Sarah Bernhardt's First American Theatrical Tour, 1880-1881

Sarah Bernhardt's First American Theatrical Tour, 1880-1881 PDF Author: Patricia Marks
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786414956
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book Here

Book Description
On October 15, 1880, with great excitement and fanfare, two Sarah Bernhardts set sail for New York from Le Havre for a theatrical tour of the United States. One wanted to introduce French culture to a backward country, and the other wanted to make money. As an actress, she behaved in a fashion that amused and scandalized her audiences, and as a woman, she was an unwed mother and a shrewd businessperson. Bernhardt's multiple personas and "otherness" were what fascinated the American public; her name, her eccentricities, and her genius had already made her world famous. Sarah Bernhardt's first American theatrical tour, from her arrival in 1880 to her return to Europe in May 1881, is chronicled here. She traveled as far west as Kansas City and as far south as New Orleans, all the while sparking cultural commentary about her performances, her artwork, and her lifestyle. This book provides an overview of the contemporary reviews, caricatures and satires, considers Bernhardt's reception by the American press and American audiences, and discusses the way in which the Bernhardt iconography was created and the assumptions that underlie it.

Sarah Bernhardt's First American Theatrical Tour, 1880-1881

Sarah Bernhardt's First American Theatrical Tour, 1880-1881 PDF Author: Patricia Marks
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 9780786414956
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Get Book Here

Book Description
On October 15, 1880, with great excitement and fanfare, two Sarah Bernhardts set sail for New York from Le Havre for a theatrical tour of the United States. One wanted to introduce French culture to a backward country, and the other wanted to make money. As an actress, she behaved in a fashion that amused and scandalized her audiences, and as a woman, she was an unwed mother and a shrewd businessperson. Bernhardt's multiple personas and "otherness" were what fascinated the American public; her name, her eccentricities, and her genius had already made her world famous. Sarah Bernhardt's first American theatrical tour, from her arrival in 1880 to her return to Europe in May 1881, is chronicled here. She traveled as far west as Kansas City and as far south as New Orleans, all the while sparking cultural commentary about her performances, her artwork, and her lifestyle. This book provides an overview of the contemporary reviews, caricatures and satires, considers Bernhardt's reception by the American press and American audiences, and discusses the way in which the Bernhardt iconography was created and the assumptions that underlie it.

Playing Sick

Playing Sick PDF Author: Meredith Conti
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351787705
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Get Book Here

Book Description
Few life occurrences shaped individual and collective identities within Victorian-era society as critically as witnessing or suffering from illness. The prevalence of illness narratives within late nineteenth-century popular culture was made manifest on the period’s British and American stages, where theatrical embodiments of illness were indisputable staples of actors’ repertoires. Playing Sick: Performances of Illness in the Age of Victorian Medicine reconstructs how actors embodied three of the era’s most provocative illnesses: tuberculosis, drug addiction, and mental illness. In placing performances of illness within wider medicocultural contexts, Meredith Conti analyzes how such depictions confirmed or resisted salient constructions of diseases and the diseased. Conti’s case studies, which range from Eleonora Duse’s portrayal of the consumptive courtesan Marguerite Gautier to Henry Irving’s performance of senile dementia in King Lear, help to illuminate the interdependence of medical science and theatre in constructing nineteenth-century illness narratives. Through reconstructing these performances, Conti isolates from the period’s acting practices a lexicon of embodied illness: a flexible set of physical and vocal techniques that performers employed to theatricalize the sick body. In an age when medical science encouraged a gradual decentering of the patient from their own diagnosis and treatment, late nineteenth-century performances of illness symbolically restored the sick to positions of visibility and consequence.

Sarah Bernhardt

Sarah Bernhardt PDF Author: Catherine Reef
Publisher: Clarion Books
ISBN: 1328557502
Category : Actresses
Languages : en
Pages : 197

Get Book Here

Book Description
A tantalizing biography for teens on Sarah Bernhardt, the first international celebrity and one of the greatest actors of all time, who lived a highly unconventional, utterly fascinating life. Illustrated with more than sixty-five photos of Bernhardt on stage, in film, and in real life. Sarah Bernhardt was a French stage actor who became a global superstar in the late nineteenth century--the Lady Gaga of her day--and is still considered to be one of the greatest performers of all time. This fast-paced account of her life, filled with provocative detail, brilliantly follows the transformation of a girl of humble origins, born to a courtesan, into a fabulously talented, wealthy, and beloved icon. Not only was her acting trajectory remarkable, but her personal life was filled with jaw-dropping exploits, and she was extravagantly eccentric, living with a series of exotic animals and sleeping in a coffin. She grew to be deeply admired around the world, despite her unabashed and public promiscuity at a time when convention was king; she slept with each of her leading men and proudly raised a son without a husband. A fascinating and fast-paced deep dive into the world of the divine Sarah. Illustrated with more than sixty-five photos of Bernhardt on stage, in film, and in real life.

Sarah

Sarah PDF Author: Robert Gottlieb
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300168799
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 219

Get Book Here

Book Description
Everything about Sarah Bernhardt is fascinating, from her obscure birth to her glorious career--redefining the very nature of her art--to her amazing (and highly public) romantic life, to her indomitable spirit. Well into her seventies, after the amputation of her leg, she was performing under bombardment for soldiers during World War I and toured America for the ninth time. Though the Bernhardt literature is vast, this is the first English-language biography to appear in decades, tracking the trajectory through which an illegitimate--and scandalous--daughter of a Jewish courtesan transformed herself into the most famous actress who ever lived, and into a national icon, a symbol of France.--From publisher description.

Strange Duets

Strange Duets PDF Author: Kim Marra
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1587297418
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 379

Get Book Here

Book Description
Autocratic male impresarios increasingly dominated the American stage between 1865 and 1914. Many rose from poor immigrant roots and built their own careers by making huge stars out of “undiscovered,” Anglo-identified actresses. Reflecting the antics of self-made industrial empire-builders and independent, challenging New Women, these theatrical potentates and their protégées gained a level of wealth and celebrity comparable to that of Hollywood stars today. In her engaging and provocative Strange Duets, Kim Marra spotlights three passionate impresario-actress relationships of exceptional duration that encapsulated the social tensions of the day and strongly influenced the theatre of the twentieth century. Augustin Daly and Ada Rehan, Charles Frohman and Maude Adams, and David Belasco and Mrs. Leslie Carter reigned over “legitimate” Broadway theatre, the venue of greatest social cachet for the monied classes. Unlike impresarios and actresses in vaudeville and burlesque, they produced full-length spoken drama that involved special rigors of training and rehearsal to sustain a character’s emotional “truth” as well as a high level of physical athleticism and endurance. Their efforts compelled fascination at a time when most people believed women’s emotions were seated primarily in the reproductive organs and thus were fundamentally embodied and sexual in nature. While the impresario ostensibly exercised full control over his leading lady, showing fashionable audiences that the exciting but unruly New Woman could be both tamed and enjoyed, she acquired a power of her own that could bring him to his knees.Kim Marra combines methods of cultural, gender, and sexuality studies with theatre history to explore the vexed mutual dependency between these status-seeking Svengalis and their alternately willing and resistant leading ladies. She illuminates how their on- and off-stage performances, highly charged in this Darwinian era with “racial” as well as gender, sexual, and class dynamics, tapped into the contradictory fantasies and aspirations of their audiences. Played out against a backdrop of enormous cultural and institutional transformation, the volatile romance of Daly and Rehan, closeted homosexuality of Frohman and Adams, and carnal expiations of Belasco and Carter produced strange duets indeed.

The Complete Letters of Henry James, 1880–1883

The Complete Letters of Henry James, 1880–1883 PDF Author: Henry James
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803285477
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 403

Get Book Here

Book Description
Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: A Finer Art, by Susan M. Griffin -- Symbols and Abbreviations -- Chronology -- Errata -- 1880 -- June -- July -- August -- September -- October -- November -- December -- 1881 -- January -- February -- March -- April -- May/June -- July -- August -- September -- October -- Biographical Register -- General Editors' Note -- Works Cited -- Index

International Westerns

International Westerns PDF Author: Cynthia J. Miller
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 081089288X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 477

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Western tradition, with its well-worn tropes, readily identifiable characters, iconic landscapes, and evocative soundtracks, is not limited to the United States. Western, or Western-inspired films have played a part in the output of numerous national film traditions, including Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, and Latin America. In International Westerns: Re-Locating the Frontier, Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper have assembled a collection of essays that explore the significance and meanings of these films, their roots in other media, and their reception in the national industries which gave them form. Among the questions that the volume seeks to answer are: What do Westerns not made in the U.S. reveal? In what ways do they challenge or support the idea of national literatures and cinemas? How do these films negotiate nation, narrative, and genre? Divided into five sections, the twenty essays in this volume look at films from a wide range of national cinemas, such as France (The Adventures of Lucky Luke), Germany (Der Schuh des Maitu), Brazil (O Cangaceiro), Eastern Europe (Lemonade Joe), and of course, Asia (Sukiyaki Western Django). Featuring contributions from a diverse group of international scholars—often writing about Westerns adapted to their own national traditions—these essays address such matters as competing national film traditions, various forms of satire and comedy based on the Western tradition, the range of cultural adaptations of the traditional Western hero, the ties between the nation-state and the outlaw, and Westerns in a variety of unanticipated guises. Representing a broader look at global Westerns than any other single volume to date—and featuring more than 70 illustrations—International Westerns will be of interest to scholars of film, popular culture, and cultural history.

Historical Dictionary of American Theater

Historical Dictionary of American Theater PDF Author: James Fisher
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 081087833X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 571

Get Book Here

Book Description
Historical Dictionary of American Theater: Beginnings covers the history of theater as well as the literature of America from 1538 to 1880. The years covered by this volume features the rise of the popular stage in American during the colonial era and the first century of the United States of America, with an emphasis on its practitioners, including such figures as Lewis Hallam, David Douglass, Mercy Otis Warren, Edwin Forrest, Charlotte Cushman, Joseph Jefferson, Ida Aldridge, Dion Boucicault, Edwin Booth, and many others. The Historical Dictionary of American Theater: Beginnings covers the history of early American Theatre through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1000 cross-referenced entries on actors and actresses, directors, playwrights, producers, genres, notable plays and theatres. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the early American Theater.

Focus On: 100 Most Popular Vaudeville Performers

Focus On: 100 Most Popular Vaudeville Performers PDF Author: Wikipedia contributors
Publisher: e-artnow sro
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1438

Get Book Here

Book Description


Starring Madame Modjeska

Starring Madame Modjeska PDF Author: Beth Holmgren
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253005191
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 428

Get Book Here

Book Description
The “important . . . meticulously researched” prize-winning biography of the pre-eminent Polish star of the nineteenth century global stage (CosmopolinReview.com). In reintroducing “a little-remembered actress to a new American audience” biographer Beth Holgram delivers a revelatory portrait of Helena Modjeska—from unparalleled European success to her reign as the most acclaimed, and most recognized female celebrity in the late nineteenth-century United States. In 1876, Poland’s leading actress, Helena Modrzejewska, accompanied by her husband, the self-stylized Count Bozente, emigrated to southern California to give up her career and establish a utopian commune. In light of its failings, it hardly fulfilled the real dreams of Madame Helena. Within a year, she changed her surname to Modjeska, and made her American debut at San Francisco’s California Theatre. Godmother to Ethel Barrymore, and sharing the Shakespearian stage with such luminaries as Otis Skinner, Edwin Booth, and Maurice Barrymore, Helena Modjeska became the leading star in the United States, where she reigned for the next thirty years. In this “Impressive . . . achievement,” Holmgren traces Modjeska’s fabulous life and career from her illegitimate birth in Krakow, to her successive reinventions of herself as a trans-continental diva, and finally to her enduring legacy (Women’s Review of Books). All in all, Starring Madame Modjeska “makes for great drama” (NewPages.com).