The Cambridge Companion to the Musical

The Cambridge Companion to the Musical PDF Author: William A. Everett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107114748
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 503

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Book Description
An expanded and updated edition of this acclaimed, wide-ranging survey of musical theatre in New York, London, and elsewhere.

The Cambridge Companion to the Musical

The Cambridge Companion to the Musical PDF Author: William A. Everett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107114748
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 503

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Book Description
An expanded and updated edition of this acclaimed, wide-ranging survey of musical theatre in New York, London, and elsewhere.

Cultivating National Identity through Performance

Cultivating National Identity through Performance PDF Author: N. Stubbs
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137326875
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
As outdoor entertainment venues in American cities, pleasure gardens were public spaces where people could explore what it meant to be American. Stubbs examines how these venues helped form American identity and argues the gardens allowed for the exploration of what it meant to be American through performance, both on and off the stage.

Stages of Engagement

Stages of Engagement PDF Author: Joshua Polster
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317358724
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Stages of Engagement is a compelling and wonderfully varied account of the relationship between theatre in the United States and the social, cultural, and political forces that shaped it during one of the most formative periods in the nation’s history. Joshua E. Polster applies key thematic perspectives – Colonialism, Religion, Race and Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality, Economic Systems, and Systems of Government – to seminal moments in US history. In doing so he explores the ways in which the theatre has responded to these turning points, through the work of some of its principal dramatists, directors, designers, and theatre companies. His approach tackles questions such as: • How did the plays of this period reflect the nation’s concerns and anxieties? • How did theatre, culture, and politics interconnect as the United States took to the world stage? • Which critical viewpoints are most useful to us when examining these cultural phenomena? • How did performances and productions attempt to influence their audiences' social and civic engagement? On its own, or in tandem with its companion volume The Routledge Anthology of US Drama 1898–1949, this is the ideal text for any course in US Theatre. By examining each cultural moment from a range of critical perspectives and drawing upon a diverse range of sources, it is designed specifically for today’s interdisciplinary and multicultural curriculum.

Jews and Jazz

Jews and Jazz PDF Author: Charles B Hersch
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1317270398
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Jews and Jazz: Improvising Ethnicity explores the meaning of Jewish involvement in the world of American jazz. It focuses on the ways prominent jazz musicians like Stan Getz, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Lee Konitz, Dave Liebman, Michael Brecker, and Red Rodney have engaged with jazz in order to explore and construct ethnic identities. The author looks at Jewish identity through jazz in the context of the surrounding American culture, believing that American Jews have used jazz to construct three kinds of identities: to become more American, to emphasize their minority outsider status, and to become more Jewish. From the beginning, Jewish musicians have used jazz for all three of these purposes, but the emphasis has shifted over time. In the 1920s and 1930s, when Jews were seen as foreign, Jews used jazz to make a more inclusive America, for themselves and for blacks, establishing their American identity. Beginning in the 1940s, as Jews became more accepted into the mainstream, they used jazz to "re-minoritize" and avoid over-assimilation through identification with African Americans. Finally, starting in the 1960s as ethnic assertion became more predominant in America, Jews have used jazz to explore and advance their identities as Jews in a multicultural society.

Theatre History Studies 2015, Vol. 34

Theatre History Studies 2015, Vol. 34 PDF Author: Elizabeth Reitz Mullenix
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817371095
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
The 2015 volume of Theatre History Studies presents a collection of five critical essays examining the intersection of theatre studies and historiography as well as twenty-five book reviews highlighting recent scholarship in this thriving field.

Dueling Grounds

Dueling Grounds PDF Author: Mary Jo Lodge
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190938870
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Hamilton opened on Broadway in 2015 and quickly became one of the hottest tickets the industry has ever seen. Lin-Manuel Miranda - who wrote the book, lyrics, and music, and created the title role - adapted the show from Ron Chernow's biography Alexander Hamilton. Although it seems an unlikely source for a Broadway musical, Miranda found a liminal space where the life that Hamilton led and the issues that he confronted came alive more than two centuries later while also commenting on contemporary life in the United States and how we view our nation's history. With a score largely based on rap and drawing on other aspects of hip-hop culture, and staged with actors of color playing the white Founding Fathers, Hamilton has much to say about race in the United States today and in our past, but at the same time it leaves important things insufficiently explained, such as the role of women and people of color in Hamilton's time. Dueling Grounds: Revolution and Revelation in the Musical Hamilton is a volume that combines the work of theater scholars and practitioners, musicologists, and scholars in such fields as ethnomusicology, history, gender studies, and economics in a multi-faceted approach to the show's varied uses of liminality, looking at its creation, casting philosophy, dance and movement, costuming, staging, direction, lyrics, music, marketing, and how aspects of race, gender, and class fit into the show and its production. Demonstrating that there is much to celebrate, as well as challenging issues to confront concerning Hamilton, Dueling Grounds is an uncompromising look at one of the most important musicals of the century.

Experiments in Democracy

Experiments in Democracy PDF Author: Cheryl Black
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 0809334690
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
In the first half of the twentieth century, a number of American theatres and theatre artists fostered interracial collaboration and socialization on stage, behind the scenes, and among audiences. In an era marked by entrenched racial segregation and inequality, these artists used performance to bridge America’s persistent racial divide and to bring African American, Latino/Latina, Asian American, Native American, and Jewish American communities and traditions into the nation’s broader cultural conversation. In Experiments in Democracy, edited by Cheryl Black and Jonathan Shandell, theatre historians examine a wide range of performances—from Broadway, folk plays and dance productions to scripted political rallies and radio dramas. Contributors look at such diverse groups as the Theatre Union, La Unión Martí-Maceo, and the American Negro Theatre, as well as individual playwrights and their works, including Theodore Browne’s folk opera Natural Man, Josefina Niggli’s Soldadera, and playwright Lynn Riggs’s Cherokee Night and Green Grow the Lilacs (the basis for the musical Oklahoma!). Exploring the ways progressive artists sought to connect isolated racial and cultural groups in pursuit of a more just and democratic society, contributors take into account the blind spots, compromised methods, and unacknowledged biases at play in their practices and strategies. Essays demonstrate how the gap between the ideal of American democracy and its practice—mired in entrenched systems of white privilege, economic inequality, and social prejudice—complicated the work of these artists. Focusing on questions of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality on the stage in the decades preceding the Civil Rights era, Experiments in Democracy fills an important gap in our understanding of the history of the American stage—and sheds light on these still-relevant questions in contemporary American society.

From Red-Baiting to Blacklisting

From Red-Baiting to Blacklisting PDF Author: Barry B Witham
Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
ISBN: 0809337754
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Author Barry B. Witham reclaims the work of Manny Fried, an essential American playwright so thoroughly blacklisted after he defied the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1954, and again in 1964, that his work all but completely disappeared from the canon. Witham details Manny Fried’s work inside and outside the theatre and examines his three major labor plays and the political climate that both nurtured and disparaged their productions. Drawing on never-before-published interview materials, Witham reveals the details of how the United States government worked to ruin Fried’s career. From Red-Baiting to Blacklisting includes the complete text of Fried’s major labor plays, all long out of print. In Elegy for Stanley Gorski, Fried depicts one of the many red-baiting campaigns that threatened countless unions in the wake of the Taft-Hartley Act and the collusion of the Catholic Church with these activities. In Drop Hammer, Fried tackles the issues of union dues, misappropriation, and potential criminal activities. In the third play, The Dodo Bird, perhaps his most popular, Fried achieves a remarkable character study of a man outsourced from his job by technology and plant closures. Manny Fried’s plays portray the hard edges of capitalism and government power and illuminate present-day struggles with hostility to labor unions and the passage in several states of right-to-work laws. Fried had no illusions about the government’s determination to destroy communism and unionism—causes to which he was deeply committed.

Music in the Hebrew Bible

Music in the Hebrew Bible PDF Author: Jonathan L. Friedmann
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786477733
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
Music in the Hebrew Bible investigates musical citations in the Hebrew Bible and their relevance for our times. Most biblical musical references are addressed, either alone or as a grouping, and each is considered from a modern perspective. The book consists of one hundred brief essays divided into four parts. Part one offers general overviews of musical contexts, recurring musical-biblical themes and discussions of basic attitudes and tendencies of the biblical authors and their society. Part two presents essays uncovering what the Torah (Pentateuch) has to say about music, both literally and allegorically. The third part includes studies on music's place in Nevi'im (Prophets) and the perceived link between musical expression and human-divine contact. Part four is comprised of essays on musical subjects derived from the disparate texts of Ketuvim (Writings).

Ensemble

Ensemble PDF Author: Mark Larson
Publisher: Agate Publishing
ISBN: 1572848057
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 624

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Book Description
This definitive history brings Chicago’s celebrated theater and comedy scenes to life with stories from some of its biggest stars spanning sixty-five years. Chicago is a bona fide theater town, bursting with vitality that thrills local fans and produces generation after generation of world-renowned actors, directors, playwrights, and designers. Now Mark Larson shares the rich theatrical history of Chicago through first-person accounts from the people who made it. Drawing from more than three hundred interviews, Larson weaves a narrative that expresses the spirit of Chicago’s ensemble ethos: the voices of celebrities such as Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ed Asner, George Wendt, Michael Shannon, and Tracy Letts comingle with stories from designers, composers, and others who have played a crucial role in making Chicago theater so powerful, influential, and unique. Among many other topics, this book explores the early days of the fabled Compass Players and the legendary Second City in the ‘50s and ‘60s; the rise of acclaimed ensembles like Steppenwolf in the ‘70s; the explosion of storefront and neighborhood companies in the ‘80s; and the enduring global influence of the city as the center of improv training and performance.