Download or read book Theatricality Playtexts and Society written by David Barnett and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-05-31 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Element proposes a novel way of defining, understanding and approaching theatricality, a term that exists both in the theatre and, more broadly, in everyday life. It argues that four foundational, material processes of theatre-making manifest themselves in all playtexts in both overt and covert forms. Each of the four sections defines a different theatrical process, explores its functions in two chosen playtexts and examines its implications for the wider experience of the spectators outside the theatre. The study concludes with a supplementary reflection on performance to show how even seemingly untheatrical playtexts can be analysed and staged to reveal their unspoken theatricality. It also argues that this new understanding of theatricality has politics, that the artifice of any theatre and the constructedness of any society are analogous and that both, consequently, can be fundamentally changed. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Download or read book Theatricality written by Tracy C. Davis and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of specially-commissioned, accessible, essays explores that element of performance theory known as theatricality. Six case studies use historically specific circumstances to illustrate how and why the concept of theatricality was and is used. Topics discussed include early use of the term; employment of 'theatricality' by a number of other disciplines to describe events; non-Western interpretation of theatricality; and its use when discussing and analyzing political and cultural events and philosophies. The book provides a first-step guide for those discovering the complex yet rewarding world of performance theory.
Download or read book Roman Tragedy written by Mario Erasmo and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roman tragedies were written for over three hundred years, but only fragments remain of plays that predate the works of Seneca in the mid-first century C.E., making it difficult to define the role of tragedy in ancient Roman culture. Nevertheless, in this pioneering book, Mario Erasmo draws on all the available evidence to trace the evolution of Roman tragedy from the earliest tragedians to the dramatist Seneca and to explore the role played by Roman culture in shaping the perception of theatricality on and off the stage. Performing a philological analysis of texts informed by semiotic theory and audience reception, Erasmo pursues two main questions in this study: how does Roman tragedy become metatragedy, and how did off-stage theatricality come to compete with the theatre? Working chronologically, he looks at how plays began to incorporate a rhetoricized reality on stage, thus pointing to their own theatricality. And he shows how this theatricality, in turn, came to permeate society, so that real events such as the assassination of Julius Caesar took on theatrical overtones, while Pompey's theatre opening and the lavish spectacles of the emperor Nero deliberately blurred the lines between reality and theatre. Tragedy eventually declined as a force in Roman culture, Erasmo suggests, because off-stage reality became so theatrical that on-stage tragedy could no longer compete.
Download or read book The Theater of Plautus written by Timothy J. Moore and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationship between actors and spectators has been of perennial interest to playwrights. The Roman playwright Plautus (ca. 200 BCE) was particularly adept at manipulating this relationship. Plautus allowed his actors to acknowledge freely the illusion in which they were taking part, to elicit laughter through humorous asides and monologues, and simultaneously to flatter and tease the spectators. These metatheatrical techniques are the focus of Timothy J. Moore's innovative study of the comedies of Plautus. The first part of the book examines Plautus' techniques in detail, while the second part explores how he used them in the plays Pseudolus, Amphitruo, Curculio, Truculentus, Casina, and Captivi. Moore shows that Plautus employed these dramatic devices not only to entertain his audience but also to satirize aspects of Roman society, such as shady business practices and extravagant spending on prostitutes, and to challenge his spectators' preconceptions about such issues as marriage and slavery. These findings forge new links between Roman comedy and the social and historical context of its performance.
Download or read book Incapacity and Theatricality written by Tony McCaffrey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Incapacity and Theatricality acknowledges the distinctive contribution to contemporary theatrical performance made by actors with intellectual disabilities. It presents a close examination of certain key theatrical performances across a variety of different media, including John Cassavetes’ 1963 social issues film A Child Is Waiting; the performance art collaboration between Robert Wilson and Christopher Knowles; and the provocative pranksterism of Christoph Schlingensief’s talent show mockumentary FreakStars 3000. Tracing a global path of performances, Incapacity and Theatricality offers an analysis of how actors with intellectual disabilities have emerged onto the main stage, and how their inclusion calls into question long-held assumptions about both theatre and intellectual disability. For postgraduate students, or anyone interested in the shifting dynamics of twenty-first century theatre, McCaffrey’s work offers a vital consideration of the intersubjective relations between people with and without intellectual disabilities and ultimately addresses urgent questions about the situation and representation of the contemporary subject caught up somewhere between incapacity and theatricality.
Download or read book Theatricality Playtexts and Society written by David Barnett and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Element proposes a novel way of defining, understanding and approaching theatricality, a term that exists both in the theatre and, more broadly, in everyday life. It argues that four foundational, material processes of theatre-making manifest themselves in all playtexts in both overt and covert forms. Each of the four sections defines a different theatrical process, explores its functions in two chosen playtexts and examines its implications for the wider experience of the spectators outside the theatre. The Element concludes with a supplementary reflection on performance to show how even seemingly untheatrical playtexts can be analysed and staged to reveal their unspoken theatricality. It also argues that this new understanding of theatricality has a politics, that the artifice of any theatre and the constructedness of any society are analogous and that both, consequently, can be fundamentally changed. This Element is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Download or read book Stages of Reality written by André Loiselle and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2012-04-12 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking collection of original essays, Stages of Reality establishes a new paradigm for understanding the relationship between stage and screen media. This comprehensive volume explores the significance of theatricality within critical discourse about cinema and television. Stages of Reality connects the theory and practice of cinematic theatricality through conceptual analyses and close readings of films including The Matrix and There Will be Blood. Contributors illuminate how this mode of address disrupts expectations surrounding cinematic form and content, evaluating strategies such as ostentatious performances, formal stagings, fragmentary montages, and methods of dialogue delivery and movement. Detailing connections between cinematic artifice and topics such as politics, gender, and genre, Stages of Reality allows readers to develop a clear sense of the multiple purposes and uses of theatricality in film.
Download or read book Playing the Other written by Froma I. Zeitlin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 498 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Zeitlin explores the diversity and complexity of these interactions through the most influential literary texts of the archaic and classical periods, from epic (Homer) and didactic poetry (Hesiod) to the productions of tragedy and comedy in fifth-century Athens.
Download or read book Theatre and Politics written by Joe Kelleher and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2009-06 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the first titles in this vibrant and eye-catching new series of short, sharp, shots for theatre students.
Download or read book The Poetics of Performance Diagrams written by Andrej Mirčev and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-30 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Element considers the concept of performance diagrams and shows their historical, epistemic and aesthetic functions in theatre and dance. In three sections, the author surveys the architectural model of theatre by Vitruvius, the woodcut of Marlow's Doctor Faustus, Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne-Atlas, the spells and drawings of Antonin Artaud, the performance Paradise Now (the Living Theatre) and the choreography I am 1984 (Barbara Matijević). Demonstrating that diagrams can be applied to multiply dramaturgical trajectories, the text reviews their relevance for performance-making, analysis and documentation. The author argues that diagrams provide new tools for theory, practice and archiving, while at the same time enabling reflection on the intersections between poetics and politics. Focusing on the potentiality of diagrams to cut through representation and dichotomies, this Element affirms the visual, corporeal and spatial dimensions of performance-making. In doing so, it elucidates the significance of diagrammatic thinking for performance studies.
Download or read book Early Modern Theatricality written by Henry S. Turner and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013-12 with total page 637 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early Modern Theatricality brings together some of the most innovative critics in the field to examine the many conventions that characterized early modern theatricality. It generates fresh possibilities for criticism, combining historical, formal, and philosophical questions, in order to provoke our rediscovery of early modern drama.
Download or read book Performance and Theatricality in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance written by Mark Cruse and published by Brepols Publishers. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume is a contribution to the cross-cultural study of theater and performance in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The studies gathered here examine material from Austria, England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, and Spain from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century. Underlying all of these essays is the understanding that performance shapes reality--that in all of the cultural contexts included here, performance opened a space in which patrons, rulers, writers, painters, spectators, and readers could see themselves or their societies differently, and thereby could assume different identities or construct alternative communities. Addressing confession and private devotion, urban theater and pageantry, royal legitimacy and religious debate, and a wide range of genres and media, this volume offers a panoramic mosaic of the world-making role of theater and performance in medieval and early modern European societies.
Download or read book Catullus and Roman Comedy written by Christopher B. Polt and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-21 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that Catullus adapts Roman comedy to explore private ideas about love, friendship, and social rivalry.
Download or read book Science on Stage written by Kirsten Shepherd-Barr and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science on Stage is the first full-length study of the phenomenon of "science plays"--theatrical events that weave scientific content into the plot lines of the drama. The book investigates the tradition of science on the stage from the Renaissance to the present, focusing in particular on the current wave of science playwriting. Drawing on extensive interviews with playwrights and directors, Kirsten Shepherd-Barr discusses such works as Michael Frayn's Copenhagen and Tom Stoppard's Arcadia. She asks questions such as, What accounts for the surge of interest in putting science on the stage? What areas of science seem most popular with playwrights, and why? How has the tradition evolved throughout the centuries? What currents are defining it now? And what are some of the debates and controversies surrounding the use of science on stage? Organized by scientific themes, the book examines selected contemporary plays that represent a merging of theatrical form and scientific content--plays in which the science is literally enacted through the structure and performance of the play. Beginning with a discussion of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, the book traces the history of how scientific ideas (quantum mechanics and fractals, for example) are dealt with in theatrical presentations. It discusses the relationship of science to society, the role of science in our lives, the complicated ethical considerations of science, and the accuracy of the portrayal of science in the dramatic context. The final chapter looks at some of the most recent and exciting developments in science playwriting that are taking the genre in innovative directions and challenging the audience's expectations of a science play. The book includes a comprehensive annotated list of four centuries of science plays, which will be useful for teachers, students, and general readers alike.
Download or read book Jane Austen and the Theatre written by Penny Gay and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-03-16 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jane Austen was fascinated by theatre from her childhood. As an adult she went to the theatre whenever opportunity arose. Scenes in her novels often resemble plays, and recent film and television versions have shown how naturally dramatic her stories are. Yet the myth remains that she was 'anti-theatrical', and readers continue to puzzle about the real significance of the theatricals in Mansfield Park. Penny Gay's book describes for the first time the rich theatrical context of Austen's writing, and the intersections between her novels and contemporary drama. Gay proposes a 'dialogue' in Austen's mature novels with the various genres of eighteenth-century drama - laughing comedy, sentimental comedy and tragedy, Gothic theatre, early melodrama. She re reads the novels in the light of this dialogue to demonstrate Austen's analysis of the pervasive theatricality of the society in which her heroines must perform.
Download or read book French Visual Culture and the Making of Medieval Theater written by Laura Weigert and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-30 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book revives what was unique, strange and exciting about the variety of performances that took place in the realms of the French kings and Burgundian dukes. Laura Weigert brings together a wealth of visual artifacts and practices to explore this tradition of late medieval performance located not in 'theaters' but in churches, courts, and city streets and squares. By stressing the theatricality rather than the realism of fifteenth-century visual culture and the spectacular rather than the devotional nature of its effects, she offers a new way of thinking about late medieval representation and spectatorship. She shows how images that ostensibly document medieval performance instead revise its characteristic features to conform to a playgoing experience that was associated with classical antiquity. This retrospective vision of the late medieval performance tradition contributed to its demise in sixteenth-century France and promoted assumptions about medieval theater that continue to inform the contemporary disciplines of art and theater history.
Download or read book Drama and Resistance written by Claire Sponsler and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a cultural and historical context for medieval popular drama. In Drama and Resistance, Claire Sponsler explores the intertwined histories of bodily subjectivity, commodity culture, and theatricality in late medieval England. In a fascinating consideration of popular drama in the period from 1350 to 1520, she argues that many types of performances during this time represented cultural evasions of the imposition of disciplinary power. The medieval theater was a social site where resistance, masked from the full scrutiny of authority by theatricality, was practiced, articulated, and enacted. Sponsler examines three key discourses of authoritarian bodily and commodity control -- clothing laws, conduct literature, and Books of Hours -- and pairs them with three kinds of theatrical performances that enact resistance to disciplining codes -- Robin Hood performances, morality plays, and Corpus Christi pageants. She considers the contradictions and inconsistencies in the repressive official discourses and analyzes the ways in which the staging of forbidden acts like cross-dressing, social and sexual misbehavior, and violence against the body challenged these discourses. Drawing on recent social theory, Drama and Resistance is an important contribution to medieval studies and the history of theater.
