This is our backup site. Click here to visit our main site at MellenPress.com
Subject Area: Theater
Van Cleve, John W.2019 1-4955-0737-3 264 pages
The plays in this volume are from the 1740s. Works from the early literary Enlightenment respond not only to the demand of educated people for rational responses to real-world situations but also to a new desire within the developing middle class to read about recognizable joys, sorrows and tensions within families and between husbands and wives. The audience for this literature held those expectations, and playwrights tried to satisfy them on the contemporary stage.
Van Cleve, John W.
2020 1-4955-0982-6 226 pages
Julius of Taranto and The Twins> first appeared during a brief literary movement that launched the career of Germany’s finest writer, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, and set the direction taken by the literature, art and music of the West during the nineteenth century, Romanticism. That German movement, commonly styled “Sturm und Drang,” or “Storm and Stress,” begins in the latest 1760s and is coming to an end by 1780. It is in German literature of the 1790s that European Romanticism first emerged fully formed, and for over a century scholars have cited the debt that Romanticism owes to Storm and Stress.
Kenny, Robert V.
2021 1-4955-0852-8 150 pages
Dr. Kenny brings us this collections of two eighteenth-century French plays from the beginning of the French colonial empire in North America. The French public was obsessed with the New World and these two plays are about the subject.
Austin, Karen
1992 0-7734-9175-9 272 pages
Reality/Realidad is the second of Galdós' paired novels which tell the same story from two very different perspectives, and through two very different narrative structures. The first, The Unknown, was an epistolary novel. Reality, presented here in English, is wholly theatrical and dramaticized - an intriguing and, for its time (1889), very innovative, standpoint. It was later reworked into a proper drama, acclaimed by publics and critics alike.
Chishty-Mujahid, Nadya Q.
2020 1-4955-0816-1 76 pages
Dr. Nadya Chishty-Mujahid wrote a Pakistani college-based play in English. I had been thinking about the art of fiction and thought that an annotated version of the attached play would make for a good monograph-with detailed explanatory notes, a few translations.
George, David
2008 0-7734-4984-1 144 pages
Examines Coriolanus, the last of Shakespeare’s Roman plays, by providing insight into the play’s adapters, their adaptations, and the critical reaction that each received in their time.
Longstaffe, Stephen
2002 0-7734-7118-9 316 pages
Essential to an understanding of the politics of the history play in the 1590s through its presentation of the original `peasants' revolt' of 1381. This first-ever annotated edition in English will help to broaden the debates around the politics of the drama at the end of Elizabeth's reign, combining a synthesis of previous scholarship and criticism with the fruits of new research. It offers a lightly modernized and corrected edition of the text and of the play's history, it features a long critical discussion placing the play in its intellectual and critical context. Extensive selections from the two major chronicle sources, Holinshed's and Grafton's Chronicles, and the relevant sections of two other texts often associated with the play, Nelson's Lord Mayor's Pageant of 1590 and Richard Johnson's 1592 Worthies of London.
Krummrich, Philip
2010 0-7734-1375-8 336 pages
This translation of Anfitrião, ou Júpiter e Alcmena by Antônio José da Silva makes this remarkable play on the exploits of Jupiter and the conception of Hercules available in English for the first time. The play is of considerable interest in literary history as part of a long tradition of stage works on the Amphitryon theme.
Perry, Frederick J.
1992 0-7734-9810-9 172 pages
This book is the product of a computer-aided text analysis of Sam Shepard's Buried Child. Its methodology centers on the idea that one gains a greater understanding of a "whole" from a complete analysis of its parts, the parts of a playscript being each character's dialogue and the stage directions. The computer performed a double breakdown of the script: first, the separate parts in full-line text; second, formatting the separate parts into individual concordances. (Thus "reconstructing the text."). The human activity is also on two levels. First, an analysis of full-line text; then the analysis of the concordance files. The investigation is concluded with an analytical/critical essay comparing the project's findings with that of published critical analyses.
Levitt, H. N.
1999 0-7734-3084-9 64 pages
Imagined scenario of the intimate details of Achilles’ story describing the events that led to the Trojan war and defeat of Hector.
Mackenney, Linda
2000 0-7734-7905-8 320 pages
Provides valuable primary research on the activities of popular dramatists and drama groups in Scotland who played an important role in the late blossoming of a Scottish National Drama. Includes Joe Corrie’s Fife Miner Players, Glasgow Unity Theatre, and Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop. These companies produced a wide range of original works on contemporary issues (the General Strike of 1926, unemployment in the Hungry 30s, Glasgow’s post-war housing shortage) as well as religious, racial, and gender issues. They adopted a variety of styles, from agit-prop to social realism., and made creative use of popular forms of entertainment, from the Burns Supper to the village concert. It provides an interesting comparison with the work of other international popular drama movements.
Chávez, Marzena
2001 0-7734-7533-8 136 pages
West, Larry E.
1997 0-7734-8698-4 686 pages
This translation and introduction is intended to fill a crucial void in German literary and linguistic scholarship by 1) making the play available to an English-speaking audience; 2) examining its origins, development, staging, and unique contributions to the genre; and 3) providing a companion text for students of late Middle High German. The Alsfeld Passion Play represents the culmination, and perhaps the most complex stage of development of the German Passion Play tradition. The Alsfeld play was a three-day play, with performances in 1501, 1511, and 1517. With roles for 188 players it was presented on the open market square, and was conspicuous for its extensive devils' scenes, portrayal of Mary Magdalene before her conversion, and lengthy disputation scenes. At present there are no known translations of the Alsfeld play, in modern German or in English. The original manuscript, preserved at the Landesbibliothek in Kassel, contains 8095 lines of dialogue along with incipits, stage directions, and a rich variety of liturgical songs. Text and translations appear on facing pages. This book is available at a special text price. Call (716) 754-2788 for information on text orders.
Rojo, Jerry
2000 0-7734-7750-0 260 pages
This book describes a method of performing whereby the actor uses his own mind-body experiences or psychophysical self in a workshop structure that utilizes some 70 theatre games and exercises. This technique places special emphasis on revealing the actor’s self-personality, which is then used as basis for creating a role in a theatre piece. The workshop is structured so that each session is played out in real time using real action, idea and emotion. Beyond revealing the actor’s self, the method’s goal is to give focus to the body and its ability to be expressive in a visual non-verbal sense. Part One introduces the theory behind the method; Part Two describes the function of games and exercises in the workshop situation; and Part Three includes descriptions of games and exercises. With illustrations
Wagner, Eva
1992 0-7734-9459-6 264 pages
Part one of this study presents a general discussion of a new theory of the tragic, an outline of the history of tragedy, and the methodology. Part two contains interpretations of Grillparzer's ten completed dramas with regard to their tragic nature and to fate and guilt concepts in particular. The third is a summary, a general discussion of Grillparzer as tragedian, and a proposal for solving the dilemma experienced by many interpreters in this context.
White, Richard Kerry
1995 0-7734-8873-1 264 pages
This practical handbook of terms, theories and styles relevant to the study and practice of dramaturgy encompasses textual, performance and production conventions as they have appeared throughout the history of drama and theatre. It is intended primarily for university students and teachers of dramatic literature, theatre history and aesthetics, and dramatic theory. The entries contain factual information, definitions and commentaries. All terms are cross-referenced, and many entries are illustrated and include suggestions for further study in addition to footnotes and a selected bibliography. Thirteen diagrams and drawings.
Rice, Paul F.
1996 0-7734-8865-0 232 pages
John Abraham Fisher (1744-1806) was one of the most important English musicians and composers of his generation. The range of his compositional activities demonstrates the diversity of his interests. In addition to playing in theatres, he performed his own works at the pleasure gardens at Vauxhall and Marylebone, and also composed cantatas, anthems, an oratorio, symphonies, and chamber music. The present volume gives evidence of his contributions to the musical life of not only the Covent Garden theatre, but British musical life in general.
Taub, Michael
2019 978-0-7799-5379-0 288 pages
This book is an edited collection of three plays by Israeli Playwright Edna Mayza. The plays are: Games in the Backyard, The New Criminals and The Back Room.
Root, Scott L.
2004 0-7734-6531-6 175 pages
Robert M. Beadell (1925-1994) modestly referred to himself as a “neoclassic eclectic composer” and an “obscure regional composer”, yet these appellations do not begin to describe the importance of his contribution to twentieth century American music. The four music drams which are the subject of this study are each very different in their size and scope, yet all bear the unmistakable stamp of Beadell’s unique blend of music and drama. This book intends to show that the four music dramas are unique examples of American opera and should have the opportunity to be examined for their musicological and dramatic worth so that American opera directors and impresarios can decide if they should be included as definitive examples of American opera.
Wang, Qun
1999 0-7734-7942-2 204 pages
Exploress Wilson's emphasis on African American language forms, histories and identities, particularly examining his linguistic and metaphoric borrowing from the blues. It examines the aesthetic debates on African American artists from the Harlem Renaissance to the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. After establishing the cultural and artistic frame, the study then devotes a chapter each to Wilson's most celebrated plays: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Fences, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, The Piano Lesson, Two Trains Running, and Seven Guitars.
Roe, Ian Frank
1991 0-7734-9725-0 307 pages
Provides a general survey with the main emphasis on the thematic and dramatic content of the plays (genesis and background, structure, characters, major themes), though questions of language, style and imagery are not neglected, especially where these contribute to the play's theatrical effectiveness. This work's most important contribution to scholarship is the investigation of Grillparzer's interest in the Classical generation of writers, reflected in almost all his works, either in the form of a debt to a particular work or in the echoing of key philosophical themes of the period.
Burch, Steven Dedalus
2008 0-7734-5084-X 252 pages
This work examines the contributions to two British theatre traditions of Andrew P. Wilson and the birth pangs accompanying the idea and the reality of a national theatre in Ireland and Scotland. The only book of its kind, it is a critical biography of one man’s work and a call to recognize important persons whom scholars have deemed as canonically dispensable.
Grote, Georg
2003 0-7734-6811-0 256 pages
The period between the fall of Parnell in 1890 and the Easter Rising 1916, is one of the most complex in Irish history due to the close interrelation between politics and culture. Literature played a significant role in the gestation of the modern Irish nation, and the Anglo-Irish Literary Movement led by Lady Gregory, William Butler Yeats, and John Millington Synge became repeatedly involved in the political struggle. This book investigates the intricate relationship between writers and politics and their responsibility for the emerging radicalization of nationalism toward 1916. It also considers the question of the writers’ own involvement in the nationalist cause, and focuses on the interplay of politics, nationalism and the very human element of personality and timing in order to elucidate the mechanics of national mobilization before 1916.
Swanson, Alan
2012 0-7734-2571-3 168 pages
An annotated edition of Joshua Barnes The Academie, or The Cambridge Dunns, with a new essay on the place of Barnes in 17th English Theatre. Swanson examines the bawdy and dark satire of the Cambridge playwright Joshua Barnes whose play savages the university and town. Barnes’ annotated version of this play sheds new light on English satire and Barnes as a “university wit,” while situating the play’s importance by differentiating it from its contemporary rivals in London.
Taub, Michael
2004 0-7734-6307-0 460 pages
This book is a collection of Israeli plays translated into English and published for the first time. These new works covers the period of the 1990s, which is where the plays in the author’s previous collections left off. These plays have now become classics. They have not only been chosen for their popularity, but for how they touch on burning issues of the day including the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, religious fanaticism and the post-Zionist ideology of current Israeli society.
Conlon, Raymond
2002 0-7734-6905-2 516 pages
A selection of Renaissance Italian, Spanish and Portuguese plays in translation, each accompanied by an introduction to the author and his works and their cultural milieu.
Cairns, Christopher
1996 0-7734-8821-9 452 pages
This volume offers newly-translated texts of three established classics of Italian Renaissance comedy, with scholarly introductions and bibliographies for each: Ariosto's seminal second play, The Supposes; Machiavelli's Mandrake; and the composition of the Sienese Intronati, The Deceived. The works are linked by documentable bond of influence, and also represent a solid chapter in the history of theatrical staging, since there are traces of evidence of idealised cityscape perspective sets for early performances of both The Supposes and The Deceived. These plays embody distinctive traditions and contributions to the genesis of European comedy.
DuBruck, Edelgard E.
1993 0-7734-9328-X 186 pages
This study examines two fields of research: German society of the fifteenth century, and its carnival comedies. This is a detailed treatment of the four classes (peasants, urban middle class, clergy, and nobility), including such aspects as health, the self and its historicity, and general rules of conduct. The German carnival plays are valuable literary texts allowing insight into fifteenth-century life. This book examines most of the 127 comedies in the Keller collection, listed in one of the indices, and provides translations of all quotations into modern English. It also contains a synoptic tabulation of the Nürnberg plays, valuable to both drama specialists and medievalists.
Pestureau, Gilbert
1997 0-7734-8548-1 160 pages
Working from four different versions of Beaumarchais' text, this new translation represents the entire script as Beaumarchais published it in 1775, with a few important variants. It includes an introduction, a brief biography, and the historical background setting the Beaumarchais text in context. This version of The Barber of Seville was first performed on March 8, 1996 at Court Theatre at the University of Chicago.
Hostetter, Elisabeth Schulz
2004 0-7734-6354-2 223 pages
This study uses semiotic methodology to explain how artists and state appointed administrators at the Berliner Staatstheater created and implemented an aesthetic that fulfilled the political needs of the Nazi Party in Germany from 1933 through 1944. Three propaganda plays, two classic repertory plays, and a resistance play are analyzed to determine how stage designs, costumes, repertory, publicity, and acting choices translated or resisted Nazi cultural policy in production practice.
Analysis of the changes occurring in the Berliner Staatstheater during Hitler’s reign reveals specific production elements used by the Nazis to aesthetically translate their ideology for general, bourgeois distribution. Findings indicate that, while plays written as pure propaganda by avid party members like Hanns Jost dies quickly in repertory, avenues of propaganda remained open through carefully staged NSDAP productions of classic plays by playwrights such as Goethe and Schiller. Casting, character portrayals, thematic emphasis, design elements, and publicity for these productions displayed pointed references to Nazi cultural aims.
The study verifies that theater became a means by which a centralized power structure consciously manipulated public sentiment. Nevertheless, the study also provides a counter approach to the main argument by offering a brief look at the famous Staatstheater production of Shakespeare’s Richard III that attempted to resist and refute NSDAP policy. Conclusions regarding the destructive use of propaganda in current and future cultural endeavors close the report. An appendix includes a fully translated version Joseph Goebbel’s May 7, 1933 speech before German theater leaders. This speech represents a key statement of nazi cultural policy, which criticized the individualism of Weimar theater and proposes a united commitment to use theater as a means to promote “the virtue of community”.
McClure, Arthur F.
1991 0-7734-9688-2 167 pages
The first comprehensive volume to provide convenient access to the literature, both primary and secondary, of the works of William Inge. Puts into perspective the materials available for the study of the man and his art and offers an insightful presentation of his life and career. Assesses significant published reference materials and locates research collections open to the student and scholar. Documents all Inge's writings, including all published plays, novels, articles, early newspaper work, and the archival holdings. Presents a combined biographical critical, and bibliographical picture of the life and times of Inge in the world of the dramatic arts.
Jennings, Neil
2012 0-7734-2644-2 284 pages
This book attempts to bring attention to an overlooked French playwright. It offers a biographical approach to his scholarship and shows his broad influence on Moliere, Bayle, and Leibniz among others. While his work is not well known among scholars working outside of Theatre Studies, the authors show that his life was an important influence on Seventeenth Century European culture.
Grizans, Mary Ann
1997 3-7052-0134-4 200 pages
Explores diseased and mortified bodies in English Renaissance plays usually critically dismissed as gratuitous, decadent, or sensationalistic, and considers the signifying capability of these bodies within the plays, to account for the plays' 'horrific' qualities. Offers psychoanalytic reading of the madness, ghosts, death and violence.
Howard-Hill, T. H.
1995 0-7734-9113-9 148 pages
This examination of the Bridgewater manuscript, which is one of the few surviving early 17th-century dramatic manuscripts (partially) in the playwright's hand, gives fascinating evidence of authorial transcription and the attentions of an early annotater. The publication of the Bridgewater manuscript completes the availability of primary sources for Middleton's play. Prefaced by a full description, the text is a modified diplomatic transcription, with textual notes, on the model of Malone Society editions.
Frerer, Lloyd Anton
2001 0-7734-7667-9 364 pages
Between 1842 and 1908, Bronson Howard wrote 27 plays which appeared under 39 different titles, and had opening nights in New York, London, and Berlin. By the 1890s, Howard was recognized both here and abroad as the Dean of American Dramatists. This study is both historical biography and critical analysis of the literature, concluding with an attempt to place his work in critical perspective both in terms of his own era and ours. In addition to his best-known play, the often-anthologized Civil War spectacle Shenandoah, it examines his other works such as Saratoga, Young Mrs. Winthrop, One of Our Girls, and The Henrietta.
Myers, James M.
1998 0-7734-8304-7 244 pages
This book examines the United States government’s efforts to use the motion picture industry to aid the war effort and maintain high public morale during the Second World War.
Farrell, Joseph
1997 0-7734-8465-5 272 pages
Papers in this volume examines the work of Carlo Goldoni in relation to the output of other theatre writers across Europe in the Age of Enlightenment, and also reconsiders Goldoni's work in the light of new questions raised by recent critical discussions.
Zants, Emily
1996 0-7734-8789-1 404 pages
This study takes a new view of the history of the French novel, that the evolution of the novel has been toward cinema, based on chaos and complexity theories. In its attempt to break away from the frozen forms of hierarchical thought inherent in the Monarchy and the Bourgeoisie, to engender a new order of thought, novels developed techniques and structures such as fragmentation, doublings, flashbacks, or metaphorical representations that are cinematic because they engender a sense of spatial and temporal simultaneity, whereas the traditional novel is condemned to the linearity of words. This evolution is significant because the new techniques suspend the readers' habitual frame of reference and engage them in a consideration of new relationships. The chapter treating each author begins with the main known reason for the adaptation, then an overview of the novel itself. Thereafter, the techniques of cinema that effectively convey the same message are explored and compared to the literary techniques, followed by a consideration of the failures and the cinematic potential of the literary model. Works include: Diderot's The Nun ; Laclos' Dangerous Liaisons ; Stendhal's The Red and the Black ; Zola's Nana ; Proust's Swann in Love ; Bernanos' Mouchette ; Duras' The Lover. Available at a special price for text use.
Tian, Min
2010 0-7734-3777-0 436 pages
This is the first English language book to systematically examine the life and art of Mei Lanfang (1894-1961). Mei, who specialized in female roles in classical Chinese theatre, especially jingju, is widely considered the greatest actor of twentieth-century China. This text includes analyses of his work from Chinese, Western, Russian,and intercultural perspectives.
Fryer, Paul
2009 0-7734-3853-X 1212 pages
Compiled by an Anglo-Russian research team over a four-year period, the chronology has drawn on contemporary records in the archives of the Mariinsky itself, the newspaper archives in the Russian National Library in St Petersburg and material held in the St Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music: the vast majority of this material has never appeared in English-translation prior to the current publication.
King, Sharon D.
2003 0-7734-6722-X 304 pages
Analyzing dramas that depict the fall of, or civic upheaval in, urban centers (both historical and legendary), this book establishes the author’s concept of “city tragedy” as a subgenre of tragedy in Renaissance theatrical practice. Using some two dozen texts (some by obscure authors, some by well-known playwrights such as Shakespeare and Calderón) from about 1560 to 1650, the book traces the different modes of creation of the city as principal character of the tragedy, then examines how an expanded notion of civic sin becomes its “fatal flaw.” This study is groundbreaking not only in its definition of the term “city tragedy” but in its examination of some of the sociological themes city tragedy presents – the city’s frequent depiction as a victimized woman, individual passion’s culpability in bringing death to the masses, the use of the notion of divine favor and divine wrath in the fate of a city for propagandistic ends. Finally, this study is timely in its discussion of recent dramatized portrayals of the events of 9/11, as it demonstrates that the patterns and conventions of city tragedies of 400 years ago are the very ones we use today.
Cairns, Christopher
1989 0-88946-080-9 472 pages
Glatzer, Paula
1977 0-7734-0537-2 339 pages
A critical study of the trilogy (authors anonymous) performed at St. John's College, Cambridge 1598/99 - 1601/2
Braun, Kazimierz
2003 0-7734-6791-2 532 pages
Nominated by the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS)
for the Orbis Prize 2004
This study narrates a millennium long record of Polish theater, focusing on the theatrical annals of cities, productions and their styles, major theater artists – actors, directors, and designers – acting and directorial instruction, theater buildings and stage design, and the changing audiences. The book includes many illustrations.
Vilalta, Maruxa
2006 0-7734-5973-1 312 pages
This mystery play by a contemporary Mexican dramatist premiered in 1991. It is based on the life of Saint Jerome (347-419) and the events of his times and his dedication to commenting on and translating the scriptures. The play won three awards: The Mexico Association of Drama Critics Best Play of Creative Research; The Society of Theatre Journalists Dramaturgy Prize; and the Claridades Best Play of the Year for 1991.
Kiss, Attila
2011 0-7734-1476-2 236 pages
Manuscript focuses on the affinity between the early modern (or protomodern) and the postmodern. The methodology is grounded in the interpretive procedures of semiography, which recontextualizes the findings of iconological research in the new theoretical framework of the postsemiotics of the subject and the poststructuralist theories of signification and mediality.
Zants, Emily
1993 0-7734-1937-3 308 pages
This text is intended as a reference for the study of over 21 exceptional French films by 13 different directors. Each chapter treats an individual director and the characteristics of his or her films, followed by background information for a specific film and analysis of the techniques used in it. Questions and exercises using the techniques of the film conclude each section. An introductory chapter discusses the participatory viewing necessary for enjoyment of most French films, general characteristics, and a brief history of French film. Analysis is provided for a least one major film by Buñuel, Carné, Cocteau, Godard, Lelouch, Malle, Ophüls, Renoir, Resnais, Tati, Tavernier, Truffaut, and Varda.
Kreglianovich, Giovanni
2003 0-7734-6740-8 492 pages
Price, Thomas F.
1997 0-7734-8626-7 304 pages
These plays by George Colman are two of the best from the mid-18th century, of very high quality and extremely funny. The Jealous Wife was the first work on the English stage to have been based (in part) on Fielding's novel Tom Jones, and the main character was one of David Garrick's most famous roles. Polly Honeycombe is a direct satire on the sentimental novel (and novel readers) of the day, and the title-character seems to be the prototype for Sheridan's character of Lydia Languish in The Rivals. The Jealous Wife has appeared only in an out-of-print anthology which uses an inferior copy-text from which many racy lines have been excised. This edition is based on the pithier first edition which has never been reprinted in this century. Polly Honeycombe, too, has never been reprinted in this century. This critical edition contains an introductory essay evaluating these plays in terms of both literary history and their own merits as lively works for the stage. At the same time, this essay offers a re-evaluation of mid-18th century comedy in general, emphasizing that the anti-sentiment movement began nearly twenty years earlier than is generally supposed. It includes the complete text of each play, accompanied by explanatory notes glossing obsolete or dialectal words and phrases, and listing only important substantive variants among the authoritative early editions. Also contains appendices for each play giving brief but thorough essays on authorship, sources, stage history, textual history, and music to one song.
Knittel, Frank
1995 0-7734-8994-0 136 pages
This edition marks the first time that Mankind has been deemed worthy of a full critical examination. It lays to rest the contention that the play is obscene and crude. The evidence presented in the critical introduction, the body of the play itself, and the opinions of current scholars demonstrate that Mankind, more than any other medieval drama, is a link to the Renaissance drama immediately following. With its intricate, well-developed metrical scheme and moral and philosophical themes, it represents an artistic achievement beyond that found in the typical drama of the Middle Ages. Its occasional humor as well as its high seriousness provide a happy combination of both wit and morality.
Perkins, Juliet
2004 0-7734-6519-7 430 pages
Labirinto de Creta is one of the eight Portuguese satiric operas, first performed in the Lisbon puppet theatre from 1733 to 1738. Their librettist, AntÓnio José da Silva, is an enigmatic and ill-fated figure. Born in Rio De Janeiro in 1705, he was sentenced to death at an auto-da-fé in Lisbon in 1739, for having practiced Judaism. By profession a lawyer, he frequented music circles, collaborating with the composer AntÓnio Teixeira on at least four occasions. Labirinto de Creta, combining a love intrigue with a comic treatment of the myth of Theseus slaying the Minotaur, is a thinly veiled satire on contemporary Portugal. With spoken dialogue, numerous musical items, and stage effects such as shipwreck, explosions and earthquake, the opera is suited to performance by actors as well as by puppets as in the original production, though unfortunately the score is not extant. Apart from the comedy of situation, the humor derives from the ebullient wit and puns of the servants, who mock their master’s high-flown expressions of love and jealousy, and ridicule the despotic, hierarchical society in which they have to survive. This English translation, the first of any operas, is accompanied by an introduction and notes.
Bradshaw, Kevin
2004 0-7734-6317-8 177 pages
ComedySportz, the Milwaukee-based competitive improvisational company, was the examination model used in this study which examines the history of the company, analyzes their beginner workshop curriculum and details their training methods. Two research questions were applied: What is the history of ComedySportz? What are the teaching methods used by ComedySportz in their beginner-level workshops? Research was based on personal interviews, company archives, questionnaires, and observations. Dick Chudnow, the company’s founder, was interviewed in order to provide a foundation for the study. Research subjects for the field investigation were selected from the instructional and artistic staff of ComedySportz and were termed “experts.” The project was descriptive in nature, relying on personal interviews, electronic mail, telephone conversations and personal observations of the ComedySportz show and workshops. The resulting investigation has revealed a rich and varied history of a company dedicated to competitive performance improvisation. The analysis of the beginner level workshop training methods of the Milwaukee, New York and San Jose ComedySportz clubs indicates a high-level of teaching expertise, a wide variety of training methods and the formation of a solid background in improvisation skills. The study provides historical documentation for a leading company and offers a model for researchers interested in pursuing similar ventures.
Garrett, Martin
1984 0-7734-0630-1 290 pages
Argues that Massinger tends to mute or undermine spectacle in his plays to an unusual extent, and to emphasize its ideal connotations at the expense of its theatrical function.
Clark, Andrew
1975 0-7734-0386-8 221 pages
Drama of War in the Theatre of Anne Devlin, Marie Jones, and Christina Reid, Three Irish Playwrights
Liddy, Brenda J.2010 0-7734-3791-6 136 pages
The book is about the representation of war in the plays of Anne Devlin, Marie Jones and Christina Reid. Cumulatively, the plays demonstrate a symbiotic relationship between war and gender, showing women’s response to war as complex and diverse. The work of these three playwrights suggests that women played a much bigger part in the conflict and in the post-conflict environment than has been acknowledged.
Breining, Daniel
2002 0-7734-7004-2 300 pages
This work investigates the censorship of género chico dramas, pieces which were commonly used as a conversional and didactic tool in New Spain during the first decades of colonial rule. These small theatrical representations and dramatic texts are particularly insightful to the censorial policies as developed and implemented by the ecclesiastical and viceregal authorities of New Spain. The official and personal anti-theatrical and anti-dramatic dictates, as enforced in part by Archbishop Juan de Zumàrraga and the New World Inquisition, relied heavily upon the ideals of mimesis, education, and concern for subversion of the state. Because the works generally included the use of Nahuatl, the language of the newly conquered natives of the Anahuac valley, and were performed by the Indians without Spanish supervision, they feared potential insertion of indigenous elements. Along with the hybridized qualities found in many of the pieces, this work also looks at the criticism of viceregal policies as one more reason for censoring these works and reprimanding their authors, with examples taken from the works of Hernán González de Eslava, Juan Pérez Ramírez, and Cristóbal de Llerena.
Freeman, Terence M.
1995 0-7734-8928-2 364 pages
This volume opens a window on the popular image of the British soldier and sailor from the Restoration through the end of the eighteenth century. For the student of the London stage, this book not only provides the military flavor of prologues, epilogues, songs, dances, music, spectaculars, mainpieces, and afterpieces, but also demonstrates the contribution of casting and staging. For the student of British military history, it demonstrates how dramatic entertainments provided insights on field and shipboard life, recruitment, impressment, pay, and the militia. It also illustrates how active stagecraft recreated the sights, sounds and smells of the man-of-war and camp.
Medoff, Mark
2004 0-7734-6390-9 441 pages
Select social and academic communities accord cultural status to deafness and disability, but cultural designation remains an intensely debated topic among many culture non-members and a sensitive “hot potato” among culture group members. As a result and with alarming speed and regularity, an increasing number of scholars now examine multiple facets of deafness and disability and how culture members intersect with mainstream society.
Keith-Smith, Brian
1996 0-7734-1346-4 760 pages
Lothar Schreyer's dramas from the expressionist periodical Der Sturm are collected here for the first time together with twelve previously unpublished earlier works and eleven later dramas. The full extent of Schreyer's development as a dramatist can now be seen from derivative forms, including ancient myth, the Narcissus theme, naturalism and farce, through his experiments in expressionist language, to his later religious works. This collection, with its long introduction, is an essential tool for researchers into early 20th-century German drama. Lothar Schreyer Edition, Volume 2
Trimble, Robert G.
2010 0-7734-1312-X 160 pages
This work is a translation of a Spanish drama of the nineteenth century. It was first performed in Madrid in 1872. The play is based on the true life conflict between Spanish king, Phillip II, and his son Don Carlos during the political and religious turmoil of the sixteenth-century. It is an excellent example of Spanish drama in the neo-romantic tradition.
Bottaro, Jésus S.
2008 0-7734-5203-6 184 pages
This study examines the social and cultural causes of the decline in political theater in Venezuela during the second half of the twentieth century. The author focuses primarily on the following representative plays: La trampa de los demonios (1977) by César Rengifo, La guerrita de Rosendo (1976) by Gilberto Pinto, La farra (1974) and La empresa perdona un momento de locura (1978) both by Rodolfo Santana.
Aramu, Paola
2009 0-7734-3896-3 360 pages
This work analyzes, in a significant corpus of narrative and theatrical works, the several and chief manifestations of the maternal figure referable to the Great Mother’s images, also by using important studies about Psychoanalysis, Sociology and History of the religions.
Gardner, Bonnie Milne
2001 0-7734-7470-6 236 pages
Bentley, Jr., G.E.
2012 0-7734-4088-7 220 pages
George Cumberland’s unpublished and almost unrecorded farce of about 1817 called The Emigrants or A Trip to The Ohio amiably pokes fun at Yankees, Yorkshiremen, Irishmen, and Utopians, and it is a treasure-house of slang, such as “Obstropelous”. Its polymath author was a prolific artist, inventor, geologist, poet, political radical, novelist, and intimate friend of William Blake.
Desvignes, Lucette
2008 0-7734-4950-3 220 pages
A dual-language edition of Lucette Desvignes reinterpretation of the Greek myth, Electra, set in World War II France.
Horne, Philip
1996 0-7734-8749-2 224 pages
Epizia is a stage adaptation of Ecatommiti, VIII.5, Giraldi's tale of an errant Governor of Innsbruck, who gets the virginal heroine to his bed with a false offer of marriage and an equally false promise to let her imprisoned brother out of jail. He is sentenced to death by the Emperor for abusing his authority, but the magnanimous intercession of the peerless Epizia saves him from this fate and brings about the happy ending. The play will be of particular interest to students of English literature because of Shakespeare's elaboration of the Epizia story in Measure for Measure.
Osnes, Beth
2010 0-7734-3779-7 348 pages
This collection examines the nexus of mothering, feminism, and theatre. The work examines the portrayals of mothers in literature and on the performance stage, and makes a contribution to studies in dramatic literature, women’s studies, feminist theory, and theatre history.
Keith-Smith, Brian
2012 0-7734-3741-X 208 pages
New insights are given on the background to staging Tannhäuser and Parsifal. Sections on the illustrations to and parodies of Parsifal extend previous research, with special emphasis on the almost forgotten stage-designer Ludwig Sievert and early reception of the opera. The inclusion of a satirical text and Trevelyan’s parody reveal some of the less serious reception.
Giraldi, G. B.
2003 0-7734-6833-1 284 pages
Among Giraldi’s later plays not published since the 16th century is Eufimia, which the playwright adapted for the stage from one of his own short stories, in a new style. It combines lavish stage spectacle with a plot incorporating romantic episodes based on the poems of chivalry and resembling some of the stock ingredients of the modern Western: flight, pursuit, rescue, combat and duel. The volumes includes explanatory notes on the text and a glossary of archaic words and word-forms. The first part of the Introduction places Giraldi’s tragedy in the context of the dispute with his literary rival, Giambattista Pigna, correcting in the process some persistent misunderstandings about the chronology of events. The second part discusses the innovative aspects of the tragedy and its place in the evolution of Giraldi’s compositions for the stage
Bower, Martha Gilman
1993 0-7734-9199-6 196 pages
This is a detailed and intimate analysis of O'Neill's complicated writing process as he created four of the plays in the eleven-play cycle: A Touch of the Poet, More Stately Mansions, The Calms of Capricorn, and Hair of the Dog. The first two are the only plays finished by O'Neill. The others have enough substantive material to give the reader a sense of what the plays would have been. Having transcribed reams of O'Neill's unpublished handwritten notes, outlines, and scenarios, Bower focuses on the `pre-writing' leading up to each play's final draft. Breaks new ground in unfolding a subtext that reveals new autobiographical analogues and connections to the late plays, and reveals O'Neill's development of a female character unique to American literature.
Euripides
1995 0-7734-8974-6 84 pages
Topical, accessible, and vigorous, Euripides' Hecuba is a play of strong women, broken vows, political and familial disaster, human suffering and revenge. This translation of Hecuba starts with the play's conflicts and chooses from a whole range of registers to render the characters. This mixture of dictions faithfully captures the Euripidean practice of mixing genres, his shifting of identities, his shrewd portrayal of political negotiation, his both fierce and playful irony. The rhythms of contemporary speech guide the formation of the characters. Finally, the line-breaks give shape to the play, be it on the page, staged, or read aloud. Yet they also respect the pauses, emphases, and repetitions in the Ancient Greek meter, syntax, and word order.
Lee, Bryant Hamor
1996 0-7734-8845-6 248 pages
This volume begins with the post-Baroque re-emergence of Classicism, the Neoclassicism of the late 18th century, examining trends and influences in the philosophy of art and architecture during the period. It examines selected theoretical writings of Pierre Patté, Paolo Landriani, and Etienne-Louis Boullée to show the development of a Neoclassical style in theatre architecture, as well as the more fanciful directions in the designs of Boullée. It examines their influence in other areas of theatrical arts: artistic vision, theatrical aesthetics, stage lighting, and scenic design. The appendices contain translations and commentary on revelant works: Patté's writing on Stage Lighting (1780); Patté's writing on Acoustics (1786); Landriani's writing on scenery and box sets (1818); Landriani's writing on the differences between French and Italian Theatres (1816); Ferrario's writing on the uses of Auditoriums (1830); and Boullée's writing on the Art of Architecture (1775-93).
Connolly, Roy
2000 0-7734-7543-5 340 pages
This book traces the evolution of Northern Ireland’s principal regional theatre, The Lyric Players, describing its transition from private concern to public institution, highlighting the difficulties attendant with this change in status. It appraises the theatre’s public role in a divided community, attempts to explain the theatre’s artistic policies and output by anatomizing the range of social, artistic and cultural factors that worked upon the theatre as it sought to establish itself as both artistic force and service provider.
Hagen, Lisa Hall
2010 0-7734-1466-5 424 pages
This book fills a gap created when overtly politicized and polarized writing on abortion is removed. It seeks to explore the ways in which theater can serve as a particularly useful place to explore abortion.
Tiernan, Sonja
2010 0-7734-3601-4 132 pages
This is the first ever publication of Fiametta, a five act play by the Irish poet, playwright and political activist Eva Gore-Booth. The manuscript of this previously unpublished play was discovered amongst the personal and literary papers of Gore-Booth. This is an exceptional find. It is rare indeed that an unpublished work, by a celebrated Irish author, is uncovered so many years after their death. This play is a significant contribution to the body of Eva Gore-Booth’s literary work. Fiametta contrasts with Gore-Booth’s other dramas and therefore, adds a new perspective to critical analysis of her work. This volume includes an introduction and brief synopsis of Gore-Booth’s dramatic works and a note on Fiametta.
Rodríguez del Pino, Salvador
1999 0-7734-8274-1 296 pages
This anthology features recent Mexican theater by several of the best contemporary playwrights, showcasing the eclecticism that characterizes recent theater. The volume includes brief biographies and interviews with each playwright.
Cone, Mary
1976 0-7734-0402-3 208 pages
Rice, Paul F.
2004 0-7734-6438-7 352 pages
During the eighteenth century, the French court made yearly trips to the chateau of Fontainebleau during the autumn months enjoying evenings of operas and plays presented by the leading performers from Paris.
Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764), the leading French composer of the period, was asked to present five new operas at the chateau in 1753 and 1754. Only one of these works was ever published and three of the five were never heard in Paris. Consequently, these works have remained little known.
This book presents Rameau’s works first heard at Fontainebleau in the context of their compositional and performance histories, a context which is rich in court intrigues and social change. This study is the first published work to investigate these operas in detail, Rameau’s relationship to the court and the public opera house of Paris is reevaluated, and the richness of Rameau’s musical imagination is revealed in works from his maturity.
Taylor, Jefferey H.
2006 0-7734-5578-7 128 pages
Explores the four levels of medieval allegory (literal, typological, tropological, and anagogical) in the York Cycle, arguing that these epistemological perceptions were not merely scholastic tools but an integral part of social cosmology. Analysis of the literal level demonstrates that these plays were culturally evocative, refuting their common description as didactic impositions. Analysis of the cycle as an extended anagoge explores the ritual level of medieval York’s self-defining discourse and the ritual compensation for the inability to directly possess God’s Eternity and the cultural past, the central sources of contemporary cultural meanings.
Gerland, Oliver
1998 0-7734-8252-0 236 pages
This study offers a new, historically-based psychoanalytic approach to Ibsen’s plays, fashioning a Freudian poetics that stresses the dramatist’s formal technique rather than his unconscious fixations, the textual surface rather than the subtextual depths. Not only does this approach avoid the methodological briar-patch of the unconscious, it also offers insight into the paradoxical openness of Ibsen’s endings.
Callens, Johan
1997 0-7734-8653-4 182 pages
Throughout his career, Sam Shepard has demonstrated a preoccupation with national identity, myths and symbols. The focus of the present study, The Bodyguard (1973), was commissioned by Tony Richardson, a film adaptation of Middleton and Rowley's classic English play, with its central love-hate relationship. The screen adaptation is presented here as a counterhegemonic appropriation of the canonical text through an assertion of Shepard's American identity and a vindication of his popular roots. The adaptation critically inscribes the tension Shepard experiences between national idea(l)s and a multicultural reality into the plot, themes and imagery of the early modern play, besides exemplifying and thematizing the postmodern fusion of high and low culture.
Collier, Jo Leslie
1988 0-7734-2014-2 174 pages
This study maintains that Murnau, and by extension the long-rake, deep-focus, moving camera approach to filmmaking he initiated, have their artistic foundations in the theater, precisely in the romantic theatrical movement of the third quarter of the nineteenth century. The study begins with Wagner, the undisputed leader of romanticism at the time both as artist and aesthetician, and also examines George II, Adolphe Appia, Max Reinhardt, and ends with F.W. Murnau.
Eis, Joel D.
2003 0-7734-6560-X 280 pages
Ye Bare & Ye Cubbe, the first play in English in the New World, was performed in a tavern near what is now the tiny hamlet of Pungoteague in Virginia on August 27, 1665. It had a clear political intent. The three young men who participated in the performance were taken to court but ‘acquitted of any wrong doing’ in one of America’s first trials over freedom of expression. August 27th was a Sunday, and they might have been charged with Violation of the Sabbath, but the Court ordered the entire play performed, complete with props and costumes. The work makes a fully supported case that the authorities were seeking higher charges based on the content of the play. Everything points to a political foundation for the performance yet virtually nothing surrounding this event has turned out as it first appears. This obscure rural event may have a value in forming ideas relative to the First Amendment that have heretofore been unexplored. The many Virginians, all lawyers or scholars in law, who were pivotal in framing the praxis for the American Revolution, could not have been ignorant of this unique case in Virginia law. This monograph solidly repositions this event in terms of American pre-revolutionary history and the history of theatre in the New World, weaving together the threads of a previously incomplete story. It contains illustrations and rare documents and maps. It will interest not only theater historians, but scholars of American history and law as well.
Eis, Joel D.
2015 0-7734-3527-1 416 pages
A new take on the topic with considerable new scholarship about how the ekkyklema worked semiotically, dramaturgically and politically within Greek tragedy. In this fascinating and well-documented cultural study the author explores the proposition that the success of Greek tragedy was connected to the pre-mediated use of religious tropes in the drama, thus triggering profoundly ancient and effective traditional loyalties.
Cornelia, Marie
1978 0-7734-0391-4 166 pages
Osborn, Peggy
1992 0-7734-9445-6 260 pages
This study comprises a critical edition of the complete text of Giraldi's Altile. (The play has been published only once before the present edition, in 1583, ten years after the author's death.) This edition also contains its narrative source, Giraldi's novella (Hecatommithi, II,3). Shows how Giraldi telescoped his unwieldy novella into the formal neo-classical structure of Renaissance tragedy, reinterpreting or even ignoring the precepts of Aristotle when they conflicted with his experience as a practical dramatist writing for the duke and court of Ferrara. He greatly developed the characters of his leading personages, adding an important new character-type to the cast: the first scheming and treacherous subordinate of modern tragedy. The study stresses the importance of the elements of suspense, pathos and maraviglia, and the pains Giraldi took to provide his audience with a lavish, well-staged spectacle. It also emphasizes the fact that the play was intended to convey a series of clearly-defined moral messages.
Buettner, Milton Arthur
1980 0-7734-0405-8 161 pages
Is a comic satirical play by Thomas Middleton, first staged in August 1624 by the King's Men at the Globe Theatre, notable for its political content.
Burden, Michael John
1994 0-7734-9132-5 172 pages
This is the first full-length study of an 18th-century masque. It examines the masque of Alfred, from 1740 to 1773, as literary form, as vehicle for allegory, and as a genre. It contributes also to theatrical history, noting the revisions that were carried out by the two different schools of thought -- one favoring the music, the other the text, illustrating their different needs and preoccupations. Earlier versions have both texts and a series of correspondence from the critic Aaron Hill to draw on, while the survival of the annotated libretto for 1773 gives a unique insight into Garrick's view of the masque, the way he worked with both text and music, and the methods of theatrical production.
Hodgart, A. Buono
1997 0-7734-8661-5 220 pages
This comparative study of Giordano Bruno's Candelaio examines a large number of theatrical authors, from the classical tradition as well as from Italian vernacular and dialect. It takes into account Bruno's recognized sources as well as unknown authors, philosophers as well as poets, playwrights as well as 'poligrafi della penna'. The study concludes that it is the polemic attack on pedantry - in the special sense attributed to it by Bruno - which constitutes the central impulse of Candelaio: a polemic against intellectual obscurantism and degenerated morals. This meaning explains and justifies, emblematically, the title itself: Candelaio is the bearer of the light of truth. Thus, by its very name, the play declares its function, to clarify and enlighten - and claims the ethical significance, as a human and social document, which makes it worth reading.
Conkie, Rob
2006 0-7734-5724-0 296 pages
Analyzes performances at the reconstructed Globe Theatre in London between 1996 and 2004 through a focus on the new Globe’s most defining characteristic: authenticity. In that this concept of authenticity reverberates so urgently with debates about identity – from national to personal, heritage-centered to technologically-mediated – the book addresses both the question of why authenticity has become so crucial in late twentieth and early twenty-first century Britain and it further considers what productions of the ‘authentic Shakespeare’ at the new Globe have to say about contemporary identities.
Street, Jack D.
2015 1-4955-0367-4 268 pages
Jane House translated the De Filippo one acts; Jack D. Street, with Jane House, the Patroni Griffi play. This book is part of the multivolume Mellen collection of contemporary Italian drama, which comprises fourteen plays, of which thirteen are first translations. The collection, covering 1950 to 2001, includes introductions to the playwrights, production photographs, a general bibliography of works in English on Italian drama of the period, and bibliographies specific to the playwrights in each book. Jack D. Street wrote the general introductions to the collection. Foreword by Marvin Carlson.
Clarke, Jan
2007 0-7734-5313-X 524 pages
This is the first detailed study of the Hôtel Guénégaud, the first home of the Paris Opéra in 1670, and the first home of the Comédie Française ten years later. The account books remain in the Archives of the Comédie Française, providing the source for a highly detailed account of the administrative structures and day-to-day running of the theatre. Moreover, a study of the records of ticket sales makes possible not only an analysis of the tastes and composition of the Guénégaud's audience, but also an attempted reconstruction of the theatre auditorium. This book will be helpful for academics in the fields of drama and theatre studies. All quotations from French sources are given in translation. Part three of a projected three-volume work. This book contains 1 color photo and 14 black and white photos.
Clarke, Jan
1998 0-7734-8392-6 428 pages
This is the first detailed study of the Hôtel Guénégaud, the first home of the Paris Opéra in 1670, and the first home of the Comédie Française ten years later. The account books remain in the Archives of the Comédie Française, providing the source for a highly detailed account of the administrative structures and day-to-day running of the theatre. Moreover, a study of the records of ticket sales makes possible not only an analysis of the tastes and composition of the Guénégaud's audience, but also an attempted reconstruction of the theatre auditorium. This book will be helpful for academics in the fields of drama and theatre studies. All quotations from French sources are given in translation. Part one of a projected three-volume work.
Clarke, Jan
2001 0-7734-7513-3 464 pages
This is the first detailed study of the Hôtel Guénégaud, the first home of the Paris Opéra in 1670, and the first home of the Comédie Française ten years later. The account books remain in the Archives of the Comédie Française, providing the source for a highly detailed account of the administrative structures and day-to-day running of the theatre. Moreover, a study of the records of ticket sales makes possible not only an analysis of the tastes and composition of the Guénégaud's audience, but also an attempted reconstruction of the theatre auditorium. This book will be helpful for academics in the fields of drama and theatre studies. All quotations from French sources are given in translation. Part one of a projected three-volume work.
van Boer, Bertil H. Jr.
1993 0-7734-9314-X 292 pages
Contains some of the latest contributions to Gustavian studies, both interdisciplinary and intuitive in approach. The first section contains articles surrounding the modern premiere of Joseph Martin Kraus's "Turkish" opera Soliman II in 1989. The articles show different perspectives as seen from each of the participants and gives unusual and penetrating insight into the artistic problems inherent in the revival of the 200-year-old work. The second section is more generalized and more scholarly -- contributions from the research of musicologists, dance historians, literary historians. The third section is devoted to a brief aesthetical perspective of Gern Schönfelder on cognitive intuition, which delineates the perceptive qualities of music. Contributors include Jacqueline Martin, Martin Tegen, Barbro Stribolt, Lennart Hedwall, Gunnar Larsson, and Newell Jenkins.
Klein, Holger
1997 0-7734-8502-3 524 pages
Part of a multi-volume series of yearbooks covering works by Shakespeare. This volume deals with film versions of "Hamlet", including topics such as Hamlet's ghost on the screen, Kenneth Branagh's interpolations in "Hamlet", Zeffirelli's "Hamlet" and Hamlet as a woman. Topics raised include comic uses of the tragedy, the portrayl of "Hamlet"'s ghost on screen and the poetic and dramatic uses of cookery in Shakespeare's plays.
Aylett, Robert
1995 0-7734-1344-8 240 pages
An old tale is brought to life again in this study which traces the English reception history of Fortunatus (editio princeps: Augsburg, 1509). Drawing on his private collection and his international research, Blamires discusses treatments ranging from the Right Pleasant and Variable Tragical Historie of 1640 to the modern reprint of Andrew Lang's Grey Fairy Book. His narrative embraces the many little-known publications, and is supported by the first attempted bibliography of Fortunatus in English and the complete texts of four key versions.
Francis, Penny
1998 0-7734-8322-5 648 pages
George, David John
1995 0-7734-9001-9 200 pages
This volume examines the commedia dell'arte as it formed a key element in the work of well-known writers such as Valle-Inclán and García Lorca, as well as that of many other poets, playwrights and dramatic theorists in 19th and 20th-century Hispanic literature. It analyses thematically the development of the commedia, its links with other theatrical and paratheatrical forms such as pantomime, circus and carnival. The book contains original analyses of familiar as well as less well-known Hispanic texts, and will be of interest to specialists in Hispanic literature. In addition, students of theatre history will have for the first time a Hispanic dimension to commedia studies. The reader's understanding will be enhanced by the inclusion of original translations of the quotations from the Hispanic texts studied.
House, Jane
2015 1-4955-0368-2 128 pages
Jane House translated Home Alone; Jack D. Street, the other two Buzzati plays; Ritva Poom, the Scabia one act. This book is part of the multivolume Mellen collection of contemporary Italian drama, which comprises fourteen plays, of which thirteen are first translations. The collection, covering 1950 to 2001,includes introductions to the playwrights, production photographs, a general bibliography of works in English on Italian drama of the period, and bibliographies specific to the playwrights in each book. Jack D. Street wrote the general introduction to the collection. Foreword by Marvin Carlson.
Hadomi, Leah
1992 0-7734-9578-9 196 pages
This study begins with an examination of the "archi-pattern" of the Prodigal Son, then analyses the analogies and differences between this "archi-pattern" and its post-figuration in modern dramatic discourse as influenced by changes in the socio-cultural code. Six modern plays are represented: Ibsen's Ghosts, O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, Miller's Death of a Salesman, Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Pinter's The Homecoming, and Shepard's Buried Child.
Sugarman, Sally
2016 1-4955-0490-5 272 pages
Examines children’s books about Shakespeare, his time and his characters in the light of changing ideas about childhood as well as changes in the experiences of the children who read the various versions of Shakespeare available to them in adaptations, fiction and non-fiction.
Street, Jack D.
2015 1-4955-0370-4 188 pages
Jane House translated the Ginzburg play; Jack D. Street, with Jane House, the Maraini play. This book is part of the multivolume Mellen collection of contemporary Italian drama, which comprises fourteen plays, of which thirteen are first translations. The collection, covering 1950 to 2001, includes introductions to the playwrights, production photographs, a general bibliography of works in English on Italian drama of the period, and bibliographies specific to the playwrights in each book. Jack D. Street wrote the general introduction to the collection. Foreword by Marvin Carlson.
Fleischer, Martha Hester
1974 0-7734-0583-6 365 pages
Investigates the emblematic significance of the stage imagery of the popular English history play in the age of Shakespeare. Demonstrates that these plays convey significance by means of visual conventions and commonplaces, and that the nonverbal images so employed actually constitute a visual vocabulary current at least in this dramatic genre.
Ritchie, Chris
2007 0-7734-5439-X 216 pages
This book follows the progress of the Greek parasite figure through his various interpretations by different poets as seen in the remaining fragments. On the Roman stage of Plautus, the parasite became a key comic figure in proceedings, later replaced by the wily slave. In medieval comedy he can be seen as the vice of morality plays, in mummers plays and he emerges as a type in early Tudor theatre. On the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage the chancing rascal was a frequent feature, most notably Falstaff. Throughout the Restoration dissipated gallants and workshy fops became well established and their behaviour reached the outer limits of the bawdy. In 18th century sentimental comedy the fascination with such roguery, ageing dandyism and peripheral scavengers remained, but modified. Rogues, idlers, skivers, flatterers and the work-shy: all chisellers.
Meyer, Matthew John
2009 0-7734-4756-3 276 pages
This study demonstrates how theatre as representation is a successful teaching and learning tool for field educators in the area of educational administration. This book contains five black and white photographs.
Kharkin, V.N.
1999 0-7734-3243-4 220 pages
A very interesting and provocative book of applied psychology tracing and explaining improvisation as a creative force for actors and theatre directors. This work reveals the many mechanisms of improvisation and is very interesting for the general reader as well.
Ketcham, Charles
1986 0-88946-556-8 392 pages
Traces the development of central themes in Bergman's cinema art by means of a detailed analysis of eleven films, from The Seventh Seal to Autumn Sonata. An excellent course text, it is available, as are all Mellen books, in an inexpensive textbook edition.
Canova-Green, Marie-Claude
2000 0-7734-7605-9 140 pages
These essays focus on courtly musical entertainments in Early Modern Europe, providing a framework within which to locate the many aesthetic considerations which lay behind the creation of opera and other musical forms, and, through analyses of individual events, the modalities of the circulation and adaptation of a so-called Italian model throughout Europe. They highlight the constant evolution of the musical entertainments of the Baroque age, and in so doing invite us to reexamine clichés about the origin and nature of operatic genres. With illustrations.
Schneider, Ben Ross Jr.
2015 0-7734-4261-8 260 pages
A unique examination of Shakespeare’s different plays to prove the relevance of stoic philosophy, in the themes, ideas, and images that play out in his body of work. Contemporary interpreters of Shakespeare have ignored these primary philosophical sources of Renaissance thought that influenced the fundamental moral principles and thinking of his time.
Street, Jack D.
2003 0-7734-6738-6 420 pages
This anthology fills a lacuna in the investigation of European avant-garde theater, from Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi to the New Theater of the Absurd. The introduction justifies the place of the Italian Theater of the Grotesque, and the text remedies the lack of access to its plays by translating the ones included in the anthology into English. Of the seven representative plays, five have never been translated into English before.
Street, Jack D.
2011 0-7734-1558-0 560 pages
This collection provides an introduction to each play and its author, clarifying its place in today’s Italian culture. [The author’s] selection of both older and younger playwrights introduces the reader to writers who have been, until now, little-known outside Italy.
Eisenhour, Jerry
2003 0-7734-6616-9 148 pages
This book is the only full-length study of a ticket agent, his business methods, and his contributions to the Broadway theatre. It contains elements of biography, economic history of the American stage, and insights into the relationship between Broadway producers and the people who sold the tickets to their attractions. This study recounts a number of then-famous battles between powerful producers and the ticket agencies, filling in several blank spots in the records. It sets the scene for readers not familiar with the period by giving ample background, and then traces the growth and development of Joe Leblang’s agency, information previously available only in snippets buried in newspapers and magazines. Leblang’s agency exerted so potent a force on the Broadway theatre that the period would not have been the same had his agency not existed.
Andreadis, Harriette A.
1975 0-7734-0536-4 250 pages
Mother Bombie is unique among Lyly's comedies in its urban setting and focus upon middle and lower class concerns. The play turns on the tissue of misconceptions surrounding the efforts of four fathers to secure socially advantageous marriages for their heirs, and the determination of their young servants to exploit their masters' misguided aspirations for their own advantage. A theatrical success in its own day, the play is of particular interest to twenty-first century criticism for its focus upon those situated on the margins of the social group, notably Mother Bombie herself, thought by some to be a witch, and the two simpletons whose marital prospects lie at the heart of the action. The play is newly re-edited from the earliest witnesses, the quartos of 1594 and 1598, and incorporates the songs first published by Blount in his collected edition of Lyly's works in 1632 and is the first fully annotated, modern-spelling edition of the play to have appeared for over thirty years and its publication sees the completion of the works of John Lyly in The Revels Plays.
Colley, John Scott
1974 0-7734-0449-X 204 pages
Le Ber, Jocelyne Françoise
2007 0-7734-5424-1 208 pages
This study consists of a literary critical investigation into Jean Cocteau’s Antigone, which combines traditional and contemporary computer-assisted approaches to the text. The first half of the book considers the place of the Antigone story, as well as myth in general, in French, while also offering a description of the evolution of the tragedy from Sophocles to the present. After this, the second half of the book is devoted to an in-depth study of Cocteau’s Antigone itself, from written drafts to its stage production. This multi-disciplinary study offers an original and timely contribution to the literature on the subject.
Brooks, Douglas A.
2010 0-7734-3666-9 576 pages
This volume of the Shakespeare Yearbook brings together articles centered around the intersections between Lacanian Theory and the literary production of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.
McNamara, Eugene
1992 0-7734-9506-1 120 pages
A study of the 1944 film Laura, the book on which it was based, how the book was turned into the movie, and what impact the film has had on viewers and on other movies. Explores the film's unique appeal and how the character, in or out of movie context, has a deep appeal on a psychological and mythic level.
Nutting, Stéphanie
2000 0-7734-7802-7 196 pages
This study gives a specific treatment of tragedy to each of the six plays analysed in depth, and exposes fundamental concerns and deep structures common to all. The first half deals mainly with the clash of legitimate and illegitimate value systems, the established social order and the heroic individuals who challenge it. Works examined are Un fils à tuer by Éloi de Grandmont, Au retour des oies blanches by Marcel Dubé, and Sainte Carmen de la Main by Michel Tremblay. The second part examines more contemporary works, including Le chien by Jean Marc Dalpé, La lumière blanche by Pol Pelletier and Fragments d’une lettre d’adieu lus par des géologues by Normand Chaurette. In French throughout.
Damisch, Isabel M.
1977 0-7734-0656-5 264 pages
Friedman, Jonathan
2004 0-7734-6325-9 146 pages
This project examines the literary, cultural, and historical significance of the 1937 stage play, The Eternal Road, the biblical epic of the Jewish émigré titans—writer Franz Werfel, composer Kurt Weill, and director Max Reinhardt. In academic circles, the play is relatively well known, although it has not received the kind of attention that scholars have paid to works such as The Threepenny Opera, Forty Days of Musa Dagh, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Reinhardt’s most often performed theatrical production. Apart from articles and chapters in dissertations and books, no comprehensive analysis of Road exists in monograph form.
The play, which premiered at the Manhattan Opera House in January 1937, sold out its 153 performances, but it closed less than six months later, a victim of extravagant casting and design. In fact, no Broadway show in its time ran up as large a deficit. Meyer Weisgal, its producer, dubbed it one of the theater’s most brilliant money-losers ever. The significance of Road lies elsewhere—in its singular moment of expression of Jewish pride by several colorful, albeit complicated, dramatis personae.
There are numerous areas of scholarship to which a study of this sort contributes. Students of the history of American theater will welcome a recitation of the play’s production history and a careful reading of its text. Historians, meanwhile, might find the subject helpful in illuminating some of the everyday responses to Nazi persecution by central European Jewish émigrés. One of the more intriguing issues for me is where to situate Road within the broader context of the life work of its principal creators. To what degree was the play a departure from or a continuity within the aesthetic approaches of Reinhardt, the parvenu, Weill, the left-leaning social critic, and Werfel, the would-be Catholic. To what extent did the three figures project their conflicts with, and corresponding concepts of, “Jewishness” onto the text and performance of the play? What was the role of external and intrinsic factors that helped to bring Road into existence? If Hitler had never come to power, would there have been an Eternal Road?
The show was the only occasion in which Reinhardt, Werfel, and Weill joined together to issue a condemnation, in the only language and forum they knew, of the Nazi assault on Jewish culture, religion, and history. And yet their play was more than mere anti-Nazi tableau, and certainly more than either a technical wonder or a box office bomb. It was a remarkable tribute by Jews to Jews in all their various, conflicting incarnations.
Wyszynski, Matthew A.
2009 0-7734-4704-0 184 pages
Tamayo y Baus’ (1829-1898) The Right Track (1862) is a product of the swirling social context of nineteenth-century Spain. This comedy is typical of the alta comedia [high comedy]: it is a didactic work that hopes to offer the bourgeois a model of virtue. As a genre, the high comedy supplanted the symbolism and declamation of romantic drama with a “realistic” portrayal of the moral dilemmas faced by the growing middle class. The climax and resolution of The Right Track unequivocally support the return advocated by Tamayo to virtue and to what he understood to be traditional Spanish values.
Privitera, Joseph F.
1998 0-7734-8337-3 272 pages
English translation of Pirandello's original Sicilian plays, retaining the names of the original characters, their dialogue, with all the peculiarities and characteristics of the Sicilian tongue and the nature and flavor of their mores, thus underscoring the fact that Sicily and Sicilians are different ethnically, culturally and linguistically from continental Italians. Volume 1 also contains the Preface, a complete list of Pirandello's plays, and an introduction setting Pirandello's life and Sicilian plays in context.
Privitera, Joseph F.
1998 0-7734-8339-X 284 pages
English translation of Pirandello's original Sicilian plays, retaining the names of the original characters, their dialogue, with all the peculiarities and characteristics of the Sicilian tongue and the nature and flavor of their mores, thus underscoring the fact that Sicily and Sicilians are different ethnically, culturally and linguistically from continental Italians. Volume 1 also contains the Preface, a complete list of Pirandello's plays, and an introduction setting Pirandello's life and Sicilian plays in context.
Dashwood, Julie
1997 0-7734-8746-8 300 pages
The purpose of these essays is to enable readers to broaden an deepen their knowledge of Luigi Pirandello and his influence on the drama of the twentieth century. The essays have been grouped loosely under four headings: issues of theory, issues of genre, issues of gender, and issues of language and theatre.
Tribble, Keith
2002 0-7734-6964-8 452 pages
Hostetter, Anthony
2003 0-7734-6802-1 224 pages
The years between 1910 and 1933 represent a period of tumultuous change in Germany. Focusing on Max Reinhardt’s Großes Schauspielhaus in Berlin during the Weimar Republic offers a unique opportunity to examine the many factors that affect theatrical production outside of the realm of the aesthetic. Using neo-Marxist methodology of Raymond Williams as well as Pierre Bourdieu’s The Field of Cultural Production, this study investigates the impact of social, political, and economic factors on planning and building the Großes Schauspielhaus and on its theatrical productions. Previous works focus on Reinhardt’s use of actors, collaboration with designers, technology, etc, but this study begins by asking ‘What were the relations between Max Reinhardt’s artistic direction and the business management?’ It provides an analysis of the economic conditions of the period, the costs involved in building and maintaining a mass theater, and questions of ‘symbolic capital’ versus ‘economic capital’. An appendix provides a complete English-language translation of Max Reinhardt’s 1905 manifesto, originally published in Arthur Kahne’s Tagebuch des Dramaturgen. With illustrations.
Plowright, Poh Sim
2002 0-7734-7057-3 262 pages
This book brings together a powerful universal myth – that of the Birdwoman, which has been the inspiration of several Asian theatres and the subject of many Asian plays – and the connection between string-puppet and human actor movements within the Asian theatrical tradition. It is a book about theatre as ritual and as power-struggle, and presents for the first time a study of Lady Jôruri, herself a semi-mythical figure, who gave her name to the world’s most sophisticated puppet theatre. With illustrations.
Chu, Hsiang-chun
2008 0-7734-5061-0 260 pages
Explores the theatrical self-reflexivity in early modern drama in terms of themetatheatrical critical perspective advocated by Lionel Abel, James L. Calderwood, Richard Hornby, and Judd D. Hubert, to name just a few. Some early modern dramatic works display unflagging excavation and disclosure of the dramatic art itself. Their self-conscious exploration of the nature and function of dramatic art gives us a chance to reconsider the dramatic medium.
Breining, Daniel
2007 0-7734-5355-5 140 pages
The purpose of this annotated bibliography is to bring together under one title a diverse collection of works along with critical commentary that deal with the first centuries of colonial Mexican theater and drama. Shortly after the fall of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlán in 1521, the Spanish conquerors deemed it necessary to instruct the large indigenous populations and to quickly convert them to Catholicism. This task fell principally on the newly arrived religious orders, the first being the Franciscans who set foot in New Spain in 1523. Because of the linguistic barriers encountered by the clerics, there was a need to exemplify the Christian faith that did not rely so heavily on simple verbal instruction. Theater and dramatic performances proved to be the ideal format. The majority of the plays in this collection were written starting with the third decade of the sixteenth century and then concluding with pieces coming towards the end of the 1600s. Studies that center on these plays are mostly modern works stemming from the late 1800s and continue up to the publication of this bibliography. In addition to these dramatic works, the reader will find the more important and prevalent pre-Hispanic plays along with studies focusing on this native genre and the far reaching importance of theatrical performance to the Indian population of central Mexico prior to the arrival of the European. Along with native dramatic works propagating indigenous religious beliefs and the Christian plays of conversion, there are many ancillary studies that deal with performance practices and theatrical sites. One part of this category is the inclusion of works concerning the architectural properties of performance locales, and especially the open air chapel, which the early religious orders depended upon heavily and used extensively in central New Spain for conversional and didactic dramas. This annotated bibliography concludes with an extensive index allowing quick access to its contents further assisting the investigator in additional research.
Campbell, Lou
2008 0-7734-5025-4 220 pages
Never before have the words of professionals performing in the field been collected and compiled into a work that so authoritatively defines, qualifies, and amplifies the art form. This book contains ten color photographs and twenty black and white photographs.
Görtschacher, Wolfgang
1996 0-7734-4205-7 598 pages
Essays by European and American scholars from the fifth Salzburg conference on the influence of war on art and literature. Topics include an analysis of the filming of the Agincourt battle in both Olivier's and Branagh's Henry V; the First World War in Irish Drama; Arthur Kopit's Indians and the Vietnam War; the fall of France on the stage; David Rabe's Sticks and Bones and Streamers; Atrocities in Vietnam War movies; Vietnam in the Genre film; the Berlin stage 1936-33; Resistance drama; Representations of WWII in British TV comedy; Three WWI plays by Women; American POWs in WWII; WWI in Truffaut's Jules et Jim; The Bridge on the River Kwai; Sam Shepard's States of Shock and the Gulf War;The Genealogy of the Woman Commissar in Soviet Culture; and others.
Cherry, Caroline Lockett
1973 0-7734-0451-1 251 pages
Systematically analyzes Middleton's depiction of women in light of the 17th-century attitudes: what was said and thought about women, the various occupations and courses of action open to them, and the forces governing these choices.
Grainger, Roger
2013 0-7734-4474-2 232 pages
This book is an exploration about the use of drama as therapy and the life-enhancing properties of theater itself. The purpose of theater is to catch us in action, engaged in the business of living. The author brings theater to us as a unique interwoven framework of the relationship between drama and psychological healing.
Vena, Gary
1988 0-7734-1990-X 251 pages
This text reconstructs the premiere of what some critics consider to be O'Neill's most controversial play -- it marked his return to the theater after more than a decade, and was also the last stage production he'd oversee. The reconstruction incorporates the playwright's own set drawings; scene plans designed by the Guild's production manager, Karl Nielsen; set renditions designed by Robert Edmond Jones; interpretations of original lighting designs; and photographs of the original cast. Facilitated by Theatre Guild promptbooks and an actor's rehearsal text, the reconstruction provides a detailed story of the play and a step-by-step analysis of director Eddie Dowling's final achievement. Comments contributed through personal interviews with selected cast members and Guild personnel further illuminate the event. Carefully detailed textual modifications between the published play and the Guild's rehearsal script appear in the first appendix. Extracts from more than fifty theatre reviews appear in the second. With bibliography and index.
Coker, Niyi
2005 0-7734-6147-7 172 pages
This work is an exploration into the writing, cultural and theatrical aesthetics of African writer and director, Ola Rotimi. It is a quest and search for an authentic African esthetic that has been transformed by at least two centuries of the European colonization. This work focuses on the aesthetic dimensions of the Ori Olokun theatre under the artistic direction of Ola Rotimi. It reviews Ola Rotimi’s vision and impact with the Ori Olokun Company, and his quest to formulate a truly authentic African theatre, void of the imported European sensibility and colonially inherited aesthetic. The unique creative achievement of Rotimi’s work at the Ori Olokun theatre, is that it evolved out of the ivory towers of the University, an ‘unfriendly’ territory as far as the indigenous theatre is concerned. Ola Rotimi dedicated his art to exploring the traditional/indigenous artistic expressions of the Nigeria people at a point when the African aesthetic had completely lost ground to the European value system. Three of Rotimi’s historical plays are analyzed to understand and locate his historical perspective. Rotimi tackles the controversial issue of an appropriate language for the African theatre, an issue that has dominated African theatre for the past half century. His solution is that writers must ‘tamper with the English language to temper it’s Englishness’. Clearly, what makes Rotimi unique, is that he brings to his plays, the linguistic characteristics and nuances that are authentic to African people.
Street, Jack D.
2015 1-4955-0369-0 220 pages
Jack D. Street translated both plays. This book is part of the multivolume Mellen collection of contemporary Italian drama, which comprises fourteen plays, of which thirteen are first translations. The collection, covering 1950 to 2001, includes introductions to the playwrights, production photographs, a general bibliography of works in English on Italian drama of the period, and bibliographies specific to the playwrights in each book. Jack D. Street wrote the general introduction to the collection. Foreword by Marvin Carlson.
Beresford, M.
1996 0-7734-8840-5 320 pages
This play appeals to students of Russian and theatre people alike. This edition, the most comprehensive ever produced, provides the reader with all that is required for a full understanding of Gogol's classic. Every aspect of the play has been carefully researched, and a detailed account of its composition, reception and stage history is given in the introduction. The text, in the original Russian, is accompanied by a commentary on all points of linguistic, literary or historical interest. There are copious notes on colloquial Russian idiom. Misconceptions about the nature and purpose of Gogol's dramatic masterpiece are common, and the editor has taken great pains to set the record straight, using evidence taken from the writings of Gogol and his contemporaries. The play, innocent of any political intent, emerges not as a light-hearted farce, but as a subtle satirical comedy, a brilliant exposé not just of bribery but of corruption in many guises.
Shafer, Gloria
1992 0-7734-9924-5 160 pages
Since all experts agree that stage fright in a proper dose adds a unique dimension to any presentation, it is not something that should be done away with, but rather a phenomenon to be used. This book covers the latest scientific evidence, mixed with age-old secrets on how to gain performance power. Creative visualization, self-hypnosis, biofeedback, the Alexander Technique, beta-blockers, and more are discussed. Everything you always wanted to know about overcoming stage fright is in this step-by-step guide which lead you to the land where fear is harnessed and butterflies fly in formation. The book has been endorsed by such luminaries as Eli Wallach, Theodore Mann, Georgette Klinger, Gay Talese, and Alan King. Well-researched, but still accessible and practical for both the professional and the neophyte.
Ritschel, Nelson O’Ceallaigh
2007 0-7734-5492-6 228 pages
This book explores the way women, specifically women perceived or presented as Irish, were represented on the Dublin stage by playwrights and actors from the 1820s to the 1920s. Yet, rather than being a feminist reading of modern Irish theatre, this book presents a nationalist and socialist reading of the theatre in its cultural and historical contexts. Arguably, the developmental process that Ireland and its theatre experienced from the eve of Catholic Emancipation to the radical idealism of the 1916 Easter Rising was one of national and social advancement. The radical agitators near the end of this period, including those in the theatre, sought self-determination for Ireland and, more importantly, self-determination for all of the Irish regardless of gender, class, or religion. This book’s argument is that as the stage image of the Irish woman modernized from the early nineteenth century into the twentieth, it mirrored the modernization of Ireland.
Leeming, David
1986 0-88946-005-1 69 pages
People's theater on an international scale, with a multicultural and international cast _ the theater of the new age of communication.
Van Watson, William
1989 0-7734-2002-9 150 pages
This study examines, from a variety of critical perspectives, Pasolini's complex, paradoxical, and eclectic drama. This book offers the most comprehensive study of Pasolini's theatre to date in any language.
Burns, Landon
1974 0-7734-0185-7 258 pages
Examines Rowe's tragic plays to determine his methods, values and achievements, and demonstrates in what ways he was a transitional figure in the history of the drama.
Uçar-Özbirinci, Pürnur
2009 0-7734-4708-3 288 pages
This study explores the process of mythmaking in plays written by women. By writing the lives of female writers and rewriting the literary characters, which have been created by male writers, women playwrights assume the role of a mythmaker. This study evaluates the constantly developing process of women’s mythmaking/mythbreaking in Liz Lochhead’s Blood and Ice, Rose Leiman Goldemberg’s Letters Home, Bilgesu Erenus’ Halide, Timberlake Wertenbaker’s The Love of the Nightingale, Bryony Lavery’s Ophelia, and Zeynep Avc?’s Gilgamesh.
Harwood-Gordon, Sharon
1990 0-88946-569-X 224 pages
Analyzes the poetic style of Corneille's Médée, Le Cid, Horace, Cinna, Polyeucte, Pompée, Théodore, and Rodogune, with a final chapter devoted to the later tragedies. Situates the Corneille's stylistic mode of expression within the historical framework and social milieu in which these works were composed.
Reid, John McKellor
2007 0-7734-5388-1 224 pages
This groundbreaking study insists that critical tradition has conspired to emasculate the polemical force Chekhovian comedy out of misplaced respect for his renowned objectivity and his loathing of overt moralizing. A rhetorical framework of analysis is predicated upon the assumption that all writings are implicated in ‘interestedness’ – the critic’s task is to uncover the rhetorical parameters and nature of that ‘interestedness.’ Through analyses of each of Chekhov’s plays in its original context, the author identifies the rhetorical potential that remains neglected in contemporary readings and productions. All of the readings in this study are addressed to actors and directors – inviting them to reassess and reclaim the force of these plays for our time.
Wong, Mitali P.
2006 0-7734-5687-2 284 pages
Rhetoric in sixteenth century English historical drama is intertwined with character development in relation to contemporary political paradigms. Recurring major political themes are those of strong rulership, stable government, the political responsibilities of the king, the peers, and the commons. Secondary themes are the need for monarchs to please their subjects, the need for both princes and peers to confront political reality with wisdom. This study concludes that Tudor dramatists were making the most of the politics of misunderstanding by exploiting the ambiguity inherent in rhetorical language. Tudor dramatists seriously questioned contemporary political doctrines by using oblique and “politic” rhetoric thereby shedding light upon the past in terms of the present in a fundamentally different way.
Phillips, George Harwood
2023 1-4955-1120-0 220 pages
"To declare that Porgy, a play that has received only limited attention from critics and scholars, is one of the great works of American musical theater may seem hyperbolic. The following chapters, however, will present evidence supporting that contention. The book begins with an overview of the history of the people who came to reside in what became known as South Carolina. Emphasis is given to the Gullah, an African-American community that emerged during slavery. The early life of Dubose Heyward, the author of the novella upon which the play is based, is examined in some detail because his knowledge of the Gullah people was crucial to the development of the characters in the play. A synopsis of the play follows, then a chapter on Rouben Mamoulian, the play's director. ...Chapters on the play's critical reception and its legacy conclude this study." -George Harwood Phillips ("Preface")
Kallin, Britta
2007 0-7734-5499-3 204 pages
Explores the representation of ethnic minorities and the construction of national identities in contemporary plays written by German and Austrian women. The study draws on approaches of cultural and postcolonial studies, African-American and other minority feminist criticism as well as Anglo-American and German feminist scholarship. The plays examined in the book include Kerstin Specht’s Lila, Elfriede Müller’s Goldener Oktober, Bettina Fless’s Asyl, Gundi Ellert’s Jagdzeit, Marlene Streeruwitz’s Bagnacavallo, and Elfriede Jelinek’s Stecken, Stab und Stangl. This book evaluates the characters in terms of visual representation, the way in which they communicate with other characters, and the characters’ involvement in the development of the play. The work demonstrates that the playwrights assign minority characters a restricted verbal capacity that limits their influence on the action of the play, thereby reducing such characters to function merely as catalysts for problems of the German and Austrian communities. The playwrights write with a well-meaning intention but some cannot avoid the trap of their position as self-appointed spokesperson while other offer new positions from where they speak and avoid reproducing stereotypes of the “Other”. This work will appeal to scholars in German studies, feminist studies and drama.
Ingham, Michael Anthony
2004 0-7734-6356-9 375 pages
This study will argue that a distinction needs to be made between faithful but derivative stage versions of novels in the tradition of Zola's Thérèse Raquin, which aspire only to the status of theatricalised novel, and the autonomous stage transformation of a literary text, creating its own performance dynamic through the reconstruction of literary form and content. For the sake of greater critical clarity the former type will be designated dramatizations and the latter adaptations, despite the lack of consistent differentiation in common theatre discourse.
Groysman, A. L.
1999 0-7734-3233-7 456 pages
This book, rich in practical explanations and implications, is a valuable tool for artists and students. The author implements a new theoretical conception which has made this book popular also with non-theatre students. Dr. A. L. Groysman is the head of the Department of Psychology and Ballet Medicine of the Russian Academy of Theatre Arts. In Russian
Ransome, Grace Greenleaf
1997 0-7734-8573-2 68 pages
This reprint of the 1931 sourcebook features a worldwide bibliography. Areas include: Puppets, Historical and Critical; Modern Puppets; Puppets in Education; Puppet Construction and Technique; Puppet Plays; Shadows, Historical and Critical; Shadow Plays; Bibliographies; Miscellanea; Magazines and Poetry. The worldwide collection ranges from Belgian to Egyptian to Turkish, includes Asia and Europe.
Polster, Joshua E.
2010 0-7734-1365-0 204 pages
This study uncovers untapped symbolic layers in some of Miller’s best-known plays by linking them to famed media events or social concerns of the period of each play’s initial production.
Riccio, Thomas
2003 0-7734-6987-7 360 pages
Fitzpatrick, Tim
1995 0-7734-9003-5 468 pages
Beyond the Improvisation/Memorisation Divide This study argues that the performers who developed the commedia dell'arte in the 16th century did so by applying oral storytelling techniques to a multi-performer genre. The book argues that the predominant documentary evidence of this theatre phenomenon, the eight hundred extant scenarios, can be examined as specific literate elements in a theatrical production process which can be delineated in relation to other well-documented oral processes. Extensive analysis of scenarios from different collections demonstrates how the scenarios are structured for, and might have functioned in, performance: they provided a series of clear schematic units for which the performers could develop specific formulaic material able to be quickly and fluently strung together to create a seamless whole. Further analysis distills the scenarios into a finite list of categorized performance units to create a notional compendium of all the sorts of schematic material for which the performers would have needed to generate formulaic utterances and actions, a sort of 'encyclopedia of the performable which influenced not only this genre but much subsequent theatre practice.
Relationships Between Score and Choreography in Twentieth-Century Dance Music, Movement and Metaphor
Hodgins, Paul1992 0-7734-9552-5 240 pages
This study examines the aesthetic interdependence of the two disciplines. It begins with a questionnaire-based survey which reveal the pervasive influence of music on a viewer's perception of movement. It proposes a paradigm which can be used to identify and categorize relationships between choreography and score. Acknowledged classics such as Apollo, Agon, Errand Into the Maze, and The Catherine Wheel are subjected to detailed choreomusical analysis, utilizing the paradigm as part of a comprehensive examination of music-movement affinities. Current dance scholarship has virtually ignored the area of music-dance relationships, so this book will be useful for courses on music for dancers, dance philosophy and aesthetics, dance history, choreography, movement and analysis, and other areas of dance scholarship.
McPharlin, Paul
2005 0-7734-8575-9 404 pages
Williams, Anthony Ronald
2000 0-7734-7745-4 248 pages
During the 19th century, the proportion of the population living in cities increased significantly, and the experience of life for those undergoing the urbanising process changed radically. This work examines theatrical responses to this phenomenon, concentrating on plays treating the experience of life in the metropolis as it changed over a 60 year period. There is a particular, though not exclusive, focus on the social class level involved: popular melodrama treats issues very close to the actual experiences of those attending the melodrama houses, many of them in the East End and on the Surrey side of the Thames, away from the fashionable theatres. Cross-references are made to popular fiction and non-fiction where relevant, as well as to major cultural and historical changes. Issues include crime, policing and prisons; changing attitudes toward the underclass; the search for occupation and finding a space to live; relationship between past and present; plight of the migrant; the impact of the railways.
Browne, Kevin Thomas
2007 0-7734-5494-2 216 pages
Examines the life and work of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) and his significant and unique place in the theatrical and political life of Great Britain. A man of middling background, he was simultaneously a leading Whig politician and, because of the success of his two plays, The Rivals (1775) and The School for Scandal (1777), the most dominant figure in the British theatre during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Theatre historians have tended to view these works as manners comedies which are long on style but appropriately short on substance. Therefore, previous criticism of the plays has concerned itself mainly with questions of genre classification, leading to an under appreciation of Sheridan’s historical context. This book argues that, given the fact that the British theatre was central to the discussion and formation of the nation’s evolving ideology, Sheridan’s dramaturgy, far from being empty of content, offers snapshots of the state of negotiations between the classes over the nature of British identity centering on issues of money, gender, class, morality, and language.
Getz, Lorine M.
1995 0-7734-8892-8 176 pages
An analysis of Bergman's artistic sensitivity to the problem of redemption in seven screenplays, The Rite, The Virgin Spring, Hour of the Wolf, Shame, Passion of Anna, The Touch, Cries and Whispers.
Thorpe, Ashley
2007 0-7734-5303-2 396 pages
This is the first Western language book to examine the chou (“clown”) role-type in traditional Chinese drama — a role-type credited with so much importance that some critics insist that “without the chou, there would not be drama.” This assertion is evaluated through an analysis of historical documents and translated play texts, fieldwork research, and from the perspectives of ethnomusicology and anthropology. The resulting analysis of the role-type, considered across different eras of history and modes of performance, teases out the central joking mechanisms employed by the chou role in a variety of social contexts. The performance of comedy as a part of exorcistic festivals and funeral rituals is investigated, while also examines the function of the chou in providing moral teaching. This book contains 1 black and white photograph and 11 color photographs.
Seed, David
1992 0-7734-9643-2 188 pages
This study gives a novel-by-novel analysis of Wurlitzer's works, relating his fiction to the writings of the Beats, Beckett, and other influences. Each of his novels centers around a literal or metaphorical West where the cultural bearings of the protagonists are brought under pressure, returning again and again to issues of cultural breakdown and isolation. A separate chapter is devoted to his work for the cinema and the strong continuity between his `road movies' and his fiction. This is the first critical study of Wurlitzer's work and has been prepared with the help of the novelist himself.
Tollini, Frederick Paul
2003 0-7734-6675-4 204 pages
This study adds another insight into the period of Luis XIV – that the confluence of the theatrical arts from older traditions developed to shape a distinctly French style which all pertained to the glorification of the Sun King. While previous studies have stressed the literary and musical side of the performances of the period, this study examines the settings and scene designs which completed the picture for the mythologies. Besides giving an account of the festivities of Versailles and setting them in their social environment, this work relates the spectacles to the political and social milieu, incorporating both contemporary literary theory and cultural history.
Cairns, Christopher
1996 0-7734-8814-6 340 pages
Papers collected in this volume were given at the Arts Centre, Aberystwyth, in March, 1993, at a conference organised to coincide with the English premiere of the first English-language staging of Pietro Aretino's Talanta. Grants had been obtained to construct the Roman perspective set described with such enthusiasm by contemporaries such as Vasari and Aretino himself for the Venice staging of the play in 1542. According to current research, the set has been seen as one of the earliest attempts to reproduce a real place on a stage with topographical accuracy. This set had been reconstructed full-size on the Aberystwyth stage according to the suggested source, and the play had been translated, adapted with new music and modern choreography. Experts on Renaissance theatre practice and in particular on aspects of staging and set-design gathered for this conference. Contains many photographs and drawings.
Williams-Witherspoon, Kimmika
2006 0-7734-5642-2 336 pages
This book is the first anthropological study on the political economy of African American theater and its use in contesting power and oppression through various ‘hidden’ scripts embedded in rituals, rhetorical strategies, and theatrical conventions, including dialogue, stagecraft, lighting, color, design, and spectacle. This ethnography focuses on the pre-production, production, and post-production of plays during the 2000-2001 theater season, with special emphasis on Ntozoke Shange’s world premiere of Sparkle: The Musical (an adaptation of Joel Schumacher’s 1976 hit screenplay of the same title). Productions of African American theater point to the real and concrete ways that classism, sexism and oppression affect and influence contemporary constructions of black identity, life, and culture, and what can be done to countermand them.
Garstenauer, Maria
1985 0-7734-0197-0 250 pages
Includes discussion of Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, State of Revolution, and Vivat! Vivat Regina!, John Osborne's Luther, John Whiting's The Devils, and Peter Shaffer's The Royal Hunt of the Sun.
Horne, Philip
1996 0-7734-8745-X 220 pages
Selene is quintessential court theater, written by a courtier, performed before courtiers, and depicting events at a fictitious court. This volume proposes that after 1546, when he entered the service of the Duke of Ferrara as Secretary, Giraldi the playwright had more practical and pressing concerns than the pursuit of literary fame. Charged with the organization of dramatic entertainment, his prime obligation was to devise lively theatrical spectacles for the enjoyment and edification of his peers at court, and he used the theater as an instrument of moral and religious persuasion and as a vehicle for dynastic propaganda. In 1546 Giampaolo Manfrone had been convicted of two assassination attempts against Duke Ercole; it was politically apt, therefore, that Giraldi's choice of plot for the cautionary drama Selene should have been the downfall of a power-hungry noble intent upon murdering his sovereign. The introduction discusses personal experiences and cultural influences at work in Selene. Chapter I examines Giraldi's exposé of court life written for the guidance of an aspiring young courtier and based on his knowledge of the Ferrarese court. Chapter II illustrates his close rapport, as dramatist, with the Duke. Chapter III sets the play in the context of the burgeoning contemporary literature concerning the excellence of women. The Notes to the play comment on its ideological content, resolve syntactical problems, and clarify the movements of the actors on stage. The Glossary lists all word-forms found in the text not represented in modern Italian.
Partridge, Colin
1991 0-7734-9746-3 124 pages
Brings together for the first time a modern translation of the 19th century novella, a discussion of the literary and historical background to the story, an account of the making of Visconti's film, and an analysis of the film itself. It offers new information on both the print-text and the film-text, illuminating the creative genius of Camille Boito and Luchino Visconti. This is an original study in an increasingly important area of academic scrutiny -- the relationship between literature and film.
André, María Claudia
2006 0-7734-5620-1 244 pages
This anthology features a collection of translated plays by Argentine actress and playwright Susana Torres Molina. The seven pieces gathered in this collection are some of the works that established Torres Molina’s reputation as one of the most outstanding and innovative female playwrights in contemporary Latin American theatre. Each piece not only reveals the author’s creative talents as a dramatist, director, and stage designer, but also offers an aesthetic perspective that challenges more realistic and conventional forms of playwriting.
Levin, Carole
1991 0-88946-078-7 289 pages
Focuses on the effects that radical instability, provoked in part by economical and theological transformations, had on gender relations and women's behavior during the English Renaissance.
Mitchell, Charles
2004 0-7734-6553-7 172 pages
Demonstrates how Shakespeare utilized a strategy of manipulating the language and conventions of public execution in his plays. Paying special attention to the poetics of hangings at Tyburn, the most dominant place of execution, Shakespeare’s subversion of this well-known (and uneasy) discourse between the public and the state is illuminated by close readings of The Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus, Richard III, Measure for Measure, and The Tempest. It uses audience-reception theory and new historicism, as well as non-dramatic texts (popular literature and ballads) to demonstrate the knowledge and experiences of execution that the audiences of Shakespeare’s time took with them to the theatre. With illustrations.
Mitchell, Charles
2004 1-4955-0928-1 172 pages
Demonstrates how Shakespeare utilized a strategy of manipulating the language and conventions of public execution in his plays. Paying special attention to the poetics of hangings at Tyburn, the most dominant place of execution, Shakespeare’s subversion of this well-known (and uneasy) discourse between the public and the state is illuminated by close readings of The Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus, Richard III, Measure for Measure, and The Tempest. It uses audience-reception theory and new historicism, as well as non-dramatic texts (popular literature and ballads) to demonstrate the knowledge and experiences of execution that the audiences of Shakespeare’s time took with them to the theatre. With illustrations.
Tollini, Frederick Paul
2005 0-7734-6231-7 296 pages
This study's intellectual center of gravity is Reinhardt's experimental early work in Wilhelm and Berlin, culminating in the 1913/14 Deutsches' Theater Shakespeare Cycle, but touching as well on large-scale postwar productions at the Grossess Schauspielhaus. More than a half-century after his death, Max Reinhardt (1873-1943) and the once vibrant theater associated with his name remain only a vague and distant memory. In America he is remembered chiefly for large-scale spectacular productions, for Everyman because of its continued association with the Salzburg Festival, and for the memorable 1935 Midsummer Night's Dream film, one of Hollywood's costliest productions up to that time. Other significant aspects of Reinhardt's distinguished career, such as his fascination and lifelong experimentation with all manner of theatrical styles, emerging stage technologies, acting techniques, and theatrical venues have by now mostly been forgouen. In Europe, where memory runs deeper, Reinhardt's genius and achievements are still periodically celebrated.
Bellis, Clive
2011 0-7734-3663-4 228 pages
This collection deals with the works of Shakespeare and Cervantes, with Rabelais as their common predecessor. This work presents the Shakespeare-Cervantes relation not only from a purely textual perspective, as scholars have tended to do, but also from a theatrical perspective, since both shared the condition of playwrights.
Gibson, Arthur
1989 0-88946-951-2 172 pages
A perennially popular reprint about the filmmaker who "exposed on film his own inner vision."
Boucquey, Thierry
1999 0-7734-8038-2 248 pages
This volume offers English translations of six French farces dating from the beinning to the mid-16th century. Each play portrays particular features of French farce. The author has clearly illustrated these informative aspects, allowing the reader to appreciate the finer distinctions between works within the genre. The Introduction provides a clear profile of the corpus of plays as well as a brief but enlightening history of farce itself. Each chapter/play includes its own introduction and set of notes, providing historical, cultural, and staging information.
Schandl, Veronika
2009 0-7734-4746-6 256 pages
This study examines how productions of Shakespeare’s plays subverted or strengthened the official doctrines of late Socialist Hungary.
Ukpokodu, I. Peter
1992 0-7734-9963-6 328 pages
This work is a study of Nigerian drama from the eve of independence to the 80s with supportive materials from Nigeria's socio-political history. It examines the appropriateness and usage of the term "Nigerian Drama" and sets limits on its meaning. It also looks at what influences the Negritude movement and independence had on Nigerian drama, and why it is important to study Nigerian drama of socio-political concern. Examines pre-Colonial Nigeria, the style of politics and electioneering that marked the first Republic, the Marxist phenomenon in drama, the effects of the civil war, and the drama that resulted. Includes play synopses, biographies of playwrights, and glossary.
Wiegmann, Mira
2003 0-7734-6891-9 312 pages
This study employs Jungian and post-Jungian hermeneutics to address psychological, social and political perspectives in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, M. Butterfly, and Kiss of the Spider Woman. These plays and their Broadway productions contain mythic narratives and dreams that Jung described as visionary drama. Peter Brooks’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream stages Jungian archetypes that bridge modern and postmodern production sensibilities and aesthetics. David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly deconstructs patriarchal personae and stages projection and introjection. Terrence McNally’s Kiss of the Spider Woman, an adaptation of Manuel Puig’s novel, demonstrates the fluidity of meaning in postmodern archetypes. This book will engage theatre scholars and practitioners as well as scholars of popular culture and interdisciplinary studies. It models archetypal hermeneutics as a useful analytical tool for postmodern performance criticism. Illustrated with production photographs.
Wetmore Jr., Kevin J.
2014 0-7734-3515-8 216 pages
This unique collection of essays explores the relationship between Japan and Ireland and their theatres, appealing to both scholars and students in a multitude of disciplines. It demonstrates the complex cultural interaction from both an historic and present practice approach to reveal the relationship between intercultural Irish theatre and the traditional theatres of Japan.
Howard, Camille Cole
1992 0-7734-9856-7 156 pages
This study focuses on three stagings of the ballet: Vincenzo Galeotti's 1811 production of ROMEO OG GIULIETTA for the Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen; Leonid Lavrovsky's 1940 full-length production for the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad; and Antony Tudor's 1943 one-act production for Ballet Theatre in New York. The ballets chosen define dance tradition at a given period or extend the dance through some crucial enlargement. Also, they reflect the aesthetic theories and tastes of their choreographers, the technique and training of the dancers, modes of artistic interpretation and performance, and, finally, the politics of the country as expressed through company production policies and selections. The book uses contemporary reports, musical scores, stage plans, production pictures, journal entries and the recorded memories of the performing and producing artists.
Kaaber, Lars
2005 0-7734-6117-5 532 pages
The aim of this study is to investigate the original text and background of Shakespeare’s Hamlet by separating the play from four hundred years of accumulated layers of theatrical and critical tradition. The outstanding popularity of the tragedy has caused the text to be altered according to the particular tastes and morals of various ages; the critical distortion occurred most notably in the Romantic Period (with Goethe, Coleridge and Hazllitt) and was perpetuated by performers of the Victorian Age and beyond. Even when cuts and changes have gradually been abandoned in favour of Shakespeare’s original text, tradition has proceeded to present, by and large, the Romantic Hamlet of the nineteenth century and an infallible protagonist strangely at odds with the rest of the Shakespeare cannon, as Joseph Hunter observed in 1845 when he said of the play that it was ‘quite at variance with the ordinary modes of thinking of its author’. In 1930, Wilson Knight stated that the price of sentimentalizing Hamlet is our failure to understand him. For the benefit of scholars as well as theatre people, this investigative study of the text and tradition of Hamlet hopes to demonstrate that Shakespeare’s original play and its hero were much less of a mystery than commonly perceived today.
Lapisardi, Frederick S.
2006 0-7734-5570-1 432 pages
An avant garde playwright whose theories of stagecraft evolved through performance experience, W.B. Yeats left a complex body of dramatic materials. This book establishes dramaturgical criteria, based on the playwright’s own words, by which all productions of his plays might be judged. Then, through an analysis of Yeats’s plays in performance, it suggests how new stage productions might best engage audiences without violating either texts or theories. Based on fifty years of study and publication about Yeats’s stagecraft and on direct experience with the plays in production both in America and in Ireland, this study develops dramaturgical plans for new productions and shares with readers behind-the-scenes notes from the author’s American Yeats production and from the first three years of James W. Flannery’s International W.B. Yeats Theatre Festival at Dublin’s Abbey Theatre. Its basic premise turns on the belief that with new technology and with directors who accept the text as living theatre worthy of imaginative stage productions for a more general audience, rather than period pieces intended for an elite few, Yeats could finally emerge as a dramatist on a scale with Beckett, Strindberg, O’Neill and other major innovators of the modern stage.
Lembach, Joachim
2003 0-7734-6786-6 316 pages
This is the first study available of the standing in Great Britain of the post-war German cinema, seen here as part of the wider issue of foreign-language film distribution and exhibition in the UK. An analysis of the relevant structural conditions of the industry as well as public attitudes toward non-English-language cinema is followed by a detailed reconstruction of the way films from both West and East Germany have been made available to British audiences, including an assessment of how they have been promoted both commercially and culturally. The final chapter aims at ascertaining to what extent the critical response to contemporary German features is a reflection of the general British perception of the films’ country of origin. An extensive appendix presents a list of some 800 feature films, with details of their screening on British television and in the cinema over five decades, as well a bibliography that includes the details of hundreds of film reviews, mainly from newspapers and specialist publications.
Courtade, Anthony E.
1982 0-7734-0348-5 179 pages
Macklin, Gerald
1993 0-7734-9349-2 290 pages
Cabrera, Eduardo
2009 0-7734-4869-1 212 pages
This work examines the hermeneutic work of theater directors as artists, a rarely considered aspect of contemporary theater in Argentina. In Spanish.
Barquet, Jésus J.
2002 0-7734-7140-5 176 pages
This study offers a profound study of Arrufat’s play, using most recent critical trends concerning the performance aspect of the drama. It examines the genre of the drama and its relationship to the phenomenon of the Cuban Revolution, Arrufat as a Cuban playwright of the 60s and his re-writing of the Greek theme of the fratricidal fight in Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes. Also contains a recent interview with Arrufat in which he describes the social circumstances surrounding the play and some of his classical re-writing techniques. In Spanish. “With the useful journey through Seven Against Thebes and its epoch furnished by this book, two assertions are well-established: first, the play is one of the masterpieces of Cuban theater of all time; and second, Barquet’s study constitutes a model of criticism in the field of Latin-American drama.” – José A. Escarpanter
Strider, James D. Jr.
1999 0-7734-8200-8 246 pages
This study offers practical suggestions for training actor-combatants in a university environment. Guidelines for teaching staged fighting are based on the author's first-hand experience in both performance and education at the college level. The study also examines the ethics of staging violence in light of modern sociological studies.
Cocozzella, Peter
2012 0-7734-2625-6 272 pages
This monograph on Joan Roís de Corella (1435-1497) offers to the English-speaking world the discovery of a prominent literary figure, worth of recognition as a leading exponent of the Renaissance in the Catalan domain. Peter Cocozzella intends to bring into focus Corella’s distinctive contribution as embodied in a work that bears the title of Tragèdia de Caldesa (‘Tragedy of Caldesa’). Contrary to the trend of criticism that flatly denies the stage-worthy qualities of this magnificent text, Cocozzella proposes that Corella’s masterpiece constitutes a full-fledged theatricalization of a form of tragedy that stems not from Aristotelian principles but, rather, from the description formulated by Isidore of Seville. Corella delves into a radically conflictive interaction of male and female characters. Arguably, his Tragèdia trans-values the Ovidian myth of Narcissus into the ambiance of the Hispanic “erotic hell” and reveals that the theme of emasculation in literature goes back at least to the fifteenth century.
Jones, Louise Conley
1996 0-7734-8802-2 180 pages
This study establishes the critical need for stage action in order to understand fully the theme of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. Marlowe's primary intent is to invert the morality play, illustrating the distortions and ambiguities of a systematized religion and to establish the human dilemma when man is faced with moral choices, using emblematic action for an effect opposite to that of the traditional moralities. Chapters consider textual problems inherent within any study of Doctor Faustus; the importance of audience response; a critical review of historical staging practices (including stage size, costuming, and special effects); a scene by scene analysis of the text with special attention to the action as metaphor; and a final chapter which is a separate director's book, with the text reproduced, together with the researcher's marginal notes on specific blocking, and with footnotes emplacing and expanding on the metaphorical action as it appears in the text.
Davis, Viola
2015 1-4955-0402-6 332 pages
This work examines the dramatic oeuvre of Derek Walcott in order to make the case that he is engaged as a playwright, in creating a “Creole” drama- a drama that bears the special marks of its Caribbean origin and setting and that embodies the hybrid nature of Caribbean history, culture and personality. This Creole reality is the result of the historical coming together of European and African values within the physical location of the Caribbean islands. The idea of “Creole” is being used to describe the result of the fusion of these three realities and this result is seen to contain a multi-cultural plentitude that is “Characteristic” of the cultural and intellectual reality of the Caribbean.
Crispin, Judith Michelle
2007 0-7734-5407-1 332 pages
This study explores an elite esoteric tradition of music composition, transmitted to succeeding generations by practicing musicians with an avid interest in the occult. Motivated by a conception of music as an agent of transcendence, this tradition has been most clearly articulated by Ferruccio Busoni as Junge Klassizität, or Young Classicality. The core ideas of Busoni’s Junge Klassizität have been passed from teacher to pupil in the manner of esoteric school, and encrypted as symbols within original compositions. One inheritor of Busoni’s esoteric legacy was the Australian composer Larry Sitsky, a composition student of Busoni via Egon Petri. Building on existing research into the esoteric nature of Busoni’s Junge Klassizität, this study traces the passage of the esoteric tradition along the Budoni-Petri-Sitsky line. It outlines a new, living and evolving tradition born from Sitsky’s reinterpretation and revitalization of Busoni’s model. Within the Busoni-Sitsky tradition of orientation of Junge Klassizität remains unchanged but has flowered into new esoteric manifestations. To further elucidate this tradition, this study examines the two major operas it has generated: Busoni’s Doktor Faust and Sitsky’s The Golem. It is demonstrated that the tradition’s core ideas are transmitted through these operas as encrypted symbols, awaiting future decipherment. This work will appeal to scholars of music history, pedagogy, and composition, as well as scholars of Australian music, Busoni, Sitsky and Western esotericism.
Eis, Joel D.
2021 1-4955-0887-0 456 pages
This is a new edition of Dr. Eis's 2003 monograph on the first play performed in America.
Angelo, Adrienne
2009 0-7734-3823-8 148 pages
Examines how the fictional works of contemporary French female authors can be read as a unique fantasy world in which the writer consciously manipulates the reader’s (and spectator’s) narrative expectations with explicit articulations of female desire. In addition, this work offers a literary and psychoanalytic reading of lesser-known female authors in French culture.
Beresford, M.
1996 0-7734-8840-5 320 pages
This play appeals to students of Russian and theatre people alike. This edition, the most comprehensive ever produced, provides the reader with all that is required for a full understanding of Gogol's classic. Every aspect of the play has been carefully researched, and a detailed account of its composition, reception and stage history is given in the introduction. The text, in the original Russian, is accompanied by a commentary on all points of linguistic, literary or historical interest. There are copious notes on colloquial Russian idiom. Misconceptions about the nature and purpose of Gogol's dramatic masterpiece are common, and the editor has taken great pains to set the record straight, using evidence taken from the writings of Gogol and his contemporaries. The play, innocent of any political intent, emerges not as a light-hearted farce, but as a subtle satirical comedy, a brilliant exposé not just of bribery but of corruption in many guises.
Braun, Kazimierz
2019 1-4955-0787-4 384 pages
This book traces a movement in European theatre history known as the Great Reform of Theatre. This movement unfolded roughly between 1880 and the late 1930s. It developed against the background of dramatic political, technological, and cultural changes in the entire western world. The Reform transformed all facets of European theatre including play-writing, mise-en-scene, performance, production, criticism, and social significance.
Moore, Carol-Lynne
2009 0-7734-4777-6 376 pages
This study of Rudolf Laban, pre-eminent dance theorist of the twentieth century, provides the first comprehensive analysis of his theoretical explorations. Based upon an examination of unpublished writings and drawings from the final two decades of Laban’s career, the work traces Laban’s systematic integration of various strands of research and delineates how he used “harmony” as an analogic metaphor to illuminate the deep structure of dance and movement. This book contains thirteen color photographs.
Espejo, Ramón
2016 1-4955-0529-4 1524 pages
This study traces the evolution and significance of American drama and theater in Spain between 1912 and 1977 offering fresh evidence how American theater clashed against a largely stale, xenophobic Spanish establishment. It explores how the meanings surrounding American productions were negotiated both on the stages and outside and how American drama has impacted Spanish theater by challenging the political status quo.
Stadem, Catherine
2010 0-7734-3882-3 320 pages
The growth of theatre in Anchorage, Alaska, is a microcosm of theatre development throughout the United States in the 20th century. In less than a century, Anchorage grew from its humble origins to become a vibrant frontier city of 300,000 and the cultural center of the state. Homegrown playwrights developed their craft, arts institutions flourished, withered, and were replaced by new institutions. Universities developed cadres of actors, directors, playwrights, designers and technicians. This book contains twelve color photographs and twenty-six black and white photographs.
Aleandri, Emelise
2011 0-7734-1510-6 708 pages
Aleandri, Emelise
2011 0-7734-1554-8 716 pages
Aleandri, Emelise
2011 0-7734-1529-7 704 pages
Aleandri, Emelise
2011 0-7734-3928-5 728 pages
This book is a comprehensive and detailed study of the Italian immigrant theatre of New York City from 1746 to 1899. It is chronologically and geographically detailed, along with details about the actors and principals of that theatre. The author provides factual, personal and anecdotal stories about the principals of this theatre, such as Lorenzo Da Ponte, Adelina Patti, Guglielmo Ricciardi and Antonion Maiori. Through these details, the book explains why theatre was so important to the Italian immigrant population, suggesting that, for one thing, life among the immigrants was itself dramatic, if not theatrical. With its thoroughness and emphasis on the humanness of Italian immigrant society clearly conveyed, this book will be an important contribution to scholarship.
Aleandri, Emelise
2006 0-7734-5692-9 408 pages
This book is a comprehensive and detailed study of the Italian immigrant theatre of New York City from 1746 to 1899. It is chronologically and geographically detailed, along with details about the actors and principals of that theatre. The author provides factual, personal and anecdotal stories about the principals of this theatre, such as Lorenzo Da Ponte, Adelina Patti, Guglielmo Ricciardi and Antonion Maiori. Through these details, the book explains why theatre was so important to the Italian immigrant population, suggesting that, for one thing, life among the immigrants was itself dramatic, if not theatrical. With its thoroughness and emphasis on the humanness of Italian immigrant society clearly conveyed, this book will be an important contribution to scholarship.
Aleandri, Emelise
2015 1-4955-0401-8 760 pages
The Italian musical emigration created an extra Italian community in New York in addition to the community of Italian political refugees and exiles. The Italian population of the city also consisted in part of the visiting transient entertainers in the fields of music, dance, circus and variety.
Aleandri, Emelise
2011 0-7734-1588-2 728 pages
Aleandri, Emelise
2012 0-7734-2639-6 608 pages
This book is a comprehensive and detailed study of the Italian immigrant theatre of New York City from 1746 to 1899. It is chronologically and geographically detailed, along with details about the actors and principals of that theatre. The author provides factual, personal and anecdotal stories about the principals of this theatre, such as Lorenzo Da Ponte, Adelina Patti, Guglielmo Ricciardi and Antonion Maiori. Through these details, the book explains why theatre was so important to the Italian immigrant population, suggesting that, for one thing, life among the immigrants was itself dramatic, if not theatrical. With its thoroughness and emphasis on the humanness of Italian immigrant society clearly conveyed, this book will be an important contribution to scholarship.
Aleandri, Emelise
2013 0-7734-4359-2 464 pages
As we progress through these volumes chronicling the Italians in New York theatre, each year’s compilation loom noticeably larger than the one before. The surge began dramatically after the Civil War and continued to expand, with more Italian visitors and residents participating in the theatrical life and business of the city.
Aleandri, Emelise
2012 0-7734-3935-8 720 pages
This book is a comprehensive and detailed study of the Italian immigrant theatre of New York City from 1746 to 1899. It is chronologically and geographically detailed, along with details about the actors and principals of that theatre. The author provides factual, personal and anecdotal stories about the principals of this theatre, such as Lorenzo Da Ponte, Adelina Patti, Guglielmo Ricciardi and Antonion Maiori. Through these details, the book explains why theatre was so important to the Italian immigrant population, suggesting that, for one thing, life among the immigrants was itself dramatic, if not theatrical. With its thoroughness and emphasis on the humanness of Italian immigrant society clearly conveyed, this book will be an important contribution to scholarship.
Aleandri, Emelise
2012 0-7734-2568-3 720 pages
This book is a comprehensive and detailed study of the Italian immigrant theatre of New York City from 1746 to 1899. It is chronologically and geographically detailed, along with details about the actors and principals of that theatre. The author provides factual, personal and anecdotal stories about the principals of this theatre, such as Lorenzo Da Ponte, Adelina Patti, Guglielmo Ricciardi and Antonion Maiori. Through these details, the book explains why theatre was so important to the Italian immigrant population, suggesting that, for one thing, life among the immigrants was itself dramatic, if not theatrical. With its thoroughness and emphasis on the humanness of Italian immigrant society clearly conveyed, this book will be an important contribution to scholarship.
Aleandri, Emelise
2012 0-7734-2541-1 708 pages
This book is a comprehensive and detailed study of the Italian immigrant theatre of New York City from 1746 to 1899. It is chronologically and geographically detailed, along with details about the actors and principals of that theatre. The author provides factual, personal and anecdotal stories about the principals of this theatre, such as Lorenzo Da Ponte, Adelina Patti, Guglielmo Ricciardi and Antonion Maiori. Through these details, the book explains why theatre was so important to the Italian immigrant population, suggesting that, for one thing, life among the immigrants was itself dramatic, if not theatrical. With its thoroughness and emphasis on the humanness of Italian immigrant society clearly conveyed, this book will be an important contribution to scholarship.
Aleandri, Emelise
2012 0-7734-2566-7 712 pages
This book is a comprehensive and detailed study of the Italian immigrant theatre of New York City from 1746 to 1899. It is chronologically and geographically detailed, along with details about the actors and principals of that theatre. The author provides factual, personal and anecdotal stories about the principals of this theatre, such as Lorenzo Da Ponte, Adelina Patti, Guglielmo Ricciardi and Antonion Maiori. Through these details, the book explains why theatre was so important to the Italian immigrant population, suggesting that, for one thing, life among the immigrants was itself dramatic, if not theatrical. With its thoroughness and emphasis on the humanness of Italian immigrant society clearly conveyed, this book will be an important contribution to scholarship.
Aleandri, Emelise
2014 0-7734-0056-7 576 pages
The Italian musical emigration created an extra Italian community in New York in addition to the community of Italian political refugees and exiles. New theatres and entertainment venues continued to open. The year 1870, on the eve of mass migration, reveals the Italian immigrant community has become more sizable, more visible, more entrenched. The Italian population of the city consisted in part of the visiting transient entertainers in the fields of music, dance, circus and variety many remained in New York permanently and the aging political refugees and exiles.
Aleandri, Emelise
2012 0-7734-3947-1 724 pages
This book is a comprehensive and detailed study of the Italian immigrant theatre of New York City from 1746 to 1899. It is chronologically and geographically detailed, along with details about the actors and principals of that theatre. The author provides factual, personal and anecdotal stories about the principals of this theatre, such as Lorenzo Da Ponte, Adelina Patti, Guglielmo Ricciardi and Antonion Maiori. Through these details, the book explains why theatre was so important to the Italian immigrant population, suggesting that, for one thing, life among the immigrants was itself dramatic, if not theatrical. With its thoroughness and emphasis on the humanness of Italian immigrant society clearly conveyed, this book will be an important contribution to scholarship.
Aleandri, Emelise
2012 0-7734-2650-7 608 pages
This book is a comprehensive and detailed study of the Italian immigrant theatre of New York City from 1746 to 1899. It is chronologically and geographically detailed, along with details about the actors and principals of that theatre. The author provides factual, personal and anecdotal stories about the principals of this theatre, such as Lorenzo Da Ponte, Adelina Patti, Guglielmo Ricciardi and Antonion Maiori. Through these details, the book explains why theatre was so important to the Italian immigrant population, suggesting that, for one thing, life among the immigrants was itself dramatic, if not theatrical. With its thoroughness and emphasis on the humanness of Italian immigrant society clearly conveyed, this book will be an important contribution to scholarship.
Aleandri, Emelise
2015 0-7734-4251-0 592 pages
Aleandri, Emelise
2014 0-7734-4304-5 632 pages
The Italian musical emigration created an extra Italian community in New York in addition to the community of Italian political refugees and exiles. The Italian population of the city also consisted in part of the visiting transient entertainers in the fields of music, dance, circus and variety.
Haynes, Robert W.
2010 0-7734-3594-8 216 pages
This work examines the connections between the playwright’s strong Texas connections and his literary art while considering Horton Foote’s many decades of experience in the world of American theater and the lessons he learned from such authors as Henrik Ibsen, William Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor.
Born-Lechleitner, Ilse
1995 0-7734-1284-0 428 pages
This study is the most detailed examination of audience reaction to adultery depicted on the stage, up to the closing of the theatres in 1642 on the outbreak of the Civil War. All tragedies containing the adultery motif are examined, not only such spectacular manifestations as Thomas Middleton and William Rowley's The Changeling and John Webster's The White Devil. Though the Elizabethan and Jacobean plays have received much critical examination, this study also scrutinizes the lesser-known Caroline plays in detail. All the relevant literature has been assembled in an exhaustive bibliography on the theme and is fully utilized in the numerous footnotes.
Petty, Jonathan Christian
2022 1-4955-0990-7 188 pages
This work applies tenets of Group Mental System theory to the Madama Butterfly: "The main tenet of this theory is that the sole linguistic object of music, language of the emotions, is Self. Musical language qualifies Self by qualifying its affect (emotions, moods, dispositions). ...[I]t is of particular interest to consider those musical works in which alterations to the Self play a direct role. One such work is Puccini's Madama Butterfly." -Jonathan Christian Petty
Bendikas, Kristina
2004 0-7734-6485-9 220 pages
This work is the first full-length analysis of the major productions of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle (1932-1988), who has been hailed internationally as one of the most important opera directors/ designers of the last century. In a career spanning four decades he was in demand at the leading opera houses of the world where he regularly collaborated with world-class conductors and singer-actors producing an enormous range of operas representing every period, genre and style from Monteverdi and Rossini to Wagner and Strauss. He was instrumental in reinstating the seria operas of Mozart into the active repertoire and was a formidable champion for new works. These credentials require an investigation into the reasons why he was so critically and popularly successful and the influence that he has had on opera production.
Kristina Bendikas has crafted a uniquely scholarly investigation into Ponnelle’s most important and influential productions at the San Francisco Opera, the Metropolitan Opera and the Houston Grand Opera, as well as those he premiered throughout Europe. In meticulously documented chapters the author draws from substantial primary source material including reviews, interviews, and production notes in order to document and analyze the choices of the director/ designer in operas ranging from Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito to Rossini’s La Cenerentola to modern operas such as Reimann’s Lear. Ponnelle’s views on the relationship between the music of opera and theatre of opera – still central to debates about the future of opera production – construct the critical juncture “opera theatre” which lies at the heart of the book. This book illuminates the work of a formidable artist and more importantly, leads to a deeper understanding of the concerns and controversies that shaped opera production in the late twentieth century.
Rowat, Malcolm
2012 0-7734-3078-4 252 pages
The main purpose of this volume is to provide an overview to all of Richard Strauss’s musical and operatic compositions. Usually the operas are ignored by scholars and composers who only perform his instrumental works. This book shows that there is incredible musical value in the operas as well. It also showcases his compositional style and techniques, as the author states, Strauss could compose while riding on a noisy train, he was just that talented.
Because of his involvement with the Nazi Party, Richard Strauss has been ignored by musical scholars for quite some time. Even when he is studied his operas are often viewed as being less important than his instrumental works. This book remedies that misconception by addressing how his operas were created and pin pointing the musical importance by chronicling their compositional qualities. There is also quite a bit about Strauss’s life in this book as well.
Fisher, James
2000 0-7734-7690-3 280 pages
A valuable examination of the artistry of the puppet stage, past and present. The Puppetry Yearbook creates a forum for new scholarship, as well as critical examinations of the growing number of international and multicultural artists and groups turning to puppets as a profound symbol that can both represent and transcend its human model. Submissions should be addressed to: James Fisher, Editor c/o Theatre Department, Wabash College Crawfordsville, IN 47933 tel. (317) 364-4394 Fax: (317) 364-4295. Submissions may be 5,000-10,000 words in length, prepared in any one of the standard notation formats, should be sent in duplicate accompanied by stamped, self-addressed envelope. ISSN: 1070-3624
Fisher, James
1995 0-7734-9335-2 212 pages
A valuable examination of the artistry of the puppet stage, past and present. The Puppetry Yearbook creates a forum for new scholarship, as well as critical examinations of the growing number of international and multicultural artists and groups turning to puppets as a profound symbol that can both represent and transcend its human model. Submissions should be addressed to: James Fisher, Editor c/o Theatre Department, Wabash College Crawfordsville, IN 47933 tel. (317) 364-4394 Fax: (317) 364-4295. Submissions may be 5,000-10,000 words in length, prepared in any one of the standard notation formats, should be sent in duplicate accompanied by stamped, self-addressed envelope. ISSN: 1070-3624 Volume 1: The Voice of the People (George Speaight); Puppets and the Commedia dell'Arte in the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries (Ryan Howard); Chapbooks and English Puppet Plays (John Phillips); Bunraku: The Traditional Puppet Theater of Japan (Kinko Ito); The Development and Characterization: Puppet Figures of Kasperltheater (Martha Freeman); The Argentine Creole Puppet Theatre (Donald S. Castro); A Chronology of European Theater Events involving Masks, Puppets, and Other Performing Ofjects, 1887-1939 (John Bell); An Interview with Lou Bunin: "Being a Puppet" (Kathryn Grow-McCromick); Po(p)litieke Satire Vlaamse Realiteit? (Freek Neirynck); Theater of the 20th Century as Theater of the Performing Object (John Bell); Domestic Resurrection: The Bread and Puppet Theater (James Fisher); book reviews.
Fisher, James
1996 0-7734-8799-9 204 pages
A valuable examination of the artistry of the puppet stage, past and present. The Puppetry Yearbook creates a forum for new scholarship, as well as critical examinations of the growing number of international and multicultural artists and groups turning to puppets as a profound symbol that can both represent and transcend its human model. Submissions should be addressed to: James Fisher, Editor c/o Theatre Department, Wabash College Crawfordsville, IN 47933 tel. (317) 364-4394 Fax: (317) 364-4295. Submissions may be 5,000-10,000 words in length, prepared in any one of the standard notation formats, should be sent in duplicate accompanied by stamped, self-addressed envelope. ISSN: 1070-3624 Volume 2:The Perception of "Puppetness" in Legacy of Modernism (Robert S. Petersen); Ancient Greek Theater, Noh, Bunraku, and Craig (Nancy L. Staub); "Gentlemen, The Marionette!": Edward Gordon Craig, Floyd Dell, and the Über-marionette (James Fisher); Histories of Gombeyatta: South Indian String Puppets (Michael Schuster); Visual Theater in South India: Gombeyatta-Puppet Traditions (Michael Schuster); Serious Humor: The Ritual Clowns of Indian and Indonesian Puppetry (Nathan Kumar Scott); A Brief Panorama on Cuban Puppetry (Freddy Artiles); The Glove Puppet Theater of Punch and Judy (Martha Feehan); The Origin and Progress of W. J. Bullock's Royal Marionettes (John Phillips); Music in Movement: The Collaboration of Julie Taymor and Elliot Goldenthal (Nancy L. Staub); Marionettes et Acteurs, des collègues faits pour s'entendre (Freek Nerynck); Satori in a Garbage Can (Bill Stout); book reviews.
Fisher, James
1997 0-7734-8646-3 260 pages
A valuable examination of the artistry of the puppet stage, past and present. The Puppetry Yearbook creates a a forum for new scholarship, as well as critical examinations of the growing number of international and multicultural artists and groups turning to puppets as a profound symbol that can both represent and transcend its human model.
Fisher, James
2005 0-7734-5830-1 288 pages
A valuable examination of the artistry of the puppet stage, past and present. The Puppetry Yearbook creates a forum for new scholarship, as well as critical examinations of the growing number of international and multicultural artists and groups turning to puppets as a profound symbol that can both represent and transcend its human model. (23 Black & White Photographs) Submissions should be addressed to: James Fisher, Editor c/o Theatre Department, Wabash College Crawfordsville, IN 47933 tel. (317) 364-4394 Fax: (317) 364-4295. Submissions may be 5,000-10,000 words in length, prepared in any one of the standard notation formats, should be sent in duplicate accompanied by stamped, self-addressed envelope. ISSN: 1070-3624
Jenkins, Terry
2017 1-4955-0614-0 212 pages
This monograph records the the history of royal licensing of theaters that begin in 1660 when Charles II granted the Davenant and Killigrew patent to John Rich. The patent was owned by John Rich for fifty years. It places John Rich's theater ownership in historical context and includes an in-depth and comprehensive history of the patents themselves.
Earnest, Steve
1999 0-7734-7916-3 196 pages
This study deals with the establishment of Reinhardt's school, the training that took place until WWII (including the implementation of nazi officials at the institution), the program of study during the German Democratic Republic, and finally the Hochschule für Schauspielkunst "Ernst Busch". By offering a detailed account of actor training methods which existed shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the study examines the shift in emphasis from a socialist Realistic school of acting, as one of the state institutes of the GDR, to a more eclectic, broad-based approach. As witneessed in 1993, the tprofram showed the influence of Reinhardt's theories of acting as well as those of Stanislaviski and Brecht. Several of the schools' main teachers and leaders throughout its almost ninety year history are profiled, with their corresponding theoretical views included.
Condé, Lisa Pauline
1993 0-7734-9254-2 232 pages
This new annotated edition of the great Spanish writer Galdós' first staged play, Realidad, marks the centary of its début in 1892. The compromise to which the new dramatist was subjected in the creative process is traced through the text by reference to the four sets of manuscripts conserved in the Casa-Museo in Las Palmas. Much of the confusion and apparent contradiction found in the published text of this ambitious play is thus clarified, and its latent dimensions revealed.
Condé, Lisa Pauline
1996 0-7734-8862-6 150 pages
This new annotated edition of Galdós's second staged play, La loca de la casa (1893), is the second in the series The Theatre of Galdós launched in 1992 to mark the centenary of this great writer's turn to the stage. All manuscripts, adaptaciones and reviews available in the Casa-Museo in Las Palmas and the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid have been consulted in order to provide as informed an edition as possible. Issues of class and gender are of particular interest in La loca de la casa, where social classes clash and then fuse as the power of motherhood is exploited and arguably abused.
Torres, Sixto E.
1993 0-7734-9356-5 408 pages
This collection provides scholars and researchers unique access to valuable, but heretofore unpublished work by one of Spain's most talented contemporary playwrights of the Franco and post-Franco eras. Of particular importance is the inclusion of El Enemigo, a psychological drama written in 1943 to which many of the elements of his more mature theatre may be traced. The remaining plays written between 1982 and 1991 are crucial in helping us gain greater insight and appreciation for the development of his theatre during the first full decade of Democratic Spain. The prefatory study and introduction provide a solid framework, and the volume contains the most extensive critical bibliography on his theatre to date.
Harris, John Wesley
2006 0-7734-5798-4 280 pages
There has never been a comprehensive survey in English of all the main forms of traditional Japanese drama – kyogen, noh, kabuki and puppetry. Individual works have been written on each form in abundance, some of them in English, and the majority of them are excellent, but they do not make the reader aware of the close connections between all of these older theatrical forms – their common origins in sacred dance, the high degree of stylization they all share, the selectivity in their use of gesture, the symbolic function of costume, the strict code of honour, which westerners often find so difficult to understand, and the heady mixture of violence with the appreciation of elegant form and a fragile, ephemeral beauty. The forms and conventions of theatre involved are also unique and challenge many of the theories that have been developed about the western stage. In fact, traditional Japanese drama is an area of theatre which should form an essential part of every dramatic specialist’s education.
Ukaegbu, Victor
2007 0-7734-5175-7 424 pages
This study examines the aesthetics of Igbo mask theatre in South-Eastern Nigeria. The author contextualizes this art in contemporary Igbo society, at a time of renewed global interest in the theater of masks. The implications of the theater’s association with new religions (Islam and Christianity) and the extant vestiges of a traditional religion that has changed beyond recognition.
Braun, Kazimierz
2000 0-7734-7828-0 544 pages
This book is a presentation of a directorial style and a method of teaching directing. First, the book presents, for the first time in English, the directorial studies, training and steps of a directorial career in Poland. Second, the book introduces, explains, and describes a method of teaching and exercising a ‘creative directing’ – based on imagination, oriented toward the unknown, asking fundamental existential, philosophical, moral, and political questions, as to opposed to ‘functional directing’ which focuses on the technical, practical, and managerial aspects of directing. The book is oriented toward readers interested in 20th century theater, but at the same time, it is a textbook for directing students, and can serve teachers on both high school and college levels. Supplemented by 60 photographs from various productions directed by the author.
Keith-Smith, Brian
2000 0-7734-1354-5 684 pages
Volume 3 of the Schreyer edition assembles for the first time all of the expressionist’s published essays on the theatre and includes his general moral tract Verantworthch (1922). Reactions to the repertoire and traditions of bourgeois theatre before the First World War precede accounts of the Berlin Sturm- and Hamburg Kampfbühne. His work at the Weimar Bauhaus and hopes for youth theatre in the 1920s and 1930s are recorded with post-1945 interpretations and reminiscences. Among the extensive unpublished documents are the two-volume Die Befreiung der Bühnenkunst (1916) analysing in detail the tasks of a director of theatre communities (an extension of earlier published statements), more on Schreyer’s productions, also his plans for a history of marionettes. This illustrated companion volume to his dramas includes a long introductory essay in German and is an essential research tool for scholars in 20th-centiury, expressionist theatre. In German.
Gressler, Thomas H.
2002 0-7734-7182-0 292 pages
This is the first work to construct a unified theory of educational theatre and suggest ways in which that theory may apply to everything from curriculum to educational theatre design. Part One investigates learning theories and suggests that educational theatre might be a nearly perfect paradigm for those theories. Part Two offers a sample curriculum and what that curriculum requires of the theatre facility. While supporting the possibility that a minority of students might achieve a career in theatre, it stresses the reality that most will not. Preparing this majority – through theatre education – for a broader array of futures requires a reassessment of goals and resources.
Fisher, James
1992 0-7734-9529-0 424 pages
This is an examination of the widespread influence of commedia dell'arte, one of the rarest of theatrical forms - a non-literary theatre that emphasized the skill of the improvising actor. In the twentieth century an astonishingly diverse group of playwrights, actors, directors, and designers rediscovered the art of commedia in ways that permanently changed the direction of the modern theatre. Luigi Pirandello, Edward Gordon Craig, Vsevolod Meyerhold, Max Reinhardt, Jacques Copeau, Dario Fo, Eugenio Barba, and many more sought liberation from formal literary drama. They viewed commedia as theatrical art at its pinnacle of expressivity and creativity. Includes chapters on Italy, Spain, England, Russia, Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, Germany, France, and the United States.
Edgecombe, David P.
1995 0-7734-8881-2 136 pages
This collection of essays examines the method and traditions of Elizabethan actors' training. The work includes chapters on the education of William Shakespeare, the training of the apprentices in the professional theatre companies, the organization and instruction of the "Boys Theatre Companies" and recommendations for application in contemporary classrooms. The first book in print on this subject, this volume will be of interest to both theatre and English teachers. Because some chapters focus on the performance education of young adults and children, many of the recommendations can be applied to performance training.
Rebholz, Ronald A.
2006 0-7734-5731-3 308 pages
With the exception of the three parts of Henry VI, which are examined in one chapter, each chapter is devoted to the critical analysis of one of Shakespeare’s plays. Each analysis begins with a central idea or question that shapes the entire chapter. Background issues, like the plays’ sources and secondary materials, are introduced only when relevant to the author’s analysis. Taken together, the separate chapters make a larger, coherent whole that reveals the major facets of Shakespeare’s creation in comedy, history plays, tragedy, and romances.
Taub, Michael
2018 1-4955-0703-3 288 pages
This book is an edited collection of three plays by Israeli Playwright Edna Mayza. The plays are: Games in the Backyard, The New Criminals and The Back Room.
Williams, Linda Paglierani
1995 0-7734-0007-9
Three short poetic dramas about family dynamics, and contemporary relationships: Cuckoo, Ollie, and Fran; A Couple of Damned Spots; and Cabin Fever.
Cairns, Christopher
1991 0-7734-9450-2 364 pages
This volume collects three Italian Renaissance comedies not readily available to the English-speaking reader and director: Ariosto's Lena (never before translated into English); Ruzante's Posh Talk (also never translated from the Paduan and Bergamask dialects); and Aretino's Talanta. Of contrasting styles, they share some characteristics, which mirror the advance of all Italian literature from humanism to the Counter-reformation, from Bembo to Sperone Speroni and from rudimentary or symbolic staging to a comparatively sophisticated realism in the treatment of stage space. With illustrations.
Morrison, Mary
1997 0-7734-8636-4 412 pages
This study examines the creative processes by which Giraldi transforms his narrative source, usually a novella from his own Hecatommithi, into a five act drama, conforming, more or less, to the conventions of 'regular' classical tragedy. Giraldi, devising these entertainments for the court of his patron, Ercole II, Duke of Ferrara, begins each play by designing an appropriate stage set of the Serlian type (the perspective of a city), to be built and painted by professional artists under his direction; he than adds to the plot new personages, drawn from court life or reflecting topical problems, and places these in situations of tension, with moments of surprise and occasional outbursts of violence. This study demonstrates these points by giving a summary of the relevant novella, followed by a scene by scene synopsis of the play. The detailed synopses will allow all students of drama to appreciate the nature of Giraldi's court entertainments by drawing attention to the non-literary aspects of his dramaturgy, to décor, movement and spectacle. With illustrations.
Aleandri, Emelise
2012 0-7734-2664-7 400 pages
This book is a comprehensive and detailed study of the Italian immigrant theatre of New York City from 1746 to 1899. It is chronologically and geographically detailed, along with details about the actors and principals of that theatre. The author provides factual, personal and anecdotal stories about the principals of this theatre, such as Lorenzo Da Ponte, Adelina Patti, Guglielmo Ricciardi and Antonion Maiori. Through these details, the book explains why theatre was so important to the Italian immigrant population, suggesting that, for one thing, life among the immigrants was itself dramatic, if not theatrical. With its thoroughness and emphasis on the humanness of Italian immigrant society clearly conveyed, this book will be an important contribution to scholarship.
Romano, Evelia
2004 0-7734-6270-8 279 pages
Alfonsina Storni was one of the leading feminist poets and playwrights in Latin America at the beginning of the twentieth century. Storni's poetry has been widely translated and has received various studies and criticism On the other hand, her theater has been mostly neglected until the present. The translation of Two Pyrotechnic Forces consisting of Cimbelina en 1900 y pico (Cvmbeline in 1900-and-something) and Polixena y la cocinerita (Polyxena and the Little Cook) gives scholars and students in the fields of Latin American literature, women's studies and world theater the opportunity to study rare examples of theater written by a woman on very controversial and progressive issues at the beginning of the twentieth century. Storni's farces are a striking example of experimental language to portray and criticize social and political realities. The plays also constitute an iconoclastic approach to the theatrical canon, since Polyxena and the Little Cook is based on Euripides' Hecuba and Cymbeline in the 1900-and-Something parodies the creation of another great name, William Shakespeare The translation is furnished with an introduction that reviews the whole theatrical production of Storni in relation to the historical and social developments of her time and places her work within the context of the literature and theater of Argentina and the Southern Cone. It emphasizes the role of Storni's plays in the foundation of a lineage of female playwrights on the Argentine stage.
Zorrilla, José
2003 0-7734-6732-7 212 pages
Benaquist, Lawrence Michael
1975 0-7734-507-0 221 pages
Examines the dramatic technique employed in the plays, with special emphasis on structure.
Partridge, Colin
1995 0-7734-9089-2 250 pages
McBride, Robert
1992 0-7734-9567-3 380 pages
This study points to the evidence that during Molière's most creative period in Paris, comedy and ballet were increasingly integrated in a unified spectacle. They are not viewed as competing art forms, but in a natural and complementary relationship. In the evolution of comic form, ballet is seen to offer aesthetic patterns through which comedy comments on characters who themselves, in the cyclic circular rhythms regulating behavior and speech, possess a strong affinity with ballet.
Mahaney, William E.
1973 0-7734-0595-X 192 pages
These two plays were produced within a few years of each other at St. John's College, Oxford, early in the seventeenth century. Texts by William E. Mahaney and Walter K. Sherwin. Translations by Walter K. Sherwin, Jay Freyman, and Eve Parrish. Introductions and Notes by William E. Mahaney. [Mellen Studies in Literature: Elizabethan and Renaissance Studies No. 16]
Balfour, Michael
2003 0-7734-6849-8 319 pages
This study examines male criminal violence; its causes and explanations; and how creative drama-based criminal justice programs can respond to working with violent men. It will serve as a guide to innovative creative arts work in criminal justice settings, as a discussion of research methods, and as a series of recommendations for professional practice. It provides practical examples of how theory, empirical research and multi-disciplinary professional practice can be integrated to develop more innovative creative responses to male violence. Drawing on five years of programme experience with offenders, five sections provide step-by-step instruction on how to use drama based interventions in programmes dealing with violent behavior. It will interest scholars and practitioners in the fields of criminology and criminal justices, arts therapies, psychology, and the performing arts.
Shiff, Jonathan
1994 0-7734-9424-3 200 pages
This study examines for the first time the thirty-eight anonymous plays performed at the state banquets that Doge Marino Grimani was required by law to offer four times a year for the leading senators and magistrates of the Venetian Republic. Explores the patronage, audience, site, performers, and music of the first performances, and places their ideological content in the context of the Venice of 1600. It finds that their most unusual feature is a ludic use of rhetoric which betrays the influence of the Sienese veglia games. These games, which called for wit, verbal skill, and variety of response, had recently penetrated Venice by means of Girolamo Bargagli's Dialogo de' Giuochi. They inspired the creation of a new theatrical form. A stylistic analysis of the Grimani plays suggests that all but one are the work of a single author, most likely Enea Piccolomini, a figure hitherto unknown to scholarship, and to whom one of the plays has traditionally been attributed.
Reed, Frances Miriam
1989 0-88946-931-8 150 pages
A critical edition that sets out the final version of Vera, Wilde's first performed play, as it was presented at its premiere on August 20, 1883, at the Union Square Theater in New York
Scott, Shelley
2007 0-7734-5445-4 136 pages
This book analyzes plays by Canadian women that deal with real-life incidents of violent women. In each of the plays under consideration, the playwright is theatrically engaged with the social meaning of the woman’s violent act, asking how it was interpreted in public discourse, and investigating the implications of that interpretation. The female playwrights in this study have each made individual choices about the form in which they will tackle their tricky subject matter, and their choices make for varied and intriguing relationships with their audiences. Each play is also placed in the context of its social milieu by means of an examination of some of the inter-textual discourse surrounding its appearance. In every case, the fundamental question remains: what and how does the violent woman mean?
Condé, Lisa Pauline
1990 0-88946-391-3 472 pages
Examines in depth the great Spanish novelist's turn to the stage in 1892 and his simultaneous shift in approach towards the roles of women in society. Particular attention is paid to the creation of and compromise involved in Galdós' dramatic debut, Realidad, which marks a significant turning point in both artistic and ideological terms. Analyzes through the contemporary drama of "the first period" the subsequent evolution of "la mujer nueva" on stage. All the relevant manuscripts, correspondence, and reviews available in the Casa-Museo and the Biblioteca Nacional have been studied in order to present as complete a picture as possible of this crucial phase in Galdós' career.
McClinton, Calvin A.
1999 0-7734-7940-6 220 pages
This study examines Vinnette Carroll's coantributions to theatre and musical theatre, and especially her work as developer of the song play through her collaboration with composer Micki Grant and her work with Langston Hughes. It focuses on her attempt to revitalize the spirit of the African American theatre experience through h directing, development of the gospel song-play, and her innovative administrative style. Research consisted of evaluating plays written, directed and collaborated on by Carroll in conjunction with the review of available prompt scripts. Critical reviews from public performances were evaluated, historical and biographical data compiled. Interviews with Carroll and other artists with whom she were worked were conducted.
Dashwood, Julie
1991 0-7734-9717-X 201 pages
These essays cover much of the span of Italian drama, from its origins, via the Renaissance and the 19th century, to Pirandello and versions for radio and theatre of Svevo's best-known novel. Contributors raise interesting questions concerning the nature of drama and how and where it can be identified.
Alston, J. B.
1989 0-88946-726-9 192 pages
The first important work to analyze Nigeria's Yoruba drama, which has grown steadily in popularity in the United States, and clarify its mysteries. Also serves as a reference work for staging Yoruba drama.