Download or read book Bernard Shaw and the Censors written by Bernard F. Dukore and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Dukore’s style is fluid and his wit delightful. I learned a tremendous amount, as will most readers, and Bernard Shaw and the Censors will doubtless be the last word on the topic.” - Michel Pharand, former editor of SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies and author of Bernard Shaw and the French (2001). "This book shows us a new side of Shaw and his complicated relationships to the powerful mechanisms of stage and screen censorship in the long twentieth century.” - - Lauren Arrington, Professor of English, Maynooth University, Ireland A fresh view of Shaw versus stage and screen censors, this book describes Shaw as fighter and failure, whose battles against censorship – of his plays and those of others, of his works for the screen and those of others – he sometimes won but usually lost. We forget usually, because ultimately he prevailed and because his witty reports of defeats are so buoyant, they seem to describe triumphs. We think of him as a celebrity, not an outsider; as a classic, not one of the avant-garde, of which Victorians and Edwardians were intolerant; as ahead of his time, not of it, when he was called “disgusting,” “immoral", and "degenerate.” Yet it took over three decades and a world war before British censors permitted a public performance of Mrs Warren’s Profession. We remember him as an Academy Award winner for Pygmalion, not as an author whose dialogue censors required deletions for showings in the United States. Scrutinizing the powerful stage and cinema censorship in Britain and America, this book focuses on one of its most notable campaigners against them in the last century.

Download or read book Drag written by Jacob Bloomfield and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2024-10-08 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A must-read for anyone interested in the history of drag performance."--​Publishers Weekly A rich and provocative history of drag's importance in modern British culture. Drag: A British History is a groundbreaking study of the sustained popularity and changing forms of male drag performance in modern Britain. With this book, Jacob Bloomfield provides fresh perspectives on drag and recovers previously neglected episodes in the history of the art form. Despite its transgressive associations, drag has persisted as an intrinsic, and common, part of British popular culture--drag artists have consistently asserted themselves as some of the most renowned and significant entertainers of their day. As Bloomfield demonstrates, drag was also at the center of public discussions around gender and sexuality in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Victorian sex scandals to the "permissive society" of the 1960s. This compelling new history demythologizes drag, stressing its ordinariness while affirming its important place in British cultural heritage.

Download or read book Nights Out written by Judith Walkowitz and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-15 with total page 629 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: London's Soho district underwent a spectacular transformation between the late Victorian era and the end of the Second World War: its fin-de-siècle buildings and dark streets infamous for sex, crime, political disloyalty, and ethnic diversity became a center of culinary and cultural tourism servicing patrons of nearby shops and theaters. Indulgences for the privileged and the upwardly mobile edged a dangerous, transgressive space imagined to be "outside" the nation. Treating Soho as exceptional, but also representative of London's urban transformation, Judith Walkowitz shows how the area's foreignness, liminality, and porousness were key to the explosion of culture and development of modernity in the first half of the twentieth century. She draws on a vast and unusual range of sources to stitch together a rich patchwork quilt of vivid stories and unforgettable characters, revealing how Soho became a showcase for a new cosmopolitan identity.

Download or read book British Literature in Transition 1940 1960 Postwar written by Gill Plain and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines debates central to postwar British culture, showing the pressures of reconstruction and the mutual implication of war and peace.

Download or read book A Companion to Modernist Literature and Culture written by David Bradshaw and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2006-02-10 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Companion combines a broad grounding in the essential texts and contexts of the modernist movement with the unique insights of scholars whose careers have been devoted to the study of modernism. An essential resource for students and teachers of modernist literature and culture Broad in scope and comprehensive in coverage Includes more than 60 contributions from some of the most distinguished modernist scholars on both sides of the Atlantic Brings together entries on elements of modernist culture, contemporary intellectual and aesthetic movements, and all the genres of modernist writing and art Features 25 essays on the signal texts of modernist literature, from James Joyce’s Ulysses to Zora Neal Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God Pays close attention to both British and American modernism

Download or read book Golden Age Drama in Contemporary Spain written by Duncan Wheeler and published by University of Wales Press. This book was released on 2012-04-15 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first monograph on the performance and reception of sixteenth- and seventeenth- century national drama in contemporary Spain, which attempts to remedy the traditional absence of performance-based approaches in Golden Age studies. The book contextualises the socio-historical background to the modern-day performance of the country’s three major Spanish baroque playwrights (Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega and Tirso de Molina), whilst also providing detailed aesthetic analyses of individual stage and screen adaptations.

Download or read book British Theatre and Performance 1900 1950 written by Rebecca D'Monte and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-02-26 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: British theatre from 1900 to 1950 has been subject to radical re-evaluation with plays from the period setting theatres alight and gaining critical acclaim once again; this book explains why, presenting a comprehensive survey of the theatre and how it shaped the work that followed. Rebecca D'Monte examines how the emphasis upon the working class, 'angry' drama from the 1950s has led to the neglect of much of the century's earlier drama, positioning the book as part of the current debate about the relationship between war and culture, the middlebrow, and historiography. In a comprehensive survey of the period, the book considers: - the Edwardian theatre; - the theatre of the First World War, including propaganda and musicals; -the interwar years, the rise of commercial theatre and influence of Modernism; - the theatre of the Second World War and post-war period. Essays from leading scholars Penny Farfan, Steve Nicholson and Claire Cochrane give further critical perspectives on the period's theatre and demonstrate its relevance to the drama of today. For anyone studying 20th-century British Drama this will prove one of the foundational texts.

Download or read book Prudes on the Prowl written by David Bradshaw and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-09-26 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative book comprises nine essays from leading scholars which investigate the relationship between fiction, censorship and the legal construction of obscenity in Britain between 1850 and the present day. Each of the chapters focuses on a distinct historical period and each has something new to say about the literary works it spotlights. Overall, the volume fundamentally refreshes our understanding of the way texts had to negotiate the moral and legal minefields of public reception. The book is original in the historical period it covers, starting in 1850 and bringing debates about fiction, obscenity and censorship up to the present day. The history that is uncovered reveals the different ways in which censorship functioned and continues to function, with considerations of Statutory definitions of Obscenity alongside the activities of non-government organisations such as the anti-vice societies, circulating libraries, publishers, printers and commentators. The essays in this book argue that the vigour with which novels were hunted down by the prowling prudes of the book's title encouraged some writers to explore sexual, excremental and moral obscenities with even more determination. Bringing such debates up to date, the book considers the ongoing impact of censorship on fiction and the current state of critical thinking about the status and freedom of literature. Given contemporary debates about the limits on freedom of speech in liberal, secular societies, the interrogation of these questions is both timely and necessary.

Download or read book The Victorians written by John Gardiner and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2006-10-27 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major study of changing attitudes to the Victorians, from Lytton Strachey to the present day. >

Download or read book Disobedient Theatre written by Chris Johnston and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-10-19 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theatre is at its best when it is disobedient, when it argues back to society. But what enables it to achieve this impact? What makes it a force to be reckoned with? What are the principles and the tools of the trade that shape it to be effective, powerful and resonant? Drawing from both theory and practice, and informed by conversations with recognized practitioners from across the UK, this book provides answers and makes an impassioned call for artists to reimagine, question and disrupt. Divided into two parts, 'In the World' and 'In the Room', the book presents a rounded picture of the possibilities of a 'disobedient' culture and includes many games and exercises for creative practitioners. In Part One the author offers a lexicon defining the spirit and impulse which characterises disobedient theatre: he describes the principles, the strategies, and the voice of the artist, before suggesting ways to survive as a creative practitioner. Part Two illustrates how these principles may be worked out in practice when creating new work, with the hands-on approaches supplemented by games and exercises to assist in generating material. Disobedient Theatre is for all those who have an interest in what makes theatre powerful, disturbing or even life-changing. It is a book for artists, thinkers, activists and all who believe in the function of art to offer new possibilities and to change and inform the evolution of society.

Download or read book John Osborne s Look Back in Anger written by Aleks Sierz and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2008-03-10 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Look Back in Anger is one of the few works of drama that are indisputably central to British culture in general, and its name is one of the most well-known in postwar cultural history. Its premiere in 1956 sparked off the first "new wave" of kitchen-sink drama and the cultural phenomenon of the angry young man. The play's anti-hero, Jimmy Porter, became the spokesman of a generation. Osborne's play is a key milestone in "new writing" for British theatre, and the Royal Court-which produced the play-has since become one of the most important new writing theatres in the UK.

Download or read book Drag Histories Herstories and Hairstories written by Mark Edward and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on rich interdisciplinary research that has laced the emerging subject of drag studies as an academic discipline, this book examines how drag performance is a political, socio-cultural practice with a widespread lineage throughout the history of performance. This volume maps the multi-threaded contexts of contemporary practices while rooting them in their fabulous historical past and memory. The book examines drag histories and what drag does with history, how it enacts or tells stories about remembering and the past. Featuring work about the USA, UK and Ireland, Japan, Australia, Brazil and Barbados, this book allows the reader to engage with a range of archival research including camp and history; ethnicity and drag; queering ballet through drag; the connections between drag king and queen history; queering pantomime performance; drag and military veterans; Puerto Rican drag performers and historical film.

Download or read book Theatre Censorship in Britain written by H. Freshwater and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-04-08 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This exploration of the wide variety of censorship that has shaped theatrical performance in twentieth and twenty-first century Britain examines the unpredictable outcomes of censorship, deep-seated anxieties about the performative influence of the stage, and the complex questions raised by acts of theatrical censorship.

Download or read book Acts of Desire written by Sos Eltis and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-04-18 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From seduced maidens to adulterous wives, bigamists, courtesans, kept women and streetwalkers, the so-called 'fallen woman' was a ubiquitous and enduring figure on the Victorian and Edwardian stage. Acts of Desire traces the theatrical representation of illicit female sexuality from early nineteenth-century melodramas, through sensation dramas, Ibsenite sex-problem plays and suffrage dramas, to early social realism and the well-made plays of Pinero, Jones, Maugham, and Coward. This study reveals and analyses enduring plot lines and tropes that continue to influence contemporary theatre and film. Women's illicit desires became a theatrical focus for anxieties and debates surrounding gender roles, women's rights, sexual morality, class conflict, economics, eugenics, and female employment. The theatre played a central role in both establishing and challenging sexual norms, and many playwrights exploited the ambiguities and implications of performance to stage disruptive spectacles of female desire, agency, energy, and resourcefulness, using ingenuity and skill to evade the control of that ever watchful state censor, the Lord Chamberlain. Covering an astonishing range of theatrical, social, literary, and political texts, this study challenges the currency and validity of the long-established critical term 'the fallen woman', and establishes the centrality of the theatre to cultural and sexual debates throughout the period. Acts of Desire encompasses published and unpublished plays, archival material, censorship records, and contemporary reviews to reveal the surprising continuities, complex debates, covert meanings, and exuberant spectacles which marked the history of theatrical representations of female sexuality. Engaging with popular and 'high art' performances, this study also reveals the vital connections between theatre and its sister arts, tracing the exchange of influences between Victorian drama, narrative painting and the novel, and showing theatre to be a crucial but neglected element in the cultural history of women's sexuality.

Download or read book Censorship across Borders written by Alberto Lázaro and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2011-07-12 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together twelve essays which explore European censorship of English literature in the last century. Taking into consideration the various social, political and historical contexts in which literary controls were imposed and the extent to which they were determined by national and international concerns, these essays comment on political and moral censorship, self-censorship, and the role of the translator as censor. Besides systematic state control, other hidden and insidious forms of censorship are also surveyed in the essays. This study considers why certain works and authors, many of them now regarded as canonical, were targeted in various states and often under opposing ideologies, such as those dominated by conservative Catholic morality and those governed by communism or socialism. The essays contain previously unpublished material, cover a wide range of authors – including Beckett, Eliot, Joyce and Orwell – and analyse diverse censorship systems operating across Europe, thus serving as a useful comparative resource. Despite the variety of structures of suppression, the study shows that certain common practices can be discerned across national borders and that general conclusions can be drawn about the complex and ambiguous nature of the state’s relationship with culture and about the immediate and long-term impact of censorship, not only on the author and publisher but on society as a whole. Finally, the essays are also significant for what they tell us about the survival of literature, despite the best efforts of the censors.

Download or read book The 101 Greatest Plays written by Michael Billington and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Having surveyed post-war British drama in State of the Nation, Michael Billington now looks at the global picture. In this provocative and challenging new book, he offers his highly personal selection of the 100 greatest plays ranging from the Greeks to the present-day. But his book is no mere list. Billington justifies his choices in extended essays- and even occasional dialogues- that put the plays in context, explain their significance and trace their performance history. In the end, it's a book that poses an infinite number of questions. What makes a great play? Does the definition change with time and circumstance? Or are certain common factors visible down the ages? It's safe to say that it's a book that, in revising the accepted canon, is bound to stimulate passionate argument and debate. Everyone will have strong views on Billington's chosen hundred and will be inspired to make their own selections. But, coming from Britain's longest-serving theatre critic, these essays are the product of a lifetime spent watching and reading plays and record the adventures of a soul amongst masterpieces.

Download or read book 1965 written by Christopher Bray and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-04-24 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is Britain before 1965 and Britain after 1965 - and they are not the same thing. 1965 was the year Britain democratised education, it was the year pop culture began to be taken as seriously as high art, the time when comedians and television shows imported the methods of modernism into their work. It was when communications across the Atlantic became instantaneous, the year when, for the first time in a century, British artists took American gallery-goers by storm. In 1965 the Beatles proved that rock and roll could be art, it was when we went car crazy, and craziness was held to be the only sane reaction to an insane society. It was the year feminism went mainstream, the year, did she but know it, that the Thatcher revolution began, the year taboos were talked up - and trashed. It was when racial discrimination was outlawed and the death penalty abolished; it marked the appointment of Roy Jenkins as Home Secretary, who became chief architect in legislating homosexuality, divorce, abortion and censorship. It was the moment that our culture, reeling from what are still the most shocking killings of the century, realised it was a less innocent, less spiritual place than it had been kidding itself. It was the year of consumerist relativism that gave us the country we live in today and the year the idea of a home full of cultural artefacts - books, records, magazines - was born. It was the year when everything changed - and the year that everyone knew it.