Download or read book Writing the History of the British Stage written by Richard Schoch and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-12 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of British theatre historiography, from its origins in the Restoration to its development as an academic discipline in the twentieth century.
Download or read book Writing the History of the British Stage 1660 1900 written by Richard W. Schoch and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is the first book on British theatre historiography. It traces the practice of theatre history from its origins in the Restoration to its emergence as an academic discipline in the early twentieth century. In this compelling revisionist study, Richard Schoch reclaims the deep history of British theatre history, valorizing the usually overlooked scholarship undertaken by antiquarians, booksellers, bibliographers, journalists and theatrical insiders, none of whom considered themselves to be professional historians. Drawing together deep archival research, close readings of historical texts from the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and an awareness of contemporary debates about disciplinary practice, Schoch overturns received interpretations of British theatre historiography and shows that the practice - and the diverse practitioners - of theatre history were far more complicated and far more sophisticated than we had realised. His book is a landmark contribution to how theatre historians today can understand their own history"--
Download or read book The Cambridge Illustrated History of British Theatre written by Simon Trussler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1994-10-20 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining authoritative writing with superb illustration, The Cambridge Illustrated History of British Theatre is a fascinating exploration of the development of the live performing arts in Britain from the earliest times to the present day. Taking a broad view of theater, the book covers everything from the minor and "illegitimate" to the mainstream and "official"--whether the mystery plays of the Middle Ages or the "real time drama" of Coronation Street, the courtly theater of Shakespeare or the contemporary "fringe." The book is aimed at both students and general readers. Simon Trussler is a retired drama professor at the University of London and the editor of New Theatre Quarterly.
Download or read book The Cambridge Illustrated History of British Theatre written by Simon Trussler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2000-09-21 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written with style, imagination and insight, and packed with interesting illustrations, this authoritative book traces the development through the ages of plays and playwriting, forms of staging, the acting profession and the role of the actor - in fact all aspects of live entertainment. From satire and burlesque to melodrama and pantomime, this is a major history of British theatre from the earliest times to the present day. Shifting its focus constantly between those who played and those who watched, between officially approved performance and the popular theatre of the people, The Cambridge Illustrated History of British Theatre will be invaluable to anyone interested in theatre, whether student, teacher, performer or spectator.
Download or read book Changing Stages written by Richard Eyre and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2001 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An authoritative, spirited account of the history of twentieth century theatre by two of its most distinguished practitioners.
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 1998-02-28 with total page 554 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge History of American Theatre is an authoritative and wide-ranging history of American theatre in all its dimensions, from theatre building to play writing, directors, performers, and designers. Engaging the theatre as a performance art, a cultural institution, and a fact of American social and political life, the History recognizes changing styles of presentation and performance and addresses the economic context that conditions the drama presented. The History approaches its subject with a full awareness of relevant developments in literary criticism, cultural analysis, and performance theory. At the same time, it is designed to be an accessible, challenging narrative. Volume One deals with the colonial inceptions of American theatre through the post-Civil War period: the European antecedents, the New World influences of the French and Spanish colonists, and the development of uniquely American traditions in tandem with the emergence of national identity.
Download or read book Women s Theatre Writing in Victorian Britain written by K. Newey and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-11-01 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women's Theatre Writing in Victorian Britain is the first book to make a comprehensive study of women playwrights in the British theatre from 1820 to 1918. It looks at how women playwrights negotiated their personal and professional identities as writers, and examines the female tradition of playwriting which dramatises the central experience of women's lives around the themes of home, the nation, and the position of women in marriage and the family. The book also includes an extensive Appendix of authors and plays, which will be a useful reference tool for students and scholars in nineteenth-century studies and theatre historians.
Download or read book British Theatre of the 1990s written by M. Aragay and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-04-23 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This exciting book uniquely combines interviews with scholars and practitioners in theatre studies to look at what most people feel is a pivotal moment of British theatre - the 1990s. With a particular focus on 'in-yer-face theatre', this volume will be essential reading for all students and scholars of contemporary British theatre.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre since 1945 written by Jen Harvie and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-02-29 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: British theatre underwent a vast transformation and expansion in the decades after World War II. This Companion explores the historical, political, and social contexts and conditions that not only allowed it to expand but, crucially, shaped it. Resisting a critical tendency to focus on plays alone, the collection expands understanding of British theatre by illuminating contexts such as funding, unionisation, devolution, immigration, and changes to legislation. Divided into four parts, it guides readers through changing attitudes to theatre-making (acting, directing, writing), theatre sectors (West End, subsidised, Fringe), theatre communities (audiences, Black theatre, queer theatre), and theatre's relationship to the state (government, infrastructure, nationhood). Supplemented by a valuable Chronology and Guide to Further Reading, it presents up-to-date approaches informed by critical race theory, queer studies, audience studies, and archival research to demonstrate important new ways of conceptualising post-war British theatre's history, practices and potential futures.
Download or read book Writing the Stage Coach Nation written by Ruth Livesey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-08 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why is it that so many of the best-loved novels of the Victorian era take place not in the steam-powered railway present in which they were published, but in the very recent past? Most works by Dickens, Brontë, Eliot, and Hardy set action neither in the present nor in a definitively historical epoch but rather in a 'just' past of collective memory, a vanishing but still tangible world moving by stage and mail coach. It is easy to overlook the fact that Jane Eyre, Bleak House, and Middlemarch, for example, are in this sense historical novels, recreating places and times that are just slipping from the horizon of here and now. Ruth Livesey brings to the surface the historical consciousness of such novels of the 'just' past and explores how they convey an idea of a national belonging that can be experienced through a sense of local place. The journey by public coach had long been an analogy for the form of the novel as it took shape in the eighteenth century; smooth engineered roads and the rapid circulation of print was one means by which Britain was reimagined as a modern, peaceable, and communicative nation in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars. But by the later 1840s the end of the stage coach was assured and that made it a highly charged figure of a lost national modernity. In its halts, relays, stops at inns, and crossing points, the stage and mail coach system offered a different experience of mobility and being-in-place—passages of flight and anchoring points—from the vectors of the railway that radiated out from industrial and urban centres. This book opens by examining the writing of the stage coach nation in Walter Scott's fiction and in the work of the radical journalists William Hazlitt and William Cobbett. Livesey suggests that in turning to the 'just' past of the stage coach imaginary, later novels by Dickens, Brontë, and Eliot reach out to the possibility of a nation knitted together by the affect of strongly felt local belonging. This vision is of a communicative nation at its liveliest when the smooth passage of characters and words are interrupted and overset, delivering readers and protagonists to local places, thick with the presence of history writ small.
Download or read book The Repertory Movement written by George Rowell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1984-10-18 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an account of the origins, development and current state of the repertory theatre movement in Britain. The movement had its roots in ideas, experiments and traditions stretching back into the nineteenth century, and first found its voice in 1907 with Miss Horniman's company in Manchester. Since then it has played a vital - often a dominant - role in British twentieth-century theatre. As a method of theatre organisation, repertory refers to those theatres based primarily in the regions, housing a resident acting company and seeking to maintain each season a programme of plays catering for the tastes of the whole community. But the theory has never been dogmatic and the movement has evolved from a gamut of complex factors, not least the visions of particular personalities. Major landmarks in the history include the effects of the two World Wars, the advent of substantial state funding for the Arts, the growth of cinema and television and the renewal of theatre's link with the community in the form of such initiatives as Theatre- in-Education. The history concludes with a detailed study of six representative regional theatres: The Nottingham Playhouse; The Citizens' Theatre, Glasgow; The Salisbury Playhouse; The Victoria Theatre, Stoke; The Everyman, Liverpool; and The Royal Exchange, Manchester. Appendixes include a Chronology, sample repertory programmes from the period, audience attendance figures and some comparative statistics about funding. Interspersed through the text are photographs of selected theatre exteriors, auditoria, stages and productions.
Download or read book New Theatre Quarterly 77 Volume 20 Part 1 written by Simon Trussler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-05-18 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides an international forum where theatrical scholarship and practice can meet.
Download or read book Writing for Theatre written by Kim Wiltshire and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-12-01 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing for theatre is a unique art form, different even from other kinds of scriptwriting. Making theatre is a truly collaborative process which can be a tricky aspect to grasp when starting out. This book will take you on a journey from the origins of theatre to what it means to write for the stage today. It includes a series of interviews with writers, directors and dramaturgs, all of whom are making theatre now, providing an unrivalled glimpse into the world of contemporary theatre making. Kim Wiltshire explores the foundations, traits and skills necessary for playwriting alongside the creative possibilities of writing theatre in the digital age. Each part of the book ends with a series of exercises which students of the craft can use to practise their art and stretch their creativity.
Download or read book Text and Performance in Contemporary British Theatre written by Catherine Love and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-02-27 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Text and Performance in Contemporary British Theatre interrogates the paradoxical nature of theatre texts, which have been understood both as separate literary objects in their own right and as material for performance. Drawing on analysis of contemporary practitioners who are working creatively with text, the book re-examines the relationship between text and performance within the specific context of British theatre. The chapters discuss a wide range of theatre-makers creating work in the UK from the 1990s onwards, from playwrights like Tim Crouch and Jasmine Lee-Jones to companies including Action Hero and RashDash. In doing so, the book addresses issues such as theatrical authorship, artistic intention, and the apparent incompleteness of plays as both written and performed phenomena. Text and Performance in Contemporary British Theatre also explores the implications of changing technologies of page and stage, analysing the impact of recent developments in theatre-making, editing, and publishing on the status of the theatre text. Written for scholars, students, and practitioners alike, Text and Performance in Contemporary British Theatre provides an original perspective on one of the most enduring problems to occupy theatre practice and scholarship.
Download or read book Twentieth Century British Theatre written by Claire Cochrane and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-27 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Claire Cochrane maps the experience of theatre across the British Isles during the twentieth century through the social and economic factors which shaped it. Three topographies for 1900, 1950 and 2000 survey the complex plurality of theatre within the nation-state which at the beginning of the century was at the hub of world-wide imperial interests and after one hundred years had seen unprecedented demographic, economic and industrial change. Cochrane analyses the dominance of London theatre, but redresses the balance in favour of the hitherto marginalised majority experience in the English regions and the other component nations of the British political construct. Developments arising from demographic change are outlined, especially those relating to the rapid expansion of migrant communities representing multiple ethnicities. Presenting fresh historiographic perspectives on twentieth-century British theatre, the book breaks down the traditionally accepted binary oppositions between different sectors, showing a broader spectrum of theatre practice.
Download or read book Historical Dictionary of British Theatre written by Darryll Grantley and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2013-10-10 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: British theatre has a greater tradition than any other, having started all the way back in 1311 and still going strong today. But that is too much for one book to cover, so this volume deals with early theatre and has a cut-off date in 1899. Still, this is almost six centuries, centuries during which British theatre not only developed but produced some of the greatest playwrights of all time and anywhere, including obviously Shakespeare but also Marlowe and Shaw. And they wrote some of the finest plays ever, which are known around the world. So there is plenty for this book to cover, just with the playwrights, plays and actors, but it also has information on stagecraft and theatres, as well as the historical and political background. This book has over 1,183 entries in the dictionary section, these being mainly on playwrights and plays, but others as well including managers and critics, and also on specific theatres, legislative acts and some technical jargon. Then there are entries on the different genres, from comedy to tragedy and everything in between. Inevitably, the chronology is quite long as it has a long period to cover and the introduction provides the necessary overview. The Historical Dictionary of Early British Theatre concludes with a pretty massive bibliography. That will be of use to particularly assiduous researchers, but this book itself is a good place to start any research since it covers periods that are far less well-known and documented, and ordinary theatre-goers will also find useful information.
Download or read book Stage Histories written by Pawel Schreiber and published by Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book presents post-war British historical drama not only as a phenomenon within literature and theatre, but also as an alternative form of representing the past, not as much competing with historiography as complementing it. The author shows how some of the central concerns of late twentieth-century methodology of history were also crucial for the historical drama of that time by applying Hayden White's classification of categories determining the shape of historical writing to the plays of Robert Bolt, David Hare, Howard Barker and Tom Stoppard. The plays discussed in the book offer not only different visions of past events, but also different visions of historiography itself.
