Author: Rebecca D'Monte
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1408166011
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 353
Get Book Here
Book Description
British theatre from 1900 to 1950 has been subject to radical re-evaluation with plays from the period setting theatres alight and gaining critical acclaim once again; this book explains why, presenting a comprehensive survey of the theatre and how it shaped the work that followed. Rebecca D'Monte examines how the emphasis upon the working class, 'angry' drama from the 1950s has led to the neglect of much of the century's earlier drama, positioning the book as part of the current debate about the relationship between war and culture, the middlebrow, and historiography. In a comprehensive survey of the period, the book considers: - the Edwardian theatre; - the theatre of the First World War, including propaganda and musicals; -the interwar years, the rise of commercial theatre and influence of Modernism; - the theatre of the Second World War and post-war period. Essays from leading scholars Penny Farfan, Steve Nicholson and Claire Cochrane give further critical perspectives on the period's theatre and demonstrate its relevance to the drama of today. For anyone studying 20th-century British Drama this will prove one of the foundational texts.
Author: Sean Mayes
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350119636
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 305
Get Book Here
Book Description
A radically urgent intervention, An Inconvenient Black History of British Musical Theatre: 1900 - 1950 uncovers the hidden Black history of this most influential of artforms. Drawing on lost archive material and digitised newspapers from the turn of the century onwards, this exciting story has been re-traced and restored to its rightful place. A vital and significant part of British cultural history between 1900 and 1950, Black performance practice was fundamental to resisting and challenging racism in the UK. Join Mayes (a Broadway- and Toronto-based Music Director) and Whitfield (a musical theatre historian and researcher) as they take readers on a journey through a historically-inconvenient and brilliant reality that has long been overlooked. Get to know the Black theatre community in London's Roaring 20s, and hear about the secret Florence Mills memorial concert they held in 1928. Acquaint yourself with Buddy Bradley, Black tap and ballet choreographer, who reshaped dance in British musicals - often to be found at Noël Coward's apartment for late-night rehearsals, such was Bradley's importance. Meet Jack Johnson, the first African American Heavyweight Boxing Champion, who toured Britain's theatres during World War 1 and brought the sounds of Chicago to places like war-weary Dundee. Discover the most prolific Black theatre practitioner you've never heard of, William Garland, who worked for 40 years across multiple continents and championed Black British performers. Marvel at performers like cabaret star Mabel Mercer, born in Stafford in 1900, who sang and conducted theatre orchestras across the UK, as well as Black Birmingham comedian Eddie Emerson, who was Garland's partner for decades. Many of their names and works have never been included in histories of the British musical - until now.
Author: Robert Leach
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429873336
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 1004
Get Book Here
Book Description
An Illustrated History of British Theatre and Performance chronicles the history and development of theatre from the Roman era to the present day. As the most public of arts, theatre constantly interacted with changing social, political and intellectual movements and ideas, and Robert Leach’s masterful work restores to the foreground of this evolution the contributions of women, gay people and ethnic minorities, as well as the theatres of the English regions, and of Wales and Scotland. Highly illustrated chapters trace the development of theatre through major plays from each period; evaluations of playwrights; contemporary dramatic theory; acting and acting companies; dance and music; the theatre buildings themselves; and the audience, while also highlighting enduring features of British theatre, from comic gags to the use of props. Continuing on from the Enlightenment, Volume Two of An Illustrated History of British Theatre and Performance leads its readers from the drama and performances of the Industrial Revolution to the latest digital theatre. Moving from Punch and Judy, castle spectres and penny showmen to Modernism and Postdramatic Theatre, Leach’s second volume triumphantly completes a collated account of all the British Theatre History knowledge anyone could ever need.
Author: Don Watson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135023205X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 283
Get Book Here
Book Description
This study of British amateur theatre in the inter-war period examines five different but interwoven examples of the belief, common in theatrical and educational circles at the time, that amateur drama had a purpose beyond recreation. Amateur theatre was at the height of its popularity as a cultural practice between the wars, so that by 1939 more British people had practical experience of putting on plays than at any time before or since. Providing an original account of the use of drama in adult education projects in deprived areas, and of amateur theatre in government-funded centres for the unemployed in the 1930s, it discusses repertoires, participation by working- class people and pioneering techniques of play-making. Amateur drama festivals and competitions were intended to raise standards and educate audiences. This book assesses their effect on play-making, and the use of innovative one-act plays to express contentious material, as well as looking at the Left Book Club Theatre Guild as an attempt to align the amateur theatre movement with anti-fascist and anti-war movements. A chapter on the Second World War rectifies the neglect of amateur theatre in war-time cultural studies, arguing that it was present and important in every aspect of war-time life. Don Watson builds on current scholarship and makes use of archival sources, local newspapers, unpublished scripts and the records of organizations not usually associated with the theatre. His work explores the range and diversity of amateur drama between the wars and the contributions it made to British theatre.
Author: Helen E. M. Brooks
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108754325
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 299
Get Book Here
Book Description
The first comprehensive guide to British theatre's engagement with the First World War over the last century, providing accessible and lively coverage of theatre's role in the representation and remembrance of events, focusing on topics including regionality, politics, popular performance, Shakespeare, class, race and gender.
Author: Gill Plain
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107119014
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 441
Get Book Here
Book Description
Examines debates central to postwar British culture, showing the pressures of reconstruction and the mutual implication of war and peace.
Author: Kirsty Johnston
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472510356
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 241
Get Book Here
Book Description
Bertolt Brecht's silent Kattrin in Mother Courage, or the disability performance lessons of his Peachum in The Threepenny Opera; Tennessee Williams' limping Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie and hard-of-hearing Bodey in A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur; Samuel Beckett's blind Hamm and his physically disabled parents Nagg and Nell in Endgame – these and many further examples attest to disability's critical place in modern drama. This Companion explores how disability performance studies and theatre practice provoke new debate about the place of disability in these works. The book traces the local and international processes and tensions at play in disability theatre, and offers a critical investigation of the challenges its aesthetics pose to mainstream and traditional practice. The book's first part surveys disability theatre's primary principles, critical terms, internal debates and key challenges to theatre practice. Examining specific disability theatre productions of modern drama, it also suggests how disability has been re-envisaged and embodied on stage. In the book's second part, leading disability studies scholars and disability theatre practitioners analyse and creatively re-imagine modern drama, demonstrating how disability aesthetics press practitioners and scholars to rethink these works in generative, valuable and timely ways.
Author: Jacob Bloomfield
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520393333
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265
Get Book Here
Book Description
“A must-read for anyone interested in the history of drag performance.”—Publishers Weekly A rich and provocative history of drag's importance in modern British culture. Drag: A British History is a groundbreaking study of the sustained popularity and changing forms of male drag performance in modern Britain. With this book, Jacob Bloomfield provides fresh perspectives on drag and recovers previously neglected episodes in the history of the art form. Despite its transgressive associations, drag has persisted as an intrinsic, and common, part of British popular culture—drag artists have consistently asserted themselves as some of the most renowned and significant entertainers of their day. As Bloomfield demonstrates, drag was also at the center of public discussions around gender and sexuality in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from Victorian sex scandals to the "permissive society" of the 1960s. This compelling new history demythologizes drag, stressing its ordinariness while affirming its important place in British cultural heritage.
Author: Elizabeth L. Wollman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472510488
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 313
Get Book Here
Book Description
This Critical Companion to the American Stage Musical provides the perfect introductory text for students of theatre, music and cultural studies. It traces the history and development of the industry and art form in America with a particular focus on its artistic and commercial development in New York City from the early 20th century to the present. Emphasis is placed on commercial, artistic and cultural events that influenced the Broadway musical for an ever-renewing, increasingly broad and diverse audience: the Gilded Age, the Great Depression, the World War II era, the British invasion in the 1980s and the media age at the turn of the twenty-first century. Supplementary essays by leading scholars provide detailed focus on the American musical's production and preservation, as well as its influence on daily life on the local, national, and international levels. For students, these essays provide models of varying approaches and interpretation, equipping them with the skills and understanding to develop their own analysis of key productions.
Author: Katharine Cockin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472570634
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 329
Get Book Here
Book Description
This new biography explores the extraordinary life of Edith Craig (1869-1947), her prolific work in the theatre and her political endeavours for women's suffrage and socialism. At London's Lyceum Theatre in its heyday she worked alongside her mother, Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and Bram Stoker, and gained valuable experience. She was a key figure in creating innovative art theatre work. As director and founder of the Pioneer Players in 1911 she supported the production of women's suffrage drama, becoming a pioneer of theatre aimed at social reform. In 1915 she assumed a leading role with the Pioneer Players in bringing international art theatre to Britain and introducing London audiences to expressionist and feminist drama from Nikolai Evreinov to Susan Glaspell. She captured the imagination of Virginia Woolf, inspiring the portrait of Miss LaTrobe in her 1941 novel Between the Acts, and influenced a generation of actors, such as Sybil Thorndike and Edith Evans. Frequently eclipsed in accounts of theatrical endeavour by her younger brother, Edward Gordon Craig, Edith Craig's contribution both to theatre and to the women's suffrage movement receives timely reappraisal in Katharine Cockin's meticulously researched and wide-ranging biography, released for the seventieth anniversary of Craig's death.
