis of contemporary protest and performance in France, North America, and beyond. At the book's heart is an inquiry into how artists of the period used theater as a way to engage in political work and, concurrently, questioned and overhauled traditional theater practices so their art would better reflect the way they wanted the world to be. Occupying the Stage embraces the utopic vision of May '68 while probing the period's many contradictions. It thus affirms the vital role theater can play in the ongoing work of social change.

Download or read book Reading Theatre written by Anne Ubersfeld and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ubersfeld show how formal analysis can enrich the work of theatre practioners and offers a reading of the symbolic structures of stage space and time as well as opening up mulitple possibilities for interpreting a play's line of action.

Download or read book Theatre and State in France 1760 1905 written by Frederick William John Hemmings and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1994-02-25 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Relations between theatre and state were seldom more fraught in France than in this period. F. W. J. Hemmings traces the vicissitudes of this perennial conflict.

Download or read book The Theatre Industry in Nineteenth Century France written by Frederic William John Hemmings and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-12-14 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to explore the history of French theater in the nineteenth century through its special role as an organized popular entertainment. Traditionally regarded as an elite art form, in post-Revolutionary France the stage began to be seen as an industry like any other and the theater became one of the few areas of employment where women were in demand as much as men. In this lively account, Hemmings examines how the theater world flourished and evolved, and reveals such matters as the difficult life of the actress, salaries and contracts, and the profession of the playwright.

Download or read book Staging Civilization written by Rahul Markovits and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2021-07-07 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eighteenth-century France is understood to have been the dominant cultural power on that era’s international scene. Considering the emblematic case of the theater, Rahul Markovits goes beyond the idea of "French Europe" to offer a serious consideration of the intentions and goals of those involved in making this so. Drawing on extensive archival research, Staging Civilization reveals that between 1670 and 1815 at least twenty-seven European cities hosted resident theater troupes composed of French actors and singers who performed French-language repertory. By examining the presence of French companies of actors in a wide set of courts and cities throughout Europe, Markovits uncovers the complex mechanisms underpinning the dissemination of French culture. The book ultimately offers a revisionist account of the traditional Europe française thesis, engaging topics such as transnational labor history, early-modern court culture and republicanism, soft power, and cultural imperialism.

Download or read book Stagestruck written by Lauren R. Clay and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stagestruck traces the making of a vibrant French theater industry between the reign of Louis XIV and the French Revolution. During this era more than eighty provincial and colonial cities celebrated the inauguration of their first public playhouses. These theaters emerged as the most prominent urban cultural institutions in prerevolutionary France, becoming key sites for the articulation and contestation of social, political, and racial relationships. Combining rich description with nuanced analysis based on extensive archival evidence, Lauren R. Clay illuminates the wide-ranging consequences of theater's spectacular growth for performers, spectators, and authorities in cities throughout France as well as in the empire's most important Atlantic colony, Saint-Domingue. Clay argues that outside Paris the expansion of theater came about through local initiative, civic engagement, and entrepreneurial investment, rather than through actions or policies undertaken by the royal government and its agents. Reconstructing the business of theatrical production, she brings to light the efforts of a wide array of investors, entrepreneurs, directors, and actors-including women and people of color-who seized the opportunities offered by commercial theater to become important agents of cultural change. Portraying a vital and increasingly consumer-oriented public sphere beyond the capital, Stagestruck overturns the long-held notion that cultural change flowed from Paris and the royal court to the provinces and colonies. This deeply researched book will appeal to historians of Europe and the Atlantic world, particularly those interested in the social and political impact of the consumer revolution and the forging of national and imperial cultural networks. In addition to theater and literary scholars, it will attract the attention of historians and sociologists who study business, labor history, and the emergence of the modern French state.

Download or read book A History of Theatrical Art in Ancient and Modern Times written by Karl Mantzius and published by Legare Street Press. This book was released on 2023-07-18 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive history of theatrical art spans from ancient Greece to the 17th century in France. Featuring detailed analyses of plays and productions, as well as biographical information on key figures in the theater, this book provides a valuable resource for students and scholars of theater history. With a focus on the work of the great French playwright Molière and the theater scene in 17th century France, this volume offers a unique perspective on the development of the art form. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Download or read book Politics and Theater written by Sheryl Kroen and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2000-09-04 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moliére's anticlerical comedy Tartuffe is the unique prism through which Sheryl Kroen views postrevolutionary France in the years of the Restoration. Following the lead of the French men and women who turned to this play in the 1820s to make sense of their world, Kroen exposes the crisis of legitimacy defining the regime in these years and demonstrates how the people of the time made steps toward a democratic resolution to this crisis. Moving from the town squares, where state and ecclesiastical officials orchestrated their public spectacles in favor of the monarchy, to the theaters, where the French used Tartuffe to mock the restored monarch and the church, this cultural history of the Restoration offers a rich and colorful portrait of a period in which critical legacies of the revolutionary period were played out and cemented. While most historians have characterized the Restoration as a period of reaction and reversal, Kroen offers convincing evidence that the Restoration was a critical bridge between the emerging practices of the Old Regime, the Revolution, and the post-1830 politics of protest. She re-creates the atmosphere of Restoration France and at the same time brings major nineteenth-century themes into focus: memory and commemoration, public and private spheres, politics and religion, anticlericalism, and the formation of democratic ideologies and practices.

Download or read book The Sentimental Theater of the French Revolution written by Dr Cecilia Feilla and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2013-04-28 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Smoothly blending performance theory, literary analysis, and historical insights, Cecilia Feilla explores the mutually dependent discourses of feeling and politics and their impact on the theatre and theatre audiences during the French Revolution. Remarkably, the most frequently performed and popular plays from 1789 to 1799 were not the political action pieces that have been the subject of much literary and historical criticism, but rather sentimental dramas and comedies, many of which originated on the stages of the Old Regime. Feilla suggests that theatre provided an important bridge from affective communities of sentimentality to active political communities of the nation, arguing that the performance of virtue on stage served to foster the passage from private emotion to public virtue and allowed groups such as women, children, and the poor who were excluded from direct political participation to imagine a new and inclusive social and political structure. Providing close readings of texts by, among others, Denis Diderot, Collot d'Herbois, and Voltaire, Feilla maps the ways in which continuities and innovations in the theatre from 1760 to 1800 set the stage for the nineteenth century. Her book revitalizes and enriches our understanding of the significance of sentimental drama, showing that it was central to the way that drama both shaped and was shaped by political culture.

Download or read book The Contested Parterre written by Jeffrey S. Ravel and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-05 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the playhouses of eighteenth-century France, clerks and students, soldiers and merchants, and the occasional aristocrat stood in the pit, while the majority of the elite sat in loges. These denizens of the parterre, who accounted for up to two-thirds of the audience, were given to disruptive behavior that culminated in full-scale riots in the last years before the Revolution. Offering a commoner's eye view of the drama offstage, this fascinating history of French theater audiences clearly demonstrates how problems in the parterre reflected tensions at the heart of the Old Regime.Jeffrey S. Ravel vividly depicts the scene in the parterre where the male spectators occupied themselves shoving one another, drinking, urinating, and confronting the actors with critiques of the performance. He traces the futile efforts of the Bourbon Court—and later its Enlightened opponents—to control parterre behavior by both persuasion and force. Ravel describes how the parterre came to represent a larger, more politicized notion of the public, one that exposed the inability of the government to accommodate the demands of French citizens. An important contribution to debates on the public sphere, Ravel's book is the first to explore the role of the parterre in the political culture of eighteenth-century France.

Download or read book Historical Dictionary of French Theater written by Edward Forman and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2010-04-27 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The term "French theater" evokes most immediately the glories of the classical period and the peculiarities of the Theater of the Absurd. It has given us the works of Corneille, Racine, and Moliere. In the Romantic era there was Alexander Dumas and surrealist works of Alfred Jarry, and then the Theater of the Absurd erupted in rationalistic France with Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, and Jean-Paul Sartre. The Historical Dictionary of French Theater relates the history of the French theater through a chronology, introduction, bibliography, and over 400 cross-referenced dictionary entries on authors, trends, genres, concepts, and literary and historical developments that played a central role in the evolution of French theater.

Download or read book A Complete History of the Stage written by Charles Dibdin and published by . This book was released on 1795 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Style of the State in French Theater 1630 1660 written by Katherine Ibbett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-12-05 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engaging with recent thinking about performance, political theory and canon formation, this study addresses the significance of the formal changes in seventeenth-century French theater. Each chapter takes up a particularity of seventeenth-century theatrical style and staging”for example, the clearing of violence from the stage”and shows how the conceptualization of these French stylistic shifts appropriates a rich body of Italian political writing on questions of action, temporality, and law. The theater's appropriation of political concerns and vocabularies, the author argues, proffers an astute reflection on the practices of government that draws attention to questions obscured in reason of state, such as the instrumentalization of women's bodies. In a new reading of tragedies about government, the author shows how the canonical figure of Pierre Corneille is formally engaged with the political strategizing he often appears to repudiate, and in so doing challenges a literary history that has read neoclassicism largely as a display of pure French style.

Download or read book Art Theatre and Opera in Paris 1750 1850 written by Professor Sarah Hibberd and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2014-04-28 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book maps the interrelation between art, theatre, and opera in a time of dramatic historical change and political contestation in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Paris. Contributions to the volume trace the creative connections and clashes fostered by the sharing of new types of subject matter throughout the period. Scholars from art history, theatre studies and musicology take as their subjects a variety of protagonists from theatre, opera, literature and history in order to make visible the intimately interwoven and entangled world of Parisian arts.