Book picks similar to
Theatre and Audience by Helen Freshwater
theatre
non-fiction
theatre-and
academic
The Emancipated Spectator
Jacques Rancière - 2008
In response, both artists and thinkers have sought to transform the spectator into an active agent and the spectacle into a communal performance.In this follow-up to the acclaimed The Future of the Image, Rancière takes a radically different approach to this attempted emancipation. First asking exactly what we mean by political art or the politics of art, he goes on to look at what the tradition of critical art, and the desire to insert art into life, has achieved. Has the militant critique of the consumption of images and commodities become, ironically, a sad affirmation of its omnipotence?
Theatre for Community Conflict and Dialogue: The Hope Is Vital Training Manual
Michael Rohd - 1998
It helps you provide opportunities for young people to open up and explore their feelings through theatre, offering a safe place for them to air their views with dignity, respect, and freedom.The purpose of this manual is to provide a clear look at the process and specifics involved in the Hope Is Vital interactive theatre techniques. The organization is sequential, providing a blueprint for creating a workable plan. Beginning with warm-up exercises and bridging activities, the process moves forward to improvisational scenework, where students actually replace characters in the stories. It is at this point that young people engage in their own mini-theatre and look at choices, strategies, and communication.Teachers will want to read this book. Counselors will want to read this book. Community leaders will want to read this book. It is useful in any group setting or as a tool for outreach.
Sense of Direction: Some Observations on the Art of Directing
William Ball - 1984
Founder and long-time general director of the acclaimed American Conservatory Theatre, Bill Ball engages his audience in a wide-ranging discussion of the director's process from first reading through opening night. Speaking as a director's director, Ball offers a candid, personal account of his method of working including the choice of a play's essential elements, preproduction homework, casting, and rehearsal techniques. Throughout, his discovering and insights guide the director in building the world of the play and bringing it to life.
The Shakespeare Riots: Revenge, Drama, and Death in Nineteenth-Century America
Nigel Cliff - 2007
Despite its unlikely origins, though, there was nothing remotely quaint about this pivotal moment in history–the unprecedented shooting by American soldiers of dozens of their fellow citizens, leading directly to the arming of American police forces. The Shakespeare Riots recounts the story of this momentous night, its two larger-than-life protagonists, and the myriad political and cultural currents that fueled the violence. In an engrossing narrative that moves at a breakneck pace from the American frontier to the Mississippi River, to the posh theaters of London, to the hangouts of the most notorious street gangs of the day, Nigel Cliff weaves a spellbinding saga of soaring passions, huge egos, and venal corruption. Cliff charts the course of this tragedy from its beginnings as a somewhat comical contretemps between Englishman William Charles Macready, the haughty lion of the London stage, and Edwin Forrest, the first great American star and a popular hero to millions. Equally celebrated, and equally self-centered, the two were once friends, then adversaries. Exploiting this rivalry, “nativist” agitators organized mobs of bullyboys to flex their muscle by striking a blow against the foppish Macready and the Old World’s cultural hegemony that he represented. The moment Macready took the stage in New York, his adversaries sprang into action, first by throwing insults, then rotten eggs, then chairs. When he dared show his face again, an estimated twenty thousand packed the streets around the theater. As cobblestones from outside rained down on the audience, National Guard troops were called in to quell the riot. Finding themselves outmatched, the Guardsmen discharged their weapons at the crowd, with horrific results. When the smoke cleared, as many as thirty people lay dead, with scores more wounded.The Shakespeare Riots is social and cultural history of the highest order. In this wondrous saga Nigel Cliff immerses readers in the bustle of mid-nineteenth-century New York, re-creating the celebrity demimonde of the day and capturing all the high drama of a violent night that robbed a nation of its innocence.
Language: The Basics
R.L. Trask - 1995
It features chapters on 'Language in Use', 'Attitudes to Language', 'Children and Language' and 'Language, Mind and Brain'.
The White Card: A Play
Claudia Rankine - 2018
The scenes in this one-act play, for all the characters' disagreements, stalemates, and seeming impasses, explore what happens if one is willing to stay in the room when it is painful to bear the pressure to listen and the obligation to respond.--from the introduction by Claudia RankineClaudia Rankine's first published play, The White Card, poses the essential question: Can American society progress if whiteness remains invisible?Composed of two scenes, the play opens with a dinner party thrown by Virginia and Charles, an influential Manhattan couple, for the up-and-coming artist Charlotte. Their conversation about art and representations of race spirals toward the devastation of Virginia and Charles's intentions. One year later, the second scene brings Charlotte and Charles into the artist's studio, and their confrontation raises both the stakes and the questions of what--and who--is actually on display.Rankine's The White Card is a moving and revelatory distillation of racial divisions as experienced in the white spaces of the living room, the art gallery, the theater, and the imagination itself.
Greek Tragedies, Volume 1: Aeschylus: Agamemnon, Prometheus Bound; Sophocles: Oedipus the King, Antigone; Euripides: Hippolytus
David Grene - 1960
Over the years these authoritative, critically acclaimed editions have been the preferred choice of more than three million readers for personal libraries and individual study as well as for classroom use.
Secrets of Screen Acting
Patrick Tucker - 1993
He explains that the actor, instead of starting with what is real and trying to portray that on screen, should work with the realities of the shoot itself, and then work out how to make it all appear realistic.Tucker has created and developed several screen acting of a courses, and this book is an extension and explanation of a lifetime of work in the field. Containing over fifty acting exercises, this book leads the reader step-by-step through the elements of effective screen acting.Refreshing in its informal approach and full of instructive anecdotes, Secrets of Screen Acting is an invaluable guide for those who wish to master the art of acting on-screen.
The Cripple of Inishmaan
Martin McDonagh - 1997
No one is more excited than Cripple Billy, an unloved boy whose chief occupation has been grazing at cows and yearning for a girl who wants no part of him. For Billy is determined to cross the sea and audition for the Yank. And as news of his audacity ripples through his rumor-starved community, The Cripple of Inishmaan becomes a merciless portrayal of a world so comically cramped and mean-spirited that hope is an affront to its order.
Humble Boy
Charlotte Jones - 2001
Thirty-five-year-old Felix Humble is a Cambridge astro-physicist in search of a unified field theory. Following the sudden death of his father, Felix returns to his middle England home and his difficult and demanding mother, where he soon realises that his search for unity must include his own chaotic home life.Humble Boy premiered at the Royal National Theatre, London, in August 2001, and transferred to the Gielgud Theatre, London, in 2002. The play was the winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Award 2001, the Critics' Circle Best New Play Award 2002, and the People's Choice Best New Play Award 2002.
I Am My Own Wife
Doug Wright - 2004
A transvestite and celebrated antiques dealer who successfully navigated the two most oppressive regimes of the past century-the Nazis and the Communists--while openly gay and defiantly in drag, von Mahlsdorf was both hailed as a cultural hero and accused of colluding with the Stasi. In an attempt to discern the truth about Charlotte, Doug Wright has written "at once a vivid portrait of Germany in the second half of the twentieth century, a morally complex tale about what it can take to be a survivor, and an intriguing meditation on everything from the obsession with collecting to the passage of time" (Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times).
The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil
John McGrath - 1974
When the Sheriff and his men arrived, the women were on the road and the men behind the walls. The women shouted 'Better to die here than America or the Cape of Good Hope'. The first blow was struck by a woman with a stick. The gentry leant out of their saddles and beat at the women's heads with their crops. (John McGrath)
Real World Research: A Resource for Social Scientists and Practitioner-Researchers
Colin Robson - 1993
These include teachers, social workers and health service professionals, managers and specialists in business, architects, designers, criminologists and accountants among many others.Real World Research provides a clear route-map of the various steps needed to carry out a piece of applied research to a high professional standard. It is accessible to those without a social science background while providing rigorous and fully up-to-date coverage of contemporary issues and debates. It brings together materials and approaches from different social science disciplines, seeing value in both quantitative and qualitative approaches, as well as their combination in mixed-method designs.