Download or read book Theatres of Human Sacrifice written by Mark Pizzato and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2004-11-18 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides insight into the ritual lures and effects of mass media spectatorship, especially regarding the pleasures, risks, and purposes of violent display. Contemporary debates about mass media violence tend to ignore the long history of staged violence in the theatres and rituals of many cultures. In Theatres of Human Sacrifice, Mark Pizzato relates the appeal and possible effects of screen violence todayin sports, movies, and television newsto specific sacrificial rites and performance conventions in ancient Greek, Aztec, and Roman culture. Using the psychoanalytic theories of Lacan, Kristeva, and Zðizûek, as well as the theatrical theories of Artaud and Brecht, the book offers insights into the ritual lures and effects of current mass media spectatorship, especially regarding the pleasures, purposes, and risks of violent display. Updating Aristotle’s notion of catharsis, Pizzato identifies a sacrificial imperative within the human mind, structured by various patriarchal cultures and manifested in distinctive rites and dramas, with both positive and negative potential effects on their audiences. Mark Pizzato is Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the author of Edges of Loss: From Modern Drama to Postmodern Theory.
Download or read book Cinema and Sacrifice written by Costica Bradatan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-02 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cinema has a long history of engaging with the theme of sacrifice. Given its capacity to stimulate the imagination and resonate across a wide spectrum of human experiences, sacrifice has always attracted filmmakers. It is on screen that the new grand narratives are sketched, the new myths rehearsed, and the old ones recycled. Sacrifice can provide stories of loss and mourning, betrayal and redemption, death and renewal, destruction and re-creation, apocalypses and the birth of new worlds. The contributors to this volume are not just scholars of film but also students of religion and literature, philosophers, ethicists, and political scientists, thus offering a comprehensive and interdisciplinary approach to the relationship between cinema and sacrifice. They explore how cinema engages with sacrifice in its many forms and under different guises, and examine how the filmic constructions, reconstructions and misconstructions of sacrifice affect society, including its sacrificial practices. This book was originally published as a special issue of Angelaki: journal of the theoretical humanities.
Download or read book Inner Theatres of Good and Evil written by Mark Pizzato and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among the most intriguing questions of neurology is how conceptions of good and evil arise in the human brain. In a world where we encounter god-like forces in nature, and try to transcend them, the development of a neural network dramatizing good against evil seems inevitable. This critical book explores the cosmic dimensions of the brain's inner theatre as revealed by neurology, cognitive science, evolutionary psychology, psychoanalysis, primatology and exemplary Western performances. In theatre, film, and television, supernatural figures express the brain's anatomical features as humans transform their natural environment into cosmic and theological spaces in order to grapple with their vulnerability in the world.
Download or read book Theatres of Contagion written by Fintan Walsh and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-09-05 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To what extent is theatre a contagious practice, capable of undoing and enlivening people and cultures? Theatres of Contagion responds to some of the anxieties of our current political and cultural climate by exploring theatre's status as a contagious cultural force, questioning its role in the spread or control of medical, psychological and emotional conditions and phenomena. Observing a diverse range of practices from the early modern to contemporary period, the volume considers how this contagion is understood to happen and operate, its real and imagined effects, and how these have been a source of pleasure and fear for theatre makers, audiences and authorities. Drawing on perspectives from medicine, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, law and affect theory, essays investigate some of the ways in which theatre can be viewed as a powerful agent of containment and transmission. Among the works analysed include a musical adaptation and an intercultural variation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet; a contemporary queer take on Hamlet; Grand Guignol and theatres of horror; the writings and influence of Artaud; immersive theatre and the work of Punchdrunk, and computer gaming and smartphone apps
Download or read book Theatre Histories written by Bruce McConachie and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-02-26 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thoroughly revised and updated third edition of the innovative and widely acclaimed Theatre Histories: An Introduction offers a critical overview of global theatre and drama, spanning a broad wealth of world cultures and periods. Bringing together a group of scholars from a diverse range of backgrounds to add fresh perspectives on the history of global theatre, the book illustrates historiographical theories with case studies demonstrating various methods and interpretive approaches. Subtly restructured sections place the chapters within new thematic contexts to offer a clear overview of each period, while a revised chapter structure offers accessibility for students and instructors. Further new features and key updates to this third edition include: A dedicated chapter on historiography New, up to date, case studies Enhanced and reworked historical, cultural and political timelines, helping students to place each chapter within the historical context of the section Pronunciation guidance, both in the text and as an online audio guide, to aid the reader in accessing and internalizing unfamiliar terminology A new and updated companion website with further insights, activities and resources to enable students to further their knowledge and understanding of the theatre.
Download or read book The Aztecs written by David Carrasco and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2012-01-26 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illuminates the complexities of Aztec life. Readers meet a people highly skilled in sculpture, astronomy, city planning, poetry, and philosophy, who were also profoundly committed to cosmic regeneration through the thrust of the ceremonial knife and through warfare.
Download or read book Theatre Sacrifice Ritual Exploring Forms of Political Theatre written by Erika Fischer-Lichte and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-11-10 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fascinating volume, acclaimed theatre historian Erika Fischer-Lichte reflects on the role and meaning accorded to the theme of sacrifice in Western cultures as mirrored in particular fusions of theatre and ritual. Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual presents a radical re-definition of ritual theatre through analysis of performances as diverse as: Max Reinhardt's new people's theatre the mass spectacles of post-revolutionary Russia American Zionist pageants the Olympic Games. In offering both a performative and a semiotic analysis of such performances, Fischer-Lichte expertly demonstrates how theatre and ritual are fused in order to tackle the problem of community-building in societies characterised by loss of solidarity and disintegration, and exposes the provocative connection between the utopian visions of community they suggest, and the notion of sacrifice. This innovative study of twentieth-century performative culture boldly examines the complexities of political theatre, propaganda and manipulation of the masses, and offers a revolutionary approach to the study of theatre and performance history.
Download or read book Pre colonial and Post colonial Drama and Theatre in Africa written by Lokangaka Losambe and published by New Africa Books. This book was released on 2001 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this collection of essays written from different critical perspectives, African playwrights demonstrate through their art that they are not only witnesses, but also consciences, of their societies.
Download or read book Jewish Drama Theatre written by Eli Rozik and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-01 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jewish drama and theatre has followed a tortuous path from extreme rabbinical intolerance to eventual secular liberalism, with its openness to the heritages of both Judaism as a culture and prominent foreign cultures, to the extent of multicultural integration. No wonder, therefore, that since biblical times until the seventeenth century there are only examples of tangential theatre practices. This initial intolerance, shared by the Church, was rooted in pagan connotations of theatre rather than in the neutral nature of the theatre medium, capable of formulating and communicating contrasting thoughts. Whereas by the tenth century the Church understood that theatre could be harnessed to its own ends, Jewish theatre was only created seven centuries later through spontaneous and amateurish theatrical practices, such as the Yiddish purim-shpil and the purim-rabbi. Due to their carnivalesque and cathartic nature these practices were tolerated by the rabbinical establishment, albeit only during the Purim holiday. But as a result, Jewish drama and theatre were created and emerged despite rabbinical antagonism. Under the influence of the Jewish Enlightenment, Yiddish-speaking theatres were increasingly established, a trend that became central in the cultural enterprise of the Jews in Israel. This process involved a renewed use of Hebrew as a spoken language, and the transition from a profound religious identity to a secular Jewish one, characterised by a basic liberalism to the extent of openness to cultures traditionally perceived as archetypal enemies of Judaism. This book sets out to analyse play-scripts and performance-texts produced in the Israeli theatre in order to illustrate these trends, and concludes that only a liberal society can bring about the full realisation of theatre's potentialities.
Download or read book Shakespeare and the Making of Theatre written by Paul Edmondson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-10-18 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A highly engaging text that approaches Shakespeare as a maker of theatre, as well as a writer of literature. Leading performance critics dismantle Shakespeare's texts, identifying theatrical cues in ways which develop understanding of the underlying theatricality of Shakespeare's plays and stimulate further performances.
Download or read book Theatricality in the Horror Film written by André Loiselle and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2019-10-28 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The horror film generally presents a situation where normality is threatened by a monster. From this premise, Theatricality in the Horror Film argues that scary movies often create their terrifying effects stylistically and structurally through a radical break with the realism of normality in the form of monstrous theatricality. Theatricality in the horror fi lm expresses itself in many ways. For example, it comes across in the physical performance of monstrosity: the overthe-top performance of a chainsaw-wielding serial killer whose nefarious gestures terrify both his victims within the film and the audience in the cinema. Theatrical artifice can also appear as a stagy cemetery with broken-down tombstones and twisted, gnarly trees, or through the use of violently aberrant filmic techniques, or in the oppressive claustrophobia of a single-room setting reminiscent of classical drama. Any performative element of a film that flaunts its difference from what is deemed realistic or normal on screen might qualify as an instance of theatrical artifice, creating an intense affect in the audience. This book argues that the artificiality of the frightening spectacle is at the heart of the dark pleasures of horror.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre written by Deborah Payne Fisk and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-05-11 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fourteen specially commissioned essays provide essential information about staging, playwrights, themes and genres in the drama of the Restoration.
Download or read book Borderlands Children s Theatre written by Cecilia Josephine Aragón and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-03-03 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book chronicles the child performer as part of the Chicana/o/Mexican-American theatre experience. Borderlands Children’s Theatre explores the phenomenon of the Chicana/o/Mexican-American child performer at the center of Chicana/o and Latina/o theatre culture. Drawing from historical and contemporary theatrical traditions to finally the emergence of Latina/o Youth Theatre and Latina/o Theatre for Young Audiences, it raises crucial questions about the role of the child in these performative contexts and about how childhood and adolescence was experienced and understood. Analyzing contemporary plays for Chicana/o/Mexican-American child performer, it introduces theorizations of "performing mestizaje" and "border crossing" borderlands performance, gender, and ethnic identity and investigates theatre as a site in which children and youth have the opportunity to articulate their emerging selfhoods. This book adds to the national and international dialogue in theatre and gives voice to Chicana/o/Mexican-American children and youth and will be of great interest to students and scholars of Theatre studies and Latina/o studies.
Download or read book Black Theatre written by Paul Carter Harrison and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2002-11-08 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Generating a new understanding of the past—as well as a vision for the future—this path-breaking volume contains essays written by playwrights, scholars, and critics that analyze African American theatre as it is practiced today.Even as they acknowledge that Black experience is not monolithic, these contributors argue provocatively and persuasively for a Black consciousness that creates a culturally specific theatre. This theatre, rooted in an African mythos, offers ritual rather than realism; it transcends the specifics of social relations, reaching toward revelation. The ritual performance that is intrinsic to Black theatre renews the community; in Paul Carter Harrison's words, it "reveals the Form of Things Unknown" in a way that "binds, cleanses, and heals."
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Theatre written by Marianne McDonald and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-05-31 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This series of essays by prominent academics and practitioners investigates in detail the history of performance in the classical Greek and Roman world. Beginning with the earliest examples of 'dramatic' presentation in the epic cycles and reaching through to the latter days of the Roman Empire and beyond, this 2007 Companion covers many aspects of these broad presentational societies. Dramatic performances that are text-based form only one part of cultures where presentation is a major element of all social and political life. Individual chapters range across a two thousand year timescale, and include specific chapters on acting traditions, masks, properties, playing places, festivals, religion and drama, comedy and society, and commodity, concluding with the dramatic legacy of myth and the modern media. The book addresses the needs of students of drama and classics, as well as anyone with an interest in the theatre's history and practice.
Download or read book Washed in Blood written by Claire Sisco King and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-25 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Will Smith in I Am Legend. Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic. Charlton Heston in just about everything. Viewers of Hollywood action films are no doubt familiar with the sacrificial victim-hero, the male protagonist who nobly gives up his life so that others may be saved. Washed in Blood argues that such sacrificial films are especially prominent in eras when the nation—and American manhood—is thought to be in crisis. The sacrificial victim-hero, continually imperiled and frequently exhibiting classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, thus bears the trauma of the nation. Claire Sisco King offers an in-depth study of three prominent cycles of Hollywood films that follow the sacrificial narrative: the early–to–mid 1970s, the mid–to–late 1990s, and the mid–to–late 2000s. From Vietnam-era disaster movies to post-9/11 apocalyptic thrillers, she examines how each film represents traumatized American masculinity and national identity. What she uncovers is a cinematic tendency to position straight white men as America’s most valuable citizens—and its noblest victims.
Download or read book Theatre and Residual Culture written by Christopher Collins and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-06-29 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book considers the cultural residue from pre-Christian Ireland in Synge’s plays and performances. By dramatising a residual culture in front of a predominantly modern and political Irish Catholic middle class audience, the book argues that Synge attempted to offer an alternative understanding of what it meant to be “modern” at the beginning of the twentieth century. The book draws extensively on Synge’s archive to demonstrate how pre-Christian residual culture informed not just how he wrote and staged pre-Christian beliefs, but also how he thought about an older, almost forgotten culture that Catholic Ireland desperately wanted to forget. Each of Synge’s plays is considered in an individual chapter, and they identify how Synge’s dramaturgy was informed by pre-Christian beliefs of animism, pantheism, folklore, superstition and magical ritual.
