Your Search Results

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        April 2001

        Women, theatre and performance

        New histories, new historiographies

        by Kate Dorney, Maggie B. Gale, Susan Williams

        The first in a new annual series, Women, Theatre and Performance that will consist of themed volumes on diverse aspects of women's engagement with theatre and performance. Ranging across three hundred years the essays in this volume address key questions in women's theatre history and retrieve a number of hitherto 'hidden' histories of women performers. Resituates women's, largely neglected, creative contribution within theatre and cultural history and seeks to challenge orthodox readings of both history and text. Topics include: Susanna Centlivre and the notion of intertheatricality; gender and theatrical space; the repositioning of women performers such as Wagner's Muse, Willhelmina Schröder-Devrient, the Comédie Français' 'Mademoiselle Mars', Mme Arnould-Plessey, and the actresses of the Russian serf theatre. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        October 1997

        Arguments for a theatre

        by Howard Barker

        There is no-one else in theatre who takes this position There is a lack of books on serious theatre theory Written in a particularly accessible form. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        November 2020

        Stage rights!

        The Actresses’ Franchise League, activism and politics 1908–58

        by Naomi Paxton

        Stage rights! explores the work and legacy of the first feminist political theatre group of the twentieth century, the Actresses' Franchise League. Formed in 1908 to support the suffrage movement through theatre, the League and its membership opened up new roles for women on stage and off, challenged stereotypes of suffragists and actresses, created new work inspired by the movement and was an integral part of the performative propaganda of the campaign. Introducing new archival material to both suffrage and theatre histories, this book is the first to focus in detail on the Actresses' Franchise League, its membership and its work. The volume is formulated as a historiographically innovative critical biography of the organisation over the fifty years of its activities, and invites a total reassessment of the League within the accepted narratives of the development of political theatre in the UK.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        October 2002

        Theatre in crisis?

        Performance manifestoes for a new century

        by Maria M. Delgado, Maria M. Delgado, Caridad Svich, Maggie B. Gale, Peter Lichtenfels

        A wide-ranging look at the state of contemporary theatre practice, economics, and issues related to identity, politics, and technology. Contains a snapshot dissection of where theatre is, where it has been and where it might be going through the voices of established and emerging theatre artists and scholars from the UK, US and elsewhere. Offers an examination of how to make theatre in a time of crisis and why it is a vital form of communication are at the heart of the book's mission. Asks questions such as: where is theatre now taking place?; what is the relationship between play and performance?; how does funding work?; what states does theatre flourish under?; and if there is a current 'crisis of theatre' should it not be seen as a welcome opportunity to develop a vigorous 'theatre of crisis'?. The international list of contributors includes Jim Carmody, Phyllis Nagy, Michael Billington, Max Stafford-Clark, Peter Sellars, Dragan Klaic, Goat Island, Erik Ehn and many others, making up a vast array of practising artists, thinkers, and scholars. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        November 2011

        The limits of performance in the French Romantic theatre

        by Susan McCready, Mike Thompson

        This volume analyses major French plays of the 1830s, focusing on their theatricality, and on the ways in which they expose the workings of the theatre rather than conceal them. Through an examination of performance within these plays, the study posits that the stage is a privileged site of demonstration, a literal 'proving ground' that lends a physical reality to abstract values announced in the text and shared or questioned by the audience. Negotiating between the literary study of drama and performance theory, this work breaks new ground in nineteenth-century theatre scholarship while proposing a fresh direction in the study of text and performance. The limits of performance 'challenges conventional wisdom', offering 'a novel take on the mal du siècle, that thematic hardy perennial of French Romanticism and the nineteenth century in general', combined with 'eminently readable and, therefore, compelling' analysis of plays - 'a thought-provoking addition to work in the field' (Glyn Hambrook, Modern and Contemporary France, November 2008). ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Biography & True Stories
        November 2024

        Walking in the dark

        James Baldwin, my father and I

        by Douglas Field

        A moving exploration of the life and work of the celebrated American writer, blending biography and memoir with literary criticism. Since James Baldwin's death in 1987, his writing - including The Fire Next Time, one of the manifestoes of the Civil Rights Movement, and Giovanni's Room, a pioneering work of gay fiction - has only grown in relevance. Douglas Field was introduced to Baldwin's essays and novels by his father, who witnessed the writer's debate with William F. Buckley at Cambridge University in 1965. In Walking in the dark, he embarks on a journey to unravel his life-long fascination and to understand why Baldwin continues to enthral us decades after his death. Tracing Baldwin's footsteps in France, the US and Switzerland, and digging into archives, Field paints an intimate portrait of the writer's life and influence. At the same time, he offers a poignant account of coming to terms with his father's Alzheimer's disease. Interweaving Baldwin's writings on family, illness, memory and place, Walking in the dark is an eloquent testament to the enduring power of great literature to illuminate our paths.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2023

        Politics, performance and popular culture

        Theatre and society in nineteenth-century Britain

        by Peter Yeandle, Katherine Newey, Jeffrey Richards

        This collection brings together studies of popular performance and politics across the nineteenth century, offering a fresh perspective from an archivally grounded research base. It works with the concept that politics is performative and performance is political. The book is organised into three parts in dialogue regarding specific approaches to popular performance and politics. Part I offers a series of conceptual studies using popular culture as an analytical category for social and political history. Part II explores the ways that performance represents and constructs contemporary ideologies of race, nation and empire. Part III investigates the performance techniques of specific politicians - including Robert Peel, Keir Hardie and Henry Hyndman - and analyses the performative elements of collective movements.

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        December 2000

        Theatre under the Nazis

        by John London

        This is the first book to appear in English about theatre from the entire Nazi period (1933-45). It is based on detailed statistical analysis, contemporary press reports, research in German archives and interviews with surviving playwrights, actors and musicians. The volume has an extensive bibliography and is fully illustrated. It forms a much needed guide to this neglected area of European culture and will be of interest to historians, Germanists and theatre specialists. The international contributors are William J. Niven, Glen Gadberry, Erik Levi, Rebecca Rovit, William Abbey and Katharina Havekamp. ;

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        March 2013

        The politics of Jean Genet's late theatre

        by Carl Lavery

      • Trusted Partner
        Lifestyle, Sport & Leisure
        August 2016

        Culture in Manchester

        Institutions and urban change since 1850

        by Janet Wolff, Mike Savage

        This book brings together studies of cultural institutions in Manchester from 1850 to the present day, giving an unprecedented account of the city's cultural evolution. These bring to light the remarkable range of Manchester's contribution to modern cultural life, including the role of art education, popular theatre, religion, pleasure gardens, clubs and societies. The chapters show the resilience and creativity of Manchester's cultural institutions since 1850, challenging any simple narrative of urban decline following the erosion of Lancashire's industrial base, at the same time illustrating the range of activities across the social classes. This book will appeal to everyone interested in the cultural life of the city of Manchester, including cultural historians, sociologists and urban geographers, as well as general readers with interests in the city. It is written by leading international authorities, including Viv Gardner, Stephen Milner, Mike Savage, Bill Williams and Janet Wolff.

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        November 2017

        Vivien Leigh

        Actress and icon

        by Kate Dorney, Maggie B. Gale

        This edited volume provides new readings of the life and career of iconic actress Vivien Leigh (1913-67), written by experts from theatre and film studies and curators from the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. The collection uses newly accessible family archives to explore the intensely complex relationship between Vivien Leigh's approach to the craft of acting for stage and screen, and how she shaped, developed and projected her public persona as one of the most talked about and photographed actresses of her era. With key contributors from the UK, France and the US, chapters range from analyses of her work on stage and screen to her collaborations with designers and photographers, an analysis of her fan base, her interior designs and the 'public ownership' of Leigh's celebrity status during her lifetime and beyond.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        April 2002

        ‘Love me or kill me’

        Sarah Kane and the theatre of extremes

        by Graham Saunders, Maria M. Delgado, Maggie B. Gale, Peter Lichtenfels, Kim Latham

        Blasted brought Sarah Kane to the theatre pages of the broadsheets, the front pages of the tabloids, and to the notice of the nation. Covers all Kane's major plays and productions, contains hitherto unpublished material and reviews, and looks at her continuing influence after her tragic early death. A chapter-by-chapter analysis looks at each play in detail and the appendices carry transcripts of interviews with colleagues and leading theatre practitioners involved with her productions. This book is the first study of the most significant British dramatist in post-war theatre and includes unpublished interview material with Sarah Kane herself. ;

      Subscribe to our

      newsletter