- Table View
- List View
Courteous exchanges: Spenser's and Shakespeare's gentle dialogues with readers and audiences (The Manchester Spenser)
by Patricia WarehCourteous Exchanges explores the significant overlap between Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene and Shakespeare’s plays, showing how both facilitate the critique of Renaissance aristocratic identity. Moving from a consideration of Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier as a text that encouraged reader engagement, the book offers new readings of Shakespeare’s plays in conjunction with Spenser. It pairs Love’s Labour’s Lost, Much Ado About Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, and The Winter’s Tale with The Faerie Queene in order to explore how topics such as education, gender, religion, race, and aristocratic identity are offered up to reader and audience interpretation.
Cue Tears: On the Act of Crying
by Daniel SackCrying holds a privileged place in conversations around emotions as an expression of authentic feeling. And yet, tears are ambiguous: they might signal the most positive and negative of affects; they might present a sincere revelation of self or be simulated to manipulate others. Unsurprisingly, tears figure prominently on stage and on screen, where actors have experimented with the mechanics of making tears. Cue Tears: On the Act of Crying uses tears as a prism through which to see some of the foundational problems and paradoxes of acting and spectatorship anew, including matters of authenticity and sincerity, the ethics of the witness, the interaction between a speech act and its affective force, liveness and documentation. Across seven semi-autonomous essays, Cue Tears looks at the mechanisms of tear production, internal and external techniques that actors use to weep, and the effects of tears in performance situations on the stage, in the gallery, and in the classroom. The writing moves with a light touch between theory and criticism of a broad range of instances from literature, theater, performance art, visual art, and cinema, while also embracing a strong autobiographical and personal slant. Author Daniel Sack’s father was a biochemist who studied tears and collected his son’s tears for research during his childhood. These “reflex tears” were produced as a physical response to irritation—an eye stretched past the point of blinking, a cotton swab up the nose. This childhood occupation coincided with his first years taking acting classes, trying to learn how to cry “emotional tears” onstage through psychological stimulation and the recollection of memory. Cue Tears investigates these memories and methods, finding that tears both shore up and dissolve distinctions between truth and artifice, emotional and physical, private and public, sad and humorous.
James Graham: State of the Nation Playwright
by Maryam PhilpottJames Graham is one of the UK’s leading dramatists, a multi-award-winning writer who for almost 20 years has analysed and articulated concepts of power and authority in modern British society. James Graham: State of the Nation Playwright is the first full-length assessment of the writer’s output, applying core thematic areas - Democracy, Anarchy, Famous Faces and Television - to understand how different power bases operate in modern society, their effectiveness and influence, and how they came to pre-eminence during the last 70 years. The book concludes with an evaluation of Graham’s contribution to state-of-the-nation debates, Britain’s cycles of decline and its consequences for understanding contemporary national identity.
The Dao of Unrepresentative British Chinese Experience: (Butterfly Dream) (Modern Plays)
by Daniel York Loh… I'm not even properly Chinese I'm only half and half so that makes me feel all wrong and I just want to blend out and fit in and not stand out and with you I stand outWeStand OutThere's no safety in numbersSorryThe 'British Chinese'. So often regarded as a 'model minority'. Quiet, high-achieving, polite, invisible…But when someone who is 'British Chinese' spends their life taking drugs, getting thrown out of school, claiming benefits, being chased in stolen cars, getting locked up, then rehabilitating onto the stage, where do they fit in? Oh, and they're not quite 'Chinese' enough anyway. Semi-autobiographical, free-form and explosive, Daniel York Loh's psychedelic gig-theatrical punk pop rap rock riff The Dao of Unrepresentative British Chinese Experience (Butterfly Dream) asks what path to choose, which identity politics to embrace or whether it's just easier to follow the 'Dao' of ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi and dream you're a butterfly. Or, be a butterfly dreaming of being 'Chinese'….This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere Kakilang production at London's Soho Theatre in June 2024.
The Dao of Unrepresentative British Chinese Experience: (Butterfly Dream) (Modern Plays)
by Daniel York Loh… I'm not even properly Chinese I'm only half and half so that makes me feel all wrong and I just want to blend out and fit in and not stand out and with you I stand outWeStand OutThere's no safety in numbersSorryThe 'British Chinese'. So often regarded as a 'model minority'. Quiet, high-achieving, polite, invisible…But when someone who is 'British Chinese' spends their life taking drugs, getting thrown out of school, claiming benefits, being chased in stolen cars, getting locked up, then rehabilitating onto the stage, where do they fit in? Oh, and they're not quite 'Chinese' enough anyway. Semi-autobiographical, free-form and explosive, Daniel York Loh's psychedelic gig-theatrical punk pop rap rock riff The Dao of Unrepresentative British Chinese Experience (Butterfly Dream) asks what path to choose, which identity politics to embrace or whether it's just easier to follow the 'Dao' of ancient Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi and dream you're a butterfly. Or, be a butterfly dreaming of being 'Chinese'….This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere Kakilang production at London's Soho Theatre in June 2024.
In Everglade Studio (Modern Plays)
by Nathaniel Brimmer-BellerChin up, now. Got to have thick skin down here.In 1974 London, three musicians and their manager seal themselves inside an underground recording studio to complete an Americana album, unaware that materials in the walls are driving them to the brink of insanity. As artistic, social, and racial tensions flare, the atmosphere grows thornier, the music grows stranger, and Everglade Studio's mixture of creativity and claustrophobia demands its pound of flesh. Longlisted for the 2023 BBC Writersroom Popcorn Award for Best New Writing, In Everglade Studio is a ferocious comedic thriller from Nathaniel Brimmer-Beller, featuring original music by Nathaniel and Aveev Isaacson.This edition was published to coincide with the run at The Hope Theatre in London, in April 2024.
In Everglade Studio (Modern Plays)
by Nathaniel Brimmer-BellerChin up, now. Got to have thick skin down here.In 1974 London, three musicians and their manager seal themselves inside an underground recording studio to complete an Americana album, unaware that materials in the walls are driving them to the brink of insanity. As artistic, social, and racial tensions flare, the atmosphere grows thornier, the music grows stranger, and Everglade Studio's mixture of creativity and claustrophobia demands its pound of flesh. Longlisted for the 2023 BBC Writersroom Popcorn Award for Best New Writing, In Everglade Studio is a ferocious comedic thriller from Nathaniel Brimmer-Beller, featuring original music by Nathaniel and Aveev Isaacson.This edition was published to coincide with the run at The Hope Theatre in London, in April 2024.
The Secret Garden (Nhb Modern Plays Ser.)
by Holly Robinson Anna Himali Howard'What happened then, some would say, was almost magic.' Disregarded and disobedient, ten-year-old Mary Lennox is sent from India to Yorkshire, and put into the care of an uncle she has never met. At Misselthwaite Manor, a brokenhearted house full of secrets and strange noises, Mary discovers a garden as lost and neglected as she is. If she can learn to make friends with robins, grumpy gardeners and a boy who speaks to animals, Mary might be able to bring more than just the garden back to life… The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett's tale about the magic of nature and the nature of magic, has been a beloved and quietly radical classic of children's literature since its publication in 1911. Holly Robinson and Anna Himali Howard's thrillingly adventurous adaptation was first performed at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre, London, in 2024. 'A beautifully crafted, thoughtfully updated new version of the immortal children's novel' - Time Out 'A gorgeously modern, enchanted adaptation… a must-see summer show for all ages' - The Stage 'This vivacious, subtly inventive new version puts the microscope on Hodgson Burnett's classic to reveal an earthy enchantment. It speaks potently to our environmentally frazzled times… It's a treat' - The Times 'A sheer delight… in terms of sheer loveliness and final achievement, nothing beats this delightful new adaptation… Holly Robinson and Anna Himali Howard have hit the jackpot here… book your tickets right away' - iNews 'An old-fashioned tale brought beautifully into the modern age' - Telegraph
Everything I Own (Modern Plays)
by Daniel WardSo, when you have the time and the space, the thoughts start to fill it, you know? Unless you fill it yourself. With a little burn mout. Or a little tune.Errol lost his dad last year. Listening to his old man's Spotify playlist, he remembers his dad's passion over the 1981 Brixton uprising and his certainty that change was coming.Errol is tired of the fight and, as his son takes up the fight with the BLM movement, he questions if this is a revolution or a repetition.A thought-provoking journey of loss, history and uprising in Everything I Own, an intimate yet provocative intergenerational conversation between father and son written by Daniel Ward.This edition was published to coincide with the run at London's Brixton House in June 2024.
Everything I Own (Modern Plays)
by Daniel WardSo, when you have the time and the space, the thoughts start to fill it, you know? Unless you fill it yourself. With a little burn mout. Or a little tune.Errol lost his dad last year. Listening to his old man's Spotify playlist, he remembers his dad's passion over the 1981 Brixton uprising and his certainty that change was coming.Errol is tired of the fight and, as his son takes up the fight with the BLM movement, he questions if this is a revolution or a repetition.A thought-provoking journey of loss, history and uprising in Everything I Own, an intimate yet provocative intergenerational conversation between father and son written by Daniel Ward.This edition was published to coincide with the run at London's Brixton House in June 2024.