The Theatre Arts Audition Book for Women

The Theatre Arts Audition Book for Women
Author: Annika Bluhm
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 112
Release: 2013-10-08
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1135871221

First published in 2003. The Theatre Arts Audition Books offer one hundred speeches from plays of the past twenty-five years, fifty in a volume for men, fifty in a volume for women. Each excerpt is preceded by a note situating the play and the selection. Speeches come from a wide range of plays, including David Mamet's Oleanna, Caryl Churchill's Serious Money, Martin McDonagh's The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Jim Cartwright's Road, and Timberlake Wertenbaker's Our Country's Good, as well as plays by Anthony Minghella, Mark Ravenhill, Sue Townsend, Alan Ayckbourn, and others. Annika Bluhm has assembled two sparkling collections of monologues that will challenge and inspire the actor

Front Row

Front Row
Author: Beryl Bainbridge
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2006-11-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0826482783

Best known as an acclaimed novelist, Beryl Bainbridge is also a former actor. Expelled from school in Liverpool at the age of fourteen, she determined to tread the boards, joining the Liverpool Playhouse Theatre Company as an assistant stage manager. Here she received a unique form of education, reading Shakespeare and Ibsen, and eventually graduating from the role of a dog to the part of a boy mathematical genius for which she had to have her hair cut. Later she appeared in two early episodes of Coronation Street as Ken Barlow's girlfriend.

Modern British Playwriting: The 1990s

Modern British Playwriting: The 1990s
Author: Aleks Sierz
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2014-03-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1408129280

British theatre of the 1990s witnessed an explosion of new talent and presented a new sensibility that sent shockwaves through audiences and critics. What produced this change, the context from which the work emerged, the main playwrights and plays, and the influence they had on later work are freshly evaluated in this important new study in Methuen Drama's Decades of Modern British Playwriting series. The 1990s volume provides a detailed study by four scholars of the work of four of the major playwrights who emerged and had a significant impact on British theatre: Sarah Kane (by Catherine Rees), Anthony Neilson (Patricia Reid), Mark Ravenhill (Graham Saunders) and Philip Ridley (Aleks Sierz). Essential for students of Theatre Studies, the series of six decadal volumes provides a critical survey and study of the theatre produced from the 1950s to 2009. Each volume features a critical analysis of the work of four key playwrights besides other theatre work, together with an extensive commentary on the period. Readers will understand the works in their contexts and be presented with fresh research material and a reassessment from the perspective of the twenty-first century. This is an authoritative and stimulating reassessment of British playwriting in the 1990s.

Comedy on Stage and Screen

Comedy on Stage and Screen
Author: Wieland Schwanebeck
Publisher: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag
Total Pages: 1229
Release: 2022-09-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3823303813

This book introduces readers to the genre of comedy, both on the stage and on the screen. It chronicles the history of comedy, starting with Ancient Greece, before summarising key chapters in Anglophone literary history, such as Shakespearean comedy, Restoration comedy, and Theatre of the Absurd. The book features an overview of key comic techniques (including slapstick, puns, and wit), as well as concise summaries of major theoretical debates (including the superiority theory and the Freudian account of laughter). The book works with many examples from the history of Anglophone comedy, including Oscar Wilde, Monty Python, and classic sitcoms. It addresses current research into cringe humour and the controversial topic of diversity in the field of comedy, and it connects classical tropes of comedy (like the fool or the marriage plot) to present-day examples. The book thus serves as an up-to-date study guide for everyone interested in comedy and its various subgenres.

The National Theatre Story

The National Theatre Story
Author: Daniel Rosenthal
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 1433
Release: 2013-11-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1849439435

Winner of the STR Theatre Book Prize 2014 The National Theatre Story is filled with artistic, financial and political battles, onstage triumphs – and the occasional disaster. This definitive account takes readers from the National Theatre's 19th-century origins, through false dawns in the early 1900s, and on to its hard-fought inauguration in 1963. At the Old Vic, Laurence Olivier was for ten years the inspirational Director of the NT Company, before Peter Hall took over and, in 1976, led the move into the National's concrete home on the South Bank. Altogether, the NT has staged more than 800 productions, premiering some of the 20th and 21st centuries' most popular and controversial plays, including Amadeus, The Romans in Britain, Closer, The History Boys, War Horse and One Man, Two Guvnors. Certain to be essential reading for theatre lovers and students, The National Theatre Story is packed with photographs and draws on Daniel Rosenthal's unprecedented access to the National Theatre's own archives, unpublished correspondence and more than 100 new interviews with directors, playwrights and actors, including Olivier's successors as Director (Peter Hall, Richard Eyre, Trevor Nunn and Nicholas Hytner), and other great figures from the last 50 years of British and American drama, among them Edward Albee, Alan Bennett, Judi Dench, Michael Gambon, David Hare, Tony Kushner, Ian McKellen, Diana Rigg, Maggie Smith, Peter Shaffer, Stephen Sondheim and Tom Stoppard.

Past-It Notes

Past-It Notes
Author: Maureen Lipman
Publisher: JR Books
Total Pages: 605
Release: 2013-02-18
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 1907532609

Life the Lipman way is always unexpected, and the hilarious and witty way in which she recalls her adventures and misadventures has made her a bestselling author and national treasure. Past-it Notes is the ultimate Maureen Lipman collection, drawing on choice material from her six previous books (re-visited and re-worked) laced with a heady dose of extremely funny new autobiographical material. Past-it Notes is packed with beguiling showbiz anecdotes, wonderful stories, eccentric characters, bizarre situations and memorable encounters Ð recalled and recorded with gusto and relish, including affectionate recollections of her late husband, the playwright Jack Rosenthal, and of her mother and Muse, the inimitable Zelma. From entertaining the neighbours at the age of four with impressions of Alma Cogan to entertaining the nation on TV, from struggling with her laptop to film-roles and award-winning stage triumphs as diverse as The Pianist and Oklahoma Ð and not forgetting her iconic creation Beattie, star of thirty five British Telecom commercials Ð Maureen combines stories of her whirlwind professional life, and confessions of the chaos that often threatens to engulf her personal life, with a style and wit that is utterly and uniquely her own. Ô Thank the Lord for Maureen LipmanÉ she is fast becoming a national treasure. She has a lightness of touch that glides over the poignant and the hilarious with elegance and gives voice to a generation that is increasingly and lamentably overlooked.Õ Sunday Express Born in Hull, actress Maureen Lipman has written six best-selling books, the most recent being Lip Reading. She has won numerous awards for her television and theatrical work including the Laurence Olivier and Variety Club of Great Britain Awards.

British Cinema

British Cinema
Author: Amy Sargeant
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 687
Release: 2019-07-25
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1838714758

Although new writing and research on British cinema has burgeoned over the last fifteen years, there has been a continued lack of single-authored books providing a coherent overview to this fascinating and elusive national cinema. Amy Sargeant's personal and entertaining history of British cinema aims to fill this gap. With its insightful decade-by-decade analysis, British Cinema is brought alive for a new generation of British cinema students and the general reader alike. Sargeant challenges Rachel Low's premise 'that few of the films made in England during the twenties were any good' by covering subjects as diverse as the art of intertitling, the narrative complexities of Shooting Stars and Brunel's burlesques. Sargeant goes onto examine among other things, the differing acting styles of Dietrich and Donat in the seminal Knight Without Armour to early promotional campaigns in the 1930s, whereas subjects ranging from product endorsement by stars to the character of the suburban wife are covered in the 1940s. The 1950s includes topics such as the effect of post-war government intervention, to Free Cinema and Lindsay Anderson's 'infuriating lapses of rigour', together with a much-needed overview of Michael Balcon's contribution to British cinema. For Sargeant, the 1960s provides an overview of the tentative relationship between film and advertising and the rise of young Turks such as Tony Richardson, Ken Loach, Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg.

The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary British Playwrights

The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary British Playwrights
Author: Aleks Sierz
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 545
Release: 2011-10-17
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1408123347

The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary British Playwrights is an authoritative guide to the work of twenty-five playwrights who have risen to prominence since the 1980s. Written by an international team of scholars, it will be invaluable to anyone interested in, studying or teaching contemporary drama. Among the many playwrights whose work is examined are Sarah Daniels, Terry Johnson, Martin Crimp, Sarah Kane, Anthony Neilson, Mark Ravenhill, Simon Stephens, Debbie Tucker Green, Tanika Gupta and Richard Bean. Each essay features: A biographical sketch and introduction to the playwright A discussion of their most important plays An analysis of their stylistic and thematic traits, the critical reception and their place in the discourses of British theatre A bibliography of texts and critical material