History & Criticism

The legendary 1964 Broadway run of Hamlet directed by John Gielgud is one of the most famous productions of Shakespeare's most important play. Audacious for its time in concept and execution, it placed the actors in everyday clothes within an unassuming...

Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name! In a...

Harnessing the romance of the world of fashion and high art, this fascinating story of a collection of miniature mannequins describes the birth of Theatre de la Mode, the Theater of Fashion. Full of stars such as Robert Ricci (Nina Ricci's son),...

'The first duty of a storyteller is to tell a story.' Or was it 'The only duty of a storyteller is to tell a story'?A writer in a totalitarian state is interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories and their similarities to a number of...

Adapted from a series of four lectures, originally delivered as the first of the Granada Northern Lectures Peter Brook's The Empty Space is an exploration of four aspects of theatre, 'Deadly, Holy, Rough and Immediate', published in Penguin Modern...

In 1956 John Osborne's Look Back in Anger changed the course of English theatre.'Look Back in Anger presents post-war youth as it really is. To have done this at all would be a significant achievement; to have done it in a first play is a minor miracle...

'One drink. And if you never want to see me again you never have to see me again.'A quantum physicist and a beekeeper meet. They hit it off, or perhaps they don't. They might go home together, they might not.Constellations explores love, free will, and...

Newsroom, political platform, local hot spot, confession box, preacher-pulpit and football stadium. For generations, African men have gathered in barber shops to discuss the world. These are places where the banter can be barbed and the truth is always...

**As featured on Barack Obama's Summer 2022 Reading List**Winner of the Gordon Burn PrizeWinner of the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in NonfictionFinalist for the National Book Critics Circle AwardFinalist for the Pen/Diamonstein-Spievogel...

Acting, direction, stagecraft, theatre architecture and design, the extraordinary evolution of dramatic literature - here is an all-embracing and richly illustrated history, global in scope and ranging from the ancient origins of the theatre in the...

Slowly I learnt the ways of humans: how to ruin, how to hate, how to debase, how to humiliate. And at the feet of my master I learnt the highest of human skills, the skill no other creature owns: I finally learnt how to lie.Childlike in his innocence but...

Exam Board: Edexcel Level: GCSE Grade 9-1 Subject: English Literature Suitable for the 2024 exams Everything you need to revise for your...

Musical theatre is often perceived as either a Broadway based art form, or as having separate histories in London and New York. Musical Theatre Histories: Expanding the Narrative, however, depicts the musical as neither American nor British, but both and...

First published in 1938, The Theatre and Its Double is a collection of essays detailing Antonin Artaud's radical theories on drama and theatre, which he saw as being stifled by conservatism and lack of experimentation. Containing the famous manifestos of...

A bold new account of how celebrity worksWhy do we care so much about celebrities? Who decides who gets to be a star? Do celebrities deserve the outsized attention they receive? Sharon Marcus challenges everything you thought you knew about our obsession...

What happens to politics when it takes the form of theatre? How has theatre both exploited and undermined politics both in society and on the stage?Theatre& Politics explores the complex relationship between theatre and politics, questioning some of the...

What if the work of a nurse, physio, or homecare worker was designated an art, so that the qualities of the experiences they create became understood as aesthetic qualities? What if the interactions created by artists, directors, dancers, or workshop...

A look at how Pamela Colman Smith's theatrical knowledge and experience came into play when she drew the iconic cards of the Rider-Waite-Smith deck.The "secrets" in this book have been known all along, and they work in all who read Tarot on a...

This volume offers a critique of cultural and intellectual life in Greece during the dictatorship of 1967-1974, discussing how Greek playwrights, directors, and actors reconceived the role of culture in a state of crisis and engaged with questions of...

Teddy, a philosophy professor in an American university, brings his wife Ruth to visit his father, uncle and two brothers at his old London home, after years of estrangement. In the intense conflict that follows, it is Ruth who becomes the focus of their...

Authoritative and wide-ranging, this absorbing account of the history of theatre draws on the latest scholarly research to describe and celebrate theatre's greatest achievemenst over 4,500 years, from festival performances in ancient Egypt to...

Authoritative and wide-ranging, this absorbing account of the history of theatre draws on the latest scholarly research to describe and celebrate theatre's greatest achievemenst over 4,500 years, from festival performances in ancient Egypt to...

Thomas Ostermeier is the most internationally recognised German theatre director of the present. With this book, he presents his directorial method for the first time. The Theatre of Thomas Ostermeier provides a toolkit for understanding and enacting the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781403961709Author Allain PaulFormat HardbackPage Count 240Imprint Palgrave MacmillanPublisher Palgrave USA

This is a provocative exploration of how the self is revealed or exposed in the experience of reading, viewing and writing about Shakespeare. Following the ethos and ambition of the "Shakespeare Now!" series, and harnessing the energy, challenge and...

Both dramatic and musical theater are part of the tradition that has made Austria - especially Vienna - and the old Habsburg lands synonymous with high culture in Central Europe. Many works, often controversial originally but now considered as classics,...

Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture addresses what may be the single most important question facing all kinds of performance today. What is the status of live performance in a culture dominated by mass media and digital technologies?Since its...

Jessica Swale's Blue Stockings is the empowering and surprising story of four young women fighting for their right to a university education in a world that assumed women belonged at home. First produced professionally at Shakespeare's Globe in 2013, and...

From before history was recorded to the present day, theatre has been a major artistic form around the world. From puppetry to mimes and street theatre, this complex art has utilized all other art forms such as dance, literature, music, painting,...

What does it mean for a play to be political in the 21st century? Does it require explicit engagement with events and situations with the aim of bringing about change or highlighting social wrongs? Is it purely a matter of content or is it also a matter...

Stephen Greenblatt's Will in the World is widely recognised to be the fullest and most brilliant account ever written of Shakespeare's life, his work and his age.Shakespeare was a man of his time, constantly engaging with his audience's deepest desires...

This volume contains Harold Pinter's first six plays, including The Birthday Party.The Birthday PartyStanley Webber is visited in his boarding house by two strangers, Goldberg and McCann. An innocent-seeming birthday party for Stanley turns into a...

Musical Theatre: A History is a new revised edition of a proven core text for college and secondary school students - and an insightful and accessible celebration of twenty-five centuries of great theatrical entertainment. As an educator with...

It was with this play that Harold Pinter had his first major success, and its production history since it was first performed in 1960 has established the work as a landmark in twentieth-century drama.The obsessive caretaker, Davies, whose papers are in...

When an essay is due and dreaded exams loom, here's the lit-crit help students need to succeed! SparkNotes Literature Guides make studying smarter, better, and faster. They provide chapter-by-chapter analysis, explanations of key themes, motifs, and...

Since the sixties, Keith Johnstone has led the work on improvisation in theatre, schools and universities. His unique ideas, set out in the classic text, Impro, have now been taken up by practitioners the world over. Impro for Storytellers builds on and...

From the 'Winner of Winners' of the Baillie Gifford Prize, a timely and dramatic story of a utopian American experiment, and the self-serving politicians that engineered its downfall.1935. As part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's progressive New...

This book provides a deep-dive into the dressmaking of the late Eighteenth Century.By combining the author's experience with drafting patterns from surviving eighteenth-century garments with fashion plates and period-correct reproduction methods this...

Stanislavski and the Actor offers a clear, modern presentation of Konstantin Stanislavski's methods of actor training and rehearsal. It is based on the course Stanislavski designed and taught with a team of hand-picked assistants in the last three years...

Stanislavski in Practice is an unparalleled step-by-step guide to Stanislavski's system. Author Nick O'Brien makes this cornerstone of acting accessible to teachers and students alike through the use of practical exercises that allow students to develop...