Download or read book Summer Theatre in London 1661 1820 and the Rise of the Haymarket Theatre written by William J. Burling and published by Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A biography of the actor who starred in the popular television series, Family Ties, as well as in a number of motion pictures and who recently announced that he has Parkinson's disease.
Download or read book Staging the Peninsular War written by Susan Valladares and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-09 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Napoleon's invasion of Portugal in 1807 to his final defeat at Waterloo, the English theatres played a crucial role in the mediation of the Peninsular campaign. In the first in-depth study of English theatre during the Peninsular War, Susan Valladares contextualizes the theatrical treatment of the war within the larger political and ideological axes of Romantic performance. Exploring the role of spectacle in the mediation of war and the links between theatrical productions and print culture, she argues that the popularity of theatre-going and the improvisation and topicality unique to dramatic performance make the theatre an ideal lens for studying the construction of the Peninsular War in the public domain. Without simplifying the complex issues involved in the study of citizenship, communal identities, and ideological investments, Valladares recovers a wartime theatre that helped celebrate military engagements, reform political sympathies, and register the public’s complex relationship with Britain’s military campaign in the Iberian Peninsula. From its nuanced reading of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's Pizarro (1799), to its accounts of wartime productions of Shakespeare, description of performances at the minor theatres, and detailed case study of dramatic culture in Bristol, Valladares’s book reveals how theatrical entertainments reflected and helped shape public feeling on the Peninsular campaign.
Download or read book Theatre and Celebrity in Britain 1660 2000 written by Mary Luckhurst and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-10-18 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theatre has always been a site for selling outrage and sensation, a place where public reputations are made and destroyed in spectacular ways. This is the first book to investigate the construction and production of celebrity in the British theatre. These exciting essays explore aspects of fame, notoriety and transgression in a wide range of performers and playwrights including David Garrick, Oscar Wilde, Ellen Terry, Laurence Olivier and Sarah Kane. This pioneering volume examines the ingenious ways in which these stars have negotiated their own fame. The essays also analyze the complex relationships between discourses of celebrity and questions of gender, spectatorship and the operation of cultural markets.
Download or read book Death in the Theatre written by Chris Wood and published by Pen and Sword History. This book was released on 2023-07-30 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A richly entertaining account of tragic theatre accidents and murders most foul. If theatre walls could talk, what secrets would they reveal? Chris Wood provides fascinating answers with tales of brawling ushers, murderously jealous husbands, stampeding crowds and infant tragedies. A meticulously researched and vivid collection of lives lost in the palaces of dreams. A must-read for all lovers of the theatre, providing shocks and gasps of horror when real life proves to be more dramatic than any play on stage." - Hugh Bonneville "Immaculately researched and beautifully macabre. This is a real treat for anyone who is either a fan of the theatre or of untimely deaths. I loved it!" - Peter James Britain’s theatrical wonderland has been a cornerstone of culture for centuries, delighting and thrilling audiences with an assemblage of exhilarating spectacles. Beyond the trodden boards, and tucked neatly behind the curtain however, lies a catalogue of real life destruction and grisly murder that our greatest tragedians would surely be proud to have presided over. Tread the bloodied boards of Britain’s theaters and witness the deathly dramas that have played out so dramatically within them. Death in the Theatre collects an astonishing selection of startling tragedies from Britain’s throng of theaters. There is something especially staggering when the player exits life on their adorned stage, and yet, with this by no means an infrequent occurrence, death has made many a fearful cameo appearance – stalking the stalls and grimly reaping the galleries in its macabre and relentless fashion. In 1910 a strange midnight tragedy was enacted in a London theater, where the brutal murder of an elderly stage carpenter prompted huge excitement among the theater-going world and indeed wider public. How did a children’s magic show descend into such unspeakable horror that would leave 183 youngsters dead in a Sunderland theater, their tiny bodies brutally laid out in the dress circle for the bleakest of identity parades? Learn of outrageous tragedy such as the young man mauled to death by a lion in a Gloucester theater, and the unfortunate victim killed in the Dumfries Theatre Royal – quite literally – by the limelight.
Download or read book I Hope I Don t Intrude written by David Vincent and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-05-14 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'I Hope I Don't Intrude' takes its title from the catch-phrase of the eponymous hero of the 1825 play Paul Pry, which was an immense success on the London stage and then rapidly in New York and around the English-speaking world. It tackles the complex, multi-faceted subject of privacy in nineteenth-century Britain by examining the way in which the tropes, language, and imagery of the play entered public discourse about privacy in the rest of the century. The volume is not just an account of a play, or of late Georgian and Victorian theatre. Rather it is a history of privacy, showing how the play resonated through Victorian society and revealed its concerns over personal and state secrecy, celebrity, gossip and scandal, postal espionage, virtual privacy, the idea of intimacy, and the evolution of public and private spheres. After 1825 the overly inquisitive figure of Paul Pry appeared everywhere - in songs, stories, and newspapers, and on everything from buttons and Staffordshire pottery to pubs, ships, and stagecoaches - and 'Paul-Prying' rapidly entered the language. 'I Hope I Don't Intrude' is an innovative kind of social history, using rich archival research to trace this cultural artefact through every aspect of its consumer context, and using its meanings to interrogate the largely hidden history of privacy in a period of major transformations in the role of the home, mass communication (particularly the new letter post, which delivered private messages through a public service), and the state. In vivid and entertaining detail, including many illustrations, David Vincent presents the most thorough account yet attempted of a recreational event in an era which saw a decisive shift in consumer markets. His study casts fresh light on the perennial tensions between curiosity and intrusion that were captured in Paul Pry and his catchphrase. Giving a new account of the communications revolution of the period, it re-evaluates the role of the state and the market in creating a new regime of privacy. And its critique of the concept and practice of surveillance looks forward to twenty-first-century concerns about the invasion of privacy through new technologies.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Georgian Theatre 1737 1832 written by Julia Swindells and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-01-16 with total page 786 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of the Georgian Theatre 1737-1832 provides an essential guide to theatre in Britain between the passing of the Stage Licensing Act in 1737 and the Reform Act of 1832 — a period of drama long neglected but now receiving significant scholarly attention. Written by specialists from a range of disciplines, its forty essays both introduce students and scholars to the key texts and contexts of the Georgian theatre and also push the boundaries of the field, asking questions that will animate the study of drama in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries for years to come. The Handbook gives equal attention to the range of dramatic forms — not just tragedy and comedy, but the likes of melodrama and pantomime — as they developed and overlapped across the period, and to the occasions, communities, and materialities of theatre production. It includes sections on historiography, the censorship and regulation of drama, theatre and the Romantic canon, women and the stage, and the performance of race and empire. In doing so, the Handbook shows the centrality of theatre to Georgian culture and politics, and paints a picture of a stage defined by generic fluidity and experimentation; by networks of performance that spread far beyond London; by professional women who played pivotal roles in every aspect of production; and by its complex mediation of contemporary attitudes of class, race, and gender.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical written by Robert Gordon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-11-21 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical provides a comprehensive academic survey of British musical theatre offering both a historical account of the musical's development from 1728 and a range of in-depth critical analyses of the unique forms and features of British musicals, which explore the aesthetic values and sociocultural meanings of a tradition that initially gave rise to the American musical and later challenged its modern pre-eminence. After a consideration of how John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728) created a prototype for eighteenth-century ballad opera, the book focuses on the use of song in early nineteenth century theatre, followed by a sociocultural analysis of the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan; it then examines Edwardian and interwar musical comedies and revues as well as the impact of Rodgers and Hammerstein on the West End, before analysing the new forms of the postwar British musical from The Boy Friend (1953) to Oliver! (1960). One section of the book examines the contributions of key twentieth century figures including Noel Coward, Ivor Novello, Tim Rice, Andrew Lloyd Webber, director Joan Littlewood and producer Cameron Macintosh, while a number of essays discuss both mainstream and alternative musicals of the 1960s and 1970s and the influence of the pop industry on the creation of concept recordings such as Jesus Christ Superstar (1970) and Les Misérables (1980). There is a consideration of "jukebox" musicals such as Mamma Mia! (1999), while essays on overtly political shows such as Billy Elliot (2005) are complemented by those on experimental musicals like Jerry Springer: the Opera (2003) and London Road (2011) and on the burgeoning of Black and Asian British musicals in both the West End and subsidized venues. The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical demonstrates not only the unique qualities of British musical theatre but also the vitality and variety of British musicals today.
Download or read book Performing Copyright written by Luke McDonagh and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-06-17 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on empirical research, this innovative book explores issues of performativity and authorship in the theatre world under copyright law and addresses several inter-connected questions: who is the author and first owner of a dramatic work? Who gets the credit and the licensing rights? What rights do the performers of the work have? Given the nature of theatre as a medium reliant on the re-use of prior existing works, tropes, themes and plots, what happens if an allegation of copyright infringement is made against a playwright? Furthermore, who possesses moral rights over the work? To evaluate these questions in the context of theatre, the first part of the book examines the history of the dramatic work both as text and as performative work. The second part explores the notions of authorship and joint authorship under copyright law as they apply to the actual process of creating plays, referring to legal and theatrical literature, as well as empirical research. The third part looks at the notion of copyright infringement in the context of theatre, noting that cases of alleged theatrical infringement reach the courts comparatively rarely in comparison with music cases, and assessing the reasons for this with respect to empirical research. The fourth part examines the way moral rights of attribution and integrity work in the context of theatre. The book concludes with a prescriptive comment on how law should respond to the challenges provided by the theatrical context, and how theatre should respond to law. Very original and innovative, this book proposes a ground-breaking empirical approach to study the implications of copyright law in society and makes a wonderful case for the need to consider the reciprocal influence between law and practice.
Download or read book Charles Dibdin and Late Georgian Culture written by Oskar Cox Jensen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-19 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charles Dibdin (1745-1814) was one of the most popular and influential creative forces in late Georgian Britain, producing a diversity of works that defy simple categorisation. He was an actor, lyricist, composer, singer-songwriter, comedian, theatre-manager, journalist, artist, music tutor, speculator, and author of novels, historical works, polemical pamphlets, and guides to musical education. This collection of essays illuminates the social and cultural conditions that made such a varied career possible, offering fresh insights into previously unexplored aspects of late Georgian culture, society, and politics. Tracing the transitions in the cultural economy from an eighteenth-century system of miscellany to a nineteenth-century regime of specialisation, Charles Dibdin and Late Georgian Culture illustrates the variety of Dibdin's cultural output as characteristic of late eighteenth-century entertainment, while also addressing the challenge mounted by a growing preoccupation with specialisation in the early nineteenth century. The chapters, written by some of the leading experts in their individual disciplines, examine Dibdin's extraordinarily wide-ranging career, spanning cultural spaces from the theatres at Drury Lane and Covent Garden, through Ranelagh Gardens, Sadler's Wells, and the Royal Circus, to singing on board ships and in elegant Regency parlours; from broadside ballads and graphic satires, to newspaper journalism, mezzotint etchings, painting, and decorative pottery. Together they demonstrate connections between forms of cultural production that have often been treated as distinct, and provide a model for a more integrated approach to the fabric of late Georgian cultural production.
Download or read book The Politics of Romantic Theatricality 1787 1832 written by D. Worrall and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-04-12 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sets out the political and cultural conditions regulating dramatic writing during an era of censorship and monopolistic royal theatres. Using a range of plays and manuscripts, it argues for the centrality of burletta, the theatrical locus of the attacks on the Cockney school of poetry and the vitality of the metropolitan dramatic scene.
Download or read book Elizabeth Inchbald s Reputation written by Ben P Robertson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through an examination of her complete works and public response to them, Robertson gauges the extent of Inchbald's reputation as the dignified Mrs Inchbald, as well as providing a clear sense of what it meant to be a female Romantic writer.
Download or read book Foreign Opera at the London Playhouses written by Christina Fuhrmann and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-24 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: London operatic adaptations have been maligned, but this comprehensive study demonstrates their importance to theatre, opera and canon formation.
Download or read book The Economics of the British Stage 1800 1914 written by Tracy C. Davis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-06-21 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive study of economic theory in relation to the development of nineteenth-century British theatre.
Download or read book British Music and the French Revolution written by Paul F. Rice and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2010-04-16 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: British Music and the French Revolution investigates the nature of British musical responses to the cataclysmic political events unfolding in France during the period of 1789–1795, a time when republican and royalist agendas were in conflict in both nations. While the parallel demands for social and political change resulted from different stimuli, and were resolved very differently, the 1790s proved to be a defining period for each country. In Britain, the combination of a protracted period of Tory conservatism, and the strong spirit of patriotism which swept the nation, had a profound influence on the arts. There was an outpouring of concert and theatrical music dealing with the French Revolution and the subsequent war with France. While patriotic songs might be expected when a country is at war, the number of recreations on the London stages of events taking place on the Continent may surprise. Initially, such topical subjects were restricted to the summer or “minor” theatres; however, government restrictions were relaxed after 1793, giving Londoners the opportunity to see topical theatre in the royal or “patent” theatres, as well. The resulting repertoire of plays and recreations (often propagandist in nature) made considerable use of music, and those performed in the “minor” theatres were all-sung. Consequently, there exists a large repertoire of music which has been little studied. British Music and the French Revolution investigates this repertoire within a social and political context. Initial chapters examine the historical relationship between France and Britain from a musical perspective, the powerful symbols of national identity in both countries, and the complex laws that governed commercial theatres in London. Thereafter, the materials are presented in a chronological fashion, starting with the fall of the Bastille in 1789, and the Fête de la Fédération in 1790. The period of the Captivity was one of growing tension and fear in both France and Britain as war became an ever-increasing threat between the two nations. Two subsequent chapters examine the war years of 1793 until first half of 1795. The choice of a five-year period allows the reader to follow British musical reactions to the fall of the Bastille and subsequent events up to the rise of Napoléon.
Download or read book London Opera Observed 1711 1844 written by Michael Burden and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-31 with total page 1819 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thrust of these five volumes is contained in their title, London Opera Observ’d. It takes its cue from the numerous texts and volumes which — during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — used the concept of ‘spying’ or ‘observing’ by a narrator, or rambler, as a means of establishing a discourse on aspects of London life. The material in this five-volume reset edition examines opera not simply as a genre of performance, but as a wider topic of comment and debate. The stories that surrounded the Italian opera singers illuminate contemporary British attitudes towards performance, sexuality and national identity. The collection includes only complete, published material organised chronologically so as to accurately retain the contexts in which the original readers encountered them — placing an emphasis on rare texts that have not been reproduced in modern editions. The aim of this collection is not to provide a history of opera in England but to facilitate the writing of them or to assist those wishing to study topics within the field. Headnotes and footnotes establish the publication information and provide an introduction to the piece, its author, and the events surrounding it or which caused its publication. The notes concentrate on attempting to identify those figures mentioned within the texts. The approach is one of presentation, not interpretation, ensuring that the collection occupies a position that is neutral rather than polemical.
Download or read book The Cambridge History of English Literature 1660 1780 written by John Richetti and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-06 with total page 974 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge History of English Literature, 1660-1780 offers readers discussions of the entire range of literary expression from the Restoration to the end of the eighteenth century. In essays by thirty distinguished scholars, recent historical perspectives and new critical approaches and methods are brought to bear on the classic authors and texts of the period. Forgotten or neglected authors and themes as well as new and emerging genres within the expanding marketplace for printed matter during the eighteenth century receive special attention and emphasis. The volume's guiding purpose is to examine the social and historical circumstances within which literary production and imaginative writing take place in the period and to evaluate the enduring verbal complexity and cultural insights they articulate so powerfully.
Download or read book The Subjects of Literary and Artistic Copyright written by Bonadio, Enrico and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2022-09-13 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This accessible and innovative book examines to what extent copyright protects a range of subjects which are engaged in the creation and management of literary and artistic works, and how such subjects use copyright to protect their interests.