The Unfinished Art of Theater

The Unfinished Art of Theater
Author: Sarah J. Townsend
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2018-07-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0810137429

A certain idea of the avant-garde posits the possibility of a total rupture with the past. The Unfinished Art of Theater pulls back on this futuristic impulse by showing how theater became a key site for artists on the semiperiphery of capitalism to reconfigure the role of the aesthetic between 1917 and 1934. The book argues that this “unfinished art”—precisely because of its historic weakness as a representative institution in Mexico and Brazil, where the bourgeois stage had not (yet) coalesced—was at the forefront of struggles to redefine the relationship between art and social change. Drawing on extensive archival research, Sarah J. Townsend reveals the importance of projects and texts that belie the rhetoric of rupture and immediacy associated with the avant-garde: ethnographic operas with ties to the recording industry, populist puppet plays, children’s radio programs about the wonders of technology, a philosophical drama about the birth of a new race, and an antifascist spectacle written for (but never performed at) a theater shut down by the police. Ultimately, the book makes the case that the very category of avant-garde art is bound up in the experience of dependency, delay, and the uneven development of capitalism.

Unfinished Show Business

Unfinished Show Business
Author:
Publisher: SIU Press
Total Pages: 320
Release:
Genre: Musicals
ISBN: 9780809388578

In this fresh approach to musical theatre history, Bruce Kirle challenges the commonly understood trajectory of the genre. Drawing on the notion that the world of the author stays fixed while the world of the audience is ever-changing, Kirle suggests that musicals are open, fluid products of the particular cultural moment in which they are performed. Incomplete as printed texts and scores, musicals take on unpredictable lives of their own in the complex transformation from page to stage. Using lenses borrowed from performance studies, cultural studies, queer studies, and ethnoracial studies, Unfinished Show Business: Broadway Musicals as Works-in-Process argues that musicals are as interesting for the provocative issues they raise about shifting attitudes toward American identity as for their show-stopping song-and-dance numbers and conveniently happy endings. Kirle illustrates how performers such as Ed Wynn, Fanny Brice, and the Marx Brothers used their charismatic personalities and quirkiness to provide insights into the struggle of marginalized ethnoracial groups to assimilate. Using examples from favorites including Oklahoma!, Fiddler on the Roof, A Chorus Line, and Les Misérables, Kirle demonstrates Broadway’s ability to bridge seemingly insoluble tensions in society, from economic and political anxiety surrounding World War II to generational conflict and youth counterculture to corporate America and the “me” generation. Enlivened by a gallery of some of Broadway’s most memorable moments—and some amusing, obscure ones as well—this study will appeal to students, scholars, and lifelong musical theatre enthusiasts.

The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright

The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright
Author: Michel Fabre
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 686
Release: 1993
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780252062643

Widely acclaimed for its comprehensive and sensitive picture of one of America's most renowned writers, The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright received the Anisfield-Wolf Award on Race Relations when it was first published. This first paperback edition contains a new preface and bibliographic essay, updating changes in the author's approach to his subject and discussing works published on Wright since 1973.

The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone: A Novel

The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone: A Novel
Author: Adele Griffin
Publisher: Soho Press
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2014-08-12
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1616953616

For fans of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, Girl, Interrupted, and A.S. King, National Book Award-finalist Adele Griffin tells the fully illustrated story of a brilliant young artist, her mysterious death, and the fandom that won't let her go. From the moment she stepped foot in NYC, Addison Stone’s subversive street art made her someone to watch, and her violent drowning left her fans and critics craving to know more. I conducted interviews with those who knew her best—including close friends, family, teachers, mentors, art dealers, boyfriends, and critics—and retraced the tumultuous path of Addison's life. I hope I can shed new light on what really happened the night of July 28. —Adele Griffin

Unfinished Business

Unfinished Business
Author: Brian Gordon Kennelly
Publisher: Rodopi
Total Pages: 140
Release: 1997
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9789042002364

This is the first study systematically to appraise Splendid's, �Elle�, and Le Bagne, the three plays by Jean Genet published after his death, both in the context of the dramatist's dramatic canon and with respect to one another. After showing that their unusual publishing history necessarily sets these works apart from Haute surveillance, Les Bonnes, Le Balcon, Les N�gres, and Les Paravents, it argues that from Splendid'sto Le Bagne, the question of incompletion is 'exteriorized' -- moving from a purely thematic to an increasingly formal context -- and that the status of each posthumously published work differs: Splendid'sis a 'completed' play, thematizing incompletion; �Elle�, with its seemingly incomplete form having thematic currency, is a 'properly unfinished' play; and as the intentionally 'fragmentary', purposefully suspended 'beginning' of a play, Le Bagneis shaped by incompletion.

The Form of the Unfinished

The Form of the Unfinished
Author: Balachandra Rajan
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2014-07-14
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 1400854776

Distinguishing between the incomplete poem and the unfinished poem, Professor Rajan sees the unfinished poem as remaining in dialogue with its own dissensions. He contributes to current critical debates by showing how the long poem resists assimilation to the forces of both unification and undecidability, finding its significance on the line of engagement between them. Originally published in 1985. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

An Unfinished Man

An Unfinished Man
Author: Dipo Baruwa-Etti
Publisher:
Total Pages: 112
Release: 2021-06
Genre:
ISBN: 9780571363476

Kayode hasn't had a job in seven years. Can't we juss name it? - Ur depressed. He needs to get help - Therapy won't undo the spell, Kayode. His marriage is suffering - I need ya help ta stage an intervention. His mother knows what to do. The Lord told me and I went to Pastor Matanmi. Can Kayode be cured? Juju exists, spirits battle and the witches and wizards of Lagos chant loudly in East London.