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The Last Yankee (Student Editions)
by Arthur Miller'When the play focuses on the self-entrapment of the characters, Mr. Miller can be tender as well as trenchant' NEW YORK TIMES Two strangers meet in a New England psychiatric clinic, each visiting their admitted, depressed wife: one is a humble carpenter with seven children, the other a successful businessman in a childless marriage; both have been forgotten by the promise of the American Dream.Described by Miller as 'a comedy about a tragedy', this one-act play highlights the devastating consequences for those who fail to achieve the purported riches of the American Dream; a reality many face.This Methuen Drama Student Edition is edited by Ciarán Leinster, with commentary and notes that explore the play's production history (including excerpts from an interview with director David Thacker) as well as the dramatic, thematic and academic debates that surround it.
The Last Yankee (Student Editions)
by Arthur Miller'When the play focuses on the self-entrapment of the characters, Mr. Miller can be tender as well as trenchant' NEW YORK TIMES Two strangers meet in a New England psychiatric clinic, each visiting their admitted, depressed wife: one is a humble carpenter with seven children, the other a successful businessman in a childless marriage; both have been forgotten by the promise of the American Dream.Described by Miller as 'a comedy about a tragedy', this one-act play highlights the devastating consequences for those who fail to achieve the purported riches of the American Dream; a reality many face.This Methuen Drama Student Edition is edited by Ciarán Leinster, with commentary and notes that explore the play's production history (including excerpts from an interview with director David Thacker) as well as the dramatic, thematic and academic debates that surround it.
Late Company
by Jordan TannahillWhen you wake up in a cold sweat at night and you think someone is watching you, well it's me. I'm watching you. And that cold sweat on your body, those are my tears.When the Shaun-Hastings sit down to dinner with the Dermots, closure is on the menu but recrimination becomes the main course. As their good intentions are stripped away, both couples' culpability in a tragedy is laid bare.At a dinner party where grief is the loudest guest, Late Company asks the question: How well can a parent ever know their child?Jordan Tannahill's Late Company received its European premiere at the Finborough Theatre, London, in April 2017 and transferred to the Trafalgar Studios, London, in August of the same year.
The Late Harold Pinter: Political Dramatist, Poet and Activist
by Basil ChiassonThis volume is the first to provide a book-length study of Pinter’s overtly political activity. With chapters on political drama, poetry, and speeches, it charts a consistent tension between aesthetics and politics through Pinter’s later career and defines the politics of the work in terms of a pronounced sensory dimension and capacity to affect audiences. The book brings to light unpublished letters and drafts from the Pinter Archive in the British Library and draws his political poems and speeches, which have previously been overshadowed by his plays, into the foreground. Intended for students, instructors, and researchers in drama and theatre, performance studies, literature, and media studies, this book celebrates Pinter’s later life and work by discerning a coherent political voice and project and by registering the complex ways that project troubles the divide between aesthetics and politics.
Late Sophocles: The Hero’s Evolution in Electra, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus
by Thomas Van NortwickOnly a few plays by Sophocles—one of the great tragic playwrights from Classical Athens—have survived, and each of them dramatizes events from the rich store of myths that framed literature and art. Sophocles’ treatment evokes issues that were vividly contemporary for Athenian audiences of the Periclean age: How could the Athenians incorporate older, aristocratic ideas about human excellence into their new democratic society? Could citizens learn to be morally excellent, or were these qualities only inherited? What did it mean to be a creature who knows that he or she must die? Late Sophocles traces the evolution of the Sophoclean hero through the final three plays, Electra, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus. The book’s main thesis, that Sophocles reimagined the nature of the tragic hero in his last three works, is developed inductively through readings of the plays. This balanced approach, in which a detailed argument about the plays is offered in a format accessible to nonspecialists, is unusual—perhaps unique—in contemporary Classical scholarship on Sophocles. This book will appeal to nonspecialist readers of serious literature as well as scholars of classical and other literatures. While including ample guidance for those not familiar with the plays, Late Sophocles goes beyond a generalized description of “what happens” in the plays to offer a clear, jargon-free argument for the enduring importance of Sophocles’ plays. The argument’s implications for longstanding interpretational issues will be of interest to specialists. All Greek is translated.
The Late Work of Sam Shepard
by Shannon Blake SkeltonHailed by critics during the 1980s as the decade's 'Great American Playwright', Sam Shepard continued to produce work in a wide array of media including short prose, films, plays, performances and screenplays until his death in 2017. Like Samuel Beckett and Tennessee Williams in their autumnal years, Shepard relentlessly pressed the potentialities and possibilities of theatre. This is the first volume to consider Shepard's later work and career in detail and ranges across his work produced since the late 1980s.Shepard's motion picture directorial debut Far North (1988) served as the beginning of a new cycle of work. He returned to the stage with the politically engaged States of Shock (1991) which resembled neither his earlier plays nor his family cycle. With both Far North and States of Shock, Shepard signaled a transition into a phase in which he would experiment in form, subject and media for the next two decades. Skelton's comprehensive study includes consideration of his work in films such as Hamlet (2000), Black Hawk Down (2001), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) and Brothers (2009); issues of authenticity in the film and screenplay Don't Come Knocking (2005) and the play Kicking a Dead Horse (2007); of memory and trauma in Simpatico, The Late Henry Moss and When the World was Green, and of masculine and conservative narratives in States of Shock and The God of Hell.Lauded by critics in his lifetime and since his death in July 2017 as 'one of the most important and influential writers of his generation' (NY Times), Shepard 'excelled as an actor, screenwriter, playwright and director' (Guardian); this is a timely and important assessment of his work spanning the last three decades of his life.
The Late Work of Sam Shepard
by Shannon Blake SkeltonHailed by critics during the 1980s as the decade's 'Great American Playwright', Sam Shepard continued to produce work in a wide array of media including short prose, films, plays, performances and screenplays until his death in 2017. Like Samuel Beckett and Tennessee Williams in their autumnal years, Shepard relentlessly pressed the potentialities and possibilities of theatre. This is the first volume to consider Shepard's later work and career in detail and ranges across his work produced since the late 1980s.Shepard's motion picture directorial debut Far North (1988) served as the beginning of a new cycle of work. He returned to the stage with the politically engaged States of Shock (1991) which resembled neither his earlier plays nor his family cycle. With both Far North and States of Shock, Shepard signaled a transition into a phase in which he would experiment in form, subject and media for the next two decades. Skelton's comprehensive study includes consideration of his work in films such as Hamlet (2000), Black Hawk Down (2001), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) and Brothers (2009); issues of authenticity in the film and screenplay Don't Come Knocking (2005) and the play Kicking a Dead Horse (2007); of memory and trauma in Simpatico, The Late Henry Moss and When the World was Green, and of masculine and conservative narratives in States of Shock and The God of Hell.Lauded by critics in his lifetime and since his death in July 2017 as 'one of the most important and influential writers of his generation' (NY Times), Shepard 'excelled as an actor, screenwriter, playwright and director' (Guardian); this is a timely and important assessment of his work spanning the last three decades of his life.
Later Operetta 2: the Highwayman, Music by Reginald DeKoven, Libretto by Harry B. Smith, 1897 (Nineteenth-Century American Musical Theater Series)
by Reginald De KovenThe most successful American-born composer of operetta at the end of the nineteenth century was Reginald de Koven. The work reprinted in this volume, The Highwayman, is arguably his best work, although he is better known for the earlier Robin Hoodwixh its evergreen wedding ballad "Oh Promise Me." (Robin Hood is available as a reprint in the 1990 volume American Opera and Music for the Stage, in the G.K. Hall series Three Centuries of American Music.) The editor of this volume, Orly Leah Krasner, is a leading scholar of de Koven’s music. She teaches at the City University of New York, and her Ph.D. dissertation, "Reginald de Koven (1859-1920) and American Comic Opera at the Turn of the Century," is also from that university. Her introduction places the work in the tenor of contemporary critical reaction, and lists the sources available for further study. The Highwayman is one of the few complete operettas of its era for which we are fortunate enough to have original performing materials in the composer’s own hand. As the penultimate volume (number 15) in this series, de Koven’s work of 1897 contrasts with two works of the previous year, Walter Damrosch’s opera The Scarlet Letter (volume 16) and John Philip Sousa’s operetta El Capitan (volume 14).
Later Operetta 2: the Highwayman, Music by Reginald DeKoven, Libretto by Harry B. Smith, 1897 (Nineteenth-Century American Musical Theater Series)
by Orly Leah KrasnerThe most successful American-born composer of operetta at the end of the nineteenth century was Reginald de Koven. The work reprinted in this volume, The Highwayman, is arguably his best work, although he is better known for the earlier Robin Hoodwixh its evergreen wedding ballad "Oh Promise Me." (Robin Hood is available as a reprint in the 1990 volume American Opera and Music for the Stage, in the G.K. Hall series Three Centuries of American Music.) The editor of this volume, Orly Leah Krasner, is a leading scholar of de Koven’s music. She teaches at the City University of New York, and her Ph.D. dissertation, "Reginald de Koven (1859-1920) and American Comic Opera at the Turn of the Century," is also from that university. Her introduction places the work in the tenor of contemporary critical reaction, and lists the sources available for further study. The Highwayman is one of the few complete operettas of its era for which we are fortunate enough to have original performing materials in the composer’s own hand. As the penultimate volume (number 15) in this series, de Koven’s work of 1897 contrasts with two works of the previous year, Walter Damrosch’s opera The Scarlet Letter (volume 16) and John Philip Sousa’s operetta El Capitan (volume 14).
Latinx Actor Training
by Cynthia Santos DeCure Micha EspinosaLatinx Actor Training presents essays and pioneering research from leading Latinx practitioners and scholars in the United States to examine the history and future of Latino/a/x/e actor training practices and approaches. Born out of the urgent need to address the inequities in academia and the industry as Latinx representation on stage and screen remains disproportionately low despite population growth; this book seeks to reimagine and restructure the practice of actor training by inviting deep investigation into heritage and identity practices. Latinx Actor Training features contributions covering current and historical acting methodologies, principles, and training, explorations of linguistic identity, casting considerations, and culturally inclusive practices that aim to empower a new generation of Latinx actors and to assist the educators who are entrusted with their training. This book is dedicated to creating career success and championing positive narratives to combat pervasive and damaging stereotypes. Latinx Actor Training offers culturally inclusive pedagogies that will be invaluable for students, practitioners, and scholars interested in the intersections of Latinx herencia (heritage), identity, and actor training.
Latinx Actor Training
by Cynthia Santos DeCure Micha EspinosaLatinx Actor Training presents essays and pioneering research from leading Latinx practitioners and scholars in the United States to examine the history and future of Latino/a/x/e actor training practices and approaches. Born out of the urgent need to address the inequities in academia and the industry as Latinx representation on stage and screen remains disproportionately low despite population growth; this book seeks to reimagine and restructure the practice of actor training by inviting deep investigation into heritage and identity practices. Latinx Actor Training features contributions covering current and historical acting methodologies, principles, and training, explorations of linguistic identity, casting considerations, and culturally inclusive practices that aim to empower a new generation of Latinx actors and to assist the educators who are entrusted with their training. This book is dedicated to creating career success and championing positive narratives to combat pervasive and damaging stereotypes. Latinx Actor Training offers culturally inclusive pedagogies that will be invaluable for students, practitioners, and scholars interested in the intersections of Latinx herencia (heritage), identity, and actor training.
Laughing Boy: (stage version) (Nhb Modern Plays Ser.)
by Sara RyanConnor is, well, Connor. He loves buses, Eddie Stobart and Lego. He also has learning disabilities. When he dies an entirely preventable death in NHS care, his mum, Sara, can't get a straight answer as to how it happened. But Sara and her family won't stop asking questions and soon an extraordinary campaign emerges. Demanding the truth, it uncovers a scandal of neglect and indifference that goes beyond Connor's death to thousands of others. Sara Ryan's impassioned, frank and surprisingly funny memoir Justice for Laughing Boy is adapted for the stage by Stephen Unwin. It was first performed at Jermyn Street Theatre, London, in 2024, in a co-production with Theatre Royal Bath. 'So much magic. So much love. So much laughter. So much work. So much rage. And so many tears.' 'An urgent look at our broken care system… compelling and heartfelt… a mighty testimony that will leave you furious' 'A moving story about love, laughter and the indomitability of one family's fighting spirit… deft and shocking' 'Heartfelt and colourful… a story told with love and fury' 'Hard hitting… balances the procession of grim, galling details against humanising, light-hearted moments… succeeds both as a tribute to Connor's family, and as a galvanising call for deeper compassion and greater support' 'Powerful… hideously timely… a shocking story'
Laughter and Blood: Performance Pieces
by Manjula PadmanabhanConjoined triplets on a blind date. A lesson in human reproduction by a manic-prudish teacher. A heart-stopping game of cards. An instrument that tunes in to the music of our bodies’ organs. Collected Plays brings together, in a much-anticipated series, the dramatic works of Onassis prize-winning playwright and author Manjula Padmanabhan. Laughter and Blood, the second volume, presents within its covers Padmanabhan’s short performance pieces. From The Sextet and Ladies’ Night to Hidden Fires and Blind Date, these wildly inventive, subversive and often chilling plays introduce readers to the intrigues of inverted power structures, tantalizingly suggestive interactions and powerful voices from the fringe. With new introductions to the works that affirm the relevance of the themes of the plays, this collection showcases the playwright’s mastery of her art and reconfirms her standing among the leading dramatists of our time.
Laura Wade: Plays One (Oberon Modern Playwrights)
by Laura Wade‘If one of the problems facing new playwrights is the expectation that each of their plays should be similar in style, Wade…proved that you could radically change both form and content… Not every writer delivers on their early promise. As this collection clearly shows, Wade certainly has.’ Aleks Sierz, from his IntroductionCOLDER THAN HERE‘Laura Wade’s play is a 90-minute masterpiece, a jewel, dark but translucent. It is a play of love, death and grief: the grief that is hardest to bear, because it begins before the loved one dies.’ Sunday TimesBREATHING CORPSES‘The tension, the emotions and the sense of absurdity and fear are brilliantly handled... A terrifying tour de force.’ Sunday TimesOTHER HANDS‘This is an extraordinary feat – a vicious satire with a heart of gold – wrought with peculiar subtlety and intelligence.’ The Spectator
Law and Intangible Cultural Heritage in the City
by Sara Gwendolyn RossWith disappearing music venues, and arts and culture communities at constant risk of displacement in our urban centers, the preservation of intangible cultural heritage is of growing concern to global cities. This book addresses the role and protection of intangible cultural heritage in the urban context. Using the methodology of Urban Legal Anthropology, the author provides an ethnographic account of the civic effort of Toronto to become a Music City from 2014-18 in the context of redevelopment and gentrification pressures. Through this, the book elucidates the problems cities like Toronto have in equitably protecting intangible cultural heritage and what can be done to address this. It also evaluates the engagement that Toronto and other cities have had with international legal frameworks intended to protect intangible cultural heritage, as well as potential counterhegemonic uses of hegemonic legal tools. Understanding urban intangible cultural heritage and the communities of people who produce it is of importance to a range of actors, from urban developers looking to formulate livable and sustainable neighbourhoods, to city leaders looking for ways in which their city can flourish, to scholars and individuals concerned with equitability and the right to the city. This book is the beginning of a conservation about what is important for us to protect in the city for future generations beyond built structures, and the role of intangible cultural heritage in the creation of full and happy lives. The book is of interest to legal and sociolegal readers, specifically those who study cities, cultural heritage law, and legal anthropology.
Law and Intangible Cultural Heritage in the City
by Sara Gwendolyn RossWith disappearing music venues, and arts and culture communities at constant risk of displacement in our urban centers, the preservation of intangible cultural heritage is of growing concern to global cities. This book addresses the role and protection of intangible cultural heritage in the urban context. Using the methodology of Urban Legal Anthropology, the author provides an ethnographic account of the civic effort of Toronto to become a Music City from 2014-18 in the context of redevelopment and gentrification pressures. Through this, the book elucidates the problems cities like Toronto have in equitably protecting intangible cultural heritage and what can be done to address this. It also evaluates the engagement that Toronto and other cities have had with international legal frameworks intended to protect intangible cultural heritage, as well as potential counterhegemonic uses of hegemonic legal tools. Understanding urban intangible cultural heritage and the communities of people who produce it is of importance to a range of actors, from urban developers looking to formulate livable and sustainable neighbourhoods, to city leaders looking for ways in which their city can flourish, to scholars and individuals concerned with equitability and the right to the city. This book is the beginning of a conservation about what is important for us to protect in the city for future generations beyond built structures, and the role of intangible cultural heritage in the creation of full and happy lives. The book is of interest to legal and sociolegal readers, specifically those who study cities, cultural heritage law, and legal anthropology.
The Law in Shakespeare (Early Modern Literature in History)
by C. Jordan K. CunninghamLeading scholars in the field analyze Shakespeare's plays to show how their dramatic content shapes issues debated in conflicts arising from the creation and application of law. Individual essays focus on such topics such as slander, revenge, and royal prerogative; these studies reveal the problems confronting early modern English men and women.
Layla's Room (Modern Plays)
by Sabrina MahfouzRespect women, respect girls. Respect yourselves. Remember you are everyone who's gone before you and you are nobody that has ever been, so make it count, make it special, make a difference, make people listen, love the women who have loved you and watch us make the world move to a better place. For Layla, every day is a battleground.The pay gap, the thigh gap, over-sexed pop and selfies that are photoshopped – they're just part of the world she lives in.But that world is about to change.While breaking out of her bedroom – and with drama, comedy, poetry and music as her weapons – Layla breaks down and makes sense of the realities, difficulties and absurdities of teenage life in the UK today.Collected from a bespoke national survey, the voices of a thousand UK teens are brought to life in Layla. Their ambitions, concerns, role-models and regrets are woven together by award-winning Sabrina Mahfouz and theatre company Theatre Centre, offering a hard-hitting, yet hopeful, story.Layla's Room received its world premiere at Redbridge Drama Centre on 15 September 2016 in a production by Theatre Centre. It is ideal for students and young performers between 16 and 18 years old.
Layla's Room (Modern Plays)
by Sabrina MahfouzRespect women, respect girls. Respect yourselves. Remember you are everyone who's gone before you and you are nobody that has ever been, so make it count, make it special, make a difference, make people listen, love the women who have loved you and watch us make the world move to a better place. For Layla, every day is a battleground.The pay gap, the thigh gap, over-sexed pop and selfies that are photoshopped – they're just part of the world she lives in.But that world is about to change.While breaking out of her bedroom – and with drama, comedy, poetry and music as her weapons – Layla breaks down and makes sense of the realities, difficulties and absurdities of teenage life in the UK today.Collected from a bespoke national survey, the voices of a thousand UK teens are brought to life in Layla. Their ambitions, concerns, role-models and regrets are woven together by award-winning Sabrina Mahfouz and theatre company Theatre Centre, offering a hard-hitting, yet hopeful, story.Layla's Room received its world premiere at Redbridge Drama Centre on 15 September 2016 in a production by Theatre Centre. It is ideal for students and young performers between 16 and 18 years old.
LA Confidential (PDF)
by Nancy TaylorChristmas 1951, Los Angeles; a city where the police are as corrupt as the criminals. Six prisoners are badly beaten in their cells by drunk police officers. For the three LAPD detectives involved, it is time to face the guilty secrets of their violent pasts. James Ellroy is one of the best crime writers of the 1990s. You won't be able to put this down. It has recently been made into a tense and atmospheric Oscar-winning film starring Kim Basinger and Kevin Spacey.
Le Théâtre du Soleil: The First Fifty-Five Years
by Béatrice Picon-VallinLe Théâtre du Soleil traces the company’s history from a group of young, barely trained actors, directors, and designers struggling to match their political commitment to a creative strategy, to their grappling with the concerns of migration, separation and exile in the early decades of the twenty-first century. Béatrice Picon-Vallin recounts how, in the 55 years since its founding, the Théâtre du Soleil has established itself as one of the foremost names in modern theatre. Ariane Mnouchkine and her collaborators have developed a unique and ever-evolving style that combines a piercing richness of shape, color, and texture with precision choreography, innovative musical accompaniment, and multi-layered, metaphorical dreamscapes. This rich, storied history is illustrated by a wealth of spectacular rehearsal and production photos from the company's own archive and interviews with dozens of past and present members, including Mnouchkine herself. Judith G. Miller’s timely translation of the first comprehensive history and analysis of a remarkable, award-winning company is a compelling read for both students and teachers of Drama and Theatre Studies.
Le Théâtre du Soleil: The First Fifty-Five Years
by Béatrice Picon-VallinLe Théâtre du Soleil traces the company’s history from a group of young, barely trained actors, directors, and designers struggling to match their political commitment to a creative strategy, to their grappling with the concerns of migration, separation and exile in the early decades of the twenty-first century. Béatrice Picon-Vallin recounts how, in the 55 years since its founding, the Théâtre du Soleil has established itself as one of the foremost names in modern theatre. Ariane Mnouchkine and her collaborators have developed a unique and ever-evolving style that combines a piercing richness of shape, color, and texture with precision choreography, innovative musical accompaniment, and multi-layered, metaphorical dreamscapes. This rich, storied history is illustrated by a wealth of spectacular rehearsal and production photos from the company's own archive and interviews with dozens of past and present members, including Mnouchkine herself. Judith G. Miller’s timely translation of the first comprehensive history and analysis of a remarkable, award-winning company is a compelling read for both students and teachers of Drama and Theatre Studies.
Leading Creators of Twentieth-Century Czech Theatre
by Jarka M. BurianIn this invaluable and detailed presentation of the leading creative figures in a richly innovative and dynamic period of Czech theatre, Professor Jarka M. Burian provides us with insightful portraits of the directors K. H. Hilar, E. F. Burian, Alfred Radok, and Otomar Krejca: of the famous Voskovec and Werich comedic duo; of the scenographer Josef Svoboda; and of the playwright, now President of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel. There are also briefer studies of numerous other directors, designers, and actors. The author, a Czech-American theatre scholar and practitioner, has been a frequent on-site observer of Czech theatre since 1965. He is directly acquainted with many of the major artists and the most notable productions that have made Czech theatre internationally famous.
Leading Creators of Twentieth-Century Czech Theatre (Routledge Harwood Polish And East European Theatre Archive Ser. #Vol. 7)
by Jarka M. BurianIn this invaluable and detailed presentation of the leading creative figures in a richly innovative and dynamic period of Czech theatre, Professor Jarka M. Burian provides us with insightful portraits of the directors K. H. Hilar, E. F. Burian, Alfred Radok, and Otomar Krejca: of the famous Voskovec and Werich comedic duo; of the scenographer Josef Svoboda; and of the playwright, now President of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel. There are also briefer studies of numerous other directors, designers, and actors. The author, a Czech-American theatre scholar and practitioner, has been a frequent on-site observer of Czech theatre since 1965. He is directly acquainted with many of the major artists and the most notable productions that have made Czech theatre internationally famous.
Lear (Student Editions)
by Edward BondEdward Bond's version of Lear's story embraces myth and reality, war and politics, to reveal the violence endemic in all unjust societies. He exposes corrupted innocence as the core of social morality, and this false morality as a source of the aggressive tension which must ultimately destroy that society. In a play in which blindness becomes a dramatic metaphor for insight, Bond warns that 'it is so easy to subordinate justice to power, but when this happens power takes on the dynamics and dialectics of aggression, and then nothing is really changed'.