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Vaudeville Melodies: Popular Musicians and Mass Entertainment in American Culture, 1870-1929
by Nicholas GebhardtIf you enjoy popular music and culture today, you have vaudeville to thank. From the 1870s until the 1920s, vaudeville was the dominant context for popular entertainment in the United States, laying the groundwork for the music industry we know today. In Vaudeville Melodies, Nicholas Gebhardt introduces us to the performers, managers, and audiences who turned disjointed variety show acts into a phenomenally successful business. First introduced in the late nineteenth century, by 1915 vaudeville was being performed across the globe, incorporating thousands of performers from every branch of show business. Its astronomical success relied on a huge network of theatres, each part of a circuit and administered from centralized booking offices. Gebhardt shows us how vaudeville transformed relationships among performers, managers, and audiences, and argues that these changes affected popular music culture in ways we are still seeing today. Drawing on firsthand accounts, Gebhardt explores the practices by which vaudeville performers came to understand what it meant to entertain an audience, the conditions in which they worked, the institutions they relied upon, and the values they imagined were essential to their success.
Vaudeville Melodies: Popular Musicians and Mass Entertainment in American Culture, 1870-1929
by Nicholas GebhardtIf you enjoy popular music and culture today, you have vaudeville to thank. From the 1870s until the 1920s, vaudeville was the dominant context for popular entertainment in the United States, laying the groundwork for the music industry we know today. In Vaudeville Melodies, Nicholas Gebhardt introduces us to the performers, managers, and audiences who turned disjointed variety show acts into a phenomenally successful business. First introduced in the late nineteenth century, by 1915 vaudeville was being performed across the globe, incorporating thousands of performers from every branch of show business. Its astronomical success relied on a huge network of theatres, each part of a circuit and administered from centralized booking offices. Gebhardt shows us how vaudeville transformed relationships among performers, managers, and audiences, and argues that these changes affected popular music culture in ways we are still seeing today. Drawing on firsthand accounts, Gebhardt explores the practices by which vaudeville performers came to understand what it meant to entertain an audience, the conditions in which they worked, the institutions they relied upon, and the values they imagined were essential to their success.
“Vaudeville Indians†? on Global Circuits, 1880s-1930s (The Henry Roe Cloud Series on American Indians and Modernity)
by Christine BoldUncovering hidden histories of Indigenous performers in vaudeville and in the creation of western modernity and popular culture
Vaudeville and the Making of Modern Entertainment, 1890–1925
by David MonodToday, vaudeville is imagined as a parade of slapstick comedians, blackface shouters, coyly revealed knees, and second-rate acrobats. But vaudeville was also America's most popular commercial amusement from the mid-1890s to the First World War; at its peak, 5 million Americans attended vaudeville shows every week. Telling the story of this pioneering art form's rise and decline, David Monod looks through the apparent carnival of vaudeville performance and asks: what made the theater so popular and transformative? Although he acknowledges its quirkiness, Monod makes the case that vaudeville became so popular because it offered audiences a guide to a modern urban lifestyle. Vaudeville acts celebrated sharp city styles and denigrated old-fashioned habits, showcased new music and dance moves, and promulgated a deeply influential vernacular modernism. The variety show's off-the-rack trendiness perfectly suited an era when goods and services were becoming more affordable and the mass market promised to democratize style, offering a clear vision of how the quintessential twentieth-century citizen should look, talk, move, feel, and act.
Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics 1948-2008
by Harold PinterVarious Voices is the only collection of Harold Pinter's prose, poems and political writing to span his career. This new edition includes a remarkable interview in which he reflects on his time as an evacuee in Cornwall during the Second World War, as well as new prose, poems and his Nobel Speech.
Variety (Oberon Modern Plays Ser.)
by Douglas MaxwellLadies and gentlemen! Let us present the romantic tenor, the couthy comedian, the speciality act and the equilibrist - a real Concert Party! In its halycon days variety theatre was part of the social life blood of the country. But in the shadow of the enemy - the technological wonder of the talkies - only the bravest or saddest of performers are left reading the boards, in cine-variety.The death throes of one of Scotland's most popular entertainments are chronicled in this world premiere of a new play by Scots playwright Douglas Maxwell, the traditions brought briefly back to pulsating life. Variety was a co-production between Grid Iron Theatre Company and the Edinburgh International Festival.
Vanya (Modern Plays)
by Anton ChekhovCan you imagine if it was possible to completely change the way you live your life? To look at your life and ask yourself what you would do if it died. If your old life died. It ended. And then take what's left of your real life and live it properly. How can I do that, Michael? Where do I start?Chekhov's classic tale of love, art, sex, and attempted murder in a fresh adaptation by Simon Stephens, written to be performed by a solo actor.Comedic and tragic, Chekhov's examination of our shared humanity – our hopes, dreams, regrets – is thrust into sharp focus in Vanya. This fresh adaptation explores the kaleidoscope of human emotions, harnessing the power of the intimate bond between actor and audience to delve deeper into the human psyche.This edition was published to coincide with the West End premiere starring Andrew Scott in September 2023.
Vanya (Modern Plays)
by Anton ChekhovCan you imagine if it was possible to completely change the way you live your life? To look at your life and ask yourself what you would do if it died. If your old life died. It ended. And then take what's left of your real life and live it properly. How can I do that, Michael? Where do I start?Chekhov's classic tale of love, art, sex, and attempted murder in a fresh adaptation by Simon Stephens, written to be performed by a solo actor.Comedic and tragic, Chekhov's examination of our shared humanity – our hopes, dreams, regrets – is thrust into sharp focus in Vanya. This fresh adaptation explores the kaleidoscope of human emotions, harnessing the power of the intimate bond between actor and audience to delve deeper into the human psyche.This edition was published to coincide with the West End premiere starring Andrew Scott in September 2023.
Vanguard Performance Beyond Left and Right
by Kimberly JannaroneVanguard Performance Beyond Left and Right challenges assumptions regarding “radical” and “experimental” performance that have long dominated thinking about the avant-garde. The book brings to light vanguard performances rarely discussed: those that support totalitarian regimes, promote conservative values, or have been effectively snapped up by right-wing regimes the performances intended to oppose. In so doing, the volume explores a central paradox: how innovative performances that challenge oppressive power structures can also be deployed in deliberate, passionate support of oppressive power. Essays by leading international scholars pose engaging questions about the historical avant-garde, vanguard acts, and the complex role of artistic innovation and live performance in global politics. Focusing on performances that work against progressive and democratic ideas (including scripted drama, staged suicide, choral dance, terrorism, rallies, and espionage), the book demonstrates how many compelling performance ideals—unification, exaltation, immersion—are, in themselves, neither moral nor immoral; they are only emotional and aesthetic urges that can be powerfully channeled into a variety of social and political outlets.
Vanbrugh and Farquhar (English Dramatists)
by John BullThe plays of Vanbrugh and Farquhar effectively herald the end of the great period of post-Restoration comedy. Both writers, in their very different ways, reflect the larger changes that British society was undergoing as it began to define a modern world. The renewed interest in their work, and the frequent revivals of it on stage, comes not just from an admiration of their reinvigoration of the comic mode, but from their clear articulation of the sense of an old world in conflict with a new. In his exciting new study of the two playwrights, John Bull locates their work both in the context of their own times and in the larger history of theatrical production.
The Vampire Trilogy (Oberon Modern Playwrights)
by David PinnerIncludes the plays Fanghorn, Edred, the Vampire and Lucifer's FairFanghorn is a darkly-surrealistic comedy, which pokes fun at the Theatre of Cruelty. Fanghorn is a lesbian vampire, who invades the household of Joseph King, who may, or may not, be the First Secretary to the Minister of Defence, and hilarious emasculation and murderous mayhem follow in her wake. Edred, the Vampyre is a thousand-year-old Anglo-Saxon bisexual vampire, who slept with Shakespeare, but never bit him. Breaking all Bram Stoker’s vampire laws, Edred loves garlic and crucifixes, so he lives in the village church where he is confronted by two students who Googled him. But soon the students wish they hadn’t.Lucifer’s Fair is the family Hallowe’en musical play, about a fair run by the Devil to entrap unwary children. Lucifer is aided by Fangs, who is a bovver boy by day, but an incompetent vampire by night. Simultaneously scary and funny, Lucifer’s Fair, with its comic spills, thrills and chills, highlights the unreliability of grownups, both the living and the undead.
Value Engineering: Scenes from the Grenfell Inquiry (Modern Plays)
by Richard Norton-TaylorValue Engineering: Scenes from the Grenfell Inquiry is a verbatim reconstruction of the Grenfell Tower Public Inquiry. Using only the words spoken at the Inquiry, the play deals predominantly with Part 2 which ran between January 2020 - July 2021 in which evidence was heard from those responsible for the disastrous refurbishment of Grenfell Tower before the tragic fire.Edited by Richard Norton-Taylor and directed by Nicholas Kent, the team behind previous testimonial plays The Colour of Justice: The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry and Bloody Sunday: Scenes from the Saville Inquiry, this edited verbatim account of the Grenfell Inquiry is aimed at giving the public an overview and access to some of the most important evidence.The play shows how companies involved in the refurbishment of the Tower conspired to cover up what they knew about the dangerous and life-threatening materials used to refurbish the Tower. It also reveals the incompetence and neglect of local authorities.Staged in Notting Hill Tabernacle in October 2021, this features the full text of the play alongside additional information on the context of Grenfell and the ongoing inquiry.
Value Engineering: Scenes from the Grenfell Inquiry (Modern Plays)
by Richard Norton-TaylorValue Engineering: Scenes from the Grenfell Inquiry is a verbatim reconstruction of the Grenfell Tower Public Inquiry. Using only the words spoken at the Inquiry, the play deals predominantly with Part 2 which ran between January 2020 - July 2021 in which evidence was heard from those responsible for the disastrous refurbishment of Grenfell Tower before the tragic fire.Edited by Richard Norton-Taylor and directed by Nicholas Kent, the team behind previous testimonial plays The Colour of Justice: The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry and Bloody Sunday: Scenes from the Saville Inquiry, this edited verbatim account of the Grenfell Inquiry is aimed at giving the public an overview and access to some of the most important evidence.The play shows how companies involved in the refurbishment of the Tower conspired to cover up what they knew about the dangerous and life-threatening materials used to refurbish the Tower. It also reveals the incompetence and neglect of local authorities.Staged in Notting Hill Tabernacle in October 2021, this features the full text of the play alongside additional information on the context of Grenfell and the ongoing inquiry.
Valparaiso
by Don DeLilloIn Valparaiso, a breathtaking play from Don DeLillo, a man sets out on what he imagines will be an ordinary business trip to Valparaiso, Indiana. It proves to be anything but run-of-the-mill, turning instead into a mock-heroic journey toward identity and transcendence. Valparaiso is a funny, sharp and deeply satirical look at our information age. This is the way we talk to each other today. This is the way we tell each other things, in public, before listening millions, that we don't dare say privately. Nothing is allowed to be unseen. Nothing remains unread. And everything melts repeatedly into something else, as if driven by the finger on the TV remote. This is also a play that makes obsessive poetry out of the language of routine airline announcements and the flow of endless information.
The Valiant Black Man in Flanders / El valiente negro en Flandes: by Andrés de Claramonte (Aris & Phillips Hispanic Classics)
A play about defiance of systemic racism. Juan de Mérida, an Afro-Spanish soldier aspires to social advancement in the Netherlands during the Eighty Years' War (1566-1648). His main enemies are not Dutch rebels but his white countrymen, whom he defeats at every attempt to humiliate him. In this play one encounters military culture, upward mobility, mistaken identities, defying destiny, royal pageantry, swordfights, cross-dressing, revenge, homosexual anxiety, and inter-racial marriage. Andrés de Claramonte’s El valiente negro en Flandes (c.1625) is an Afrodiasporic play that enjoyed great success and multiple stagings in Spain and in Latin America. Its 1938 negrista performance in Havana, Cuba, and Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, attest to the power of this play to illuminate contemporary racial dynamics. This is the first annotated, critical edition and English translation of El valiente negro en Flandes with a comprehensive introduction, three critical essays, the critical apparatus comparing the eleven extant versions of the play, and an appendix with alternative scenes and related historical documents. A tool for scholars of early modern European literature and a pedagogical aid to discuss the early discourses on Blackness in Spain and its trans-Atlantic empire.
The Vagrant Trilogy: The Hour of Feeling; The Vagrant; Urge for Going
by Mona Mansour“The [Vagrant Trilogy] extends far beyond the timeline of devastating events, and instead shows us something greater: humanity.” - Broadway World The Vagrant Trilogy is a set of three plays by award-winning Arab American playwright Mona Mansour which explores the Palestinian condition prior to, during, and after the infamous Six-Day War. It sketches the devastating effect this conflict had on members of the Palestinian diaspora scattered in Europe and in Lebanese refugee camps. With productions in Washington DC, New York, and Abu Dhabi, this trilogy has moved audiences across both America and the Arabic-speaking world. The Hour of Feeling, The Vagrant, and Urge for Going offer a deep exploration of the Palestinian struggle for home and identity, a powerful glimpse into a reality that many face and few understand. The volume includes a foreword by director Mark Wing-Davey; an introduction by Arab American theatre scholars Hala Baki and Michael Malek Najjar; the three plays in their final performance versions; an interview with playwright Mona Mansour; and a critical essay by literary scholar Diya Abdo. This collection of Mansour's outstanding plays is another important contribution to the Arab American theatrical canon and the larger body of American drama.
The Vagrant Trilogy: The Hour of Feeling; The Vagrant; Urge for Going
by Mona Mansour“The [Vagrant Trilogy] extends far beyond the timeline of devastating events, and instead shows us something greater: humanity.” - Broadway World The Vagrant Trilogy is a set of three plays by award-winning Arab American playwright Mona Mansour which explores the Palestinian condition prior to, during, and after the infamous Six-Day War. It sketches the devastating effect this conflict had on members of the Palestinian diaspora scattered in Europe and in Lebanese refugee camps. With productions in Washington DC, New York, and Abu Dhabi, this trilogy has moved audiences across both America and the Arabic-speaking world. The Hour of Feeling, The Vagrant, and Urge for Going offer a deep exploration of the Palestinian struggle for home and identity, a powerful glimpse into a reality that many face and few understand. The volume includes a foreword by director Mark Wing-Davey; an introduction by Arab American theatre scholars Hala Baki and Michael Malek Najjar; the three plays in their final performance versions; an interview with playwright Mona Mansour; and a critical essay by literary scholar Diya Abdo. This collection of Mansour's outstanding plays is another important contribution to the Arab American theatrical canon and the larger body of American drama.
Utpal Dutt's Theatre: Continuities and Disjunctions in His Politics and Aesthetics (Performance Studies & Cultural Discourse in South Asia #1)
by Uddalak DuttaThis book offers the reader an in-depth understanding of Utpal Dutt’s entire career in drama. Covering Dutt’s career in proscenium, street theatre and Jatra, it analyzes the interesting exchange of dramatic art with politics in his theatre. Owing to a plethora of unsubstantiated opinions, Dutt is either revered by his followers or dismissed by his opponents, but hardly ever studied with necessary objectivity and intellectual rigour. The book attempts to bust the myth that Dutt was primarily a political propagandist who used theatre only as a means to achieve his political end. The remarkable range of Dutt’s subject matter makes him as internationally significant as he is loved by Indian theatre enthusiasts. His work has been discussed on various reputed international platforms. Yet there is a stark lacuna when it comes to intellectual attention devoted to Dutt’s theatre. This is the first book which attempts to introduce Dutt’s theatre comprehensively to an international readership. The book looks briefly at Dutt’s life, the impact of his politics on his theatre, the art of his characterization, his dramaturgy and stage technique, and the legacy of his work in theatre. It also offers the reader with a chronological list of the first performances of his original theatrical works and an exhaustive bibliography, which, it is hoped, shall prove especially useful for researchers. The book is designed for lay theatre enthusiasts as well as advanced students of theatre.
Utpal Dutt and Political Theatre in Postcolonial India (Elements in Theatre, Performance and the Political)
by null Mallarika Sinha RoyAmong the most significant playwrights and theatre-makers of postcolonial India, Utpal Dutt (1929–1993), was an early exponent of rethinking colonial history through political theatre. Dutt envisaged political theatre as part of the larger Marxist project, and his incorporation of new developments in Marxist thinking, including the contributions of Antonio Gramsci, makes it possible to conceptualise his protagonists as insurgent subalterns. A decolonial approach to staging history remained a significant element in Dutt's artistic project. This Element examines Dutt's passionate engagement with Marxism and explores how this sense of urgency was actioned through the writing and producing of plays about the peasant revolts and armed anti-colonial movements which took place during the period of British rule. Drawing on contemporary debates in political theatre regarding the autonomy of the spectator and the performance of history, the author locates Dutt's political theatre in a historical frame.
Utopian Drama: In Search of a Genre (Methuen Drama Engage)
by Siân AdiseshiahAs the first full-length study to analyse utopian plays in Western drama from antiquity to the present, Utopian Drama: In Search of a Genre offers an illuminating appraisal of the objectives of utopianism as manifested in drama through the ages, and carefully ascertains the added value that live performance brings to the persuasion of utopian thought. Siân Adiseshiah scrutinises the distinctive intervention of utopian drama through its examination alongside the utopian prose tradition – in this way, the book establishes new ways of approaching utopian aesthetics and new ways of interpreting utopian drama. This book provides fresh understandings of the generic features of utopian plays, identifies the gains of establishing a new genre, and ascertains ways in which this genre functions as political theatre. Referring to over 40 plays, of which 18 are examined in detail, Utopian Drama traces the emergence of the utopian play in the Western tradition from ancient Greek Comedy to experimental contemporary work. Works discussed in detail include plays by Aristophanes, Margaret Cavendish, George Bernard Shaw, Howard Brenton, Claire MacDonald, Cesi Davidson, and Mojisola Adebayo. As well as offering extended attention to the work of these playwrights, the book reflects on the development of utopian drama through history, notes the persistent features, tropes, and conventions of utopian plays, and considers the implications of their registration for both theatre studies and utopian studies.
Utopian Drama: In Search of a Genre (Methuen Drama Engage)
by Siân AdiseshiahAs the first full-length study to analyse utopian plays in Western drama from antiquity to the present, Utopian Drama: In Search of a Genre offers an illuminating appraisal of the objectives of utopianism as manifested in drama through the ages, and carefully ascertains the added value that live performance brings to the persuasion of utopian thought. Siân Adiseshiah scrutinises the distinctive intervention of utopian drama through its examination alongside the utopian prose tradition – in this way, the book establishes new ways of approaching utopian aesthetics and new ways of interpreting utopian drama. This book provides fresh understandings of the generic features of utopian plays, identifies the gains of establishing a new genre, and ascertains ways in which this genre functions as political theatre. Referring to over 40 plays, of which 18 are examined in detail, Utopian Drama traces the emergence of the utopian play in the Western tradition from ancient Greek Comedy to experimental contemporary work. Works discussed in detail include plays by Aristophanes, Margaret Cavendish, George Bernard Shaw, Howard Brenton, Claire MacDonald, Cesi Davidson, and Mojisola Adebayo. As well as offering extended attention to the work of these playwrights, the book reflects on the development of utopian drama through history, notes the persistent features, tropes, and conventions of utopian plays, and considers the implications of their registration for both theatre studies and utopian studies.
Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theater
by Jill Dolan"Jill Dolan is the theatre's most astute critic, and this new book is perhaps her most important. Utopia in Performance argues with eloquence and insight how theatre makes a difference, and in the process demonstrates that scholarship matters, too. It is a book that readers will cherish and hold close as a personal favorite, and that scholars will cite for years to come." ---David Román, University of Southern California What is it about performance that draws people to sit and listen attentively in a theater, hoping to be moved and provoked, challenged and comforted? In Utopia in Performance, Jill Dolan traces the sense of visceral, emotional, and social connection that we experience at such times, connections that allow us to feel for a moment not what a better world might look like, but what it might feel like, and how that hopeful utopic sentiment might become motivation for social change. She traces these "utopian performatives" in a range of performances, including the solo performances of feminist artists Holly Hughes, Deb Margolin, and Peggy Shaw; multicharacter solo performances by Lily Tomlin, Danny Hoch, and Anna Deavere Smith; the slam poetry event Def Poetry Jam; The Laramie Project; Blanket, a performance by postmodern choreographer Ann Carlson; Metamorphoses by Mary Zimmerman; and Deborah Warner's production of Medea starring Fiona Shaw. While the book richly captures moments of "feeling utopia" found within specific performances, it also celebrates the broad potential that performance has to provide a forum for being human together; for feeling love, hope, and commonality in particular and historical (rather than universal and transcendent) ways.
Utility
by Emily SchwendThe tenth winner of the Yale Drama Series centers on a young mother dealing with life’s many trials Marking the tenth anniversary of the Yale Drama Series for emerging playwrights, Emily Schwend’s powerful work centers on Amber, a young woman struggling to raise a family in East Texas. Amber is juggling two nearly full-time jobs and three kids. Her on-again, off-again husband Chris is eternally optimistic and charming as hell, but rarely employed. The house is falling apart and Amber has an eight-year-old’s birthday party to plan. Selected from more than 1,600 entries, Schwend’s newest play—produced by the Amoralists Theatre Company at Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre in 2016—vividly captures the economic hardships and relationship difficulties faced by so many Americans today. “Utility is a remarkable play: beautifully written and effortlessly powerful,” said contest judge Nicholas Wright. “At every moment the happiness of human lives is put at risk: is there any greater dramatic theme?”
The Usual Auntijies (Modern Plays)
by Paven VirkAunti-ji - noun. a term sometimes used to address women older than oneself. Ji is traditionally used after someone's name to show respect, mainly by the communities of the Indian sub-continent. Somewhere in the city live three elderly, South Asian auntijies who have found themselves together in a refuge for abused women, empty of memories and bereft of their families and friends. Nearby, a new Indian bride has arrived in the country only to find herself in a place that she is utterly unprepared for. The Usual Auntijies is a bitter-sweet new comic-drama that visits the lives of four women as they embark on an inspiring, emotional and comic journey to overcome the past abuse and rediscover their sense of life, love and happiness.Exploring ideas of family and the cultural differences that exist between the East and West, the Auntijies struggle with popular Western culture and provide a hybrid cultural context which amusingly sits alongside the women's otherness and past pain.The Usual Auntijies is a celebration of all women of a particular age whose desires and struggles are too often forgotten.
The Usual Auntijies (Modern Plays)
by Paven VirkAunti-ji - noun. a term sometimes used to address women older than oneself. Ji is traditionally used after someone's name to show respect, mainly by the communities of the Indian sub-continent. Somewhere in the city live three elderly, South Asian auntijies who have found themselves together in a refuge for abused women, empty of memories and bereft of their families and friends. Nearby, a new Indian bride has arrived in the country only to find herself in a place that she is utterly unprepared for. The Usual Auntijies is a bitter-sweet new comic-drama that visits the lives of four women as they embark on an inspiring, emotional and comic journey to overcome the past abuse and rediscover their sense of life, love and happiness.Exploring ideas of family and the cultural differences that exist between the East and West, the Auntijies struggle with popular Western culture and provide a hybrid cultural context which amusingly sits alongside the women's otherness and past pain.The Usual Auntijies is a celebration of all women of a particular age whose desires and struggles are too often forgotten.