IB Theatre

THE ART OF THEATRE: THEN AND NOW, Third Edition, explores issues of cultural diversity and creativity, presents a full day-in-the-life of theatre, and offers comprehensive coverage of theatre history. The authors make timely and relevant connections between theatre and the familiar world of television and film to help students understand how the living art of theatre relates to and influences today's screen entertainment. For flexibility in instruction, THE ART OF THEATRE is available in two versions. This full version contains 17 chapters, six of which cover theatre history in both Western and non-Western contexts, and concludes with a chapter on "The Musical". THE ART OF THEATRE: A CONCISE INTRODUCTION features 12 chapters and a briefer treatment of theatre's history, and also features a chapter on "The Musical".

This comprehensive guide to the theatre's history covers theatre arts around the globe, including ancient Eastern arts like Kabuki and more modern ones such as Bollywood. This book goes back to what we know from our earliest ancestors by examining ancient artifacts and ancient texts to find out how theatre was influenced by life and how it in turn influenced the culture of the people who came to enjoy it. The book concludes with a look at modern theatre and its current heyday as entertainment for the masses, especially in places like Broadway in New York City.

Known as the bible of theatre history, Brockett and Hildy's History of the Theatre is the most comprehensive and widely used survey of theatre history in the market. This 40th Anniversary Edition retains all of the traditional features that have made History of the Theatre the most successful text of its kind including worldwide coverage, more than 530 photos and illustrations, useful maps, and the expertise of Oscar G. Brockett and Franklin J. Hildy, two of the most widely respected theatre historians in the field. This tenth edition provides the most thorough and accurate assessment of theatre history available and includes contemporary milestones in theatre history.

Fringe Benefits, an award-winning theatre company, collaborates with schools and communities to create plays that promote constructive dialogue about diversity and discrimination issues. Staging Social Justice is a groundbreaking collection of essays about Fringe Benefits' script-devising methodology and their collaborations in the United States, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. The anthology also vividly describes the transformative impact of these creative initiatives on participants and audiences.  By reflecting on their experiences working on these projects, the contributing writers--artists, activists and scholars--provide the reader with tools and inspiration to create their own theatre for social change.   "Contributors to this big-hearted collection share Fringe Benefits' play devising process, and a compelling array of methods for measuring impact, approaches to aesthetics (with humor high on the list), coalition and community building, reflections on safe space, and acknowledgement of the diverse roles needed to apply theatre to social justice goals. The book beautifully bears witness to both how generative Fringe Benefits' collaborations have been for participants and to the potential of engaged art in multidisciplinary ecosystems more broadly."--Jan Cohen-Cruz, editor of Public: A Journal of Imagining America

If theatre were a religion, explains David Mamet in his opening chapter, "many of the observations and suggestions in this book might be heretical." As always, Mamet delivers on his promise: inTheatre, the acclaimed author ofGlengarry Glen Ross andSpeed the Plowcalls for nothing less than the death of the director and the end of acting theory. For Mamet, either actors are good or they are non-actors, and good actors generally work best without the interference of a director, however well-intentioned. Issue plays, political correctness, method actors, impossible directions, Stanislavksy, and elitists all fall under Mamet's critical gaze. To students, teachers, and directors who crave a blast of fresh air in a world that can be insular and fearful ofchange,Theatre throws down a gauntlet that challenges everyone to do better, including Mamet himself.

From before history was recorded to the present day, theatre has been a major artistic form around the world. From puppetry to mimes and street theatre, this complex art has utilized all other art forms such as dance, literature, music, painting, sculpture, and architecture. Every aspect ofhuman activity and human culture can be, and has been, incorporated into the creation of theatre. In this Very Short Introduction Marvin Carlson takes us through Ancient Greece and Rome, to Medieval Japan and Europe, to America and beyond, and looks at how the various forms of theatre have been interpreted and enjoyed. Exploring the role that theatre artists play - from the actor and director tothe designer and puppet-master, as well as the audience - this is an engaging exploration of what theatre has meant, and still means, to people of all ages at all times.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, andenthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

This condensed anthology reproduces close to a dozen plays from Xiaomei Chen's well-received original collection, The Columbia Anthology of Modern Chinese Drama, along with her critical introduction to the historical, cultural, and aesthetic evolution of twentieth-century Chinese spoken drama. Comprising representative works from the Republican era to postsocialist China, the book encapsulates the revolutionary rethinking of Chinese theater and performance that began in the late Qing dynasty and vividly portrays the uncertainty and anxiety brought on by modernism, socialism, political conflict, and war. Chosen works from 1919 to 1990 also highlight the formation of national and gender identities during a period of tremendous social, cultural, and political change in China and the genesis of contemporary attitudes toward the West. PRC theater tracks the rise of communism, juxtaposing ideals of Chinese socialism against the sacrifices made for a new society. Post-Mao drama addresses the nation's socialist legacy, its attempt to reexamine its cultural roots, and postsocialist reflections on critical issues such as nation, class, gender, and collective memories. An essential, portable guide for easy reference and classroom use, this abridgment provides a concise yet well-rounded survey of China's theatricality and representation of political life. The original work not only established a canon of modern Chinese drama in the West but also made it available for the first time in English in a single volume.

At a time when good editions of drama in English are prohibitively expensive and online texts are unedited and lack the apparatus necessary for students to understand and contextualize the plays, this anthology affordably illustrates every significant genre of drama in the English language from the late fourteenth century to the early twentieth century, with plays from England, Ireland, and the United States of America. The mystery and morality plays of the Middle Ages, Renaissance comedy, tragedy and meta-theater, Restoration and eighteenth-century comedy, tragedy, and ballad opera, nineteenth-century melodrama, and early twentieth century realism and naturalism are all presented with the introductions, glossaries and notes suitable for a college level reader by an editor with a quarter of a century of experience teaching courses onthe history of drama in English. The plays both reflect their times and critique them, while remaining stageable today. The Wakefield Master, The York Realist, Marlowe, Jonson, Dryden, Wycherley, Gay, Boucicault, Synge, and Shaw are some of the playwrights in this representative collection of plays that reveal both the popular appeal of the English language theater and the dazzling dramatic artistry it embodied over a period of six centuries. Further the collection is in "old spelling" and is thus a useful sourcebook for those interested in the history of the English language.

Enacting History is a collection of new essays exploring the world of historical performances. The volume focuses on performances outside the traditional sphere of theatre, among them living history museums, battle reenactments, pageants, renaissance festivals, and adventure-tourism destinations. This volume argues that the recent surge in such performances have raised significant questions about the need for, interest in, and value of such nontraditional theater. Many of these performances claim a greater or lesser degree of historical "accuracy" or "authenticity," and the authors tease out the representational and historiographic issues related to these arguments. How, for instance, are issues of race, ethnicity, and gender dealt with at museums that purport to be accurate windows into the past? How are politics and labor issues handled in local- or state-funded institutions that rely on volunteer performers? How do tourists' expectations shape the choices made by would-be purveyors of the past? Where do matters of taste or censorship enter in when reconciling the archival evidence with a family-friendly mission? Essays in the collection address, among other subjects, reenactments of period cookery and cuisine at a Maryland renaissance festival; the roles of women as represented at Minnesota's premiere living history museum, Historic Fort Snelling; and the Lewis and Clark bicentennial play as cultural commemoration. The editors argue that historical performances like these-regardless of their truth-telling claims-are an important means to communicate, document, and even shape history, and allow for a level of participation and accessibility that is unique to performance. Enacting History is an entertaining and informative account of the public's fascination with acting out and watching history and of the diverse methods of fulfilling this need.

Theatre, like other subjects in the humanities, has recently undergone quintessential changes in theory, approach, and research. Modern Drama - a collection of twelve essays from leading theatre and drama scholars - investigates the contemporary meanings and the cultural and political resonances of the terms inherent in the concepts of 'modern' and 'drama,' delving into a range of theoretical questions on the history of modernism, modernity, postmodernism, and postmodernity as they have intersected with the shifting histories of drama, theatre, and performance. Using incisive analyses of both modern and postmodern plays, the contributors examine varied topics such as the analysis of periodicity; the articulation of social, political, and cultural production in theatre; the re-evaluation of texts, performances, and canons; and demonstrations of how interdisciplinarity inflects theatre and its practice.Including work by Sue-Ellen Case, Elin Diamond, Harry J. Elam Jr, Alan Filewod, Erika Fischer-Lichte, Stanton B. Garner Jr, Shannon Jackson, Loren Kruger, Josephine Lee, David Savran, Michael Sidnell, and Ann Wilson, the collection highlights the importance of continuing to investigate not only critical texts but also the terms of the debate themselves. Incorporating both drama history and modern studies, this compilation will be an invaluable work to all scholars of theatre and drama, and as well as those students of the humanities and modernism.

Stagestruck traces the making of a vibrant French theater industry between the reign of Louis XIV and the French Revolution. During this era more than eighty provincial and colonial cities celebrated the inauguration of their first public playhouses. These theaters emerged as the most prominent urban cultural institutions in prerevolutionary France, becoming key sites for the articulation and contestation of social, political, and racial relationships. Combining rich description with nuanced analysis based on extensive archival evidence, Lauren R. Clay illuminates the wide-ranging consequences of theater's spectacular growth for performers, spectators, and authorities in cities throughout France as well as in the empire's most important Atlantic colony, Saint-Domingue. Clay argues that outside Paris the expansion of theater came about through local initiative, civic engagement, and entrepreneurial investment, rather than through actions or policies undertaken by the royal government and its agents. Reconstructing the business of theatrical production, she brings to light the efforts of a wide array of investors, entrepreneurs, directors, and actors--including women and people of color--who seized the opportunities offered by commercial theater to become important agents of cultural change. Portraying a vital and increasingly consumer-oriented public sphere beyond the capital, Stagestruck overturns the long-held notion that cultural change flowed from Paris and the royal court to the provinces and colonies. This deeply researched book will appeal to historians of Europe and the Atlantic world, particularly those interested in the social and political impact of the consumer revolution and the forging of national and imperial cultural networks. In addition to theater and literary scholars, it will attract the attention of historians and sociologists who study business, labor history, and the emergence of the modern French state.