History & Criticism

Act of violence or show of strength? In a world of spectacular suffering and power plays - large and small - what is theatre's role in protecting human dignity? With its impassioned plays, inspired activism and outspoken artists, the theatre has long...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781801511407Author Kelly MatthewsFormat PaperbackPage Count 256Imprint Four Courts Press LtdPublisher Four Courts Press Ltd

This is the first major collection of critical responses to performance lighting and includes contributions from award-winning lighting designers, researchers and artists. Showcasing recent examples of work - with case studies of lighting practices in...

One of the most frank and authentic accounts yet written of the pressures placed on today's stars King Lear is perhaps the most challenging role in the Shakespearian canon. In 1991, directed by Deborah Warner, Brian Cox gave a highly-acclaimed...

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...

Richard Schechner's pioneering textbook is a lively, accessible overview of the full range of performance, with primary extracts, student activities, key biographies, and over 200 images of global performance. The publication of Performance Studies: An...

Strongly influenced by Classical drama, Jean Racine (1639-99) broke away from the grandiose theatricality of baroque drama to create works of intense psychological realism, with characters manipulated by cruel and vengeful gods. Iphigenia depicts a...

Written specifically for GCSE students by academics in the field, the Methuen Drama GCSE Student Editions provide in-depth explanatory material alongside the play texts frequently studied at Key Stage 4. Whether for use in the classroom or...

Attempts on her Life 17 scenarios for the theatre by Martin Crimp Attempts to describe her? Attempts to destroy her? Or attempts to destroy herself? Is Anne the object of violence? Or its terrifying practitioner? Martin Crimps 17 scenarios for the...

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...

'Beginning Shakespeare' introduces students to the study of Shakespeare, and grounds their understanding of his work in theoretical discourses. After an introductory survey of the dominant approaches of the past, seven chapters examine the major current...

The 'macabre', as a process and product, has been haunting the theatre - and more broadly, performance - for thousands of years. In its embodied meditations on death and dying, its thematic and aesthetic grotesquerie, and its sensory-rich environments,...

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...

A comprehensive companion to the six-part Emmy-winning PBS documentary series, Broadway: The American Musical is the gold standard of musical theater history books, tracing the roots of the art form at the turn of the twentieth century through the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781598537093Author MoliereFormat HardbackPage Count 1134Imprint The Library of AmericaPublisher The Library of America

"This book is a fascinating cri de coeur and made me question everything I think about musicals" Alan Cumming A book for those who can't stand musicals, those who love them, and every theatregoer, academic, practitioner and student in between...

Now published in the Bloomsbury Revelations series, this is a classic work on the power and importance of drama by renowned American playwright, screenwriter and essayist David Mamet. In this short but arresting series of essays, David Mamet explains...

Addressing a wide range of improvised art and music forms-from jazz and cinema to dance and literature-this volume's contributors locate improvisation as a key site of mediation between the social and the aesthetic. As a catalyst for social experiment...

In the first major academic work to examine British variety theatre, Double provides a detailed history of this art form and analyses its performance dynamics and techniques. Encompassing singers, comedians, dancers, magicians, ventriloquists and diverse...

'Enchanting' - Simon Russell Beale 'Remarkable' - James Shapiro'Wonderful . . . compulsively readable' - Nicholas HytnerWhy do the collected works of an Elizabethan writer continue to speak to us as if they were written yesterday?When Robert McCrum began...

Raised in poverty on an Iowa farm, the Cherry Sisters had little education and no training. But they possessed a burning desire to take to the stage and show the world what they could do-and what they could do was awful. Their unique act was "so bad it...

Frantic Assembly have had a powerful and continuing influence on the popularisation of devising practices in contemporary theatre-making. Their work blends brave and bold physical theatre with exciting new writing, and they have collaborated with some of...

Who were the giants of the twentieth-century stage, and exactly how did they influence modern theatre?Robert Leach's Makers of Modern Theatre is the first detailed introduction to the work of the key theatre-makers who shaped the drama of the last...

What were the origins of commedia dell'arte and how did it evolve as a dramatic form over time and as it spread from Italy? How did its relationship to the ruling ideology of the day change during the Enlightenment? What is its legacy today? These are...

British theatre is booming. But where do these beautiful buildings and exciting plays come from? And when did the story start? To find out we time travel back to the age of the first Queen Elizabeth in the 16th century, four hundred years ago when there...

"A must-read for anyone interested in the history of drag performance."- Publishers WeeklyA 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...

This title provides informative critical introduction to Beckett's "Waiting for Godot", one of the most commonly studied modern plays."Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot" is not only an indisputably important and influential dramatic text - it is also...

Since its original publication in 1996, Marvin Carlson's Performance: A Critical Introduction has remained the definitive guide to understanding performance as a theatrical activity. It is an unparalleled exploration of the myriad ways in which...

Dramaturgy is at the heart of any musical theatre score, proving that song and music combined can collectively act as drama. The Musical Theatre Composer as Dramatist: A Handbook for Collaboration offers techniques for approaching a musical with the...

In this lavishly illustrated hands-on account of the creation of new theatre spaces spanning a century, Iain Mackintosh offers a compelling history that is part memoir, part impassioned call to rethink the design of our theatre spaces and the future of...

**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...

A fascinating look at the gay and lesbian influence on the American stage by an internationally-recognized authority on the topic From the genteel female impersonators of the 1910s to the raucous drag queens of La Cage Aux Folles, from the men of The...

Slaves to Fashion is a pioneering cultural history of the black dandy, from his emergence in Enlightenment England to his contemporary incarnations in the cosmopolitan art worlds of London and New York. It is populated by sartorial impresarios such as...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780486440149Author Friedrich PerzynskiFormat PaperbackPage Count 176Imprint Dover Publications Inc.Publisher Dover Publications Inc.Weight(grams)...

"On Beckett: Essays and Criticism" is the first collection of writings about the Nobel Prize-winning author that covers the entire spectrum of his work, and also affords a rare glimpse of the private Beckett. More has been written about Samuel Beckett...

When the Portuguese seafarer Afonso de Albuquerque conquered the bustling port of Malacca in 1511, he effectively gained control of the entire South China Sea spice trade. Although Portuguese dominance lasted only 130 years, its legacy lies at the heart...

This play is a celebration of London life and theatre in which Francis Beaumont's comic genius is given free rein. A grocer, his wife and their two apprentices attending the theatre in holiday mood interrupt and finally replace a fatuous love comedy with...

This book provides an exhaustive account of the performance history of Euripides' tragedy and its various versions and adaptations from 1500 to 2000, filling some of the yawning gaps left by previous accounts of Medea.Book InformationISBN...

The Origin of German Tragic Drama is Walter Benjamin's most sustained and original work. It begins with a general theoretical introduction on the nature of the baroque art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, concentrating on the peculiar...

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