Drama Stage and Audience

Drama Stage and Audience PDF

Author: J. L. Styan

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1975-04-25

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9780521098694

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This book will appeal to students, actors and directors of drama, as well as the theatregoers.

Audience as Performer

Audience as Performer PDF

Author: Caroline Heim

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-07-30

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 1317633555

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'Actors always talk about what the audience does. I don’t understand, we are just sitting here.' Audience as Performer proposes that in the theatre, there are two troupes of performers: the actors and the audience. Although academics have scrutinised how audiences respond, make meaning and co-create while watching a performance, little research has considered the behaviour of the theatre audience as a performance in and of itself. This insightful book describes how an audience performs through its myriad gestural, vocal and paralingual actions, and considers the following questions: If the audience are performers, who are their audiences? How have audiences’ roles changed throughout history? How do talkbacks and technology influence the audience’s role as critics? What influence does the audience have on the creation of community in theatre? How can the audience function as both consumer and co-creator? Drawing from over 140 interviews with audience members, actors and ushers in the UK, USA and Austrialia, Heim reveals the lived experience of audience members at the theatrical event. It is a fresh reading of mainstream audiences’ activities, bringing their voices to the fore and exploring their emerging new roles in the theatre of the Twenty-First Century.

Imagining the Audience in Early Modern Drama, 1558-1642

Imagining the Audience in Early Modern Drama, 1558-1642 PDF

Author: J. Low

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2011-04-25

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0230118399

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This essay collection builds on the latest research on the topic of theatre audiences in early modern England. In broad terms, the project answers the question, 'How do we define the relationships between performance and audience?'.

Theatrical Convention and Audience Response in Early Modern Drama

Theatrical Convention and Audience Response in Early Modern Drama PDF

Author: Jeremy Lopez

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2002-12-05

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1139436678

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This book gives a detailed and comprehensive survey of the diverse, theatrically vital formal conventions of the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Besides providing readings of plays such as Hamlet, Othello, Merchant of Venice, and Titus Andronicus, it also places Shakespeare emphatically within his own theatrical context, and focuses on the relationship between the demanding repertory system of the time and the conventions and content of the plays. Lopez argues that the limitations of the relatively bare stage and non-naturalistic mode of early modern theatre would have made the potential for failure very great, and he proposes that understanding this potential for failure is crucial for understanding the way in which the drama succeeded on stage. The book offers perspectives on familiar conventions such as the pun, the aside and the expository speech; and it works toward a definition of early modern theatrical genres based on the relationship between these well-known conventions and the incoherent experience of early modern theatrical narratives.

Modern Drama and the Rhetoric of Theater

Modern Drama and the Rhetoric of Theater PDF

Author: W. B. Worthen

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2015-01-30

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0520286871

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The history of drama is typically viewed as a series of inert "styles." Tracing British and American stage drama from the 1880s onward, W. B. Worthen instead sees drama as the interplay of text, stage production, and audience. How are audiences manipulated? What makes drama meaningful? Worthen identifies three rhetorical strategies that distinguish an O'Neill play from a Yeats, or these two from a Brecht. Where realistic theater relies on the "natural" qualities of the stage scene, poetic theater uses the poet's word, the text, to control performance. Modern political theater, by contrast, openly places the audience at the center of its rhetorical designs, and the drama of the postwar period is shown to develop a range of post-Brechtian practices that make the audience the subject of the play. Worthen's book deserves the attention of any literary critic or serious theatergoer interested in the relationship between modern drama and the spectator.

The English Stage

The English Stage PDF

Author: J. L. Styan

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1996-07-13

Total Pages: 452

ISBN-13: 9780521556361

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The English Stage tells the story of drama through its many changes in style and convention from medieval times to the present day. With a wide sweep of coverage, John Styan analyses the key features of staging, including early street theatre and public performance, the evolution of the playhouse and the private space, and the pairing of theory and stagecraft in the works of modern dramatists. He focuses on the conventions by which a playwright, actors and their audience create the phenomenon of theatre and the way such conventions have changed over time. Styan can be considered among a small number of influential scholars who have helped to develop theatre history from its origins in literary studies into an independent and respected field. From the vantage point of a lifetime's study he examines and illustrates the multitude of factors which have brought and continue to bring plays to life.

Routledge Companion to Audiences and the Performing Arts

Routledge Companion to Audiences and the Performing Arts PDF

Author: Matthew Reason

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-04-05

Total Pages: 774

ISBN-13: 1000537986

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The Routledge Companion to Audiences and the Performing Arts represents a truly multi-dimensional exploration of the inter-relationships between audiences and performance. This study considers audiences contextually and historically, through both qualitative and quantitative empirical research, and places them within appropriate philosophical and socio-cultural discourses. Ultimately, the collection marks the point where audiences have become central and essential not just to the act of performance itself but also to theatre, dance, opera, music and performance studies as academic disciplines. This Companion will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduates, as well as to theatre, dance, opera and music practitioners and performing arts organisations and stakeholders involved in educational activities.

Audience as Performer

Audience as Performer PDF

Author: Caroline Heim

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-07-30

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 1317633547

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'Actors always talk about what the audience does. I don’t understand, we are just sitting here.' Audience as Performer proposes that in the theatre, there are two troupes of performers: the actors and the audience. Although academics have scrutinised how audiences respond, make meaning and co-create while watching a performance, little research has considered the behaviour of the theatre audience as a performance in and of itself. This insightful book describes how an audience performs through its myriad gestural, vocal and paralingual actions, and considers the following questions: If the audience are performers, who are their audiences? How have audiences’ roles changed throughout history? How do talkbacks and technology influence the audience’s role as critics? What influence does the audience have on the creation of community in theatre? How can the audience function as both consumer and co-creator? Drawing from over 140 interviews with audience members, actors and ushers in the UK, USA and Austrialia, Heim reveals the lived experience of audience members at the theatrical event. It is a fresh reading of mainstream audiences’ activities, bringing their voices to the fore and exploring their emerging new roles in the theatre of the Twenty-First Century.

Theatre Audiences

Theatre Audiences PDF

Author: Susan Bennett

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-09-13

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1136207171

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Susan Bennett's highly successful Theatre Audiences is a unique full-length study of the audience as cultural phenomenon, which looks at both theories of spectatorship and the practice of different theatres and their audiences. Published here in a brand new updated edition, Theatre Audiences now includes: • a new preface by the author • a stunning extra chapter on intercultural theatre • a revised up-to-date bibliography. Theatre Audiences is a must-buy for teachers and students interested in spectatorship and theatre audiences, and will be valuable reading for practitioners and others involved in the theatre.

Play Readings

Play Readings PDF

Author: Rob Urbinati

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2015-10-05

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 1317554647

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Play Readings: A Complete Guide for Theatre Practitioners demystifies the standards and protocols of a play reading, demonstrating how to create effective and evocative readings for those new to or inexperienced with the genre. It examines all of the essential considerations involved in readings, including the use of the venue, pre-reading preparations, playwright/director communication, editing/adapting stage directions, casting, using the limited rehearsal time effectively, simple "staging" suggestions, working with actors, handling complex stage directions, talkbacks, and limiting the use of props, costumes, and music. A variety of readings are covered, including readings of musicals, operas, and period plays, for comprehensive coverage of this increasingly prevalent production form.