British Theatre Between the Wars, 1918-1939 PDF Download

Author: Clive Barker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521624077
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
This volume initiates a long-overdue reassessment of mid-twentieth-century British theatre cultures.

Author: Rebecca D'Monte
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1408166011
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
British theatre from 1900 to 1950 has been subject to radical re-evaluation with plays from the period setting theatres alight and gaining critical acclaim once again; this book explains why, presenting a comprehensive survey of the theatre and how it shaped the work that followed. Rebecca D'Monte examines how the emphasis upon the working class, 'angry' drama from the 1950s has led to the neglect of much of the century's earlier drama, positioning the book as part of the current debate about the relationship between war and culture, the middlebrow, and historiography. In a comprehensive survey of the period, the book considers: - the Edwardian theatre; - the theatre of the First World War, including propaganda and musicals; -the interwar years, the rise of commercial theatre and influence of Modernism; - the theatre of the Second World War and post-war period. Essays from leading scholars Penny Farfan, Steve Nicholson and Claire Cochrane give further critical perspectives on the period's theatre and demonstrate its relevance to the drama of today. For anyone studying 20th-century British Drama this will prove one of the foundational texts.

Author: Robert Sawyer
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137582189
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 314

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Book Description
Shakespeare Between the World Wars draws parallels between Shakespearean scholarship, criticism, and production from 1920 to 1940 and the chaotic years of the Interwar era. The book begins with the scene in Hamlet where the Prince confronts his mother, Gertrude. Just as the closet scene can be read as a productive period bounded by devastation and determination on both sides, Robert Sawyer shows that the years between the World Wars were equally positioned. Examining performance and offering detailed textual analyses, Sawyer considers the re-evaluation of Shakespeare in the Anglo-American sphere after the First World War. Instead of the dried, barren earth depicted by T. S. Eliot and others in the 1920s and 1930s, this book argues that the literary landscape resembled a paradoxically fertile wasteland, for just below the arid plain of the time lay the seeds for artistic renewal and rejuvenation which would finally flourish in the later twentieth century.

Author: Robert Leach
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429873336
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 848

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Book Description
An Illustrated History of British Theatre and Performance chronicles the history and development of theatre from the Roman era to the present day. As the most public of arts, theatre constantly interacted with changing social, political and intellectual movements and ideas, and Robert Leach’s masterful work restores to the foreground of this evolution the contributions of women, gay people and ethnic minorities, as well as the theatres of the English regions, and of Wales and Scotland. Highly illustrated chapters trace the development of theatre through major plays from each period; evaluations of playwrights; contemporary dramatic theory; acting and acting companies; dance and music; the theatre buildings themselves; and the audience, while also highlighting enduring features of British theatre, from comic gags to the use of props. Continuing on from the Enlightenment, Volume Two of An Illustrated History of British Theatre and Performance leads its readers from the drama and performances of the Industrial Revolution to the latest digital theatre. Moving from Punch and Judy, castle spectres and penny showmen to Modernism and Postdramatic Theatre, Leach’s second volume triumphantly completes a collated account of all the British Theatre History knowledge anyone could ever need.

Author: Jane Milling
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521651328
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 597

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Book Description
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Author: Don Watson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 135023205X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
This study of British amateur theatre in the inter-war period examines five different but interwoven examples of the belief, common in theatrical and educational circles at the time, that amateur drama had a purpose beyond recreation. Amateur theatre was at the height of its popularity as a cultural practice between the wars, so that by 1939 more British people had practical experience of putting on plays than at any time before or since. Providing an original account of the use of drama in adult education projects in deprived areas, and of amateur theatre in government-funded centres for the unemployed in the 1930s, it discusses repertoires, participation by working- class people and pioneering techniques of play-making. Amateur drama festivals and competitions were intended to raise standards and educate audiences. This book assesses their effect on play-making, and the use of innovative one-act plays to express contentious material, as well as looking at the Left Book Club Theatre Guild as an attempt to align the amateur theatre movement with anti-fascist and anti-war movements. A chapter on the Second World War rectifies the neglect of amateur theatre in war-time cultural studies, arguing that it was present and important in every aspect of war-time life. Don Watson builds on current scholarship and makes use of archival sources, local newspapers, unpublished scripts and the records of organizations not usually associated with the theatre. His work explores the range and diversity of amateur drama between the wars and the contributions it made to British theatre.

Author: Maggie B. Gale
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136345221
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 882

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Book Description
A groundbreaking compilation of the key movements in the history of modern theatre. Each of the book’s parts comprises full reproductions of the plays that defined the period and key critical writings that inform and contextualise their reading. "Here is an anthology of plays and criticism that all teachers of drama should take seriously. The fresh angles and approaches the volume offers on topics such as naturalism, the historical avant-garde, and breakthrough works by innovative performance artists (e.g., Laurie Anderson, SuAndi) all argue in favor of this collection as required reading in courses on modern stagecraft." CHOICE, Feb 2011

Author: Beatrix Hesse
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 113746304X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
This is the first comprehensive study of the English crime play, presenting a survey of 250 plays performed in the London West End between 1900 and 2000. The first part is historically orientated while the second one establishes a tentative poetics of the genre. The third part presents an analysis of some 20 plays adapted from detective fiction.

Author: Maggie B. Gale
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134143052
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
The first book to provide a detailed and up to date analysis of Priestley’s enormous contribution to twentieth century British theatre. This study unpicks the contradictions of a playwright and theatre theorist popular with audiences but too often dismissed by critics.

Author: Nadine Holdsworth
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134102348
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
This book explores the ways that pre-existing ‘national’ works or ‘national theatre’ sites can offer a rich source of material for speaking to the contemporary moment because of the resonances or associations they offer of a different time, place, politics, or culture. Featuring a broad international scope, it offers a series of thought-provoking essays that explore how playwrights, directors, theatre-makers, and performance artists have re-staged or re-worked a classic national play, performance, theatrical form, or theatre space in order to engage with conceptions of and questions around the nation, nationalism, and national identity in the contemporary moment, opening up new ways of thinking about or problematizing questions around the nation and national identity. Chapters ask how productions engage with a particular moment in the national psyche in the context of internationalism and globalization, for example, as well as how productions explore the interconnectivity of nations, intercultural agendas, or cosmopolitanism. They also explore questions relating to the presence of migrants, exiles, or refugees, and the legacy of colonial histories and post-colonial subjectivities. The volume highlights how theatre and performance has the ability to contest and unsettle ideas of the nation and national identity through the use of various sites, stagings, and performance strategies, and how contemporary theatres have portrayed national agendas and characters at a time of intense cultural flux and repositioning.