Author: Reade Whiting Dornan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English drama
Languages : en
Pages : 570

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Book Description

Author: John Elsom
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1317557751
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Since the Second World War, we have witnessed exciting, often confusing developments in the British theatre. This book, first published in 1976, presents an enlightening, objective history of the many facets of post-war British theatre and a fresh interpretation of theatre itself. The remarkable and profound changes which have taken place during this period range from the style and content of plays, through methods of acting, to shapes of theatres and the organisational habits of managers. Two national theatres have been brought almost simultaneously into existence; while at the other end of the financial scale, the fringe and pub theatres have kicked their way into vigorous life. The theatre in Britain has been one of the post-war success stories, to judge by its international renown and its mixture of experimental vitality and polished experience. In this book Elsom presents an approach to the problems of criticism and appreciation which range beyond those of literary analysis.

Author: Alistair Fair
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198807473
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
Modern Playhouses is the first detailed study of the major programme of theatre-building which took place in Britain between the 1950s and the 1980s. Drawing on a vast range of archival material--much of which had never previously been studied by historians--it sets architecture in a wide social and cultural context, presenting the history of post-war theatre buildings as a history of ideas relating not only to performance but also to culture, citizenship, and the modern city. During this period, more than sixty major new theatres were constructed in locations from Plymouth to Inverness, Aberystwyth to Ipswich. The most prominent example was the National Theatre in London, but the National was only the tip of the iceberg. Supported in many cases by public subsidies, these buildings represented a new kind of theatre, conceived as a public service. Theatre was ascribed a transformative role, serving as a form of "productive" recreation at a time of increasing affluence and leisure. New theatres also contributed to debates about civic pride, urbanity, and community. Ultimately, theatre could be understood as a vehicle for the creation of modern citizens in a consciously modernizing Britain. Through their planning and appearance, new buildings were thought to connote new ideas of theatre's purpose. In parallel, new approaches to staging and writing posed new demands of the auditorium and stage. Yet while recognizing, as contemporaries did, that the new theatres of the post war decades represented change, Modern Playhouses also asks how radically different these buildings really were, and what their 'mainstream' architecture reveals of the history of modern British architecture, and of post-war Britain.

Author: Dominic Shellard
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300147910
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
British theatre of the past fifty years has been brilliant, varied, and controversial, encompassing invigorating indigenous drama, politically didactic writing, the formation of such institutions as the National Theatre, the exporting of musicals worldwide from the West End, and much more. This entertaining and authoritative book is the first comprehensive account of British theatre in this period. Dominic Shellard moves chronologically through the half-century, discussing important plays, performers, directors, playwrights, critics, censors, and agents as well as the social, political, and financial developments that influenced the theatre world. Drawing on previously unseen material (such as the Kenneth Tynan archives), first-hand testimony, and detailed research, Shellard tackles several long-held assumptions about drama of the period. He questions the dominance of Look Back in Anger in the 1950s, arguing that much of the theatre of the ten years prior to its premiere in 1956 was vibrant and worthwhile. He suggests that theatre criticism, theatre producers, and such institutions as the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company have played key roles in the evolution of recent drama. And he takes a fresh look at the work of Terence Rattigan, Harold Pinter, Joe Orton, Alan Ayckbourn, Timberlake Wertenbaker, and other significant playwrights of the modern era. The book will be a valuable resource not only for students of theatre history but also for any theatre enthusiast.

Author: Michelene Wandor
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134773110
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
In this extensively revised and updated edition of her classic work, Look Back in Gender, Michelene Wandor confirms the symbiotic relationship between drama and gender in a provocative look at key, representative British plays from the last fifty years. Repositioning the text at the heart of hteatre studies, Wandor surveys plays by Ayckbourn, Beckett, Churchill, Daniels, Friel, Hare, Kane, Osborne, Pinter, Ravenhill, Wertenbaker, Wesker and others. Her nuanced argument, central to any analysis of contemporary drama, discusses: *the imperative of gender in the playwright's imagination *the function of gender as a major determinant of the text's structural and narrative drives *the impact of socialism and feminism on post-war British drama, and the relevance of feminist dynamics in drama *differences in the representation of the fmaily, sexuality and the mother, before and after 1968 *the impact of the slogan that the 'personal is political' on contemporary form and content.

Author: Peter Catterall
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134837933
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
Too many sociology textbooks begin and end with how society is structured. To understand how society operates it is necessary to explore not only its constituent structures and relationships, but how these structures emerge and why changes occur within them. By bringing together a group of distinguished sociologists and social historians, this book critically appraises the usefulness of current theories in advancing our understanding of contemporary society. It explores British society as dynamic and developing. In the process the authors draw our attention to the fact that society is shaped not just by social policy and structures, but by how far these influence people's life-patterns, attitudes, experience and conduct. Celia Brackenridge (Cheltenham & Gloucester College of Higher Education, Joan C Brown, Robert G Burgess (University of Warwick), Rosemary Crompton (University of Kent), John Curtice (University of Str

Author: Gill Plain
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107119014
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
Examines debates central to postwar British culture, showing the pressures of reconstruction and the mutual implication of war and peace.

Author: Amber Jamilla Musser
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1479891401
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
No detailed description available for "Sensational Flesh".

Author: Joe Kelleher
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 0230205232
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 97

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Book Description
One of the first titles in this vibrant and eye-catching new series of short, sharp, shots for theatre students.

Author: Ted Freeman
Publisher: University of Exeter Press
ISBN: 9780859895590
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
Theatres of War is the first full-length study to be devoted to the 'Committed' theatre that flourished in modern France from 1944 to the mid-1950s. During this crucial decade, authors such as Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus, along with other lesser-known dramatists, responded to the issues of their time by contributing a number of tense controversial plays to a distinctive genre of realist theatre. These plays dealt with the ideological, political and moral issues arising from the Second World War, the Cold War and a series of disastrous colonial wars. Theatres of War combines historical contextualisation, pointing up the political and moral debate of the theatre of the period, with detailed analysis of specific plays, making it a useful student text. All quotations are in French with English translations immediately following.