Author: Wallace Shawn
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
ISBN: 1559367903
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 98
Book Description
"Brilliantly upsetting and endearing . . . riveting."—Newsday An updated and revised edition of Wallace Shawn's most outlandish work to date. This poetic epic about a scientist, his wife, and his two mistresses as they fend for their lives in a world savagely close to extinction, raises issues of redemption, forgiveness, and responsibility. Grasses of a Thousand Colors is a troubling, erotic adventure that received high critical praise for its first New York City revival in 2013, starring Shawn. Wallace Shawn is a noted actor and writer. His often politically charged and controversial plays include The Fever, Aunt Dan and Lemon, Marie and Bruce, and The Designated Mourner. With Andre´ Gregory, he co-wrote My Dinner with Andre´, in which he also starred.
Grasses of a Thousand Colors
Author: Wallace Shawn
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
ISBN: 1559367903
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 98
Book Description
"Brilliantly upsetting and endearing . . . riveting."—Newsday An updated and revised edition of Wallace Shawn's most outlandish work to date. This poetic epic about a scientist, his wife, and his two mistresses as they fend for their lives in a world savagely close to extinction, raises issues of redemption, forgiveness, and responsibility. Grasses of a Thousand Colors is a troubling, erotic adventure that received high critical praise for its first New York City revival in 2013, starring Shawn. Wallace Shawn is a noted actor and writer. His often politically charged and controversial plays include The Fever, Aunt Dan and Lemon, Marie and Bruce, and The Designated Mourner. With Andre´ Gregory, he co-wrote My Dinner with Andre´, in which he also starred.
Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
ISBN: 1559367903
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 98
Book Description
"Brilliantly upsetting and endearing . . . riveting."—Newsday An updated and revised edition of Wallace Shawn's most outlandish work to date. This poetic epic about a scientist, his wife, and his two mistresses as they fend for their lives in a world savagely close to extinction, raises issues of redemption, forgiveness, and responsibility. Grasses of a Thousand Colors is a troubling, erotic adventure that received high critical praise for its first New York City revival in 2013, starring Shawn. Wallace Shawn is a noted actor and writer. His often politically charged and controversial plays include The Fever, Aunt Dan and Lemon, Marie and Bruce, and The Designated Mourner. With Andre´ Gregory, he co-wrote My Dinner with Andre´, in which he also starred.
Dramatic Revisions of Myths, Fairy Tales and Legends
Author: Verna A. Foster
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476600139
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 259
Book Description
These new essays explore the ways in which contemporary dramatists have retold or otherwise made use of myths, fairy tales and legends from a variety of cultures, including Greek, West African, North American, Japanese, and various parts of Europe. The dramatists discussed range from well-established playwrights such as Tony Kushner, Caryl Churchill, and Timberlake Wertenbaker to new theatrical stars such as Sarah Ruhl and Tarell Alvin McCraney. The book contributes to the current discussion of adaptation theory by examining the different ways, and for what purposes, plays revise mythic stories and characters. The essays contribute to studies of literary uses of myth by focusing on how recent dramatists have used myths, fairy tales and legends to address contemporary concerns, especially changing representations of women and the politics of gender relations but also topics such as damage to the environment and political violence.
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476600139
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 259
Book Description
These new essays explore the ways in which contemporary dramatists have retold or otherwise made use of myths, fairy tales and legends from a variety of cultures, including Greek, West African, North American, Japanese, and various parts of Europe. The dramatists discussed range from well-established playwrights such as Tony Kushner, Caryl Churchill, and Timberlake Wertenbaker to new theatrical stars such as Sarah Ruhl and Tarell Alvin McCraney. The book contributes to the current discussion of adaptation theory by examining the different ways, and for what purposes, plays revise mythic stories and characters. The essays contribute to studies of literary uses of myth by focusing on how recent dramatists have used myths, fairy tales and legends to address contemporary concerns, especially changing representations of women and the politics of gender relations but also topics such as damage to the environment and political violence.
Night Thoughts
Author: Wallace Shawn
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1608468135
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 50
Book Description
This “acerbic yet compassionate” meditation on humanity by the acclaimed actor and playwright offers “curiosity, thoughtfulness, sharp logic, deep emotion” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Beloved actor and Obie Award–winning playwright Wallace Shawn has been an incisive commentator on civilization and its discontents for decades. Now, having recently passed the age of seventy and watched Donald Trump claim the presidency, he offers a late-stage critique of his species, which he sees as being divided between the lucky and the unlucky. In Night Thoughts, Shawn takes the lucky—himself included—to task for their complacency while offering fascinating reflections on “civilization, morality, Beethoven, 11th-century Japanese court poetry, and his hopes for a better world, among other topics” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1608468135
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 50
Book Description
This “acerbic yet compassionate” meditation on humanity by the acclaimed actor and playwright offers “curiosity, thoughtfulness, sharp logic, deep emotion” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Beloved actor and Obie Award–winning playwright Wallace Shawn has been an incisive commentator on civilization and its discontents for decades. Now, having recently passed the age of seventy and watched Donald Trump claim the presidency, he offers a late-stage critique of his species, which he sees as being divided between the lucky and the unlucky. In Night Thoughts, Shawn takes the lucky—himself included—to task for their complacency while offering fascinating reflections on “civilization, morality, Beethoven, 11th-century Japanese court poetry, and his hopes for a better world, among other topics” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
Waste
Author: Jessica Rizzo
Publisher: punctum books
ISBN: 1950192881
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 177
Book Description
If at its most elemental, the theater is an art form of human bodies in space, what becomes of the theater as suicide capitalism pushes our world into a posthuman age? Waste: Capitalism and the Dissolution of the Human in Twentieth-Century Theater traces the twentieth-century theater's movement from dramaturgies of efficiency to dramaturgies of waste, beginning with the observation that the most salient feature of the human is her ability to be ashamed of herself, to experience herself as excess, the waster and the waste of the world. By examining theatrical representations of capitalism, war, climate change, and the permanent refugee crisis, Waste traces the ways in which these human-driven events signal a tendency toward prodigality that terminates with self-destruction. Defying its promise of abundance for all, capitalism poisons all relationships with competition and fear. The desire to dominate in war is revealed to be the desire to obliterate the self in collective conflagration. The refugee crisis raises the urgent question of our responsibility to the other, but the climate crisis renders the question of anthropocentric obligations moot.Waste proposes that the theater is the form best suited to confronting the human's perverse relationship to its finitude. Everything about the theater is suffused with existential shame, with an acute awareness of its provisionality. Unlike the dominant narrative of the human, which is bound up with a fantasy of infinite growth, the theater is not deluded about its nature, origins, and destiny. At its best, the theater gathers artist and audience in one space to die together for a little while, to consciously waste, and not spend, their time. JESSICA RIZZO is an American writer, director, and dramaturge. She holds a DFA in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from the Yale School of Drama, where she served as Associate Editor of Theater magazine and was awarded the John W. Gassner Prize for Criticism. She has taught at the Yale School of Drama, Yale College, and Bryn Mawr College. In 2017, she directed the North American premiere of Elfriede Jelinek's Shadow: Eurydice Says in New York City. She has also worked at the Yale Repertory Theatre and the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj, and has had her work presented as part of the Hong Kong Arts Festival. Her writing has appeared in PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, TheaterForum, Theatre Journal, Theater, TDR, Austrian Studies, the Theatre Times, Vice, Momus, LA's Cultural Weekly, Philadelphia's Broad Street Review and ArtBlog, and Romania's Scena.ro.
Publisher: punctum books
ISBN: 1950192881
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 177
Book Description
If at its most elemental, the theater is an art form of human bodies in space, what becomes of the theater as suicide capitalism pushes our world into a posthuman age? Waste: Capitalism and the Dissolution of the Human in Twentieth-Century Theater traces the twentieth-century theater's movement from dramaturgies of efficiency to dramaturgies of waste, beginning with the observation that the most salient feature of the human is her ability to be ashamed of herself, to experience herself as excess, the waster and the waste of the world. By examining theatrical representations of capitalism, war, climate change, and the permanent refugee crisis, Waste traces the ways in which these human-driven events signal a tendency toward prodigality that terminates with self-destruction. Defying its promise of abundance for all, capitalism poisons all relationships with competition and fear. The desire to dominate in war is revealed to be the desire to obliterate the self in collective conflagration. The refugee crisis raises the urgent question of our responsibility to the other, but the climate crisis renders the question of anthropocentric obligations moot.Waste proposes that the theater is the form best suited to confronting the human's perverse relationship to its finitude. Everything about the theater is suffused with existential shame, with an acute awareness of its provisionality. Unlike the dominant narrative of the human, which is bound up with a fantasy of infinite growth, the theater is not deluded about its nature, origins, and destiny. At its best, the theater gathers artist and audience in one space to die together for a little while, to consciously waste, and not spend, their time. JESSICA RIZZO is an American writer, director, and dramaturge. She holds a DFA in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from the Yale School of Drama, where she served as Associate Editor of Theater magazine and was awarded the John W. Gassner Prize for Criticism. She has taught at the Yale School of Drama, Yale College, and Bryn Mawr College. In 2017, she directed the North American premiere of Elfriede Jelinek's Shadow: Eurydice Says in New York City. She has also worked at the Yale Repertory Theatre and the Hungarian Theatre of Cluj, and has had her work presented as part of the Hong Kong Arts Festival. Her writing has appeared in PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, TheaterForum, Theatre Journal, Theater, TDR, Austrian Studies, the Theatre Times, Vice, Momus, LA's Cultural Weekly, Philadelphia's Broad Street Review and ArtBlog, and Romania's Scena.ro.
Twenty-First Century Drama
Author: Siân Adiseshiah
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137484039
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 349
Book Description
Within this landmark collection, original voices from the field of drama provide rich analysis of a selection of the most exciting and remarkable plays and productions of the twenty-first century. But what makes the drama of the new millenium so distinctive? Which events, themes, shifts, and paradigms are marking its stages? Kaleidoscopic in scope, Twenty-First Century Drama: What Happens Now creates a broad, rigorously critical framework for approaching the drama of this period, including its forms, playwrights, companies, institutions, collaborative projects, and directors. The collection has a deliberately British bent, examining established playwrights – such as Churchill, Brenton, and Hare – alongside a new generation of writers – including Stephens, Prebble, Kirkwood, Bartlett, and Kelly. Simultaneously international in scope, it engages with significant new work from the US, Japan, India, Australia, and the Netherlands, to reflect a twenty-first century context that is fundamentally globalized. The volume’s central themes – the financial crisis, austerity, climate change, new forms of human being, migration, class, race and gender, cultural politics and issues of nationhood – are mediated through fresh, cutting-edge perspectives.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137484039
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 349
Book Description
Within this landmark collection, original voices from the field of drama provide rich analysis of a selection of the most exciting and remarkable plays and productions of the twenty-first century. But what makes the drama of the new millenium so distinctive? Which events, themes, shifts, and paradigms are marking its stages? Kaleidoscopic in scope, Twenty-First Century Drama: What Happens Now creates a broad, rigorously critical framework for approaching the drama of this period, including its forms, playwrights, companies, institutions, collaborative projects, and directors. The collection has a deliberately British bent, examining established playwrights – such as Churchill, Brenton, and Hare – alongside a new generation of writers – including Stephens, Prebble, Kirkwood, Bartlett, and Kelly. Simultaneously international in scope, it engages with significant new work from the US, Japan, India, Australia, and the Netherlands, to reflect a twenty-first century context that is fundamentally globalized. The volume’s central themes – the financial crisis, austerity, climate change, new forms of human being, migration, class, race and gender, cultural politics and issues of nationhood – are mediated through fresh, cutting-edge perspectives.
The American Play
Author: Marc Robinson
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030015612X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 415
Book Description
In this brilliant study, Marc Robinson explores more than two hundred years of plays, styles, and stagings of American theater. Mapping the changing cultural landscape from the late eighteenth century to the start of the twenty-first, he explores how theater has--and has not--changed and offers close readings of plays by O'Neill, Stein, Wilder, Miller, and Albee, as well as by important but perhaps lesser known dramatists such as Wallace Stevens, Jean Toomer, Djuna Barnes, and many others. Robinson reads each work in an ambitiously interdisciplinary context, linking advances in theater to developments in American literature, dance, and visual art. The author is particularly attentive to the continuities in American drama, and expertly teases out recurring themes, such as the significance of visuality. He avoids neatly categorizing nineteenth- and twentieth-century plays and depicts a theater more restive and mercurial than has been recognized before. Robinson proves both a fascinating and thought-provoking critic and a spirited guide to the history of American drama.
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030015612X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 415
Book Description
In this brilliant study, Marc Robinson explores more than two hundred years of plays, styles, and stagings of American theater. Mapping the changing cultural landscape from the late eighteenth century to the start of the twenty-first, he explores how theater has--and has not--changed and offers close readings of plays by O'Neill, Stein, Wilder, Miller, and Albee, as well as by important but perhaps lesser known dramatists such as Wallace Stevens, Jean Toomer, Djuna Barnes, and many others. Robinson reads each work in an ambitiously interdisciplinary context, linking advances in theater to developments in American literature, dance, and visual art. The author is particularly attentive to the continuities in American drama, and expertly teases out recurring themes, such as the significance of visuality. He avoids neatly categorizing nineteenth- and twentieth-century plays and depicts a theater more restive and mercurial than has been recognized before. Robinson proves both a fascinating and thought-provoking critic and a spirited guide to the history of American drama.
The Village of Ben Suc
Author: Jonathan Schell
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681378507
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 113
Book Description
With a new introduction by Wallace Shawn, a classic work of war reportage that describes, with unblinking vision, the systematic leveling of a Vietnamese village by American troops. In January 1967, as President Lyndon Johnson sent more forces to the war in Vietnam, the US military began what was to be the largest ground operation of the entire conflict. Not far from Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, and close to the Cambodian border was an area known as the Iron Triangle, long under Viet Cong control. Operation Cedar Falls set out to eliminate that guerrilla threat by sealing off the region, emptying its villages, and leveling the surrounding jungle. The local population would be transferred to model "New Life Villages" under US surveillance. The village of Ben Suc was the Americans' first target, and Jonathan Schell, a reporter at the start of his career, accompanied them there. He witnessed the destruction of the village; the frantic efforts of young soldiers to figure out who was or wasn't a foe; the destruction of people's homes and possessions; and the chaotic transfer of women, children, old men, and livestock to a refugee camp where no preparations had been made for their arrival. He described it all in measured tones and unflinching detail. As a cautionary tale about the unintended and devastating consequences of military occupation, The Village of Ben Suc remains unequaled. "Schell's book might have been the crystal ball that could have led American policymakers to realize that quasi-imperial American interventions of this type could not succeed in the contemporary world, and if the policymakers had read Schell's book and studied it carefully, who knows, maybe a million or more Vietnamese lives could have been saved, along with the lives of fifty thousand American soldiers, along with countless lives in Afghanistan and Iraq." —From Wallace Shawn's Introduction.
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681378507
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 113
Book Description
With a new introduction by Wallace Shawn, a classic work of war reportage that describes, with unblinking vision, the systematic leveling of a Vietnamese village by American troops. In January 1967, as President Lyndon Johnson sent more forces to the war in Vietnam, the US military began what was to be the largest ground operation of the entire conflict. Not far from Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, and close to the Cambodian border was an area known as the Iron Triangle, long under Viet Cong control. Operation Cedar Falls set out to eliminate that guerrilla threat by sealing off the region, emptying its villages, and leveling the surrounding jungle. The local population would be transferred to model "New Life Villages" under US surveillance. The village of Ben Suc was the Americans' first target, and Jonathan Schell, a reporter at the start of his career, accompanied them there. He witnessed the destruction of the village; the frantic efforts of young soldiers to figure out who was or wasn't a foe; the destruction of people's homes and possessions; and the chaotic transfer of women, children, old men, and livestock to a refugee camp where no preparations had been made for their arrival. He described it all in measured tones and unflinching detail. As a cautionary tale about the unintended and devastating consequences of military occupation, The Village of Ben Suc remains unequaled. "Schell's book might have been the crystal ball that could have led American policymakers to realize that quasi-imperial American interventions of this type could not succeed in the contemporary world, and if the policymakers had read Schell's book and studied it carefully, who knows, maybe a million or more Vietnamese lives could have been saved, along with the lives of fifty thousand American soldiers, along with countless lives in Afghanistan and Iraq." —From Wallace Shawn's Introduction.
Acting Queer
Author: Conrad Alexandrowicz
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030293181
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Book Description
This book is situated at the intersection of queer/gender studies and theories of acting pedagogy and performance. It explores the social and cultural matrix in which matters of gender are negotiated, including that of post-secondary theatre and drama education. It identifies the predicament of gender dissident actors who must contend with the widespread enforcement of realist paradigms within the academy, and proposes a re-imagining of the way drama/theatre/performance are practised in order to serve more fairly and effectively the needs of queer actors in training. This is located within a larger project of critique in reference to the art form as a whole. The book stimulates discussion among practitioners and scholars on matters concerning various kinds of diversity: of gender expression, of approaches to the teaching of acting, and to the way the art form may be imagined and executed in the early years of the 21st Century, in particular in the face of the climate crisis. But it is also an aid to practitioners who are seeking new theoretical and practical approaches to dealing with gender diversity in acting pedagogy.
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030293181
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 225
Book Description
This book is situated at the intersection of queer/gender studies and theories of acting pedagogy and performance. It explores the social and cultural matrix in which matters of gender are negotiated, including that of post-secondary theatre and drama education. It identifies the predicament of gender dissident actors who must contend with the widespread enforcement of realist paradigms within the academy, and proposes a re-imagining of the way drama/theatre/performance are practised in order to serve more fairly and effectively the needs of queer actors in training. This is located within a larger project of critique in reference to the art form as a whole. The book stimulates discussion among practitioners and scholars on matters concerning various kinds of diversity: of gender expression, of approaches to the teaching of acting, and to the way the art form may be imagined and executed in the early years of the 21st Century, in particular in the face of the climate crisis. But it is also an aid to practitioners who are seeking new theoretical and practical approaches to dealing with gender diversity in acting pedagogy.
Paula Scher
Author: Paula Scher
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1616899344
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
A larger-than-life figure in the design community with a client list to match, Paula Scher turned her first major project as a partner at Pentagram into a formative twenty-five-year relationship with the Public Theater in New York. This behind-the-scenes account of the relationship between Scher and "the Public," as it's affectionately known, chronicles over two decades of brand and identity development and an evolving creative process in a unique "autobiography of graphic design."
Publisher: Chronicle Books
ISBN: 1616899344
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 258
Book Description
A larger-than-life figure in the design community with a client list to match, Paula Scher turned her first major project as a partner at Pentagram into a formative twenty-five-year relationship with the Public Theater in New York. This behind-the-scenes account of the relationship between Scher and "the Public," as it's affectionately known, chronicles over two decades of brand and identity development and an evolving creative process in a unique "autobiography of graphic design."
The Playwright at Work
Author: Rosemarie Tichler
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810127628
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 337
Book Description
Rosemarie Tichler and Barry Jay Kaplan take us behind the scenes in conversations with thirteen of today’s most distinguished playwrights, including Tony Kushner, John Guare, Wallace Shawn, Suzan-Lori Parks, David Henry Hwang, and Sarah Ruhl. To familiarize the reader with the world of each playwright, Tichler and Kaplan introduce us to the environments in which the work happens, conducting their interviews in the playwright’s home, a dark theater, or a coffee shop. Topics of conversation range from the playwrights’ earliest memories of the theater to finding their unique voices, and from their working relationships with directors, actors, and designers to their involvement in the purely commercial aspects of their profession. Taken together, these conversations constitute a collectively taught master class in the art and craft of writing for the stage.
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810127628
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 337
Book Description
Rosemarie Tichler and Barry Jay Kaplan take us behind the scenes in conversations with thirteen of today’s most distinguished playwrights, including Tony Kushner, John Guare, Wallace Shawn, Suzan-Lori Parks, David Henry Hwang, and Sarah Ruhl. To familiarize the reader with the world of each playwright, Tichler and Kaplan introduce us to the environments in which the work happens, conducting their interviews in the playwright’s home, a dark theater, or a coffee shop. Topics of conversation range from the playwrights’ earliest memories of the theater to finding their unique voices, and from their working relationships with directors, actors, and designers to their involvement in the purely commercial aspects of their profession. Taken together, these conversations constitute a collectively taught master class in the art and craft of writing for the stage.