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Blood Wedding: Blood Wedding; Yerma; Dona Rosita The Spinster (Student Editions)
by Federico Garcia Lorca Gwynne EdwardsBlood Wedding is set in a village community in Lorca's Andalusia, and tells the story of a couple drawn irresistibly together in the face of an arranged marriage. This tragic and poetic play is the work on which his international reputation was founded. Like many of Lorca's passionate and intensely lyrical plays that focus on peasant life and the forces of nature, Blood Wedding combines innovatory dramatic technique with Spanish popular tradition. Methuen Drama Student Editions are expertly annotated texts of a wide range of plays from the modern and classic repertoires. As well as the complete text of the play itself, the volume contains a chronology of the playwright's life and work; an introduction giving the background to the play; a discussion of the various interpretations; notes on individual words and phrases in the text; and questions for further study.
Bond Plays: Born; People; Chair; Existence; The Under Room (Contemporary Dramatists)
by Edward BondEdward Bond Plays:8 brings together recent work by the writer of the classic stage plays Saved, Lear, The Pope's Wedding, and Early Morning. The volume comprises five new plays and two prose essays:Two Cups: introductory essayBorn: the third play in the Colline Tetralogy (the first two of which appear in Edward Bond Plays:7); premiering at the Avignon Festival in July 2006. People: the fourth play in the Colline Tetralogy Chair: first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2000. Existence: first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2002. The Under Room: first staged by Big Brum in October 2005; 'an intricate puzzle that is compelling in both its intellectual and emotional intensity'5 stars (Guardian) Freedom and Drama: an extended disquisition on the relationship of drama to the self and society in which Bond argues that drama alone can create human meaning.
The Bonefire (Modern Plays)
by Rosemary JenkinsonAcross Belfast the Loyalist community is steadying itself for the orgiastic drug-fest that is the sacred and glorious Twelfth of July. As "The Boney" looms larger day by day, UDA wannabes are drawn like moths to a flame. Up in the flats, hardman Tommy thinks Leanne is more like his ma than his sister, but in her head Leanne is anything but maternal. And when Tommy's pal Davey arrives with a mysterious new woman, it only takes a spark to ignite the Bonefire.
Bones (Oberon Modern Plays Ser.)
by Kay AdsheadWhite people in their big shiny cars drive many kilometres with their sickness which I heal; sickness of the mind, body and of the soul. I charge a bit more for the soul' At night, a young black boy is 'questioned' by a white South African policeman…..36 years later, when the truth is dug up, a tortured Jennifer watches over her dying husband. But does her maid Beauty have the power to 'save' him, and is the price of remembering a dreadful secret one that Jennifer is prepared to pay?Bones is a ruthless excavation of South Africa in 2005, and in an age of threats, retribution and bloody revenge, it is an anthem for hope. A production directed by Adshead opened at the Bush Theatre in October 2006.
The Boss of It All (Oberon Modern Plays)
by Lars Von TrierA critically acclaimed, smart and fast-paced comedy about faked identities and explosive office politics, adapted from Lars von Trier’s cult classic film. The boss of an IT company is secretly selling up. To save face he hires Kristoffer, an actor, to take the blame. Thrown in at the deep end, the hapless actor gets more than he bargained for. In an office of misfit staff, he faces an unexpected dilemma; to sell off the company or try and save his new-found friends. Through 40 years of making and touring exceptional and original theatre, New Perspectives has established itself as the East Midlands national touring company. This is Jack McNamara’s first adaptation as the company’s Artistic Director.
Botho Strauss: The Park, Seven Doors, Time and the Room (Oberon Modern Playwrights)
by Botho Strauss Jeremy SamsIncludes the plays The Park, Seven Doors and Time and the Room.These three plays, first published in German in the 1980s, show Strauss developing an enigmatic, unsettling and uniquely theatrical style. Set in Hamburg, The Park is Strauss’s take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Seven Doors brings together a jilted husband, a wedding without guests and two monks with an intimate knowledge of hell. In Time and the Room, the room contrives to be the play’s main character.
Brecht and Critical Theory: Dialectics and Contemporary Aesthetics (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies #2)
by Sean CarneyArguing that Brecht’s aesthetic theories are still highly relevant today, and that an appreciation of his theory and theatre is essential to an understanding of modern critical theory, this book examines the influence of Brecht’s aesthetic on the pre-eminent materialist critics of the twentieth century: Louis Althusser, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Frederic Jameson, Theodor W. Adorno and Raymond Williams. Re-reading Brecht through the lens of post-structuralism, Sean Carney asserts that there is a Lacanian Brecht and a Derridean Brecht: the result of which is a new Brecht whose vital importance for the present is located in decentred theories of subjectivity. Brecht and Critical Theory maps the many ways in which Brechtian thinking pervades critical thought today, informing the critical tools and stances that make up the contemporary study of aesthetics.
Brecht and Critical Theory: Dialectics and Contemporary Aesthetics (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
by Sean CarneyArguing that Brecht’s aesthetic theories are still highly relevant today, and that an appreciation of his theory and theatre is essential to an understanding of modern critical theory, this book examines the influence of Brecht’s aesthetic on the pre-eminent materialist critics of the twentieth century: Louis Althusser, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Frederic Jameson, Theodor W. Adorno and Raymond Williams. Re-reading Brecht through the lens of post-structuralism, Sean Carney asserts that there is a Lacanian Brecht and a Derridean Brecht: the result of which is a new Brecht whose vital importance for the present is located in decentred theories of subjectivity. Brecht and Critical Theory maps the many ways in which Brechtian thinking pervades critical thought today, informing the critical tools and stances that make up the contemporary study of aesthetics.
Caligula and Other Plays (Penguin Modern Classics)
by Albert Camus Stuart GilbertCaligula reveals some aspects of the existential notion of 'the absurd' by portraying an emperor so mighty and so desperate in his search for freedom that he inevitably destroys gods, men and himself. The dramatic impetus of Cross Purpose, however, comes from the tension between consent to and refusal of man's absurdity; it is the tragedy of a man who returns home to his mother and sister without revealing his identity to them. By the time of The Just and The Possessed, refusal and rebellion have taken over, and in these overtly political plays (the latter based on Dostoyevsky's The Devils) Camus dramatizes action and revolt in the name of liberty.Albert Camus was born in Algeria in 1913. His play, Caligula, appeared in 1939. His first two important books, L'Etranger (The Outsider) and the long essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus), were published when he returned to Paris. After the war he devoted himself to writing and established an international reputation with such books as La Peste (The Plague 1947), Les Justes (The Just 1949) and La Chute (The Fall; 1956). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. He was killed in a road accident in 1960.
Carrie's War (Oberon Modern Plays)
by Nina Bawden Emma ReevesWhen the Second World War air raids threaten their safety in the city, Carrie and her brother Nick are evacuated to a small Welsh village. But the countryside has dangers and adventures of its own - and a group of characters who will change Carrie's life forever. There's mean Mr Evans, who won't let the children eat meat; but there’s also kind Auntie Lou. There's brilliant young Albert Sandwich, another evacuee, and Mr Johnny, who speaks a language all of his own. Then there's Hepzibah Green, the witch at Druid’s Grove who makes perfect mince pies, and the ancient skull with its terrifying curse...For adults and young people aged eight and over.Emma Reeves has created a stunning stage adaptation of Nina Bawden’s much loved classic account of life as an evacuee in the 1940s, which opened at the Lillian Bayliss Theatre in November 2006. This edition includes teachers' notes and activities for classes based on the play.‘I doubt... anything will beat this traditional page-to-stage adaptation for ceaselessly involving telling of a cracking story’ - Evening Standard‘Irresistible’ - Sunday Telegraph, Critic's Choice‘Richly entertaining. Funny & deeply rewarding’ - Daily Telegraph, Critic’s Choice‘Consistently excellent’ - The Times, Critic’s Choice‘Dramatic, imaginative and polished’ - Evening Standard, Critic’s Choice‘Excellent. Truly refreshing story-telling’ - Daily Mail
Changing the Performance: A Companion Guide to Arts, Business and Civic Engagement
by Julia RowntreeA result of many years of research and practice, Changing the Performance is a book about the arts and about business, and the interplay between the two. Julia Rowntree gives a fascinating account of her experiences forging the business sponsorship campaign at the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT). Raising intriguing questions, this book proposes that fundraising for the arts is much more than simply a function for generating income. It fulfils an ancient social role of connection across levels of power, expertise, culture, gender and generation. Rowntree describes why these dynamics are vital to society's ability to adapt. Changing the Performance is an inspiring manual for arts practitioners concerned with the relationship between business, the arts and wider society, and particularly those engaged in fundraising.
Changing the Performance: A Companion Guide to Arts, Business and Civic Engagement
by Julia RowntreeA result of many years of research and practice, Changing the Performance is a book about the arts and about business, and the interplay between the two. Julia Rowntree gives a fascinating account of her experiences forging the business sponsorship campaign at the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT). Raising intriguing questions, this book proposes that fundraising for the arts is much more than simply a function for generating income. It fulfils an ancient social role of connection across levels of power, expertise, culture, gender and generation. Rowntree describes why these dynamics are vital to society's ability to adapt. Changing the Performance is an inspiring manual for arts practitioners concerned with the relationship between business, the arts and wider society, and particularly those engaged in fundraising.
Child of the Divide (Modern Plays)
by Sudha BhucharI have a boy. He is across the border, I know he is.A few miles between. The same starsShine on himSummer 1947. Sixteen million people are on the move between India and the newly-formed Pakistan. Amid the violent political upheaval, young Pali's fingers slip from his father's hand, and his destiny changes forever.Lost, dispossessed and alone, Pali is saved by a Muslim family. The boy is given a new home and new family, a new name, a new faith and a new life. But seven years later, his real father returns to claim him and Pali's life is turned upside down again. He is forced to decide who he is: the Hindu boy he was born to be, the Muslim boy he has become, or simply a child of the divide.This edition has been published to mark the 70th anniversary of the partition of India and a new high-profile production originating once again at the Polka Theatre. Sudha Bhuchar's remarkable story of family, identity and belonging set against a fractured landscape is a fictionalised account of real experiences, of families torn apart and of stolen pasts, where friendship and love are found in unexpected places.
Classical Comedy: Five Plays By Plautus And Terence (Focus Classical Library)
by Aristophanes Menander Plautus TerenceFrom the fifth to the second century BC, innovative comedy drama flourished in Greece and Rome. This collection brings together the greatest works of Classical comedy, with two early Greek plays: Aristophanes' bold, imaginative Birds, and Menander's The Girl from Samos, which explores popular contemporary themes of mistaken identity and sexual misbehaviour; and two later Roman comic plays: Plautus' The Brothers Menaechmus - the original comedy of errors - and Terence's bawdy yet sophisticated double love-plot, The Eunuch. Together, these four plays demonstrate the development of Classical comedy, celebrating its richness, variety and extraordinary legacy to modern drama.
Collins Drama - Private Peaceful (PDF)
by Simon Reade Michael MorpurgoA stunning adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's elegaic novel of the First World War. As young Thomas Peaceful looks back over his childhood from the battlefields of the First World War, his memories are full of family life deep in the countryside. But the clock is ticking, and every moment that Tommo spends remembering how things used to be, means another moment closer to something that will change his life forever.
A Companion to Shakespeare's Sonnets (Blackwell Companions to Literature and Culture)
by Michael SchoenfeldtThis Companion represents the myriad ways of thinking about the remarkable achievement of Shakespeare’s sonnets. An authoritative reference guide and extended introduction to Shakespeare’s sonnets. Contains more than 20 newly-commissioned essays by both established and younger scholars. Considers the form, sequence, content, literary context, editing and printing of the sonnets. Shows how the sonnets provide a mirror in which cultures can read their own critical biases. Informed by the latest theoretical, cultural and archival work.
The Complete Dramatic Works of Samuel Beckett (Faber Drama Ser.)
by Samuel BeckettThe present volume gathers all of Beckett's texts for theatre, from 1955 to 1984. It includes both the major dramatic works and the short and more compressed texts for the stage and for radio.'He believes in the cadence, the comma, the bite of word on reality, whatever else he believes; and his devotion to them, he makes clear, is a sufficient focus for the reader's attention. In the modern history of literature he is a unique moral figure, not a dreamer of rose-gardens but a cultivator of what will grow in the waste land, who can make us see the exhilarating design that thorns and yucca share with whatever will grow anywhere.' - Hugh KennerContents: Waiting for Godot, Endgame, Happy Days, All That Fall, Acts Without Words, Krapp's Last Tape, Roughs for the Theatre, Embers, Roughs for the Radio, Words and Music, Cascando, Play, Film, The Old Tune, Come and Go, Eh Joe, Breath, Not I, That Time, Footfalls, Ghost Trio,...but the clouds..., A Piece of Monologue, Rockaby, Ohio Impromptu, Quad, Catastrophe, Nacht und Traume, What Where.
Contemporary Theatres in Europe: A Critical Companion
by Joe Kelleher Nicholas RidoutThrough specific examples, case studies and essays by specialist writers, academics, and a new generation of theatre researchers, this collection of specially commissioned essays looks at current theatre practices across Europe. From Théatre du Soleil to Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, the authors reconsider the possibilities of theatre practice, its relation to history and location and its place in Europe at the turn of the twenty-first century. Contemporary Theatres in Europe examines a wide range of topics including: mainstream European theatre experimental performance music theatre theatre for children dance theatre. Tailor-made for students, offering clear examples of different ways of thinking and writing about performance, this is a richly detailed introduction which brings key themes to life for all students of European theatre.
Contemporary Theatres in Europe: A Critical Companion
by Joe Kelleher Nicholas RidoutThrough specific examples, case studies and essays by specialist writers, academics, and a new generation of theatre researchers, this collection of specially commissioned essays looks at current theatre practices across Europe. From Théatre du Soleil to Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, the authors reconsider the possibilities of theatre practice, its relation to history and location and its place in Europe at the turn of the twenty-first century. Contemporary Theatres in Europe examines a wide range of topics including: mainstream European theatre experimental performance music theatre theatre for children dance theatre. Tailor-made for students, offering clear examples of different ways of thinking and writing about performance, this is a richly detailed introduction which brings key themes to life for all students of European theatre.
Crooked (Modern Plays)
by Catherine TrieschmannComing-of-age drama with sideways glance at evangelical and Sapphic love'I mean, the fact that Jesus chose to turn the water into wine, rather than just decontaminating it, proves that drinking alcohol is not a sin.'Fourteen-year-old Laney arrives in Oxford, Mississippi, an outsider with a twisted back and only her writing to keep her company. When she befriends the hapless born-again Maribel, Laney's penchant for story-telling soon spirals out of control. A hilarious chain of events is set in motion, sparking a spiritual and sexual journey that infuriates her mother and threatens to tear their fragile world apart.A gloriously sideways glance at evangelical and Sapphic love way down south, Crooked premiered at the Bush Theatre, London, 3 May 2006.'a work of warped loveliness, directed with exquisite delicacy and acted with tenderness and wit . . . Gorgeous almost beyond belief.' Times'a play of immense psychological shrewdness' Guardian'delicious satirical naughtiness' Independent on Sunday
The 'Cut' and 'Product' (Modern Plays)
by Mark RavenhillTwo bold new dramas from the author of Shopping & F***ingThe CutPaul is an ordinary man with a shocking secret. At home, he is a loving husband and father. At work, he administers the cut. In a society sickened by his profession, Paul struggles with his conscience and longs to tell the truth. The Cut has its world premiere at the Donmar Warehouse, London, on 23 February 2006, starring Ian McKellan.Product'I love your work, I love it. I've seen you do those turns on a sixpence....You're fabulous. And this material is going to be fabulous once it's punched up.' Amy is a hot young starlet. Now all she needs is the script which will save her from B movie hell, a script which balances artistic integrity with blockbuster bucks. Mark thinks he's got the perfect pitch - a script which combines a torrid love story with the dark spectre of terrorism and big, big explosions. If he can only persuade Amy, he's got the perfect Product. Mark Ravenhill starred in this monologue piece when it premiered to critical acclaim at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, in August 2005.'Ravenhill has more to say, and says it more refreshingly and wittily, than any other playwright of his generation' Time Out'There are few stage authors writing more interestingly than Mark Ravenhill ... He is – it is now yet more evident – a searing, intelligent, disturbing sociologist with a talent for satirical dialogue and a flair for sexual sensationalism' Financial Times'Compelling viewing' Guardian (on The Cut at the Donmar Warehouse)
Cyrano de Bergerac: Literary Touchstone Classic
by Edmond RostandPoet and soldier, brawler and charmer, Cyrano de Bergerac is desperately in love with Roxane, the most beautiful woman in Paris. But there is one very large problem - he has a nose of stupendous size and believes she will never see past it to return his feelings. So when he discovers that the handsome but tongue-tied Christian is also pining for Roxane, generous Cyrano offers to help by writing exquisite declarations of love for the young man to woo her with. Will she ever recognize who she is really falling in love with? Set during the reign of Louis XIII, Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac (1897) was one of the great theatrical successes of its time and remains as popular today for its dramatic power and, above all, for its good-natured, passionate and swashbuckling hero.
Cyrano de Bergerac: Literary Touchstone Classic (Oberon Modern Plays)
by Edmond Rostand Glyn Maxwell'Better to bear each day, to laugh and cry and sing and go my way freely, to think nothing of my name, to journey only, though the journey be O halfway to the moon! Swordsman, Philosopher, Poet, Raconteur – Cyrano de Bergerac is all these things, but none of them makes him happy. What he desires above all is the love of the beautiful Roxane. But his problem is as plain as the nose on his face. Surely he is too ugly ever to be loved? Salvation of a kind arrives in the form of the handsome yet tongue-tied Christian de Neuvillette – might not Cyrano’s eloquence and Christian’s beauty together win Roxane? Yet duelling foes, powerful rivals, and a war against Spain will all put our hero to the test before he finds his way at last into his lady’s arms.
Das deutsche bürgerliche Trauerspiel (Sammlung Metzler)
by Karl S. GuthkeStandardstoff an Schule und Hochschule. 'Emilia Galotti', 'Kabale und Liebe' und 'Maria Magdalena' gelten als Paradebeispiele für das bürgerliche Trauerspiel. Was zeichnet die zentrale literarische Gattung des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts aus? Die 6. Auflage liefert einen aktualisierten Überblick.
Dialects for the Stage
by Evangeline MachlinDialect work is one of the actor's most challenging tasks. Need to know a Russian accent? Playing a German countess or a Midwestern farmhand? These and more accents – from Yiddish to French Canadian – are clearly explained in Evangeline Machlin's classic work. Now available in a book-and-CD format, Evangeline Machlin's Dialects for the Stage is based on a method of dialect acquisition she developed during her years working with students at Boston University's Division of Theatre. During her long career, Evangeline Machlin trained such actors as Steve McQueen, Lee Grant, Suzanne Pleshette, Joanne Woodward, and Faye Dunaway.