Perspectives on Contemporary Theatre

Perspectives on Contemporary Theatre PDF Author: Oscar G. Brockett
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807124208
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
Contemporary theatre is nearly as controversial as the changing society it reflects. Much of its journalistic notoriety derives from its seeming advocacy of behavior, language, and ideas once considered unsuitable for public performance. In this overview, a noted authority takes a perceptive look at the radical trends in modern drama and provides us with a new awareness of the forces and ideas behind the current theatrical battle. Professor Brockett demonstrates that many of the puzzling aspects of contemporary theatre—such as obscenity, nudity, and propaganda—are rooted in the traditions of Western stage and society. He traces the sifts in values over the past century and shows how these changes have affected modern drama. This uncertainty about values, says the author, has been accompanied by new conceptions of structural unity in theatre. He points out the various structural innovations in drama from Aristotle through wide range of playwrights, including Sophocles, Ionesco, Ibsen, Brecht, Artaud, Beckett, and Jean-Claude van Itallie, and discusses the relationship of “relevance” to “universality.” He examines the most recent theatrical shift—from detachment to commitment—and compares the plays of the anxious 1950s, such as Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, with today’s committed theatre, including such productions as Chicago 70, Hair, and Che! Perspectives on Contemporary Theatre is a thoughtful guide for the reader who seeks a better understanding of the radical changes in the nature and function of dramatic art.

Perspectives on Contemporary Theatre

Perspectives on Contemporary Theatre PDF Author: Oscar G. Brockett
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 9780807124208
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
Contemporary theatre is nearly as controversial as the changing society it reflects. Much of its journalistic notoriety derives from its seeming advocacy of behavior, language, and ideas once considered unsuitable for public performance. In this overview, a noted authority takes a perceptive look at the radical trends in modern drama and provides us with a new awareness of the forces and ideas behind the current theatrical battle. Professor Brockett demonstrates that many of the puzzling aspects of contemporary theatre—such as obscenity, nudity, and propaganda—are rooted in the traditions of Western stage and society. He traces the sifts in values over the past century and shows how these changes have affected modern drama. This uncertainty about values, says the author, has been accompanied by new conceptions of structural unity in theatre. He points out the various structural innovations in drama from Aristotle through wide range of playwrights, including Sophocles, Ionesco, Ibsen, Brecht, Artaud, Beckett, and Jean-Claude van Itallie, and discusses the relationship of “relevance” to “universality.” He examines the most recent theatrical shift—from detachment to commitment—and compares the plays of the anxious 1950s, such as Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, with today’s committed theatre, including such productions as Chicago 70, Hair, and Che! Perspectives on Contemporary Theatre is a thoughtful guide for the reader who seeks a better understanding of the radical changes in the nature and function of dramatic art.

Perspectives on Contemporary Theatre

Perspectives on Contemporary Theatre PDF Author: Oscar Gross Brockett
Publisher: Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press
ISBN: 9780080710938
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description


Postdramatic Theatre and the Political

Postdramatic Theatre and the Political PDF Author: Karen Jürs-Munby
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408185881
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Is postdramatic theatre political and if so how? How does it relate to Brecht's ideas of political theatre, for example? How can we account for the relationship between aesthetics and politics in new forms of theatre, playwriting, and performance? The chapters in this book discuss crucial aspects of the issues raised by the postdramatic turn in theatre in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century: the status of the audience and modes of spectatorship in postdramatic theatre; the political claims of postdramatic theatre; postdramatic theatre's ongoing relationship with the dramatic tradition; its dialectical qualities, or its eschewing of the dialectic; questions of representation and the real in theatre; the role of bodies, perception, appearance and theatricality in postdramatic theatre; as well as subjectivity and agency in postdramatic theatre, dance and performance. Offering analyses of a wide range of international performance examples, scholars in this volume engage with Hans-Thies Lehmann's theoretical positions both affirmatively and critically, relating them to other approaches by thinkers ranging from early theorists such as Brecht, Adorno and Benjamin, to contemporary thinkers such as Fischer-Lichte, Rancière and others

Perspectives on Contemporary Irish Theatre

Perspectives on Contemporary Irish Theatre PDF Author: Anne Etienne
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319597108
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
This book addresses the notion posed by Thomas Kilroy in his definition of a playwright’s creative process: ‘We write plays, I feel, in order to populate the stage’. It gathers eclectic reflections on contemporary Irish theatre from both Irish theatre practitioners and international academics. The eighteen contributions offer innovative perspectives on Irish theatre since the early 1990s up to the present, testifying to the development of themes explored by emerging and established playwrights as well as to the (r)evolutions in practices and approaches to the stage that have taken place in the last thirty years. This cross-disciplinary collection devotes as much attention to contextual questions and approaches to the stage in practice as it does to the play text in its traditional and revised forms. The essays and interviews encourage dialectic exchange between analytical studies on contemporary Irish theatre and contributions by theatre practitioners.

Making Contemporary Theatre

Making Contemporary Theatre PDF Author: Jen Harvie
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719074929
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Making Contemporary Theatre reveals how some of the most significant international contemporary theatre is actually made. The book opens with an introductory chapter which contextualizes recent trends in approaches to theatre-making. In the ensuing eleven chapters, eleven different writer-observers describe, contextualize and analyze the theatre-making practices of eleven different companies and directors, including Japan’s Gekidan Kaitaisha and the Québécois director Robert Lepage. Each chapter is enriched with extensive illustrations as well as boxed-off "asides," giving the reader different perspectives on the work. Chapters usually focus on a single production, such as Complicite’s 2003-04 The Elephant Vanishes, allowing detailed investigations of complex practices to emerge. The book concludes with a brief manifesto for making contemporary theatre by the editors, plus a bibliography suggesting further reading. Making contemporary theatre is a rich resource for the theatre-making student and the theatre--goer alike, full of diverse examples of how the most exciting theatre is actually made.

Community Theatre

Community Theatre PDF Author: Eugene van Erven
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134656351
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Community theatre is an important device for communities to collectively share stories, to participate in political dialogue, and to break down the increasing exclusion of marginalised groups of citizens. It is practised all over the world by growing numbers of people. Published at the same time as a video of the same name, this is a unique record of these theatre groups in action. Based on van Erven's own travels and experiences working with community theatre groups in six very different countries, this is the first study of their work and the methodological traditions which have developed around the world.

Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Plays by Women

Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Plays by Women PDF Author: Penny Farfan
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 047205435X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
Explores how women playwrights illuminate the contemporary world and contribute to its reshaping

Redefining Theatre Communities

Redefining Theatre Communities PDF Author: Szabolcs Musca
Publisher: Intellect (UK)
ISBN: 9781789380767
Category : Community theater
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Redefining Theatre Communities explores the interplay between contemporary theatre and communities. It considers the aesthetic, social and cultural aspects of community-conscious theatre-making. It also reflects on transformations in structural, textual and theatrical conventions, and explores changing modes of production and spectatorship.

The Show and the Gaze of Theatre

The Show and the Gaze of Theatre PDF Author: Erika Fischer-Lichte
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 9781587290633
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 428

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Book Description
Theatre, in some respects, resembles a market. Stories, rituals, ideas, perceptive modes, conversations, rules, techniques, behavior patterns, actions, language, and objects constantly circulate back and forth between theatre and the other cultural institutions that make up everyday life in the twentieth century. These exchanges, which challenge the established concept of theatre in a way that demands to be understood, form the core of Erika Fischer-Lichte's dynamic book. Each eclectic essay investigates the boundaries that separate theatre from other cultural domains. Every encounter between theatre and other art forms and institutions renegotiates and redefines these boundaries as part of an ongoing process. Drawing on a wealth of fascinating examples, both historical and contemporary, Fischer-Lichte reveals new perspectives in theatre research from quite a number of different approaches. Energetically and excitingly, she theorizes history, theorizes and historicizes performance analysis, and historicizes theory.

Authoring Performance

Authoring Performance PDF Author: A. Sidiropoulou
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 113700178X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
A historical, theoretical, and comparative study of the emergence of the director-as-author phenomenon, posing questions of authorship and redefining the relationship between 'playwright' and the director-playwright.