Generating Theatre Meaning

Generating Theatre Meaning
Author: Eli Rozik
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2007-12-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1802071326

Offers a theory and methodology of performance analysis as an alternative to traditional play-analysis. This book carries an underlying theme that theatre performance is a descriptive text generated by the theatre medium and that the process of generating meaning takes place in the actual encounter between a theatre performance and the spectator.

The Field of Drama

The Field of Drama
Author: Martin Esslin
Publisher: London ; New York : Methuen
Total Pages: 200
Release: 1987
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN:

This book of criticism brings both theatre and film studies within a single theoretical framework.

Producing Theatre

Producing Theatre
Author: Donald C. Farber
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
Total Pages: 516
Release: 2006
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9780879103170

For the professional and student here is a basic guide to raising money, obtaining rights and bringing a play to the stage. Appendices include actual examples of commonly used legal forms and contracts. .,."likely to remain for some time to come the authoritative reference in its field." -Variety

Local Acts

Local Acts
Author: Jan Cohen-Cruz
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2005-03-25
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0813537584

An eclectic mix of art, theatre, dance, politics, experimentation, and ritual, community-based performance has become an increasingly popular art movement in the United States. Forged by the collaborative efforts of professional artists and local residents, this unique field brings performance together with a range of political, cultural, and social projects, such as community-organizing, cultural self-representation, and education. Local Acts presents a long-overdue survey of community-based performance from its early roots, through its flourishing during the politically-turbulent 1960s, to present-day popular culture. Drawing on nine case studies, including groups such as the African American Junebug Productions, the Appalachian Roadside Theater, and the Puerto Rican Teatro Pregones, Jan Cohen-Cruz provides detailed descriptions of performances and processes, first-person stories, and analysis. She shows how the ritual side of these endeavors reinforces a sense of community identification while the aesthetic side enables local residents to transgress cultural norms, to question group habits, and to incorporate a level of craft that makes the work accessible to individuals beyond any one community. The book concludes by exploring how community-based performance transcends even national boundaries, connecting the local United States with international theater and cultural movements.

Performance in Greek and Roman Theatre

Performance in Greek and Roman Theatre
Author: George Harrison
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 601
Release: 2013-03-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9004245456

Drawing on insights from various disciplines (philology, archaeology, art) as well as from performance and reception studies, this volume shows how a heightened awareness of performance can enhance our appreciation of Greek and Roman theatre.

Theatre Sciences

Theatre Sciences
Author:
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2015-06-26
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1836241313

Traditional theatre semiotics promoted a scientific approach to theatre studies, albeit viewing semiotics as the unique discipline of research. Theatre Sciences: A Plea for a Multidisciplinary Approach to Theatre Studies suggests instead a multi-disciplinary approach, including the following theoretical disciplines: narratology, mythology, pragmatics, ethics, theatre irony, theory of genres, aesthetics, semiotics, theory of non-verbal figures of speech, rhetoric, psychoanalysis, reception theory, history, and sociology -- with semiotics being only one among equals. These disciplines are presented from the perspective of their possible contributions to a sound methodology of theatre-texts analysis. Traditional theatre semiotics, moreover, holds the view that the actual performance on stage is the genuine text of theatre, instead of the play-script. Despite this paradigmatic shift, however, this viewpoint has failed to produce commendable analyses of such texts. The alternative presupposition put forward in this volume entails a series of novel perceptions of the theatre-text and its possible impact on the experiencing spectator, whose role in reading, interpreting and experiencing the theatre-text is not less crucial than that of the text itself. This view presupposes that the theatre-text is a description of a fictional world generated by the theatre medium. The author also contests the age-old view that a theatre/fictional-text reflects a simple narrative structure, and suggests instead a complexity that consists of seven layers: personified, mythical, praxical, naive, ironic, modal and aesthetic -- with each one of them re-structuring the previous layer. Professor Rozik also presents and describes a semiotic layer that lends communicative capacity to the description of a fictional world, and two additional metaphoric and rhetoric layers, which structure the theatre experience. The underlying purpose is to illustrate the application of the aforementioned disciplines to these fictional layers, and eventually their joint application to entire theatre / fictional texts. Organisation of the book reflects the structure of a university course.

Understanding Plays

Understanding Plays
Author: Milly S. Barranger
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Longman
Total Pages: 756
Release: 2004
Genre: Drama
ISBN:

Understanding Plays As Texts for Performance offers seventeen plays with critical commentaries that span the range of Western writing for the theatre from the Greeks to the post-moderns. This book introduces readers to dramatic writing as "pre-texts" for theatrical performance written not only to be read, but also to be performed by actors before audiences.

Theatre History Studies 2010, Vol. 30

Theatre History Studies 2010, Vol. 30
Author: Rhona Justice-Malloy
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2010-11-04
Genre: History
ISBN: 0817371079

To mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Theatre History Studies journal, editor Rhona Justice-Malloy and the Mid-America Theatre Conference have collected a special-themed volume covering the past and present of African and African American theatre. Topics included range from modern theatrical trends and challenges in Zimbabwe and Kenya, and examining the history and long-range impact of Paul Robeson’s groundbreaking and troubled life and career, to gender issues in the work of Ghanaian playwright Efo Kodjo Mawugbe, and the ways that 19th-century American blackness was defined through Othello and Desdemona. This collection fills a vacancy in academic writing. Readers will enjoy it; academics can incorporate it into their curriculum; and students will find it helpful and illuminating.

Theatre of the Oppressed

Theatre of the Oppressed
Author: Augusto Boal
Publisher: Get Political
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2008
Genre: Social classes in literature
ISBN: 9780745328386

''... brilliantly original ... brings cultural and post-colonial theory to bear on a wide range of authors with great skill and sensitivity.' Terry Eagleton

Between Jerusalem and Athens

Between Jerusalem and Athens
Author: Nurit Yaari
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 480
Release: 2018-10-04
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0191063606

How does a theatrical tradition emerge in the fields of dramatic writing and artistic performance? How can a culture in which theatre played no part in the past create a theatrical tradition in the modern world? How do political and social conditions affect the encounter between cultures, and what role do they play in creating a theatre with a distinctive identity? This volume attempts to answer these and other questions in the first in-depth study of the reception of ancient Greek drama in Israeli theatre over the last 70 years. Exploring how engagement with classical culture has shaped the evolution of Israel's theatrical identity, it draws on both dramatic and aesthetic issues - from mise en scène to 'post dramatic' performance - and offers ground-breaking analysis of a wide range of translations and adaptations of Greek drama, as well as new writing inspired by Greek antiquity. The detailed discussion of how the performances of these works were created and staged at key points in the development of Israeli culture not only sheds new light on the reception of ancient Greek drama in an important theatrical and cultural context, but also offers a new and illuminating perspective on artistic responses to the fateful political, social, and cultural events in Israel's recent history.