Erwin Piscator's Political Theatre

Erwin Piscator's Political Theatre PDF Author: C. D. Innes
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521084567
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
This 1977 text was the first full study of Erwin Piscator, the German theatrical producer who was prominent in the 1920s and worked after 1945 with the writers Hochhuth, Kipphardt and Weiss. Professor Innes sketches the background of Dadaism and Expressionism from which Piscator came, and points out the differences between Piscator and the other experimenters of his time. He also gives a vivid description of Piscator's technical innovations, the modern means of communication such as film, the illumination of the stage from below and 'the treadmill', a flat moving band along which the characters walked. These turned drama into a multi-media event. Professor Innes uses Piscator's career as a focus to describe theatrical developments in the twentieth century and to discuss the role of the author, the director, and the actor in drama, the purpose of the theatre, and the involvement of the audience.

The Theatre of Erwin Piscator

The Theatre of Erwin Piscator PDF Author: John Willett
Publisher: New York : Holmes & Meier
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Book Description
This is the first book in English to cover the theatrical career of Erwin Piscator. As one of the leading authorities on 20th century German theatre, the author is well-equipped to write about this important director. Most of the text is devoted to the Weimar period and is illustrated with rare pictures and documents.

The Political Theatre

The Political Theatre PDF Author: Erwin Piscator
Publisher: Methuen Publishing
ISBN: 9780413335005
Category : Theater
Languages : en
Pages : 373

Book Description
'The Political Theatre' is among the most important documents of the modern stage. It tells of the foundation and flowering in Weimar Germany of a new form of theatre - epic theatre - designed to bring on to the stage the real political issues of the time, and to do so with all the aids that modern technology could supply.

The Piscator Notebook

The Piscator Notebook PDF Author: Judith Malina
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136467122
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 257

Book Description
'Theater legend Malina has written one of the most interesting studies of the avant-garde theatrical movement published in the last several years.' – CHOICE Judith Malina and The Living Theatre have been icons of political theatre for over six decades. What few realise is that she originally studied under one of the giants of twentieth century culture, Erwin Piscator, in his Dramatic Workshop at The New School in New York. Piscator founded the Workshop after emigrating to New York, having collaborated with Brecht to create "epic theatre" in Germany. The Piscator Notebook documents Malina’s intensive and idiosyncratic training at Piscator’s school. Part diary, part theatrical treatise, this unique and inspiring volume combines: complete transcriptions of Malina’s diaries from her time as a student at the Dramatic Workshop, as well as reproductions of various of Piscator’s syllabi and teaching materials; notes on Malina’s teachers, fellow students – including Marlon Brando and Tennessee Williams – and New School productions; studies of Piscator’s process and influence, along with a new essay on the relationship between his teaching, Malina’s work with the Living Theatre and "The Ongoing Epic"; an introduction by performance pioneer, Richard Schechner. The Piscator Notebook is a compelling record of the genealogy of political theatre practice in the early 20th Century, from Europe to the US. But it is also a stunningly personal reflection on the pleasures and challenges of learning about theatre, charged with essential insights for the student and teacher, actor and director. 'Piscator is the greatest theatre man of our time.' – Bertolt Brecht

Staged

Staged PDF Author: Minou Arjomand
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231545738
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
Theater requires artifice, justice demands truth. Are these demands as irreconcilable as the pejorative term “show trials” suggests? After the Second World War, canonical directors and playwrights sought to claim a new public role for theater by restaging the era’s great trials as shows. The Nuremberg trials, the Eichmann trial, and the Auschwitz trials were all performed multiple times, first in courts and then in theaters. Does justice require both courtrooms and stages? In Staged, Minou Arjomand draws on a rich archive of postwar German and American rehearsals and performances to reveal how theater can become a place for forms of storytelling and judgment that are inadmissible in a court of law but indispensable for public life. She unveils the affinities between dramatists like Bertolt Brecht, Erwin Piscator, and Peter Weiss and philosophers such as Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin, showing how they responded to the rise of fascism with a new politics of performance. Linking performance with theories of aesthetics, history, and politics, Arjomand argues that it is not subject matter that makes theater political but rather the act of judging a performance in the company of others. Staged weaves together theater history and political philosophy into a powerful and timely case for the importance of theaters as public institutions.

Brando Unzipped

Brando Unzipped PDF Author: Darwin Porter
Publisher: Blood Moon Productions, Ltd.
ISBN: 9780974811826
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 668

Book Description
That ongoing, barely under control drama known as Marlon Brando--Hollywood's Ultimate Bad Boy, Megastar, and Sexual Outlaw--with a special focus on his early rise to fame and his social and sexual associations with the A-list legends of the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Brando Unzipped is the definitive gossip guide to the late, great actor's life --New York Daily News. Lurid, raunchy, perceptive, and certainly worth reading, it's one of the best show-biz biographies of the year. --London's Sunday Times. Brando Unzipped received an Honorable Mention from Foreword Magazine in its Book of the Year competition, and it won a Silver Ippy award for Best Biography from the Independent Publisher's Association.

The Piscatorbühne Century

The Piscatorbühne Century PDF Author: Drew Lichtenberg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000479757
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 286

Book Description
This study of the Piscatorbühne season of 1927–1928 uncovers a vital, previously neglected current of radical experiment in modern theater, a ghost in the machine of contemporary performance practices. A handful of theater seasons changed the course of 20th- and 21st-century theatre. But only the Piscatorbühne of 1927–1928 went bankrupt in less than a year. This exploration tells the story of that collapse, how it predicted the wider collapse of the late Weimar Republic, and how it relates to our own era of political polarization and economic instability. As a wider examination of Piscator’s contributions to dramaturgical and aesthetic form, The Piscatorbühne Century makes a powerful and timely case for the renewed significance of the broader epic theater tradition. Drawing on a rich archive of interwar materials, Drew Lichtenberg reconstructs this germinal nexus of theory and praxis for the modern theatre. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in theatre, performance, art, and literature.

The Plays of Ernst Toller

The Plays of Ernst Toller PDF Author: Cecil Davies
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134361785
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 704

Book Description
This book is the fullest and most detailed study yet published in English of Ernst Toller's plays and their most significant productions. In particular the productions directed by Karl-Heinz Martin, Jurgen Fehling and Erwin Piscator are closely analyzed and the author demonstrates how, brilliant though they were, they obscured or even distorted Toller's intentions. The plays are seen as eminently stage-worthy while worth lies in Toller's use of language, both in prose and inverse. The neglected puppet-play The Scorned Lovers' Revenge is analyzed from a new perspective in the light, both of its language and its sexual theme, so important in Toller's writings as a whole. The reader is led to appreciate why Toller was regarded as the most outstanding German dramatist of his generation until, after his death in 1939 his reputation was overlaid by that of Brecht. This book should do much to restore Toller to his proper place in theatre history.

Erwin Piscator and the American Theatre

Erwin Piscator and the American Theatre PDF Author: Gerhard F. Probst
Publisher: Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Book Description
As the centennial of his birth approaches, a revaluation of Erwin Piscator's influence on the theatre of the western world seems due. Although he was the first to do political qua epic theatre, it was his pupil Brecht who received all the attention. During the Hitler years Piscator spent almost 13 years (1939-1951) in the United States where he founded and directed the Dramatic Workshop at the New School for Social Research and had among his students Beatrice Arthur, Harry Belafonte, Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Judith Malina, Walther Matthau, Tony Randall, to name only a few. The question is raised whether his alleged influence can be felt in contemporary American theatre, particularly with regard to playwrights such as A. Miller, R.P. Warren, Th. Wilder, and Tennessee Williams.

Erwin Piscator: Political Theatre, 1920-1966

Erwin Piscator: Political Theatre, 1920-1966 PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Theater
Languages : en
Pages : 96

Book Description