The Birth of Modern Theatre

The Birth of Modern Theatre PDF Author: Norman S. Poser
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429820038
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
The Birth of Modern Theatre: Rivalry, Riots, and Romance in the Age of Garrick is a vivid description of the eighteenth-century London theatre scene—a time when the theatre took on many of the features of our modern stage. A natural and psychologically based acting style replaced the declamatory style of an earlier age. The theatres were mainly supported by paying audiences, no longer by royal or noble patrons. The press determined the success or failure of a play or a performance. Actors were no longer shunned by polite society, some becoming celebrities in the modern sense. The dominant figure for thirty years was David Garrick, actor, theatre manager and playwright, who, off the stage, charmed London with his energy, playfulness, and social graces. No less important in defining eighteenth-century theatre were its audiences, who considered themselves full-scale participants in theatrical performances; if they did not care for a play, an actor, or ticket prices, they would loudly make their wishes known, sometimes starting a riot. This book recounts the lives—and occasionally the scandals—of the actors and theatre managers and weaves them into the larger story of the theatre in this exuberant age, setting the London stage and its leading personalities against the background of the important social, cultural, and economic changes that shaped eighteenth-century Britain. The Birth of Modern Theatre brings all of this together to describe a moment in history that sowed the seeds of today’s stage.

The Birth of Modern Theatre

The Birth of Modern Theatre PDF Author: Norman S. Poser
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429820038
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Birth of Modern Theatre: Rivalry, Riots, and Romance in the Age of Garrick is a vivid description of the eighteenth-century London theatre scene—a time when the theatre took on many of the features of our modern stage. A natural and psychologically based acting style replaced the declamatory style of an earlier age. The theatres were mainly supported by paying audiences, no longer by royal or noble patrons. The press determined the success or failure of a play or a performance. Actors were no longer shunned by polite society, some becoming celebrities in the modern sense. The dominant figure for thirty years was David Garrick, actor, theatre manager and playwright, who, off the stage, charmed London with his energy, playfulness, and social graces. No less important in defining eighteenth-century theatre were its audiences, who considered themselves full-scale participants in theatrical performances; if they did not care for a play, an actor, or ticket prices, they would loudly make their wishes known, sometimes starting a riot. This book recounts the lives—and occasionally the scandals—of the actors and theatre managers and weaves them into the larger story of the theatre in this exuberant age, setting the London stage and its leading personalities against the background of the important social, cultural, and economic changes that shaped eighteenth-century Britain. The Birth of Modern Theatre brings all of this together to describe a moment in history that sowed the seeds of today’s stage.

Theatre of the Book, 1480-1880

Theatre of the Book, 1480-1880 PDF Author: Julie Stone Peters
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780199262168
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description
This volume explores the impact of printing on the European theatre in the period 1480-1880 and shows that the printing press played a major part in the birth of modern theatre.

Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism

Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism PDF Author: Toril Moi
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191502642
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) is the founder of modern theater, and his plays are performed all over the world. Yet in spite of his unquestioned status as a classic of the stage, Ibsen is often dismissed as a fuddy-duddy old realist, whose plays are of interest only because they remain the gateway to modern theater. In Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism , Toril Moi makes a powerful case not just for Ibsen's modernity, but for his modernism. Situating Ibsen in his cultural context, she shows how unexpected his rise to world fame was, and the extent of his influence on writers such Shaw, Wilde, and Joyce who were seeking to escape the shackles of Victorianism. Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism also rewrites nineteenth-century literary history; positioning Ibsen between visual art and philosophy, the book offers a critique of traditional theories of the opposition between realism and modernism. Modernism, Moi argues, arose from the ruins of idealism, the dominant aesthetic paradigm of the nineteenth century. She also shows why Ibsen still matters to us today, by focusing on two major themes-his explorations of women, men, and marriage and his clear-eyed chronicling of the tension between skepticism and the everyday. This radical new account places Ibsen in his rightful place alongside Baudelaire, Flaubert, and Manet as a founder of European modernism.

A History of Japanese Theatre

A History of Japanese Theatre PDF Author: Jonah Salz
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316395324
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 1066

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Book Description
Japan boasts one of the world's oldest, most vibrant and most influential performance traditions. This accessible and complete history provides a comprehensive overview of Japanese theatre and its continuing global influence. Written by eminent international scholars, it spans the full range of dance-theatre genres over the past fifteen hundred years, including noh theatre, bunraku puppet theatre, kabuki theatre, shingeki modern theatre, rakugo storytelling, vanguard butoh dance and media experimentation. The first part addresses traditional genres, their historical trajectories and performance conventions. Part II covers the spectrum of new genres since Meiji (1868–), and Parts III to VI provide discussions of playwriting, architecture, Shakespeare, and interculturalism, situating Japanese elements within their global theatrical context. Beautifully illustrated with photographs and prints, this history features interviews with key modern directors, an overview of historical scholarship in English and Japanese, and a timeline. A further reading list covers a range of multimedia resources to encourage further explorations.

The Birth of Theater from the Spirit of Philosophy

The Birth of Theater from the Spirit of Philosophy PDF Author: David Kornhaber
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810132621
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Nietzsche's love affair with the theater was among the most profound and prolonged intellectual engagements of his life, but his transformational role in the history of the modern stage has yet to be explored. In this pathbreaking account, David Kornhaber vividly shows how Nietzsche reimagined the theatrical event as a site of philosophical invention that is at once ancestor, antagonist, and handmaiden to the discipline of philosophy itself. August Strindberg, George Bernard Shaw, and Eugene O'Neill— seminal figures in the modern drama's evolution and avowed Nietzscheans all—came away from their encounters with Nietzsche's writings with an impassioned belief in the philosophical potential of the live theatrical event, coupled with a reestimation of the dramatist's power to shape that event in collaboration with the actor. In these playwrights' reactions to and adaptations of Nietzsche's radical rethinking of the stage lay the beginnings of a new direction in modern theater and dramatic literature.

The Nervous Stage

The Nervous Stage PDF Author: Matthew Wilson Smith
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190644087
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
The Nervous Stage examines the relations between theatrical practices and the scientific study of the nervous system.

David Garrick and the Birth of Modern Theatre

David Garrick and the Birth of Modern Theatre PDF Author: Jean Benedetti
Publisher: Methuen Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
"Actor, director, impresario, author, David Garrick (1717-1779) is the most legendary man of the theatre of modern times. He reformed English theatre practice, established a 'natural' style of acting, and made the profession socially acceptable. As his great friend Dr. Johnson remarked, no actor before Garrick had made so much money nor achieved such an eminent position in society. Not for nothing is the most exclusive club in London named after him: Garrick was the first international 'megastar'." "Garrick's circle of friends was enormous and covered the social spectrum, from lawyers and wine merchants to the most famous men of letters and statesmen of his time: Pope, Boswell, Edmund Burke, Lord Burlington, Lord Chesterfield, the Prime Minister Pitt the Elder, the Lord Chancellor: the Duke of Devonshire, Lord Spencer. In France he counted Diderot, d'Alembert, Baron d'Holbach and the philosophes among his acquaintance. Though never honoured, he was at the very centre of his world." "Drawing on the large amount of source material available - from the accounts of Johnson's friendship with Garrick by James Boswell, through descriptions of his acting by English, French and German critics, to his own diaries and letters - Jean Benedetti has written a lively and fascinating account of Garrick's style and reforms, clearly establishing his pivotal role in the development of acting and directing."--Book Jacket.

John Gay and the London Theatre

John Gay and the London Theatre PDF Author: Calhoun Winton
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813159369
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
The Beggar's Opera, often referred to today as the first musical comedy, was the most popular dramatic piece of the eighteenth century—and is the work that John Gay (1685-1732) is best remembered for having written. That association of popular music and satiric lyrics has proved to be continuingly attractive, and variations on the Opera have flourished in this century: by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, by Duke Ellington, and most recently by Vaclav Havel. The original opera itself is played all over the world in amateur and professional productions. But John Gay's place in all this has not been well defined. His Opera is often regarded as some sort of chance event. In John Gay and the London Theatre, the first book-length study of John Gay as dramatic author, Calhoun Winton recognized the Opera as part of an entirely self-conscious career in the theatre, a career that Gay pursued from his earliest days as a writer in London and continued to follow to his death. Winton emphasizes Gay's knowledge of and affection for music, acquired, he argues, by way of his association with Handel. Although concentrating on Gay and his theatrical career, Winton also limns a vivid portrait of London itself and of the London stage of Gay's time, a period of considerable turbulence both within and outside the theatre. Gay's plays reflect in varying ways and degrees that social, political, and cultural turmoil. Winton's study sheds new light not only on Gay and the theatre, but also on the politics and culture of his era.

Theatre and Knowledge

Theatre and Knowledge PDF Author: David Kornhaber
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350316016
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 73

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Book Description
From Plato onwards, philosophers the world over have pondered the fraught relationship between the illusory practices of the stage and the rational pursuit of knowledge. In this engaging and accessible volume, David Kornhaber sheds new light on this ancient quarrel. Drawing on a global array of theatrical traditions and spanning millennia-from the Sanskrit dramas of classical India to Shakespeare and Greek tragedy, from the Noh drama of Japan to West End comedies and avant-grade performances.Theatre & Knowledge vividly demonstrates how questions of knowledge have long animated the theatre and continue to motivate some of its most innovative practices. As much as philosophy itself, the theatre has always been instrumental in probing the boundaries of what we can possibly know. Concise yet thought-provoking, this is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Theatre and Philosophy.

If you know not me, you know nobody

If you know not me, you know nobody PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description