Download or read book Victorian Theatricals written by Sara Hudston and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-01-03 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A captivating study of the plays, literature and writings about private and public theatrical spectacle during the Victorian Age By the 1890s the British theatre had transformed itself into a world where spectacles and public shows were aimed at the widest audience possible. The theatre had become big business. This anthology brings together a variety of plays and prose which sets this phenomenon in perspective and traces the development of Victorian theatricals from private home events in the late-Georgian period to full-scale Gilbert and Sullivan operettas in the 1890s. The section 'Theatrical Behaviour' looks at the world of the audience and includes extracts from Jane Austen's novel Mansfield Park; Thackeray's Vanity Fair; an anonymous playlet called Acting Proverbs; and an extract from Marie Corelli's novel Sorrows of Satan. In 'Fun and Freaks' we explore the world of popular, sensationalist entertainment through the eyes of Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Dion Boucicault and others. In the final section, 'Society', we have the scripts for four principal melodramas and serious plays of the age: The Factory Lad by John Walker; Society by T.W. Robertson; The Mikado by W.S. Gilbert and The Second Mrs Tanqueray by Arthur Wing Pinero.
Download or read book The Victorian Marionette Theatre written by John Mccormick and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2004-04 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fascinating and colorful book, researcher and performer John McCormick focuses on the marionette world of Victorian Britain between its heyday after 1860 and its waning years from 1895 to 1914. Situating the rich and diverse puppet theatre in the context of entertainment culture, he explores both the aesthetics of these dancing dolls and their sociocultural significance in their life and time. The history of marionette performances is interwoven with live-actor performances and with the entire gamut of annual fairs, portable and permanent theatres, music halls, magic lantern shows, waxworks, panoramas, and sideshows. McCormick has drawn upon advertisements in the Era, an entertainment paper, between the 1860s and World War I, and articles in the World’s Fair, a paper for showpeople, in the first fifty years of the twentieth century, as well as interviews with descendants of the marionette showpeople and close examinations of many of the surviving puppets. McCormick begins his study with an exploration of the Victorian marionette theatre in the context of other theatrical events of the day, with proprietors and puppeteers, and with the venues where they performed. He further examines the marionette’s position as an actor not quite human but imitating humans closely enough to be considered empathetic; the ways that physical attributes were created with wood, paint, and cloth; and the dramas and melodramas that the dolls performed. A discussion of the trick figures and specialized acts that each company possessed, as well as an exploration of the theatre’s staging, lighting, and costuming, follows in later chapters. McCormick concludes with a description of the last days of marionette theatre in the wake of changing audience expectations and the increasing popularity of moving pictures. This highly enjoyable and readable study, often illuminated by intriguing anecdotes such as that of the Armenian photographer who fell in love with and abducted the Holden company’s Cinderella marionette in 1881, will appeal to everyone fascinated by the magic of nineteenth-century theatre, many of whom will discover how much the marionette could contribute to that magic.
Download or read book Theatre in the Victorian Age written by Michael R. Booth and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1991-07-26 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive survey of the theatre practice and dramatic literature of the Victorian period.
Download or read book Victorian Spectacular Theatre 1850 1910 written by Michael R. Booth and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-24 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1981. This study concentrates on one aspect of Victorian theatre production in the second half of the nineteenth century – the spectacular, which came to dominate certain kinds of production during that period. A remarkably consistent style, it was used for a variety of dramatic forms, although surrounded by critical controversy. The book considers the theories and practice of spectacle production as well as the cultural and artistic movements that created the favourable conditions in which spectacle could dominate such large areas of theatre for so many years. It also discusses the growth of spectacle and the taste of the public for it, examining the influence of painting, archaeology, history, and the trend towards realism in stage production. An explanation of the working of spectacle in Shakespeare, pantomime and melodrama is followed by detailed reconstructions of the spectacle productions of Irving’s Faust and Beerbohm Tree’s King Henry VIII.
Download or read book Ruskin the Theatre and Victorian Visual Culture written by A. Heinrich and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-04-08 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays sets out to challenge the dominant narrative about Victorian theatre by placing the practices and products of the Victorian theatre in relation to Victorian visual culture, through the lens of the concept of 'Ruskinian theatre', an approach to theatre which values its educative purpose as well as its aesthetic expression.
Download or read book W S Gilbert written by Jane W. Stedman and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1996 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836-1911) was the most brilliant dramatist of Victorian England. A daring and cynical playwright, the forerunner of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, he was also a prolific journalist and humorous poet (his Bab Ballads are still widely read), and he achieved worldwide fame through his long collaboration with the composer Arthur Sullivan, a collaboration that created such classics as H. M. S. Pinafore, The Mikado, and all the other Savoy operas. Now the story of this remarkable writer's life - and of his stormy relationship with Sullivan - is here chronicled by a renowned authority on Gilbert and on the theatrical and literary scene in Victorian London. For this biography, Jane W. Stedman has returned to original sources, has interviewed survivors, and has scoured a whole variety of Victorian periodicals for reviews, and personal comment. Gilbert emerges as a much more complex and interesting figure than has previously been thought. The book is a worthy companion piece to Arthur Jacobs's recent biography Arthur Sullivan: A Victorian Musician.
Download or read book Victorians on Broadway written by Sharon Aronofsky Weltman and published by . This book was released on 2020-06-24 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Broadway productions of musicals such as The King and I, Oliver!, Sweeney Todd, and Jekyll and Hyde became huge theatrical hits. Remarkably, all were based on one-hundred-year-old British novels or memoirs. What could possibly explain their enormous success? Victorians on Broadway is a wide-ranging interdisciplinary study of live stage musicals from the mid- to late twentieth century adapted from British literature written between 1837 and 1886. Investigating musical dramatizations of works by Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Christina Rossetti, Robert Louis Stevenson, and others, Sharon Aronofsky Weltman reveals what these musicals teach us about the Victorian books from which they derive and considers their enduring popularity and impact on our modern culture. Providing a front row seat to the hits (as well as the flops), Weltman situates these adaptations within the history of musical theater: the Golden Age of Broadway, the concept musicals of the 1970s and 1980s, and the era of pop mega-musicals, revealing Broadway's debt to melodrama. With an expertise in Victorian literature, Weltman draws on reviews, critical analyses, and interviews with such luminaries as Stephen Sondheim, Polly Pen, Frank Wildhorn, and Rowan Atkinson to understand this popular trend in American theater. Exploring themes of race, religion, gender, and class, Weltman focuses attention on how these theatrical adaptations fit into aesthetic and intellectual movements while demonstrating the complexity of their enduring legacy.
Download or read book Victorian Theatricals written by Ed. Sara Hudston Staff and published by . This book was released on 1999-05-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Victorian Women and the Theatre of Trance written by Amy Lehman and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2014-01-10 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spiritualists in the nineteenth century spoke of the "Borderland," a shadowy threshold where the living communed with the dead, and where those in the material realm could receive comfort or advice from another world. The skilled performances of mostly female actors and performers made the "Borderland" a theatre, of sorts, in which dramas of revelation and recognition were produced in the forms of seances, trances, and spiritualist lectures. This book examines some of the most fascinating American and British actresses of the Victorian era, whose performances fairly mesmerized their audiences of amused skeptics and ardent believers. It also focuses on the transformative possibilities of the spiritualist theatre, revealing how the performances allowed Victorian women to speak, act, and create outside the boundaries of their restricted social and psychological roles.
Download or read book Lewis Carroll and the Victorian Stage written by Richard Foulkes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Author of the enduringly popular Alice books, mathematician, Anglican cleric, and pioneer photographer, Lewis Carroll maintained a lifelong enthusiasm for the theatre. Lewis Carroll and the Victorian Stage is the first book to focus on Carroll's irresistible fascination with all things theatrical, from childhood charades and marionettes to active involvement in the dramatisation of Alice, influential contributions to the debate on child actors, and the friendship of leading players, especially Ellen Terry. As well as being a key to his complex and enigmatic personality, Carroll's interest in the theatre provides a vivid account of a remarkable era on the stage that encompassed Charles Kean's Shakespeare revivals, the comic genius of Frederick Robson, the heyday of pantomime, Gilbert and Sullivan, opera bouffe, the Terry sisters, Henry Irving, and favourite playwrights Tom Taylor, H. A. Jones, and J. M. Barrie. With attention to the complex motives that compelled Carroll to attend stage performances, Foulkes examines the incomparable record of over forty years as a playgoer that Carroll left for posterity.
Download or read book John Ruskin and the Victorian Theatre written by K. Newey and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-12-04 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to explore the involvement of John Ruskin with the popular theatre of his time. Based on original archival research, this book offers a fresh look at the aesthetic and social theories of Ruskin and his direct and indirect influence on the commercial theatre of the late nineteenth century.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Victorian and Edwardian Theatre written by Kerry Powell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-02-19 with total page 517 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 2004 Companion is designed for readers interested in the creation, production and interpretation of Victorian and Edwardian theatre, both in its own time and on the contemporary stage. The volume opens with a brief overview and introduction surveying the theatre of the time followed by an essay contextualizing the theatre within the frame of Victorian and Edwardian culture as a whole. Succeeding chapters examine specific aspects of performance, production, and theatre, including the music, the actors, stagecraft and the audiences themselves; plays and playwriting and issues of class and gender are also explored. Chapters also deal with comedy, farce and melodrama, while other essays bring forward new topics and approaches that cross the boundaries of traditional investigation, including analysis of the economics of theatre and of the theatricality of personal identity.
Download or read book Private Theatricals written by Nina Auerbach and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Everyman" as actor on life's stage has been a recurrent theme in popular literature--epecially persuasive in these times of powerful electronic media, celebrity hype, and professional image-makers--but the great Victorians exuded sincerity. Nina Auerbach reminds us that all lives can be subversive performances. Charting the notable impact of the theater and theatricality on the Victorian imagination, she provocatively reexamines the concept of sincerity and authenticity as literary ideal. In novels, popular fiction, and biographies, Auerbach unveils the theatrical element in lives imagined and represented. Focusing on three major points in the life cycle--childhood, passage to maturity, and death--she demonstrates how the process of living was for Victorians the acting of a role; only dying generated a creature with an "own self." Her discussion draws not only on theater history, but on demonology-the ghosts and monsters so much a part of the nineteenth-century imagination. Nina Auerbach has written a closely reasoned and stimulating book for everyone interested in the Victorian age, and everyone interested in theatricality---whether private or on the stage.
Download or read book Victorian Theatrical Burlesques written by Richard Schoch and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-01-29 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 2003. Wildly popular in their own day, Victorian burlesques are now little read, scarcely studied, and never performed. Giving long overdue emphasis to an unjustly neglected theatrical tradition, this critical edition - the first to focus on Victorian burlesques of Victorian plays - represents a valuable scholarly tool for students and scholars of modern drama, theatre history, and nineteenth-century popular culture. Victorian Theatrical Burlesques includes a 'state-of-the-art' introduction which provides a general overview of theatrical burlesques in the Victorian era, emphasising performance history. Sustained reference is made to burlesques other than those presented in the anthology. Through its general introduction, prefaces and annotations to individual plays, checklist of burlesque plays, and bibliography, the unique volume allows both specialist and non-specialist readers to see Victorian burlesques as a rich historical record of shifting attitudes toward drama and the theatre.
Download or read book Queen Victoria and the Theatre of Her Age written by R. Schoch and published by Springer. This book was released on 2004-01-28 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh and intimate portrait of Queen Victoria 'at the play'. Through Victoria's diary, artwork and correspondence we see her as enraptured spectator, bountiful patron and tyrannical director of private theatricals. At times she appears formidable. More frequently she is impudent, high-spirited and unruly; a woman who delights in gory melodramas and circus acts. Queen Victoria and the Theatre of Her Age gives readers a deeply personal account of her lifelong devotion to the stage. It will appeal to anyone interested in monarchy's place in popular culture.
Download or read book Victorian Spectacular Theatre 1850 1910 written by Michael R. Booth and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-24 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1981. This study concentrates on one aspect of Victorian theatre production in the second half of the nineteenth century – the spectacular, which came to dominate certain kinds of production during that period. A remarkably consistent style, it was used for a variety of dramatic forms, although surrounded by critical controversy. The book considers the theories and practice of spectacle production as well as the cultural and artistic movements that created the favourable conditions in which spectacle could dominate such large areas of theatre for so many years. It also discusses the growth of spectacle and the taste of the public for it, examining the influence of painting, archaeology, history, and the trend towards realism in stage production. An explanation of the working of spectacle in Shakespeare, pantomime and melodrama is followed by detailed reconstructions of the spectacle productions of Irving’s Faust and Beerbohm Tree’s King Henry VIII.
Download or read book The Victorian Theatre written by Richard Southern and published by Newton Abbot : David & Charles. This book was released on 1970 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
