History & Criticism

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...

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...

'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...

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...

Ever since the signing of the Armistice in 1918, theatre has played an important part in reflecting the experience of the 'war to end all wars'. But on the Home Front, what role did those involved with British theatre play during those tumultuous four...

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...

Insubordinate Costume: Inspiring Performance presents a comprehensive study of historical and contemporary examples of scenographic costume - the type of costume that creates an almost complete stage environment by itself, simultaneously acting as...

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...

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...

Providing one of the first critically sustained engagements with the new forms of verbatim and testimonial theatre that emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s, this book examines what distinguishes verbatim theatre from the more established...

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...

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

'Adrian Noble vigorously highlights the extraordinary rhythmic, linguistic patterns Shakespeare gives the speaker. Any actor will find this book invaluable. For any student of Shakespeare it should be essential.' (From the Foreword by Ralph Fiennes)'How...

What do we mean when we talk about bodies in theatre? And how does theatre affect the way we think about the human body?Bodies are vital elements of theatre production and spectatorship. But the body is not just physical, it is also conceptual. Drawing...

This volume in the Routledge Key Guides series provides a round-up of the fifty musicals whose creations were seminal in altering the landscape of musical theater discourse in the English-speaking world.Each entry summarises a show, including a full...

'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...

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...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780956501370Author Alan StockwellFormat PaperbackPage Count 234Imprint Vesper Hawk PublishingPublisher Vesper Hawk PublishingWeight(grams)...

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...

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...

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

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

One Tough Dame: The Life and Career of Diana Rigg offers a sweeping portrait of the revered performer's life and career. Deemed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1994, Diana Rigg (1938-2020) initially found fame as super sleuth Mrs...

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...

The new revised edition of the uncensored 'Acto-biography' of the most controversial thespian of his generation. The memoirs of Nicholas Craig - theatrical eminence best known for his Trueplate in The Cuckolde of Leicester and more popularly as Gob in Oh...

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...

Hollywood's conversion to sound in the 1920s created an early peak in the film musical following the immense success of The Jazz Singer. The opportunity to synchronize moving pictures with a soundtrack suited the musical in particular, since the...

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...

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...

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...

In 1956 Harry Belafonte's Calypso became the first LP to sell more than a million copies. For a few fleeting months, calypso music was the top-selling genre in the US-it even threatened to supplant rock and roll. Stolen Time provides a vivid cultural...

Kabuki is well known for its exaggerated acting, flamboyant costumes and makeup, and unnatural storylines. The onnagata, usually male actors who perform the roles of women, have been an important aspect of kabuki since its beginnings in the 17th century...

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...