Download or read book The Ecologies of Amateur Theatre written by Helen Nicholson and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-10-26 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first major study of amateur theatre, offering new perspectives on its place in the cultural and social life of communities. Historically informed, it traces how amateur theatre has impacted national repertoires, contributed to diverse creative economies, and responded to changing patterns of labour. Based on extensive archival and ethnographic research, it traces the importance of amateur theatre to crafting places and the ways in which it sustains the creativity of amateur theatre over a lifetime. It asks: how does amateur theatre-making contribute to the twenty-first century amateur turn?
Download or read book Greek Tragedy Education and Theatre Practices in the UK Classics Ecology written by David Bullen and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-06-12 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through a series of case studies, this book explores the interrelations among Greek tragedy, theatre practices, and education in the United Kingdom. This is situated within what the volume proposes as ‘the Classics ecology’. The term ‘ecology’, frequently used in Theatre Studies, understands Classics as a field of cultural production dependent on shared knowledge circulated via formal and informal networks, which operate on the basis of mutually beneficial exchange. Productions of Greek tragedy may be influenced by members of the team studying Classics subjects at school or university, or reading popular works of Classical scholarship, or else by working with an academic consultant. All of these have some degree of connection to academic Classics, albeit filtered through different lenses, creating a network of mutual influence and benefit (the ecology). In this way, theatrical productions of Greek drama may, in the long term, influence Classics as an academic discipline, and certainly contribute to attesting to the relevance of Classics in the modern world. The chapters in this volume include contributions by both theatre makers and academics, whose backgrounds vary between Theatre Studies and Classics. They comprise a variety of case studies and approaches, exploring the dissemination of knowledge about the ancient world through projects that engage with Greek tragedy, theories and practices of theatre making through the chorus, and practical relationships between scholars and theatre makers. By understanding the staging of Greek tragedy in the United Kingdom today as being part of the Classics ecology, the book examines practices and processes as key areas in which the value of engaging with the ancient past is (re)negotiated. This book is primarily suitable for students and scholars working in Classical Reception and Theatre Studies who are interested in the reception history of Greek tragedy and the intersection of the two fields. It is also of use to more general Classics and Theatre Studies audiences, especially those engaged with current debates around ‘saving Classics’ and those interested in a structural, systemic approach to the intersection between theatre, culture, and class.
Download or read book Ecodramaturgies written by Lisa Woynarski and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-11-25 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses theatre’s contribution to the way we think about ecology, our relationship to the environment, and what it means to be human in the context of climate change. It offers a detailed study of the ways in which contemporary performance has critiqued and re-imagined everyday ecological relationships, in more just and equitable ways. The broad spectrum of ecologically-oriented theatre and performance included here, largely from the UK, US, Canada, Europe, and Mexico, have problematised, reframed, and upended the pervasive and reductive images of climate change that tend to dominate the ecological imagination. Taking an inclusive approach this book foregrounds marginalised perspectives and the multiple social and political forces that shape climate change and related ecological crises, framing understandings of the earth as home. Recent works by Fevered Sleep, Rimini Protokoll, Violeta Luna, Deke Weaver, Metis Arts, Lucy + Jorge Orta, as well as Indigenous activist movements such as NoDAPL and Idle No More, are described in detail.
Download or read book Women s Amateur Theatre in Rural Britain 1919 1945 written by Bonnie White and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-11-30 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women’s Amateur Theatre in Rural Britain is the first book-length study of the National Federation of Women’s Institutes’ amateur drama groups, which served as an umbrella organisation for women’s amateur drama. This work addresses a key historical gap by covering the activities, lives, and labour of women in rural England, Wales, and Scotland. It challenges gender-based assumptions about the value of women’s amateur theatre, highlighting the need for leisure opportunities and social connections in rural villages. The rapid expansion of women’s amateur drama groups is assessed in conjunction with major developments of the period, including the effect of post-1918 reconstruction efforts in rural regions, the revaluation of informal adult education schemes, the law’s influences and restrictions on amateur performances, and the impact of the Second World War on the ability of the Women’s Institutes to carve out a space for all-women’s drama groups that empowered women through education and skill-building programmes to aid in personal and community development. The broad scope of this research will appeal to undergraduates, postgraduates, scholars, and non-specialists interested in cultural history and the lives of rural women after the First World War.
Download or read book Theatre with a Purpose written by Don Watson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-12-28 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study of British amateur theatre in the inter-war period examines five different but interwoven examples of the belief, common in theatrical and educational circles at the time, that amateur drama had a purpose beyond recreation. Amateur theatre was at the height of its popularity as a cultural practice between the wars, so that by 1939 more British people had practical experience of putting on plays than at any time before or since. Providing an original account of the use of drama in adult education projects in deprived areas, and of amateur theatre in government-funded centres for the unemployed in the 1930s, it discusses repertoires, participation by working- class people and pioneering techniques of play-making. Amateur drama festivals and competitions were intended to raise standards and educate audiences. This book assesses their effect on play-making, and the use of innovative one-act plays to express contentious material, as well as looking at the Left Book Club Theatre Guild as an attempt to align the amateur theatre movement with anti-fascist and anti-war movements. A chapter on the Second World War rectifies the neglect of amateur theatre in war-time cultural studies, arguing that it was present and important in every aspect of war-time life. Don Watson builds on current scholarship and makes use of archival sources, local newspapers, unpublished scripts and the records of organizations not usually associated with the theatre. His work explores the range and diversity of amateur drama between the wars and the contributions it made to British theatre.
Download or read book Subscription Theater written by Matthew Franks and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2020-08-28 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Subscription Theater asks why turn-of-the-century British and Irish citizens spent so much time, money, and effort adding their names to subscription lists. Shining a spotlight on private play-producing clubs, public repertory theaters, amateur drama groups, and theatrical magazines, Matthew Franks locates subscription theaters in a vast constellation of civic subscription initiatives, ranging from voluntary schools and workers' hospitals to soldiers' memorials and Diamond Jubilee funds. Across these enterprises, Franks argues, subscribers created their own spaces for performing social roles from which they had long been excluded. Whether by undermining the authority of the Lord Chamberlain's Examiner of Plays and London's commercial theater producers, or by extending rights to disenfranchised women and property-less men, a diverse cast of subscribers including typists, plumbers, and maids acted as political representatives for their fellow citizens, both inside the theater and far beyond it. Citizens prized a "democratic" or "representative" subscription list as an end in itself, and such lists set the stage for the eventual public subsidy of subscription endeavors. Subscription Theater points to the importance of printed ephemera such as programs, tickets, and prospectuses in questioning any assumption that theatrical collectivity is confined to the live performance event. Drawing on new media as well as old, Franks uses a database of over 23,000 stage productions to reveal that subscribers introduced nearly a third of the plays that were most frequently revived between 1890 and the mid-twentieth century, as well as nearly half of all new translations, and they were instrumental in staging the work of such writers as Shaw and Ibsen, whose plays featured subscription lists as a plot point or prop. Although subscribers often are blamed for being a conservative force in theater, Franks demonstrates that they have been responsible for how we value audience and repertoire today, and their history offers a new account of the relationship between ephemera, drama, and democracy.
Download or read book Theatre Ecology written by Baz Kershaw and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-12-13 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study into the relationships between performance, theatre and environmental ecology.
Download or read book Tracing Your Theatrical Ancestors written by Katharine M Cockin and published by Pen and Sword Family History. This book was released on 2023-07-31 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can you find out about the lives of ancestors who were involved in the world of theater: on stage and on film, in the music halls and traveling shows, in the circus and in all sorts of other forms of public performance? Katharine Cockin’s handbook provides a fascinating introduction for readers searching for information about ancestors who had clearly defined roles in the world of the theater and performance as well as those who left only a few tantalizing clues behind. The wider history of public performance is outlined, from its earliest origins in church rituals and mystery plays through periods of censorship driven by campaigns on moral and religious grounds up to the modern world of stage and screen. Case studies, which are a special feature of the book, demonstrate how the relevant records and be identified and interpreted, and they prove how much revealing information they contain. Information on relevant archives, books, museums and websites make this an essential guide for anyone who is keen to explore the subject.
Download or read book The Methuen Drama Handbook of Theatre History and Historiography written by Claire Cochrane and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-31 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Methuen Drama Handbook of Theatre History and Historiography is an authoritative guide to contemporary debates and practices in this field. The book covers the key themes and methods that are current in theatre history research, with a particular focus on expanding the object of study to include engagement with theatre and performance practices and the development of theatre histories around the world. Central to the book are eighteen specially commissioned essays by established and emerging scholars from a wide range of international contexts, whose discussion of individual case studies is predicated on their understanding and experience of their 'local' landscape of theatre history. These essays reveal where important work continues to be done in the field and, most valuably, draws on academic contexts beyond the Western academy to expand our knowledge of the exciting directions that such an approach opens up. Prefaced by an introduction tracing the development of the discipline of theatre history and changing historiographical approaches, the Handbook explores current issues pertaining to theatre and performance history research, as well as providing up to date and robust introductions to the methods and historiographic questions being explored by researchers in the field. Featuring a series of essential research tools, including a detailed list of resources and an annotated bibliography of key texts, this is an indispensable scholarly handbook for anyone working in theatre and performance history and historiography.
Download or read book Theatre in Towns written by Helen Nicholson and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-12-27 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theatre in Towns offers a contemporary perspective on the role of theatre in the cultural life of towns in England. Exploring volunteer-led, professional and community theatres, this book investigates the rich and diverse ways that theatres in towns serve their locality, negotiate their civic role, participate in networks of mutual aid and exchange, and connect audiences beyond their geographical borders. With a geographical focus on post-industrial, seaside, commuter and market towns in England, the book opens questions about how theatre shapes the narratives of town life, and how localism, networks and partnerships across and between towns contribute to living sustainably. Each chapter is critically and historically informed, drawing on original research in towns, including visits to performances and many conversations with townspeople, from theatre-makers, performers, set-builders, front-of-house volunteers, to audience members and civic leaders. Theatre in Towns asks urgent questions about how the relationships between towns and theatres can be redefined in new and equitable ways in the future. Theatre in Towns brings new research to scholars and students of theatre studies, cultural geography, cultural and social policy and political sociology. It will also interest artists, policy-makers and researchers wanting to develop their own and others’ understanding of the value of active theatre cultures in towns. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Download or read book Black Theater City Life written by Macelle Mahala and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-15 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Macelle Mahala’s rich study of contemporary African American theater institutions reveals how they reflect and shape the histories and cultural realities of their cities. Arguing that the community in which a play is staged is as important to the work’s meaning as the script or set, Mahala focuses on four cities’ “arts ecologies” to shed new light on the unique relationship between performance and place: Cleveland, home to the oldest continuously operating Black theater in the country; Pittsburgh, birthplace of the legendary playwright August Wilson; San Francisco, a metropolis currently experiencing displacement of its Black population; and Atlanta, a city with forty years of progressive Black leadership and reverse migration. Black Theater, City Life looks at Karamu House Theatre, the August Wilson African American Cultural Center, Pittsburgh Playwrights’ Theatre Company, the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, the African American Shakespeare Company, the Atlanta Black Theatre Festival, and Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre Company to demonstrate how each organization articulates the cultural specificities, sociopolitical realities, and histories of African Americans. These companies have faced challenges that mirror the larger racial and economic disparities in arts funding and social practice in America, while their achievements exemplify such institutions’ vital role in enacting an artistic practice that reflects the cultural backgrounds of their local communities. Timely, significant, and deeply researched, this book spotlights the artistic and civic import of Black theaters in American cities.
Download or read book Shakespeare and Community Performance written by Katherine Steele Brokaw and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-09-09 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how productions of Shakespearean plays create meaning in specific communities, with special attention to issues of access, adaptation, and activism. Instead of focusing on large professional companies, it analyzes performances put on by community theatres and grassroots companies, and in applied drama projects. It looks at Shakespearean productions created by marginalized populations in Greater London, Harlem, and Los Angeles, a Hamlet staged in the remote Faroe Islands, and eco-theatre made in California’s Yosemite National Park. The book investigates why different communities perform Shakespeare, and what challenges, opportunities, and triumphs accompany the processes of theatrical production for both the artists and the communities in which they are embedded.
Download or read book Performing Early Modern Drama Beyond Shakespeare written by Harry R. McCarthy and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-12 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Element provides the first in-depth study of the present-day all-boy company, Edward's Boys, who are based at King Edward VI School ('Shakespeare's School') in Stratford-upon-Avon. Since 2005, the company has produced a wide array of early modern plays, providing the most substantial repertory of early modern drama available for examination by scholars. The Element provides a comprehensive account of the company's practices, drawing on extensive rehearsal and performance observation, evidence from the company's archive, and interviews with actors and key company personnel. The Element takes account of the company's particular educational and strongly interpersonal environment, suggesting that these factors have a distinctive shaping force on their performance practice. In the hands of Edward's Boys, the Element argues, early modern drama becomes the source of company creation, ensemble practice, and virtuosic physical play, inviting us to reimagine what it means – and takes – to perform these plays today.
Download or read book Redefining Theatre Communities written by Szabolcs Musca and published by Intellect (UK). This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Redefining Theatre Communities explores the interplay between contemporary theatre and communities. It considers the aesthetic, social and cultural aspects of community-conscious theatre-making. It also reflects on transformations in structural, textual and theatrical conventions, and explores changing modes of production and spectatorship.
Download or read book Weathering Shakespeare written by Evelyn O'Malley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-12-24 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From The Pastoral Players' 1884 performance of As You Like It to contemporary site-specific productions activist interventions, there is a rich history of open air performances of Shakespeare's plays beyond their early modern origins. Weathering Shakespeare reveals how new insights from the environmental humanities can transform our understanding of this popular performance practice. Drawing on audience accounts of outdoor productions of those plays most commonly chosen for open air performance – including A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest – the book examines how performers and audiences alike have reacted to unpredictable natural environments.
Download or read book The Theatrical Professoriate written by Emily Roxworthy and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-12-06 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that today’s professoriate has become increasingly theatrical, largely as a result of neoliberal policies in higher education, but also in response to an anti-intellectual scrutiny that has become pervasive throughout the Western world. The Theatrical Professoriate: Contemporary Higher Education and Its Academic Dramas examines how the Western professoriate increasingly finds itself enacting command performances that utilize scripting, characterization, surrogation, and spectacle—the hallmarks of theatricality—toward neoliberal ends. Roxworthy explores how the theatrical nature of today’s professoriate and the resultant glut of performances about academia on stage and screen have contributed to a highly ambivalent public fascination with academia. She further documents the "theatrical turn" witnessed in American higher education, as academic institutions use performance to intervene in the diversity issues and disciplinary disparities fueled by neoliberalism. By analyzing academic dramas and their audience reception alongside theoretical approaches, the author reveals how contemporary academia drives the professoriate to perform in what seem like increasingly artificial ways. Ideal for practitioners and students of education, ethnic, and science studies, The Theatrical Professoriate deftly intervenes in Performance Studies’ still-unsettled debates over the differential impact of live versus mediated performances.
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.
