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Introduction: Stephen Berkoff: One-Act Plays
No full text[BOOK ABSTRACT]
Steven Berkoff has been variously described as controversial, thrilling, electric and dynamic. A Renaissance man of the theatre, he is known equally for his writing, directing and acting.
Collecting together nineteen one-act plays, this volume presents never-before-published material. Abusive, shocking and endlessly surprising, these sharply written pieces showcase Berkoff's trademark controversy, black humour and dramatic dialectics.
Themes that haunt much of his work are present: his luxurious verbosity; his counterpoint of crude street-patter and elegiac proclamation; sex wars; class wars; dislocation and abandonment of love in a thankless and unyielding world. The selection of plays allows the performer and reader to experience Berkoff's fluid anarchic poetry at its most profane within the complete and pithy structure of the one-act play.
Established plays such as The Biblical Tales (which enjoyed success in their 2010 run at the New End Theatre, Hampstead) stand alongside previously unpublished material, giving the range of Berkoff's work full expression, from his established thematic concerns to his new and unseen work.
Perfect for student and amateur performances, this volume contains a full introduction by Geoffrey Colman, Head of Acting at the Central School of Speech and Drama. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/steven-berkoff-one-act-plays-9781408182482/#sthash.YWuUTDVl.dpu
Introduction (To A History of Theatre in Spain)
No full textAn Introduction to 'A History of Theatre in Spain'.
What is Spain? In any 'history of', this becomes the key question, the one that informs the entire work and inevitably shapes the readers' response to it. As the political and cultural boundaries of the Iberian Peninsula slowly formed themselves from the eighth century onward - boundaries which became relatively stable by the early sixteenth century as the nation-building agenda of the Catholic monarchs bore fruit - the global imaginary began to equate 'Spain' with Castile, the central plateau of the Peninsula that laid claim to being the seat of government (Philip II made Madrid the administrative capital in 1561) and, consequently, the very heart and soul of the country
Plays and Performance Text by Women 1880-1930: An Anthology of Plays by British and American Women from the Modernist Period
No full textThis groundbreaking anthology, part of the Women, Theatre and Performance series, brings together an extraordinary mix of one-act and full length plays and solo performance texts written by women. Included in the volume are texts by Beatrice Herford, Ruth Draper, Zora Neale Hurston and G. B. Stern, originally performed across commercial and amateur theatres in Britain and America. Some of the plays have remained unpublished since their original performance - Georgina Weldon's Not Alone, Clothilde Graves' Mother of Three, Rachel Crother's Ourselves and Marie Stope's Our Ostriches. Others are anthologized here alongside plays with which they connect aesthetically and historically, for example, Edith Lyttelton's Warp and Woof, Elizabeth Robins' Votes for Women, Elizabeth Baker's Edith, Sophie Treadwell's Machinal and Aimée Stuarts' Nine Till Six.
The volume, for students and scholars, provides an accessible collection of texts exemplifying the range and breadth of women's theatre writing from the 1880s to the early decades of the twentieth century
Performing Barcelona: Cultural Tourism, Geography and Identity
No full textIn a city whose identity has been so marked by architectural innovation, and where theatricality is perceived to form such a conspicuous part of everyday life, it is perhaps not surprising that the iconography of Barcelona is bound up with performance. Examining key companies whose work is lauded in the global marketplace, the importance of refashioned theatrical spaces, and the move towards a dramaturgy more concerned with the city’s concrete history and inhabitants, this paper shows the modes in which ‘Barcelona’ as a material and imagined entity is performed across a range of theatrical and filmic texts
So You Think You Can Dance Does Dance Studies
No full textThe extended choreography of the reality television dance competition So You Think You Can Dance teaches its viewers how to engage in a different kind of spectatorship
Rehearsing Boal
No full textThe following paper takes the form of a staged dialogue between two characters who meet on a country road. We chose the dialogical form for a number of reasons. The first is that the theatrical form which is the subject of our piece forefronts the technique and art of argument - and so, here two characters engage in an extended argument over the meaning and possibility of political theatre, following the death of Augusto Boal in 2009. Second, the literary conceit of a written dialogue has a long history within discourses of theatre, philosophy and politics - going back to Plato, but one also finds it in Diderot and in Brecht's 'Messingkauf' dialogues. It may appear that there is a certain irony to our approach, which uses a staged dialogic form to talk about a mode of theatre that is essentially improvised with and audience who are incorporated as its participants. However, our aim is to engage the reader through a deliberately polemical technique: to engage Boal, not as most of the literature on 'Theatre of the Oppressed' does, by reporting on practice, but through an imagined discussion with philosophical interlocutors. Thus, we connect Boal with a broader question (and tradition) of political theatre and its current meaning. A third reason is that we wanted to retain a certain fidelity to the way this thinking originated, which as a co-authored piece, presented performatively at conferences, also derives from many hours of discussion. Fourth, and finally, we wanted to invite reflection on the paradox of theatre itself, which 'stages' dialogue, at the same time as making it impossible. Here we wanted our dialogue to function a little like Benjamin's automaton chess player, who "respond[s] to every move [...] with a countermove [to] ensure the winning of the game.
The Physical Voice in the Moving Body
No full textDiscussion and experience about voice in the body. An interview with Patricia Bardi and commentary by Jane Boston at Central
From Grounded Foot to Leaping Foot
No full textThis research project developed from a realisation that there was a missing link between movement work for grounding and the next demand on the student to jump. Debbie Green and Ita O'Brien began their research, ‘From grounded foot to leaping foot’ in February 2009, proposing the statement ‘grounding is a pre-requisite’ as the premise from which to start the investigation into how the use of the feet can be developed to take the actor from this deeply grounded place to jump and leap safely. The work is explored within the context of fundamental movement for the acting student with the aim of maximising the actor's physical choices within her/his expressive work. From being grounded to leaping is quite literally a big ‘leap’ for acting students to make. Following nine months of research (March–December 2009), Green and O'Brien led a series of six practical sessions with nine volunteer actors between January and March 2010 to develop the progression from the ground, through the rigour and preparation required to take the body into a jump and leap, to the strength and articulation required to land safely. The work was then presented as a Practice and Pedagogy Forum, to an invited audience within the Research Events programme at Central School of Speech & Drama on 26 October 2010. The work has subsequently been taken back into the classroom. This article is the culmination of the research into the progression of work, ‘From grounded foot to leaping foot’
