Sex And War On The American Stage

Author : Emily Klein
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 206 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2014-04-24
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9781135087722

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Sex and War on the American Stage by Emily Klein Pdf

American adaptations of Aristophanes’ enduring comedy Lysistrata have used laughter to critique sex, war, and feminism for nearly a century. Unlike almost any other play circulating in contemporary theatres, Lysistrata has outlived its classical origins in 411 BCE and continues to shock and delight audiences to this day. The play’s "make love not war" message and bawdy humor render it endlessly appealing to college campuses, activist groups, and community theatres – so much so that none of Aristophanes’ plays are performed in the West as frequently as Lysistrata. Starting with the play’s first mainstream production in the U.S. in 1930, Emily B. Klein explores the varied iterations of Lysistrata that have graced the American stage, page, and screen since the Great Depression. These include the Federal Theatre’s 1936 Negro Repertory production, the 1955 movie musical The Second Greatest Sex and Spiderwoman Theater’s openly political Lysistrata Numbah!, as well as Douglas Carter Beane’s Broadway musical, Lysistrata Jones, and the international Lysistrata Project protests, which updated the classic in the contemporary context of the Iraq War. Although Aristophanes’ oeuvre has been the subject of much classical scholarship, Lysistrata has received little attention from feminist theatre scholars or performance theorists. In response, this book maps current debates over Lysistrata’s dubious feminist underpinnings and uses performance theory, cultural studies, and gender studies to investigate how new adaptations reveal the socio-political climates of their origins. Emily B. Klein is Assistant Professor of English and Drama at Saint Mary's College of California. Her work has appeared in Women and Performance and Frontiers as well as Political and Protest Theater After 9/11: Patriotic Dissent (Routledge, 2012).

Author : David Mayer
Publisher : University of Iowa Press
Page : 311 pages
File Size : 50,9 Mb
Release : 2009-03-01
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781587298400

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Stagestruck Filmmaker by David Mayer Pdf

An actor, a vaudevillian, and a dramatist before he became a filmmaker, D. W. Griffith used the resources of theatre to great purpose and to great ends. In pioneering the quintessentially modern medium of film from the 1890s to the 1930s, he drew from older, more broadly appealing stage forms of melodrama, comedy, vaudeville, and variety. In Stagestruck Filmmaker, David Mayer brings Griffith’s process vividly to life, offering detailed and valuable insights into the racial, ethnic, class, and gender issues of these transitional decades. Combining the raw materials of theatre, circus, minstrelsy, and dance with the newer visual codes of motion pictures, Griffith became the first acknowledged artist of American film. Birth of a Nation in particular demonstrates the degree to which he was influenced by the racist justifications and distorting interpretations of the Civil War and the Reconstruction era. Moving through the major phases of Griffith’s career in chapters organized around key films or groups of films, Mayer provides a mesmerizing account of the American stage and cinema in the final years of the nineteenth century and the first three decades of the twentieth century. Griffith’s relationship to the theatre was intricate, complex, and enduring. Long recognized as the dominant creative figure of American motion pictures, throughout twenty-six years of making more than five hundred films he pillaged, adapted, reshaped, revitalized, preserved, and extolled. By historicizing his representations of race, ethnicity, and otherness, Mayer places Griffith within an overall template of American life in the years when film rivaled and then surpassed the theatre in popularity.

Author : Don B. Wilmeth,Tice L. Miller
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 448 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 1996-06-13
Category : Drama
ISBN : 0521564441

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The Cambridge Guide to American Theatre by Don B. Wilmeth,Tice L. Miller Pdf

"This new and updated Guide, with over 2,700 cross-referenced entries, covers all aspects of the American theatre from its earliest history to the present. Entries include people, venues and companies scattered through the U.S., plays and musicals, and theatrical phenomena. Additionally, there are some 100 topical entries covering theatre in major U.S. cities and such disparate subjects as Asian American theatre, Chicano theatre, censorship, Filipino American theatre, one-person performances, performance art, and puppetry. Highly illustrated, the Guide is supplemented with a historical survey as introduction, a bibliography of major sources published since the first edition, and a biographical index covering over 3,200 individuals mentioned in the text."--BOOK JACKET.

Author : Rosa Andújar,Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 313 pages
File Size : 45,5 Mb
Release : 2020-01-09
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9781350125629

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Greeks and Romans on the Latin American Stage by Rosa Andújar,Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos Pdf

The first comprehensive treatment in English of the rich and varied afterlife of classical drama across Latin America, this volume explores the myriad ways in which ancient Greek and Roman texts have been adapted, invoked and re-worked in notable modern theatrical works across North and South America and the Caribbean, while also paying particular attention to the national and local context of each play. A comprehensive introduction provides a critical overview of the varying issues and complexities that arise when studying the afterlife of the European classics in the theatrical stages across this diverse and vast region. Fourteen chapters, divided into three general geographical sub-regions (Southern Cone, Brazil and the Caribbean and North America) present a strong connection to an ancient dramatic source text as well as comment upon important socio-political crises in the modern history of Latin America. The diversity and expertise of the voices in this volume translate into a multi-ranging approach to the topic that encompasses a variety of theoretical and interdisciplinary perspectives from classics, Latin American studies and theatre and performance studies.

Author : Miriam G. Reumann
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 307 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2005-03-07
Category : History
ISBN : 9780520238350

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American Sexual Character by Miriam G. Reumann Pdf

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Author : Charles Harlen Shattuck
Publisher : Associated University Presses
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 1976
Category : Actors
ISBN : 9780918016775

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Shakespeare on the American Stage: From Booth and Barrett to Sothern and Marlowe by Charles Harlen Shattuck Pdf

This set of essays, which surveys major developments in the winding down of nineteenth-century methods of Shakespeare staging, spans the decades from the 1880s to about 1920. The Epilogue describes the American celebration of the Tercentenary of Shakespeare's death.

Author : Jeffrey H. Richards
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 406 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2005-10-27
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9781139448048

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Drama, Theatre, and Identity in the American New Republic by Jeffrey H. Richards Pdf

Drama, Theatre, and Identity in the American New Republic investigates the way in which theatre both reflects and shapes the question of identity in post-revolutionary American culture. In this 2005 book Richards examines a variety of phenomena connected to the stage, including closet Revolutionary political plays, British drama on American boards, American-authored stage plays, and poetry and fiction by early Republican writers. American theatre is viewed by Richards as a transatlantic hybrid in which British theatrical traditions in writing and acting provide material and templates by which Americans see and express themselves and their relationship to others. Through intensive analyses of plays both inside and outside of the early American 'canon', this book confronts matters of political, ethnic and cultural identity by moving from play text to theatrical context and from historical event to audience demography.

Author : Oscar G. Brockett
Publisher : LSU Press
Page : 172 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 1999-03-01
Category : Drama
ISBN : 0807124206

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Perspectives on Contemporary Theatre by Oscar G. Brockett Pdf

Contemporary theatre is nearly as controversial as the changing society it reflects. Much of its journalistic notoriety derives from its seeming advocacy of behavior, language, and ideas once considered unsuitable for public performance. In this overview, a noted authority takes a perceptive look at the radical trends in modern drama and provides us with a new awareness of the forces and ideas behind the current theatrical battle. Professor Brockett demonstrates that many of the puzzling aspects of contemporary theatre—such as obscenity, nudity, and propaganda—are rooted in the traditions of Western stage and society. He traces the sifts in values over the past century and shows how these changes have affected modern drama. This uncertainty about values, says the author, has been accompanied by new conceptions of structural unity in theatre. He points out the various structural innovations in drama from Aristotle through wide range of playwrights, including Sophocles, Ionesco, Ibsen, Brecht, Artaud, Beckett, and Jean-Claude van Itallie, and discusses the relationship of “relevance” to “universality.” He examines the most recent theatrical shift—from detachment to commitment—and compares the plays of the anxious 1950s, such as Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, with today’s committed theatre, including such productions as Chicago 70, Hair, and Che! Perspectives on Contemporary Theatre is a thoughtful guide for the reader who seeks a better understanding of the radical changes in the nature and function of dramatic art.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 223 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2024-06-17
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9781135967918

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Performing American Identity in Anti-Mormon Melodrama by Anonim Pdf

Author : Alan Axelrod
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 45,7 Mb
Release : 2009-03-03
Category : History
ISBN : 9780230619593

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Selling the Great War by Alan Axelrod Pdf

The riveting, untold story of George Creel and the Committee on Public Information -- the first and only propaganda initiative sanctioned by the U.S. government. When the people of the United States were reluctant to enter World War I, maverick journalist George Creel created a committee at President Woodrow Wilson's request to sway the tide of public opinion. The Committee on Public Information monopolized every medium and avenue of communication with the goal of creating a nation of enthusiastic warriors for democracy. Forging a path that would later be studied and retread by such characters as Adolf Hitler, the Committee revolutionized the techniques of governmental persuasion, changing the course of history. Selling the War is the story of George Creel and the epoch-making agency he built and led. It will tell how he came to build the and how he ran it, using the emerging industries of mass advertising and public relations to convince isolationist Americans to go to war. It was a force whose effects were felt throughout the twentieth century and continue to be felt, perhaps even more strongly, today. In this compelling and original account, Alan Axelrod offers a fascinating portrait of America on the cusp of becoming a world power and how its first and most extensive propaganda machine attained unprecedented results.

Author : L. Collins
Publisher : Springer
Page : 253 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 1997-11-05
Category : History
ISBN : 9780230372221

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Theatre at War, 1914-18 by L. Collins Pdf

A lively study of the function of theatre entertainment in the First World War, 1914-18. The theatre's role as unofficial government aide in the form of recruiter, propagandist and fund raiser is examined; so too its use as morale booster and provider of a war-related role for the aristocracy, female and military over-aged male artists. The organization of theatre for and by the military and civilian concert parties for troops in training and at the Front is analysed.

Author : Cindy Williams
Publisher : DIANE Publishing
Page : 342 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2008-11
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9781428989153

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Beyond Preemption and Preventive War by Cindy Williams Pdf

Since 2002 the Bush White House has embraced a policy that it calls preemption, or preventive war. The new policy calls for the U.S. to go on the offensive when it believes that an enemy is gathering the capability to attack, even though the time, place, or even likelihood of an enemy move is unknown and perhaps far in the future. But this report maintains that the best defense may instead be the prevention of attacks on the U.S. and prevention of conflict around the globe. Such a policy would be pursued through a stronger emphasis within the defense establishment itself on countering the proliferation of dangerous weapons and materials, participating in stability operations and post-conflict reconstruction, and cooperating with allies.

Author : Lynne Greeley
Publisher : Cambria Press
Page : 588 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2015-08-06
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9781621967422

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Fearless Femininity by Women in American Theatre, 1910s to 2010s by Lynne Greeley Pdf

In this unprecedented, fascinating book which covers women in theatre from the 1910s to the 2010s, author Lynne Greeley notes that, for the purposes of this study, "feminism" is defined as the political impulse toward economic and social empowerment for females or the female-identified, a position perceived by many feminists as oppositional to ideas of femininity that they see as personally and politically constraining and that "femininity" comprises social behaviors and practices that mean as "many different things as there are women," some of which are empowering and others of which are not. This book illuminates how throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, playwrights and artists in American theatre both embodied and disrupted the feminine of their times. Through approaches as wide ranging as performing their own recipes, energizing silences, raging against war and rape, and inviting the public to inscribe their naked bodies, theatre artists have used performance as a site to insert themselves between the physicality of their female presence and the liminality of their disrupting the role of the feminine. Capturing that place of liminality, a neither-here-nor-there place that is often unsafe, where the established order is overturned by acts as banal as raising a plant, women have written and performed and disrupted their way through one hundred years of theatre history, even within the constraints of a variably rigid and usually unsympathetic social order. Creating a feminist femininity, they have reinscribed their place in the culture and provided models for their audiences to do the same. This comprehensive tome, part of the Cambria Contemporary Global Performing Arts headed by John Clum (Duke University) is an essential addition for theater studies and women's studies.

Author : Stephen R. Duncan
Publisher : JHU Press
Page : 347 pages
File Size : 53,8 Mb
Release : 2018-11-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781421426341

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The Rebel Café by Stephen R. Duncan Pdf

An account of how the subterranean nightspots in 1950s New York and San Francisco became social, cultural, and political hothouses for left-wing bohemians. The art and antics of rebellious figures in 1950s American nightlife—from the Beat Generation to eccentric jazz musicians and comedians—have long fascinated fans and scholars alike. In The Rebel Café, Stephen R. Duncan flips the frame, focusing on the New York and San Francisco bars, nightclubs, and coffeehouses from which these cultural icons emerged. Duncan shows that the sexy, smoky sites of bohemian Greenwich Village and North Beach offered not just entertainment but doorways to a new sociopolitical consciousness. This book is a collective biography of the places that harbored beatniks, blabbermouths, hipsters, playboys, and partisans who altered the shape of postwar liberal politics and culture. Touching on literary figures from Norman Mailer and Amiri Baraka to Susan Sontag as well as performers ranging from Dave Brubeck to Maya Angelou to Lenny Bruce, The Rebel Café profiles hot spots such as the Village Vanguard, the hungry i, the Black Cat Cafe, and the White Horse Tavern. Ultimately, the book provides a deeper view of 1950s America, not simply as the black-and-white precursor to the Technicolor flamboyance of the sixties but as a rich period of artistic expression and identity formation that blended cultural production and politics. “What emerges in these pages is nothing less than a comprehensive psycho-social geography of an underground counter-culture of black and white jazz musicians, leftists, poets, artists, beatniks, gays and lesbians and other people of the demi-monde.” —All About Jazz

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 1178 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2006
Category : Theater
ISBN : UOM:49015003117299

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American Theatre by Anonim Pdf