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Author: Jordan Tannahill Publisher: Coach House Books ISBN: 177056411X Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 161
Book Description
How dull plays are killing theatre and what we can do about it. Had I become disenchanted with the form I had once fallen so madly in love with as a pubescent, pimple-faced suburban homo with braces? Maybe theatre was like an all-consuming high school infatuation that now, ten years later, I saw as the closeted balding guy with a beer gut he’d become. There were of course those rare moments of transcendencethat kept me coming back. But why did they come so few and far between? A lot of plays are dull. And one dull play, it seems, can turn us off theatre for good. Playwright and theatre director Jordan Tannahill takes in the spectrum of English-language drama – from the flashiest of Broadway spectacles to productions mounted in scrappy storefront theatres – to consider where lifeless plays come from and why they persist. Having travelled the globe talking to theatre artists, critics, passionate patrons and the theatrically disillusioned, Tannahill addresses what he considers the culture of ‘risk aversion’ paralyzing the form. Theatre of the Unimpressed is Tannahill’s wry and revelatory personal reckoning with the discipline he’s dedicated his life to, and a roadmap for a vital twenty-first-century theatre – one that apprehends the value of ‘liveness’ in our mediated age and the necessity for artistic risk and its attendant failures. In considering dramaturgy, programming and alternative models for producing, Tannahill aims to turn theatre from an obligation to a destination. ‘[Tannahill is] the poster child of a new generation of (theatre? film? dance?) artists for whom "interdisciplinary" is not a buzzword, but a way of life.’ —J. Kelly Nestruck, Globe and Mail ‘Jordan is one of the most talented and exciting playwrights in the country, and he will be a force to be reckoned with for years to come.’ —Nicolas Billon, Governor General's Award–winning playwright (Fault Lines)
Author: Jordan Tannahill Publisher: Coach House Books ISBN: 177056411X Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 161
Book Description
How dull plays are killing theatre and what we can do about it. Had I become disenchanted with the form I had once fallen so madly in love with as a pubescent, pimple-faced suburban homo with braces? Maybe theatre was like an all-consuming high school infatuation that now, ten years later, I saw as the closeted balding guy with a beer gut he’d become. There were of course those rare moments of transcendencethat kept me coming back. But why did they come so few and far between? A lot of plays are dull. And one dull play, it seems, can turn us off theatre for good. Playwright and theatre director Jordan Tannahill takes in the spectrum of English-language drama – from the flashiest of Broadway spectacles to productions mounted in scrappy storefront theatres – to consider where lifeless plays come from and why they persist. Having travelled the globe talking to theatre artists, critics, passionate patrons and the theatrically disillusioned, Tannahill addresses what he considers the culture of ‘risk aversion’ paralyzing the form. Theatre of the Unimpressed is Tannahill’s wry and revelatory personal reckoning with the discipline he’s dedicated his life to, and a roadmap for a vital twenty-first-century theatre – one that apprehends the value of ‘liveness’ in our mediated age and the necessity for artistic risk and its attendant failures. In considering dramaturgy, programming and alternative models for producing, Tannahill aims to turn theatre from an obligation to a destination. ‘[Tannahill is] the poster child of a new generation of (theatre? film? dance?) artists for whom "interdisciplinary" is not a buzzword, but a way of life.’ —J. Kelly Nestruck, Globe and Mail ‘Jordan is one of the most talented and exciting playwrights in the country, and he will be a force to be reckoned with for years to come.’ —Nicolas Billon, Governor General's Award–winning playwright (Fault Lines)
Author: Terry McCabe Publisher: Ivan R. Dee ISBN: 146169941X Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 130
Book Description
Terry McCabe, himself an accomplished stage director and teacher of theatre arts, here attacks what he calls the growing decadence that plagues contemporary stage directing. He argues for a radical reorganization of the director's view of his role. It has become an article of faith in the theatre, Mr. McCabe observes, that a play is about what the director chooses to have it be about. But what right does a director have to treat a play as a found object, to be reshaped to express the director's concerns? None whatsoever, Mr. McCabe replies. He examines anecdotally a range of work by different directors by way of offering a substantial critique of today's leading theory of stage directing, and he offers an alternate approach. He challenges the notion that a play is the director's vehicle for self-expression, arguing that the idea of the director as centerpiece of the theatre tends to distort plays and oppress actors. He explores what it means to direct a play when directing is properly understood as a process of self-effacement. Mis-directing the Play examines the role of the director as collaborator with actors, designers, dramaturges, and playwrights. Throughout, the book's focus is on shedding the counterproductive myth of the director as creative auteur and urging in its place a return to first principles: the idea of the director as the interpretive artist in charge of putting the playwright's play onstage.
Author: J. K. Rowling Publisher: ISBN: 9780751565362 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
As an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband, and a father, Harry Potter struggles with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs while his youngest son, Albus, finds the weight of the family legacy difficult to bear.
Author: Lauren Gunderson Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc. ISBN: 0822237725 Category : Drama Languages : en Pages : 95
Book Description
Without William Shakespeare, we wouldn’t have literary masterpieces like Romeo and Juliet. But without Henry Condell and John Heminges, we would have lost half of Shakespeare’s plays forever! After the death of their friend and mentor, the two actors are determined to compile the First Folio and preserve the words that shaped their lives. They’ll just have to borrow, beg, and band together to get it done. Amidst the noise and color of Elizabethan London, THE BOOK OF WILL finds an unforgettable true story of love, loss, and laughter, and sheds new light on a man you may think you know.
Author: Peter Weiss Publisher: A&C Black ISBN: 9780826409638 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 334
Book Description
Peter Weiss (1916-1982) was virtually unknown in the mid-1960s when Peter Brook made Marat/Sade into a film. The weaving of time, space, plot, real-and-imagined characters, sexual liberation, and surrealist imagery made Marat/Sade a sensation. Little did audiences realize that this counterculture classic was written by a German Jew. At that time, Weiss was also at work on a play about Auschwitz: The Investigation. These two dramas are in this volume along with The Shadow of the Body of the Coachman. All are cogently introduced and edited by Robert Cohen.
Author: Gina Bloom Publisher: University of Michigan Press ISBN: 0472053817 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 305
Book Description
Rich connections between gaming and theater stretch back to the 16th and 17th centuries, when England's first commercial theaters appeared right next door to gaming houses and blood-sport arenas. In the first book-length exploration of gaming in the early modern period, Gina Bloom shows that theaters succeeded in London's new entertainment marketplace largely because watching a play and playing a game were similar experiences. Audiences did not just see a play; they were encouraged to play the play, and knowledge of gaming helped them become better theatergoers. Examining dramas written for these theaters alongside evidence of analog games popular then and today, Bloom argues for games as theatrical media and theater as an interactive gaming technology. Gaming the Stage also introduces a new archive for game studies: scenes of onstage gaming, which appear at climactic moments in dramatic literature. Bloom reveals plays to be systems of information for theater spectators: games of withholding, divulging, speculating, and wagering on knowledge. Her book breaks new ground through examinations of plays such as The Tempest, Arden of Faversham, A Woman Killed with Kindness, and A Game at Chess; the histories of familiar games such as cards, backgammon, and chess; less familiar ones, like Game of the Goose; and even a mixed-reality theater videogame.
Author: Winnie Holzman Publisher: Applause Theatre & Cinema ISBN: 9781423492764 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Each title in The Applause Libretto Library Series presents a Broadway musical with fresh packaging in a 6 x 9 trade paperback format. Each Complete Book and Lyrics is approved by the writers and attractively designed with color photo inserts from the Broadway production. All titles include introduction and foreword by renowned Broadway musical experts. Long before Dorothy dropped in, two other girls meet in the Land of Oz. One, born with emerald green skin, is smart, fiery, and misunderstood. The other is beautiful, ambitious, and very popular. The story of how these two unlikely friends end up as the Wicked Witch of the West and Glinda the Good Witch makes for the most spellbinding new musical in years.
Author: Keith Johnstone Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1136610456 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 206
Book Description
Keith Johnstone's involvement with the theatre began when George Devine and Tony Richardson, artistic directors of the Royal Court Theatre, commissioned a play from him. This was in 1956. A few years later he was himself Associate Artistic Director, working as a play-reader and director, in particular helping to run the Writers' Group. The improvisatory techniques and exercises evolved there to foster spontaneity and narrative skills were developed further in the actors' studio then in demonstrations to schools and colleges and ultimately in the founding of a company of performers, called The Theatre Machine. Divided into four sections, 'Status', 'Spontaneity', 'Narrative Skills', and 'Masks and Trance', arranged more or less in the order a group might approach them, the book sets out the specific techniques and exercises which Johnstone has himself found most useful and most stimulating. The result is both an ideas book and a fascinating exploration of the nature of spontaneous creativity.
Author: Catherine Larson Publisher: Bucknell University Press ISBN: 9780838755693 Category : Drama Languages : en Pages : 224
Book Description
In the seventeen dramatic texts examined in this study, women writers from Spanish America have self-consciously incorporated games into their plays' structures to highlight from a woman's perspective the idea that life, as well as the theatre, is a game. Some dramas are so overtly about games that the word appears significantly in their titles. Others reflect game playing in less direct ways or connect metatheatrical examinations of role-playing to the ludic. In every drama examined, however, a game of some sort plays a key role in the construction of the playtest. By looking at the nature and number of the games played in these women-authored dramas from the past fifty years, we can see the ways in which play is used to effect social control and the connections between play and aggression, gender, history and politics. In these representative dramas, the theatre serves as a vehicle for encouraging audiences to think about (if not act upon) the issues that have shaped Spanish America. Games, rules, winners and losers join together as the playwrights explore events and times of fundamental importance in the countries' historical and political evolutions.
Author: Lloyd Suh Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc. ISBN: 0822239906 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 48
Book Description
Afong Moy is fourteen years old when she’s brought to the United States from Guangzhou Province in 1834. Allegedly the first Chinese woman to set foot on U.S. soil, she has been put on display for the American public as “The Chinese Lady.” For the next half-century, she performs for curious white people, showing them how she eats, what she wears, and the highlight of the event: how she walks with bound feet. As the decades wear on, her celebrated sideshow comes to define and challenge her very sense of identity. Inspired by the true story of Afong Moy’s life, THE CHINESE LADY is a dark, poetic, yet whimsical portrait of America through the eyes of a young Chinese woman.
Author: Jordan Tannahill
Author: Jordan Tannahill
Author: Terry McCabe
Author: J. K. Rowling
Author: Lauren Gunderson
Author: Peter Weiss
Author: Gina Bloom
Author: Winnie Holzman
Author: Keith Johnstone
Author: Catherine Larson
Author: Lloyd Suh