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Bean Plays Four (Oberon Modern Playwrights)
by Richard BeanEngland People Very Nice‘A very funny but outrageous comedy…makes you laugh then wonder whether you should have.’ Financial TimesThe Big Fellah‘Bean’s play is very funny, full of sharp contrasts between grim hilarity and gut-wrenching reversals.’ The Stage(Shortlisted for the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Best Theatre Play 2011)The Heretic‘delicious… Above all, though, it is Bean’s writing that scintillates. Pulsing with shrewd humour, it’s risqué and linguistically rich. There are some blissfully surreal touches… The Heretic is clever, imaginative and entertaining theatre.’ Evening StandardWinner of the 2011 Evening Standard Theatre Best Play Award.
Beachy Head: A Design Guide (Oberon Modern Plays)
by Hannah Barker Lewis Hetherington Liam JarvisIt has been a month since Stephen jumped. Amy collects her husband’s effects, the things he had with him gathered in a single box. There was no sign – no warning of what he would do. As fractured memories of their last night together rewind, replay and unravel, she is desperate to find out why.Joe and Matt are making a documentary. Whilst reviewing their footage they make a startling discovery that takes their film in an unexpected direction – the blurred image of a man jumping from the cliffs. Beachy Head is a powerful look at the ripple effects of one man’s decision to take his life.‘A quietly splendid production, magically well staged; it lingers long’ -The Observer‘Beachy Head treats its sombre core themes – mortality, grief and artistic responsibility – with a clever, caring and occasionally humorous theatrical intelligence. Well-researched and simply but fluidly staged, it is a skilful blend of text of technology. Analogue’s desire to probe the painful, mysterious emotions behind clinical facts is honourable.’ – Donald Hutera, The Times
Bea (Oberon Modern Plays)
by Mick GordonFollowing their acclaimed shows On Ego, On Religion, On Emotion and On Love the On Theatre now tackle empathy, in an exploration of the expanse and limits of our capacity to understand one another.Bea is lively, naughty and full of life. When she asks something of her mother that no parent would want to be asked, and of her only friend ‘Not Gay Ray’, they are both forced to challenge the boundaries of their own compassion.
Be Drag Fabulous: How to Live Your Best Drag Queen Life
by Katie MockridgeBringing together life advice and gorgeous illustrations inspired by some of the best drag queens from all over the world, this book will have you sashaying your way to success.Whenever you need life advice, just think: WWADQD – What Would A Drag Queen Do? Containing 75 essential lessons, Be Drag Fabulous will show you how to become the most spectacular version of yourself.Containing gorgeous illustrations by Katie Mockridge, this little book of drag wit and wisdom has you covered on all aspects of life, from fashion and self-care, beauty, friendships and work and brings together the best drag queens from around the world.Make your world you very own catwalk and learn how to channel your charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent. Condragulations, this is the first step in becoming drag fabulous. The perfect gift for fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Battle Royal
by Nick Stafford1795: England is at war with France, women are seen but not heard, and the Prince Regent, a man with 'an undeserved reputation for enjoying the amusements of his position whilst not embracing duties', is under pressure to marry and produce and heir.
The Battle of Green Lanes (Oberon Modern Plays)
by Cosh OmarWelcome to Green Lanes in North London where Erol has been working in his dad’s café since leaving college – he’s a Turkish Cypriot. His best mate Tom is getting grief from mum Anastasia to get married. Tom is a Greek Cypriot like the rest of the gang – Cos, Babs and Chris. Erol’s seeing Maria – another Greek - but she doesn’t want a Muslim to father her child. His dad Remzi and uncle Engin are plotting to get rich back in Northern Cyprus and will sell-up and go, with or without Erol. But, most importantly of all, his two newest friends Abdullah and Kysar have been helping him become a ‘real’ Muslim and join them in the holy fight to re-establish The Islamic State. Erol is now on a path that may change the world – and no one told him that living down Green Lanes would be so complicated. The Battle of Green Lanes is a dangerous new play by first-time writer Cosh Omar. It launched the opening season of work by Theatre Royal Stratford East’s new Artistic Director Kerry Michael.
Bathsheba Doran: The Marriage Plays (Oberon Modern Playwrights)
by Bathsheba Dorankin Anna, a Texan poetry scholar and Sean, an Irish personal trainer, hardly seem destined for one another. But as their web of family and friends crosses distances both psychological and geographical, an unlikely new family is forged. A sharp exploration of the changing face of kinship in the expansive landscape of the modern world. the mystery of love and sex Deep in the American South, Charlotte and Jonny have been best friends since they were nine. She's Jewish, he's Christian, he's black, she's white. An unexpected love story about where souls meet and the consequences of growing up. parents’ eveningMother and Father are in the bedroom, preparing for parents’ evening. This rare opportunity to check in triggers a volatile, passionate and surprising confrontation. A painfully witty, perceptive exploration of the landlines of parenting in modern marriage.
The Basics: Theatre Studies
by Robert LeachThis is an essential read for anyone setting out to study the thrilling world of theatre for the first time. Introducing you to all the aspects of drama, theatre and performance you will be studying in your course, from the theoretical to the practical. Theatre Studies: The Basics will take you through such topics as: dramatic genres, from tragedy to political documentary theories of performance, the history of the theatre in the West and acting, directing and scenography the audience. Theatre Studies: The Basics has all you need to get your studies off to a flying start.nbsp;
Bashment (Oberon Modern Plays)
by Rikki Beadle-Blair"Was it the music that made you do it? Did you chant lyrics while you beat his brains out? Did the preacher inspire you to despise people who fall in love without your permission? Where does the rage begin?""He was white. And he was queer. And he was there. In our club. In our music. In our face. What's he expect? A kiss and a cuddle?"An electrifying new play - hard-hitting, tender and painfully funny. About love, about hate - Bashment is a play for our times.
Bartlett's Shakespeare Quotations
by John BartlettFrom the quote afficionado to the historical researcher, fans of Bartlett's will be thrilled to see this edition of quotations from the great William Shakespeare. Collecting quotes from his many works into one beautiful volume, Bartlett's Shakespeare Quotations is essential as a reference tool and makes for some wonderful browsing. Quotes culled from Bartlett's Familiar Quotations are organised by play or sonnet in chronological order and capture a unique view of Shakespeare's life and work. From King Henry VI to The Tempest (and even the epitaph on his grave) this volume will delight both researchers and casual readers as it highlights one of the most beguiling and beloved playwrights in history.
Bartlett Plays: Not Talking, My Child, Artefacts, Contractions, Cock (Contemporary Dramatists)
by Mike BartlettThis first collection of Mike Bartlett's plays showcases the adroit expertise and flair of a writer known for laser-sharp political comment, tight dialectics and needlingly real characters.My Child is a gut-wrenching exploration of the lengths a father will go to to have access to his child. The play creates a violent world where good intentions count for very little, and offers an incisive, honest look at what it means to be a good parent.Contractions is an ink-black comedy about work and play: Emma's been seeing Darren. She thinks she's in love. Her boss thinks she's in breach of contract. The situation needs to be resolved. Artefacts depicts a father-daughter reunion which, after 16 years, crosses between the world of a British teenager and an Iraqi expert in antiquity, and is complicated by the ambivalent gift of a precious Mespotamian vase. Cock is a punchy play which takes a playful, candid look at one man's sexuality and the difficulties that arise when you realise you have a choice.
Bartlett Plays: Not Talking, My Child, Artefacts, Contractions, Cock (Contemporary Dramatists)
by Mike BartlettThis first collection of Mike Bartlett's plays showcases the adroit expertise and flair of a writer known for laser-sharp political comment, tight dialectics and needlingly real characters.My Child is a gut-wrenching exploration of the lengths a father will go to to have access to his child. The play creates a violent world where good intentions count for very little, and offers an incisive, honest look at what it means to be a good parent.Contractions is an ink-black comedy about work and play: Emma's been seeing Darren. She thinks she's in love. Her boss thinks she's in breach of contract. The situation needs to be resolved. Artefacts depicts a father-daughter reunion which, after 16 years, crosses between the world of a British teenager and an Iraqi expert in antiquity, and is complicated by the ambivalent gift of a precious Mespotamian vase. Cock is a punchy play which takes a playful, candid look at one man's sexuality and the difficulties that arise when you realise you have a choice.
Bartholmew Fair (New Mermaids)
by Ben Jonson Alexander Leggatt G. R. HibbardEarly modern London - too foggy and Protestant to have a carnival -offered its inhabitants commercial events during which to indulge theirneed for bodily delights and festival exuberance. The fair of StBartholmew, held anually in Smithfield on 24 August, served Jonson asan opportunity to dissect a wide cross-section of Londoners and theirvarious reasons for spending a day out among the booths, stalls, smellsand noises of the fair. Unusually magnanimous for a Jonsonian citycomedy, the main thrust of the satire is not against fools, madmen,fortune-hunters, cuckolds or prostitutes, but against hypocrisy andbigotry. This edition shows that the play can be read as acomprehensive refutation of puritanism and the London magistracy, bothof whom were attacking the theatre (and the festive culture of which itwas still part) as idolatrous, seditious and disorderly.
Bartholmew Fair (New Mermaids)
by Ben Jonson Alexander Leggatt G. R. HibbardEarly modern London - too foggy and Protestant to have a carnival -offered its inhabitants commercial events during which to indulge theirneed for bodily delights and festival exuberance. The fair of StBartholmew, held anually in Smithfield on 24 August, served Jonson asan opportunity to dissect a wide cross-section of Londoners and theirvarious reasons for spending a day out among the booths, stalls, smellsand noises of the fair. Unusually magnanimous for a Jonsonian citycomedy, the main thrust of the satire is not against fools, madmen,fortune-hunters, cuckolds or prostitutes, but against hypocrisy andbigotry. This edition shows that the play can be read as acomprehensive refutation of puritanism and the London magistracy, bothof whom were attacking the theatre (and the festive culture of which itwas still part) as idolatrous, seditious and disorderly.
Barrow Hill (Oberon Modern Plays)
by Jane WainwrightChesterfield, Derbyshire, 2012. Kath is 86 years young and still going, but as her friends keep dying around her, her only tie to the world is her beloved chapel. When Kath discovers that the chapel is to be converted into luxury flats for young professionals and that her own son, Graham, has won the contract for the rebuilding work, she is forced into a bitter battle between the past and the future. In a society that’s waiting for her to die, Kath is confronted with the fragility of family loyalties and the pain of learning to let go...
Barrie Kosky’s Transnational Theatres (Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues)
by James Phillips John R. SevernThis book, the first of its kind, surveys the career of the renowned Australian-German theatre and opera director Barrie Kosky. Its nine chapters provide multidisciplinary analyses of Barrie Kosky’s working practices and stage productions, from the beginning of his career in Melbourne to his current roles as Head of the Komische Oper Berlin and as a guest director in international demand. Specialists in theatre studies, opera studies, musical theatre studies, aesthetics, and arts administration offer in-depth accounts of Kosky’s unusually wide-ranging engagements with the performing arts – as a director of spoken theatre, operas, musicals, operettas, as an adaptor, a performer, a writer, and an arts manager. Further, this book includes contributions from theatre practitioners with first-hand experience of collaborating with Kosky in the 1990s, who draw on interviews with members of Gilgul, Australia’s first Jewish theatre company, to document this formative period in Kosky’s career. The book investigates the ways in which Kosky has created transnational theatres, through introducing European themes and theatre techniques to his Australian work or through bringing fresh voices to the national dialogue in Germany’s theatre landscape. An appendix contains a timeline and guide to Kosky’s productions to date.
Barrie Kosky on the Contemporary Australian Stage: Affect, Post-Tragedy, Emergency (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
by Charlotte FarrellThis is the first book-length study of Australian theatre productions by internationally-renowned director, Barrie Kosky. Now a prolific opera director in Europe, Barrie Kosky on the Contemporary Australian Stage accounts for the formative years of Kosky's career in Australia. This book provides in-depth engagements with select productions including The Dybbuk which Kosky directed with Gilgul theatre company in 1991, as well as King Lear (1998), The Lost Echo (2006), and Women of Troy (2008). Using affect theory as a prism through which these works are analysed, the book accounts for the director's particular engagement with – and radical departure from – classical tragedy in contemporary performance: what the book defines as Kosky's 'post-tragedies'. Theatre studies scholars and students, particularly those with interests in affect, contemporary performance, 'director's theatre', and tragedy, will benefit from Barrie Kosky on the Contemporary Australian Stage’s vivid engagement with Kosky's work: a director who has become a singular figure in opera and theatre of international critical acclaim.
Barrie Kosky on the Contemporary Australian Stage: Affect, Post-Tragedy, Emergency (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
by Charlotte FarrellThis is the first book-length study of Australian theatre productions by internationally-renowned director, Barrie Kosky. Now a prolific opera director in Europe, Barrie Kosky on the Contemporary Australian Stage accounts for the formative years of Kosky's career in Australia. This book provides in-depth engagements with select productions including The Dybbuk which Kosky directed with Gilgul theatre company in 1991, as well as King Lear (1998), The Lost Echo (2006), and Women of Troy (2008). Using affect theory as a prism through which these works are analysed, the book accounts for the director's particular engagement with – and radical departure from – classical tragedy in contemporary performance: what the book defines as Kosky's 'post-tragedies'. Theatre studies scholars and students, particularly those with interests in affect, contemporary performance, 'director's theatre', and tragedy, will benefit from Barrie Kosky on the Contemporary Australian Stage’s vivid engagement with Kosky's work: a director who has become a singular figure in opera and theatre of international critical acclaim.
Baroque, Venice, Theatre, Philosophy
by Will DaddarioThis book theorizes the baroque as neither a time period nor an artistic style but as a collection of bodily practices developed from clashes between governmental discipline and artistic excess, moving between the dramaturgy of Jesuit spiritual exercises, the political theatre-making of Angelo Beolco (aka Ruzzante), and the civic governance of the Venetian Republic at a time of great tumult. The manuscript assembles plays seldom read or viewed by English-speaking audiences, archival materials from three Venetian archives, and several secondary sources on baroque, Renaissance, and early modern epistemology in order to forward and argument for understanding the baroque as a gathering of social practices. Such a rethinking of the baroque aims to complement the already lively studies of neo-baroque aesthetics and ethics emerging in contemporary scholarship on (for example) Latin American political art.
Baroque, Venice, Theatre, Philosophy
by Will DaddarioThis book theorizes the baroque as neither a time period nor an artistic style but as a collection of bodily practices developed from clashes between governmental discipline and artistic excess, moving between the dramaturgy of Jesuit spiritual exercises, the political theatre-making of Angelo Beolco (aka Ruzzante), and the civic governance of the Venetian Republic at a time of great tumult. The manuscript assembles plays seldom read or viewed by English-speaking audiences, archival materials from three Venetian archives, and several secondary sources on baroque, Renaissance, and early modern epistemology in order to forward and argument for understanding the baroque as a gathering of social practices. Such a rethinking of the baroque aims to complement the already lively studies of neo-baroque aesthetics and ethics emerging in contemporary scholarship on (for example) Latin American political art.
Baroque Modernity: An Aesthetics of Theater (Hopkins Studies in Modernism)
by Joseph CermatoriA groundbreaking study on the vital role of baroque theater in shaping modernist philosophy, literature, and performance.Winner, Helen Tartar First Book Subvention AwardBaroque style—with its emphasis on ostentation, adornment, and spectacle—might seem incompatible with the dominant forms of art since the Industrial Revolution, but between 1875 and 1935, European and American modernists connected to the theater became fascinated with it. In Baroque Modernity, Joseph Cermatori argues that the memory of seventeenth-century baroque stages helped produce new forms of theater, space, and experience around the turn of the twentieth century. In response, modern theater helped give rise to the development of the baroque as a modern philosophical idea. The book focuses on avant-gardists whose writing takes place between theory and performance: philosophical theater-makers and theatrical philosophers including Friedrich Nietzsche, Stéphane Mallarmé, Walter Benjamin, and Gertrude Stein. Moving between page and stage, this study tracks the remnants of seventeenth-century theater through modernist aesthetics across an array of otherwise disparate materials, including modern opera, Bertolt Brecht's Epic Theater, poetic tragedies, and miracle plays. By reexamining the twentieth century's engagements with Gianlorenzo Bernini, William Shakespeare, Claudio Monteverdi, Calderón de la Barca, and other seventeenth-century predecessors, the book delineates an enduring tradition of baroque performance. Along the way, Cermatori expands our familiar narratives of "the modern" and traces a history of theatricality that reverberates into the twenty-first century. Baroque Modernity will appeal to readers in a wide array of disciplines, including comparative literature, theater and performance, art and music history, intellectual history, and aesthetic theory.
Baroque Modernity: An Aesthetics of Theater (Hopkins Studies in Modernism)
by Joseph CermatoriA groundbreaking study on the vital role of baroque theater in shaping modernist philosophy, literature, and performance.Winner, Helen Tartar First Book Subvention AwardBaroque style—with its emphasis on ostentation, adornment, and spectacle—might seem incompatible with the dominant forms of art since the Industrial Revolution, but between 1875 and 1935, European and American modernists connected to the theater became fascinated with it. In Baroque Modernity, Joseph Cermatori argues that the memory of seventeenth-century baroque stages helped produce new forms of theater, space, and experience around the turn of the twentieth century. In response, modern theater helped give rise to the development of the baroque as a modern philosophical idea. The book focuses on avant-gardists whose writing takes place between theory and performance: philosophical theater-makers and theatrical philosophers including Friedrich Nietzsche, Stéphane Mallarmé, Walter Benjamin, and Gertrude Stein. Moving between page and stage, this study tracks the remnants of seventeenth-century theater through modernist aesthetics across an array of otherwise disparate materials, including modern opera, Bertolt Brecht's Epic Theater, poetic tragedies, and miracle plays. By reexamining the twentieth century's engagements with Gianlorenzo Bernini, William Shakespeare, Claudio Monteverdi, Calderón de la Barca, and other seventeenth-century predecessors, the book delineates an enduring tradition of baroque performance. Along the way, Cermatori expands our familiar narratives of "the modern" and traces a history of theatricality that reverberates into the twenty-first century. Baroque Modernity will appeal to readers in a wide array of disciplines, including comparative literature, theater and performance, art and music history, intellectual history, and aesthetic theory.
Barney Norris: Plays One (Oberon Modern Playwrights)
by Barney NorrisVisitors: On a farmhouse at the edge of Salisbury Plain, a family is falling apart. Stephen can’t afford to put his mother into care; Arthur can’t afford to stop working and look after his wife. When a young stranger with blue hair moves in to look after Edie as her mind unravels, the family are forced to ask: are we living the way we wanted? Visitors is a haunting, beautiful look at the way our lives slip past us. Eventide: A love song, an elegy, a celebration: Eventide tells the story of three people whose worlds are disappearing. John is a landlord forced to sell up; Liz is a church organist who can't get a gig; Mark takes what work he can just to pay the rent. Their tale unfold round the back of a pub hidden deep in the heart of the Hampshire countryside – a heart that doesn't seem to be beating any more. While We’re Here: Eddie and Carol were lovers once, but their lives went in different directions. Now they meet again on a park bench in a town full of memories, and find something still burns between them. Nightfall: What you believed in seemed to vanish overnight. So how are you going to live now? One family struggling in the heart of the country looks for a star to steer by as they try to plot a route out of the dark they’ve been pitched into.
Barnes Plays: Red Noses, The Spirit of Man, Nobody Here But Us Chickens, Sunsets and Glories, Bye Bye Columbus (Contemporary Dramatists)
by Peter BarnesA selection of plays by "one of the most original and biting comic writers working in Britain" (The Times)The Spirit of Man is "an ingenious triple-bill exploring Man's need for faith through three short satires based in medieval France, Protectorate England and nineteenth-century Eastern Europe" (Independent); Nobody Here But Us Chickens is a linked trilogy of satires on New Age, corporate and bedroom politics. Red Noses is a political satire about the plague and takes place in 1348. Set in medieval Italy during a crisis in the Church, Sunsets and Glories is "a work of the highest and most thrilling theatrical energy" (Independent on Sunday), whilst Bye Bye Columbus is a "highly entertaining" (Guardian) television play."Peter Barnes is one of the unrecognised geniuses of the English theatre" (Plays and Players)
Barnes Plays: Clap Hands; Heaven's Blessings; Revolutionary Witness (Contemporary Dramatists)
by Peter BarnesA selection of plays by "one of the most original and biting comic writers working in Britain" (The Times)Clap Hands Here Comes Charlie is a riotous, scabrous comedy concerning a demonic figure, a destroyer and giver of life, who is always trying to jump, with both feet into his left trouser leg. Heaven's Blessings, taken from the grim pages of the Bible is a charming epic comedy of Tobit, his wife, their son and a cantankerous guardian angel, who set out to reclaim an outstanding IOU, overcoming many dangers which test their faith to breaking point. Revolutionary Witness, about the French Revolution, is a series of four monologues televised by the BBC in 1989."Peter Barnes is one of the unrecognised geniuses of the English theatre" (Plays and Players)