Author: Macelle Mahala
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 0810145162
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 355
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Book Description
Macelle Mahala’s rich study of contemporary African American theater institutions reveals how they reflect and shape the histories and cultural realities of their cities. Arguing that the community in which a play is staged is as important to the work’s meaning as the script or set, Mahala focuses on four cities’ “arts ecologies” to shed new light on the unique relationship between performance and place: Cleveland, home to the oldest continuously operating Black theater in the country; Pittsburgh, birthplace of the legendary playwright August Wilson; San Francisco, a metropolis currently experiencing displacement of its Black population; and Atlanta, a city with forty years of progressive Black leadership and reverse migration. Black Theater, City Life looks at Karamu House Theatre, the August Wilson African American Cultural Center, Pittsburgh Playwrights’ Theatre Company, the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, the African American Shakespeare Company, the Atlanta Black Theatre Festival, and Kenny Leon’s True Colors Theatre Company to demonstrate how each organization articulates the cultural specificities, sociopolitical realities, and histories of African Americans. These companies have faced challenges that mirror the larger racial and economic disparities in arts funding and social practice in America, while their achievements exemplify such institutions’ vital role in enacting an artistic practice that reflects the cultural backgrounds of their local communities. Timely, significant, and deeply researched, this book spotlights the artistic and civic import of Black theaters in American cities.
Author: David Kaufman
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 9781557836373
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 548
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Book Description
(Applause Books). From his first unscripted appearance on an Off-Broadway stage in the revolutionary 1960s to the frontpage news of his death from AIDS in 1987 at age 44, Charles Ludlam embodied and helped to engender the upheavals of his time. The astonishing life and legacy of this force to be reckoned with are at last revealed in RIDICULOUS! , a literary biography of an American comic genius. After founding the Ridiculous Theatrical Company in 1967, Ludlam sustained an ever-shifting troupe of bohemian players through two decades of perennially daunting circumstances by writing 29 plays plays that he starred in and directed as well. While Ludlam's work has become increasingly popular at regional theatres, on college campuses, and on stages throughout the world, his gender-bending theories and wide-ranging cultural impact have reached far beyond Bette Midler, the original cast members of Saturday Night Live and the countless other artists he influenced during his abbreviated lifetime. Like his early plays, Ludlam's life was rife with the sex, drugs and creative experimentation that characterized the freewheeling '60s and '70s. Based on a decade of research and interviews with more than 150 people who knew or worked with Ludlam including all of the major players in his troupe and seven of his lovers RIDICULOUS! recreates the dramatic life of an inimitable and subversive theatrical master with you-are-there intensity. Winner of the LAMBDA Literary Award for Biography and the Theatre Library Association Award for Outstanding Theatre Book of the Year "David Kaufman makes a persuasive case for Ludlam's being a genius ... As a record of Ludlam's life and the theatrical world in which he was both guru and grandmaster, this book is informed and passionate." Mel Gussow, The New York Times "A fascinating portrait of an authentic stage genius and the New York avant-garde scene in which he toiled with such demented and dedicated diligence." Playbill "The phenom who inspired everyone from Bette Midler and Madeline Kahn to Tony Kushner and Paul Rudnick was no box of chocolates which, as reading experiences go, makes his story all the sweeter." Vanity Fair "This is one helluva piece of work." Marilyn Stasio, Variety.com
Author: Todd London
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780984310906
Category : American drama
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
Author: Irvin R. Glazer
Publisher: Courier Dover Publications
ISBN:
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 120
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Book Description
In over 130 photographs and drawings, this superb book celebrates the architecture of Philadelphia's theaters from the candlelight and gaslight eras to the fabulous legitimate theaters and movie palaces of the 20th century.
Author: Andrew Craig Morrison
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393731088
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 412
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Book Description
The latest title in the Norton/Library of Congress Visual Sourcebooks series, Theaters offers a richly illustrated history of a revered cultural artifact and a technological challenge, following its progression from the eighteenth-century opera house to the modern movie multiplex.
Author: National Theatre Letters
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1782833978
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 485
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Book Description
The perfect gift for any theatre lover There has been always as much drama offstage as on at the National Theatre, and much of it is to be found in the letters, telegrams, scribbled notes and colourful postcards of its main players. - What drove Laurence Olivier to confess: 'The foolishness of my position starts to obsess me'? - Why did Maggie Smith write: 'I am absolutely heartbroken by your decision'? - What prompted Judi Dench to ask: 'Can't you write me a musical so that I can sit on a chair in a fur hat & nothing else and sing RUDE songs?' This book brings together for the first time some of the most inspiring, dramatic and amusing letters from the life of Britain's most beloved theatre: Laurence Olivier's gracious rejection letters, Peter Hall's combative memos, Helen Mirren's impassioned defence of theatrical innovation, fantastical good luck missives and long conspiratorial letters. Together, they reveal the stories behind some of the most lavish, triumphant, daring and disastrous productions in the theatre's history, including Amadeus, Romans in Britain, Laurence Olivier's Othello, Closer, The History Boys and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. A rich collection of correspondence like no other, this book offers a fascinating and celebratory look at the world of theatre and beyond.
Author: Nikolaĭ Nikolaevich Evreinov
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
Author: Wendy Smith
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0345805992
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Real Life Drama is the classic history of the remarkable group that revitalized American theater in the 1930s by engaging urgent social and moral issues that still resonate today. Born in the turbulent decade of the Depression, the Group Theatre revolutionized American arts. Wendy Smith's dramatic narrative brings the influential troupe and its founders to life once again, capturing their joys and pains, their triumphs and defeats. Filled with fresh insights into the towering personalities of Harold Clurman, Lee Strasberg, Cheryl Crawford, Elia Kazan, Clifford Odets, Stella and Luther Adler, Karl Malden, and Lee J. Cobb, among many others, Real Life Drama chronicles a passionate community of idealists as they opened a new frontier in theater.
Author: Edwin Wilson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780393602265
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Author: Suzanne Tarbell Cooper
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738555799
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 132
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Book Description
Los Angeles and the movies grew up together, and a natural extension of the picture business was the premium presentation of the product--the biggest, best, and brightest theatres imaginable. The magnificent movie palaces along Broadway in downtown Los Angeles still represent the highest concentration of vintage theatres in the world. With Hollywood and the movies practically synonymous, the theatres in the studios' neighborhood were state-of-the-art for showbiz, whether they were designed for film, vaudeville, or stage productions. From the elegant Orpheum and the exotic Grauman's Chinese to the modest El Rey, this volume celebrates the architecture and social history of Los Angeles's unique collection of historic theatres past and present. The common threads that connect them all, from the grandest movie palace to the smallest neighborhood theatre, are stories and the ghosts of audiences past waiting in the dark for the show to begin.
