Post-War British Theatre (Routledge Revivals)

Post-War British Theatre (Routledge Revivals) PDF 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.

Post-War British Theatre (Routledge Revivals)

Post-War British Theatre (Routledge Revivals) PDF Author: John Elsom
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1317557751
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 247

Get Book Here

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.

Post-War British Theatre Criticism (Routledge Revivals)

Post-War British Theatre Criticism (Routledge Revivals) PDF Author: John Elsom
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317557514
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
This book, first published in 1981, sets out the critical reaction to some fifty key post-war productions of the British theatre, as gauged primarily through the contemporary reviews of theatre critics. The plays chosen are each, in their different ways, important in their contribution to the development of the British theatre, covering the period from immediately after the Second World War, when British theatre fell into decline, through the revival of the late 1950s, to the time in which this book was first published, in which British theatre enjoyed a high international reputation for its diversity and quality. This book is ideal for theatre studies students, as well as for the general theatre-goer.

A Companion to Post-war British Theatre

A Companion to Post-war British Theatre PDF Author: Philip Barnes
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
This original compilation is a comprehensive guide to every aspect of contemporary British theatre. It contains entries on playwrights and their plays; on major directors, actors and theatre groups; on alternative theatre, 'schools' of dramatic practice, critical idioms and stage history. It will be an invaluable source of reference for the student of drama, the critic, the aspiring writer or actor; and a desirable acquisition for the thousands who visit the theatre regularly.

Society and Literature 1945-1970 (Routledge Revivals)

Society and Literature 1945-1970 (Routledge Revivals) PDF Author: Alan Sinfield
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135021376
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
First published in 1983, this book focuses on the twentieth-century writer as both a product, and an interpreter, of his or her society. It explores the social basis of our conceptions of literature and the ways in which writing is affected by the media, institutional and technical, through which it reaches readers. The text looks at experiences of the period in terms of domestic and world affairs, sexuality, and philosophical and religious attitudes. It discusses the social and economic structures which specifically affect the act of writing, and considers the dominant developments of the period in three genres: novels, poetry and writing for theatre.

Post-war British Theatre

Post-war British Theatre PDF Author: John Elsom
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Theater
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description


Anger and After (Routledge Revivals)

Anger and After (Routledge Revivals) PDF Author: John Russell Taylor
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317917057
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
When it was first published in 1962, Anger and After was the first comprehensive study of the dramatic movement which began in 1956 with the staging of John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger and has since brought forward such dramatists as Brendan Behan, Harold Pinter, N. F. Simpson, John Arden and Arnold Wesker. Thoroughly revised in 1969, this book remains important reading for theatre students in need of a comprehensive and authoritative guide to post-Osborne drama in Britain.

Look Back in Gender (Routledge Revivals)

Look Back in Gender (Routledge Revivals) PDF Author: Michelene Wandor
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317606140
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
In this challenging book, first published in 1987, Michelene Wandor looks at the best-known plays in the thirty years prior to publication, from Look Back in Anger onwards. Wandor investigates the representation of the family and different forms of sexuality in these plays and re-reviews them from a perspective that throws into sharp relief the function of gender as an important determinant of plot, setting and the portrayal of character. Juxtaposing the period before 1968, when statutory censorship was still in force, with the years following its abolition, Wandor scrutinises the key plays of, among others, Osborne, Pinter, Wesker, Arden, and Delaney. Each one is analysed in terms of its social context: the influence of World War II, the testing of gender roles, the development of the Welfare State and changes in family patterns, and the impact of feminist, Left-wing and gay politics. Throughout the period, two generations of playwrights and theatregoers transformed the theatre into a forum in which they could articulate and explore the interaction of their interpersonal relationships with the wider political sphere. These changes are explored in this title, which will allow readers to re-evaluate their view of post-war British drama.

British Literature in Transition, 1940-1960: Postwar

British Literature in Transition, 1940-1960: Postwar PDF 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.

Sexual Sameness (Routledge Revivals)

Sexual Sameness (Routledge Revivals) PDF Author: Joseph Bristow
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317807596
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 275

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Book Description
First published in 1992, Sexual Sameness examines the differing textual strategies male and female writers have developed to celebrate homosexuality. Examining such writers as E.M. Forster, James Baldwin, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Audre Lourde, this wide-ranging book demonstrates how literature has been one of the few cultural spaces in which sexual outsiders have been able to explore forbidden desires. From the humiliating trials of Oscar Wilde to the appalling stigmatisation of people living with AIDS, Sexual Sameness reveals the persistent homophobia that has until recently almost completely inhibited our understanding of lesbian and gay writing. In opening up homosexual literature to informed and objective methods of reading, Sexual Sameness will be of interest to a large lesbian and gay readership, as well as to students of gender studies, literary studies and the social sciences.

Verse Drama in England, 1900-2015

Verse Drama in England, 1900-2015 PDF Author: Irene Morra
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 147258015X
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Verse Drama in England, 1900-2015 provides a critical and historical exploration of a tradition of modern dramatic creativity that has received very little scholarly attention. Exploring the emergence of a distinctly modern verse drama at the turn of the century and its development into the twenty-first, it counters common assumptions that the form is a marginal, fundamentally outdated curiosity. Through an examination of the extensive and diverse engagement of literary and theatrical writers, directors and musicians, Irene Morra identifies in modern verse drama a consistent and often prominent attempt to expand upon, revitalize, and redefine the contemporary English stage. Dramatists discussed include Stephen Phillips, Gordon Bottomley, John Masefield, James Elroy Flecker, T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, Ronald Duncan, Christopher Fry, John Arden, Anne Ridler, Tony Harrison, Steven Berkoff, Caryl Churchill, and Mike Bartlett. The book explores the negotiation of these dramatists with the changing position of verse drama in relation to constructions of national and communal audience, aesthetic challenge, and dramatic heritage. Key to the study is the self-conscious positioning of many of these dramatists in relation to an assumed mainstream tradition – and the various critical responses that that positioning has provoked. The study advocates for a scholarly revaluation of what must be identified as an influential and overlooked tradition of aesthetic challenge and creativity.