Molière, the French Revolution, and the Theatrical Afterlife

Molière, the French Revolution, and the Theatrical Afterlife PDF Author: Mechele Leon
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1587298910
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
From 1680 until the French Revolution, when legislation abolished restrictions on theatrical enterprise, a single theatre held sole proprietorship of Molière’s works. After 1791, his plays were performed in new theatres all over Paris by new actors, before audiences new to his works. Both his plays and his image took on new dimensions. In Molière, the French Revolution, and the Theatrical Afterlife, Mechele Leon convincingly demonstrates how revolutionaries challenged the ties that bound this preeminent seventeenth-century comic playwright to the Old Regime and provided him with a place of honor in the nation’s new cultural memory. Leon begins by analyzing the performance of Molière’s plays during the Revolution, showing how his privileged position as royal servant was disrupted by the practical conditions of the revolutionary theatre. Next she explores Molière’s relationship to Louis XIV, Tartuffe, and the social function of his comedy, using Rousseau’s famous critique of Molière as well as appropriations of George Dandin in revolutionary iconography to discuss how Moliérean laughter was retooled to serve republican interests. After examining the profusion of plays dealing with his life in the latter years of the Revolution, she looks at the exhumation of his remains and their reentombment as the tangible manifestation of his passage from Ancien Régime favorite to new national icon. The great Molière is appreciated by theatre artists and audiences worldwide, but for the French people it is no exaggeration to say that the Father of French Comedy is part of their national soul. By showing how he was represented, reborn, and reburied in the new France—how the revolutionaries asserted his relevance for their tumultuous time in ways that were audacious, irreverent, imaginative, and extreme—Leon clarifies the important role of theatrical figures in preserving and portraying a nation’s history.

Scenes from the Revolution

Scenes from the Revolution PDF Author: Kim Wiltshire
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
ISBN: 9780745338514
Category : Agitprop theater
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Political theatre thrives on turbulence. By turning the political issues of the day into a potent, dramatic art form, its practitioners hold up a mirror to our society - with the power to shock, discomfit and entertain. 'Scenes from the Revolution' is a celebration of 50 years of political theatre in Britain. Including 'lost' scripts from companies including Broadside Mobile Workers Theatre, The Women's Theatre Group and The General Will, with incisive commentary from contemporary political theatre makers, the book asks the essential questions: What can be learnt from our rich history of political theatre? And how might contemporary practitioners apply these approaches to our current politically troubled world?

The Playful Revolution

The Playful Revolution PDF Author: Eugene Van Erven
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253112880
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
"The Playful Revolution is an entertaining journal.... exemplary... " -- Illusions "The Playful Revolution breaks new ground by documenting developmental theatre in Asia in its current socio-political and economic ethos... " -- New Theatre Quarterly "[T]his book is the account of a personal journey through Asia, a written documentary of a quest to find political theatre that really works and that possesses a vitality and passion that the contemporary Western theatre seems to have lost." -- from the book In this groundbreaking book, van Erven reports on the liberation theatre movements throughout Asia, which include a diverse collection of creative artists whose politics range from liberal to revolutionary but who all share a common goal of using grass-roots theatre as an agent of liberation.

Theatre in Revolution

Theatre in Revolution PDF Author: Nancy Van Norman Baer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Avant-garde (Aesthetics)
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description


Revolution as Theatre

Revolution as Theatre PDF Author: Robert Sanford Brustein
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780871400451
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 194

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Book Description
Using his extraordinary grasp of the theatre, Robert Brustein, Dean of the Yale Drama School and prize-winning critic, examines campus turmoil, radicalism versus liberalism, the fate of the free university, and the new revolutionary life style. Brustein sees American society as profoundly decadent, and those radicals from whom creative and rational alternatives should come as being increasingly dominated by sentimentality and false emotionalism. His observations are often controversial, always timely and interesting.

The Cambridge History of British Theatre

The Cambridge History of British Theatre PDF Author: Jane Milling
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521650682
Category : English drama
Languages : en
Pages : 574

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Book Description
Publisher Description

Dramaturgy

Dramaturgy PDF Author: Mary Luckhurst
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139448188
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 19

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Book Description
Dramaturgy: A Revolution in Theatre is a substantial history of the origins of dramaturgs and literary managers. It frames the explosion of professional appointments in England within a wider continental map reaching back to the Enlightenment and eighteenth-century Germany, examining the work of the major theorists and practitioners of dramaturgy, from Granville Barker and Gotthold Lessing to Brecht and Tynan. This study positions Brecht's model of dramaturgy as central to the worldwide revolution in theatre-making practices, and it also makes a substantial argument for Granville Barker's and Tynan's contributions to the development of literary management. With the territories of play and performance-making being increasingly hotly contested, and the public's appetite for new plays showing no sign of diminishing, Mary Luckhurst investigates the dramaturg as a cultural and political phenomenon.

Early American Theatre from the Revolution to Thomas Jefferson

Early American Theatre from the Revolution to Thomas Jefferson PDF Author: Heather S. Nathans
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521825085
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
This 2003 book examines the growth and influence of the theatre in the development of the young American Republic.

Memories of the Revolution

Memories of the Revolution PDF Author: Holly Hughes
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472068636
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
Scripts, interviews, photos, and critical commentary documenting the riotous beginnings of this long-lived experimental theater space for women

London in a Box

London in a Box PDF Author: Odai Johnson
Publisher: University of Iowa Press
ISBN: 1609384946
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
2017 Theatre Library Association Freedley Award Finalist In this remarkable feat of historical research, Odai Johnson pieces together the surviving fragments of the story of the first professional theatre troupe based in the British North American colonies. In doing so, he tells the story of how colonial elites came to decide they would no longer style themselves British gentlemen, but instead American citizens. London in a Box chronicles the enterprise of David Douglass, founder and manager of the American Theatre, from the 1750s to the climactic 1770s. How he built this network of patrons and theatres and how it all went up in flames as the revolution began is the subject of this witty history. A treat for anyone interested in the world of the American Revolution and an important study for historians of the period.