The Silenced Theatre

The Silenced Theatre PDF Author: Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487597649
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description
Since the Soviet occupation of 1968 censorship has closed the curtain on free expression in Czechoslovakia. But plays continue to be circulated in typescript within the country, are regularly smuggled out for publication abroad, and continue to be produced without restriction in the West. This book is the first full-length study of Czechoslovak drama of the sixties and seventies. The author discusses the works of major playwrights, including Václav Havel, Pavel Kohout, and Josef Topol; and the influence of the great Czech writers Kafka and Hašek as well as Western writers such as Beckett, Sartre, and Albee. Czech and Slovak playwrights have responded in a distinctive, courageous, and often very funny manner to a political situation perhaps best labelled 'absurd.' The author depicts movingly their portrait of the horror–and the unintended humour–of life in a rigidly bureaucratic society, a theme of universal interest. The Silenced Theatre is the only detailed study of this dynamic and modern national theatre. This book will help to preserve Czech drama and create an awareness of its important role in Western literaturea role it continues to play even in exile from its homeland.

The Silenced Theatre

The Silenced Theatre PDF Author: Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487597649
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 500

Get Book Here

Book Description
Since the Soviet occupation of 1968 censorship has closed the curtain on free expression in Czechoslovakia. But plays continue to be circulated in typescript within the country, are regularly smuggled out for publication abroad, and continue to be produced without restriction in the West. This book is the first full-length study of Czechoslovak drama of the sixties and seventies. The author discusses the works of major playwrights, including Václav Havel, Pavel Kohout, and Josef Topol; and the influence of the great Czech writers Kafka and Hašek as well as Western writers such as Beckett, Sartre, and Albee. Czech and Slovak playwrights have responded in a distinctive, courageous, and often very funny manner to a political situation perhaps best labelled 'absurd.' The author depicts movingly their portrait of the horror–and the unintended humour–of life in a rigidly bureaucratic society, a theme of universal interest. The Silenced Theatre is the only detailed study of this dynamic and modern national theatre. This book will help to preserve Czech drama and create an awareness of its important role in Western literaturea role it continues to play even in exile from its homeland.

Silent Sky

Silent Sky PDF Author: Lauren Gunderson
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
ISBN: 0822233800
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 65

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Book Description
THE STORY: When Henrietta Leavitt begins work at the Harvard Observatory in the early 1900s, she isn’t allowed to touch a telescope or express an original idea. Instead, she joins a group of women “computers,” charting the stars for a renowned astronomer who calculates projects in “girl hours” and has no time for the women’s probing theories. As Henrietta, in her free time, attempts to measure the light and distance of stars, she must also take measure of her life on Earth, trying to balance her dedication to science with family obligations and the possibility of love. The true story of 19th-century astronomer Henrietta Leavitt explores a woman’s place in society during a time of immense scientific discoveries, when women’s ideas were dismissed until men claimed credit for them. Social progress, like scientific progress, can be hard to see when one is trapped among earthly complications; Henrietta Leavitt and her female peers believe in both, and their dedication changed the way we understand both the heavens and Earth.

Modern Czech Theatre

Modern Czech Theatre PDF Author: Jarka Burian
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1587293358
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
The story of Czech theatre in the twentieth century involves generations of mesmerizing players and memorable productions. Beyond these artistic considerations, however, lies a larger story: a theatre that has resonated with the intense concerns of its audiences acquires a significance and a force beyond anything created by striking individual talents or random stage hits. Amid the variety of performances during the past hundred years, that basic and provocative reality has been repeatedly demonstrated, as Jarka Burian reveals in his extraordinary history of the dramatic world of Czech theatre. Following a brief historical background, Burian provides a chronological series of perspectives and observations on the evolving nature of Czech theatre productions during this century in relation to their similarly evolving social and political contexts. Once Czechoslovak independence was achieved in 1918, a repeated interplay of theatre with political realities became the norm, sometimes stifling the creative urge but often producing even greater artistry. When playwright Václav Havel became president in 1990, this was but the latest and most celebrated example of the vital engagement between stage and society that has been a repeated condition of Czech theatre for the past two hundred years. In Jarka Burian's skillful hands, Modern Czech Theatre becomes an extremely important touchstone for understanding the history of modern theatre within western culture.

Adorno and Modern Theatre

Adorno and Modern Theatre PDF Author: K. Gritzner
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137534478
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
Adorno and Modern Theatre explores the drama of Edward Bond, David Rudkin, Howard Barker and Sarah Kane in the context of the work of leading philosopher Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969). The book engages with key principles of Adorno's aesthetic theory and cultural critique and examines their influence on a generation of seminal post-war dramatists.

Adapting King Lear for the Stage

Adapting King Lear for the Stage PDF Author: Dr Lynne Bradley
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1409476162
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
Questioning whether the impulse to adapt Shakespeare has changed over time, Lynne Bradley argues for restoring a sense of historicity to the study of adaptation. Bradley compares Nahum Tate's History of King Lear (1681), adaptations by David Garrick in the mid-eighteenth century, and nineteenth-century Shakespeare burlesques to twentieth-century theatrical rewritings of King Lear, and suggests latter-day adaptations should be viewed as a unique genre that allows playwrights to express modern subject positions with regard to their literary heritage while also participating in broader debates about art and society. In identifying and relocating different adaptive gestures within this historical framework, Bradley explores the link between the critical and the creative in the history of Shakespearean adaptation. Focusing on works such as Gordon Bottomley's King Lear's Wife (1913), Edward Bond's Lear (1971), Howard Barker's Seven Lears (1989), and the Women's Theatre Group's Lear's Daughters (1987), Bradley theorizes that modern rewritings of Shakespeare constitute a new type of textual interaction based on a simultaneous double-gesture of collaboration and rejection. She suggests that this new interaction provides constituent groups, such as the feminist collective who wrote Lear's Daughters, a strategy to acknowledge their debt to Shakespeare while writing against the traditional and negative representations of femininity they see reflected in his plays.

Theatre and Performance in East Africa

Theatre and Performance in East Africa PDF Author: Osita Okagbue
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351996169
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Theatre and Performance in East Africa looks at indigenous performances to unearth the aesthetic principles, sensibilities and critical framework that underpin African performance and theatre. The book develops new paradigms for thinking about African performance in general through the construction of a critical framework that addresses questions concerning performance particularities and coherences, challenging previous understandings. To this end, it establishes a common critical and theoretical framework for indigenous performance using case studies from East Africa that are also reflected elsewhere in the continent. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of theatre and performance, especially those with an interest in the close relationship between theatre and performance with culture.

Refugees, Theatre and Crisis

Refugees, Theatre and Crisis PDF Author: A. Jeffers
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230354823
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
Using examples of refugee arts and theatrical activity since the 1990s, this book examines how the 'refugee crisis' has conditioned all arts and cultural activity with refugees in a world where globalization and migration go hand in hand.

Global Insights on Theatre Censorship

Global Insights on Theatre Censorship PDF Author: Catherine O'Leary
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131750092X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
Theatre has always been subject to a wide range of social, political, moral, and doctrinal controls, with authorities and social groups imposing constraints on scripts, venues, staging, acting, and reception. Focusing on a range of countries and political regimes, this book examines the many forms that theatre censorship has taken in the 20th century and continues to take in the 21st, arguing that it remains a live issue in the contemporary world. The book re-examines assumptions about prohibition and state control, and offers a more complex reading of theatre censorship as a continuum ranging from the unconscious self-censorship built into social structures and discursive practices, through bureaucratic regulation or unofficial influence, up to detention and physical violence. An international team of contributors offers an illuminating set of case studies informed by both new archival research and the first-hand experience of playwrights and directors, covering theatre censorship in areas such as Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Poland, East Germany, Nepal, Zimbabwe, the USA, Ireland, and Britain. Focusing on right-wing dictatorships, post-colonial regimes, communist systems and Western democracies, the essays analyze methods and discourses of censorship, identify the multiple agents involved, examine the responses of theatremakers, and show how each example reveals important features of its political and cultural contexts. Expanding understanding of the nature and effects of censorship, this volume affirms the power of theatre to challenge authorized discourses and makes a timely contribution to debates about freedom of expression through performance.

Innovative Methods for Applied Drama and Theatre Practice in African Contexts

Innovative Methods for Applied Drama and Theatre Practice in African Contexts PDF Author: Hazel Barnes
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527578879
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 562

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Book Description
This book, based on components of Drama for Life, addresses the subject of “innovative methods for applied drama and theatre practice in African contexts”. It does so by providing chapters that share the rich, multilayered, and reflexive work that has taken place at Drama for Life from 2008 to the present day. It invites the reader to learn from the experiences of Drama for Life as shared by the authors, understand the role it has played and continues to play in advocating for, and extending the work of, Applied Drama and Theatre practice, and engage in critical, dialogical spaces to examine and interrogate current debates and practices in the field of Applied Drama and Theatre. The volume is invaluable for anyone interested in the extensive body of work generated by Drama for Life and its innovative approaches to learning and teaching, as well as performing arts practitioners, artists, teachers, people in community development and service work, and anyone involved in researching Applied Drama and Theatre practice, particularly in an African context, but also globally.

Filming and Performing Renaissance History

Filming and Performing Renaissance History PDF Author: M. Burnett
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230299423
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Over the last century, many 16th- and 17th-century events and personalities have been brought before home, cinema, exhibition, festival and theatrical audiences. This collection examines these representations, looking at recent television series, documentaries, pageantry, theatre and popular culture in various cultural and linguistic guises.