Playwrights' Progress PDF Download

Author: Colin Chambers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Author: Peggy Ramsay
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786824302
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Peggy Ramsay (1908-1991) was the foremost play agent of her time. Her list of clients shows her to have been at the centre of British playwriting for several generations from the late 1950s on. To her remarkable array of clients, her letter writing was notorious, marked by searing candour, both a wondrous motivation and an unforgiving scrutiny to be feared. 'Peggy judged by the most exalted standards and lashed her writers when they failed to meet them. Her force of personality made her well-nigh irresistible. The letters she wrote to her writers and to producers are extraordinary documents, filled with all these qualities, and indiscreet, blasphemous and saucy to boot.' – Simon Callow

Author: Carol Fisher Saller
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226734102
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 151

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Book Description
Each year writers and editors submit over three thousand grammar and style questions to the Q&A page at The Chicago Manual of Style Online. Some are arcane, some simply hilarious—and one editor, Carol Fisher Saller, reads every single one of them. All too often she notes a classic author-editor standoff, wherein both parties refuse to compromise on the "rights" and "wrongs" of prose styling: "This author is giving me a fit." "I wish that I could just DEMAND the use of the serial comma at all times." "My author wants his preface to come at the end of the book. This just seems ridiculous to me. I mean, it’s not a post-face." In The Subversive Copy Editor, Saller casts aside this adversarial view and suggests new strategies for keeping the peace. Emphasizing habits of carefulness, transparency, and flexibility, she shows copy editors how to build an environment of trust and cooperation. One chapter takes on the difficult author; another speaks to writers themselves. Throughout, the focus is on serving the reader, even if it means breaking "rules" along the way. Saller’s own foibles and misadventures provide ample material: "I mess up all the time," she confesses. "It’s how I know things." Writers, Saller acknowledges, are only half the challenge, as copy editors can also make trouble for themselves. (Does any other book have an index entry that says "terrorists. See copy editors"?) The book includes helpful sections on e-mail etiquette, work-flow management, prioritizing, and organizing computer files. One chapter even addresses the special concerns of freelance editors. Saller’s emphasis on negotiation and flexibility will surprise many copy editors who have absorbed, along with the dos and don’ts of their stylebooks, an attitude that their way is the right way. In encouraging copy editors to banish their ignorance and disorganization, insecurities and compulsions, the Chicago Q&A presents itself as a kind of alter ego to the comparatively staid Manual of Style. In The Subversive Copy Editor, Saller continues her mission with audacity and good humor.

Author: Adrian Page
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349219061
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
The nine essays in this volume make significant contributions to the development of contemporary literary theory and demonstrate how a range of new approaches can be applied to modern British drama. In addressing the questions of power, subjectivity, sexuality, psychoanalysis, and the nature of the dramatic text, the contributors reveal how much modern drama can be re-read to discover its radically subversive characteristics. Their conclusions challenge accepted interpretations and suggest major revisions of the processes of understanding and staging drama.

Author: Tom Markus
Publisher: Waveland Press
ISBN: 1478639377
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
Another Opening, Another Show derived from the authors asking students what they wanted in an introductory theatre textbook. They've given them exactly that: • A book that doesn't cost a lot • A book that is fun to read • A book that helps them understand and enjoy theatre • An insider's look at theatre, not a scholar's critique of it • An opportunity to learn about plays on a stage rather than plays on a page • Pictures that illustrate the ideas in the text instead of just decorating it Instructors will appreciate the Third Edition's modularity. Each chapter stands on its own, allowing for maximum flexibility for individual course needs. The book's inclusive approach touches on cultural diversity and gender issues in American theatre, as well as adding an entirely new chapter on Asian theatre. Photos of contemporary productions enrich the text, and a variety of side material shows students how the concepts they read about are applied by theatre professionals.

Author: Jeffrey Ullom
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 0809387085
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Far from the glittering lights of Broadway, in a city known more for its horse racing than its artistic endeavors, an annual festival in Louisville, Kentucky, has transformed the landscape of the American theater. The Actors Theatre of Louisville—the Tony Award–winning state theater of Kentucky—in 1976 successfully created what became the nation's most respected new-play festival, the Humana Festival of New American Plays. The Humana Festival: The History of New Plays at Actors Theatre of Louisville examines the success of the festival and theater’s Pulitzer Prize–winning productions that for decades have reflected new-play trends in regional theaters and on Broadway—the result of the calculated decisions, dogged determination, and good luck of its producing director, Jon Jory. The volume details how Actors Theatre of Louisville was established, why the Humana Festival became successful in a short time, and how the event’s success has been maintained by the Louisville venue that has drawn theater critics from around the world for more than thirty years. Author Jeffrey Ullom charts the theater’s early struggles to survive, the battles between troupe leaders, and the desperate measures to secure financial support from the Louisville community. He examines how Jory established and expanded the festival to garner extraordinary local support, attract international attention, and entice preeminent American playwrights to premier their works in the Kentucky city. In The Humana Festival, Ullom provides a broad view of new-play development within artistic, administrative, and financial contexts. He analyzes the relationship between Broadway and regional theaters, outlining how the Humana Festival has changed the process of new-play development and even Broadway’s approach to discovering new work, and also highlights the struggles facing regional theaters across the country as they strive to balance artistic ingenuity and economic viability. Offering a rare look at the annual event, The Humana Festival provides the first insider’s view of the extraordinary efforts that produced the nation’s most successful new-play festival.

Author: Geraldine Cousin
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040149529
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 165

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Book Description
First Published in 1989, Churchill: The Playwright is an illuminating and comprehensive guide to Caryl Churchill’s stage, television, and radio plays. Alongside Top Girls, Fen and Serious Money, plays that have established Churchill as one of the most notable writers of the decade, Geraldine Cousin examines some of Churchill's major themes-the nature of time and the revolutionary possibilities for change- in earlier plays such as Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, Traps and Cloud Nine. Through detailed analysis Geraldine Cousin shows Churchill's development towards the challenging, innovative style and combination of pungent satire and compassion, that have made her such a successful chronicler and critic of our time. This is a must read for scholars and researchers of theatre studies.

Author: Maggie B. Gale
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317596218
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Fifty Modern and Contemporary and Dramatists is a critical introduction to the work of some of the most important and influential playwrights from the 1950s to the present day. The figures chosen are among the most widely studied by students of drama, theatre and literature and include such celebrated writers as: • Samuel Beckett • Caryl Churchill • Anna Deavere Smith • Jean Genet • Sarah Kane • Heiner Müller • Arthur Miller • Harold Pinter • Sam Shephard Each short essay is written by one of an international team of academic experts and offers a detailed analysis of the playwright’s key works and career. The introduction provides an historical and theatrical context to the volume, which provides an invaluable overview of modern and contemporary drama.

Author: William W. Demastes
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313032653
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 470

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Book Description
From 1880 to 1956, when John Osborne transformed the British theater world with Look Back in Anger, British playwrights made numerous lasting contributions and provided a foundation for the innovations of dramatists during the latter half of the 20th century. This reference profiles the life and work of some 40 British playwrights active during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many of whom are also known for their work as novelists and poets. Included are figures such as W. H. Auden, Max Beerbohm, Noel Coward, T. S. Eliot, John Galsworthy, Graham Greene, D. H. Lawrence, W. Somerset Maugham, George Bernard Shaw, and Oscar Wilde. Each entry provides a biographical overview; a list of major plays and summaries of their critical reception; a list of minor plays, adaptations, and productions; an assessment of the playwright's career; and archival and bibliographical information. Included in this reference book are alphabetically arranged entries for some 40 British playwrights active from 1880 through 1956. Entries are written by expert contributors, with each entry providing a biographical overview; a list of major plays, premieres, and significant revivals, along with a summary of the critical reception of these works; a listing of additional plays, adaptations, and productions; an assessment of the playwright's career and contributions, with reference to published evaluations in magazines, journals, dissertations, and books; a listing of locations housing unpublished archival material, if available; a selected bibliography of the dramatist's published plays and of essays and articles by the playwright on aspects of the theater; a selected bibliography of secondary sources; and, when available, a listing of previously published bibliographies on the playwright.

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