Shakespeare and Amateur Performance

Shakespeare and Amateur Performance
Author: Michael Dobson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2011-04-28
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1139496816

From the Hamlet acted on a galleon off Africa to the countless outdoor productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream that now defy each English summer, Shakespeare and Amateur Performance explores the unsung achievements of those outside the theatrical profession who have been determined to do Shakespeare themselves. Based on extensive research in previously unexplored archives, this generously illustrated and lively work of theatre history enriches our understanding of how and why Shakespeare's plays have mattered to generations of rude mechanicals and aristocratic dilettantes alike: from the days of the Theatres Royal to those of the Little Theatre Movement, from the pioneering Winter's Tale performed in eighteenth-century Salisbury to the Merchant of Venice performed by Allied prisoners for their Nazi captors, and from the how-to book which transforms Mercutio into Yankee Doodle to the Napoleonic counterspy who used Richard III as a tool of surveillance.

Secrets of Acting Shakespeare

Secrets of Acting Shakespeare
Author: Patrick Tucker
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2013-11-05
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1135862265

Secrets of Acting Shakespeare isn't a book that gently instructs. It's a passionate, yes-you-can designed to prove that anybody can act Shakespeare. By explaining how Elizabethan actors had only their own lines and not entire playscripts, Patrick Tucker shows how much these plays work by ear. Secrets of Acting Shakespeare is a book for actors trained and amateur, as well as for anyone curious about how the Elizabethan theater worked.

Shakespeare on Theatre

Shakespeare on Theatre
Author: William Shakespeare
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2013-04-01
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 1623160332

(Book). Shakespeare was a man of the theatre to his core, so it is no surprise that he repeatedly contemplated the nuts and bolts of his craft in his plays and poems. Shakespeare scholar Nick de Somogyi here draws together all the cherishable set pieces including "All the world's a stage," Hamlet's encounters with the Players, and Bottom's amateur theatricals along with many other oblique but no less revealing glances, and further insights into theatre practice by Shakespeare's contemporaries and rivals. De Somogyi's commentary takes us through the entire process of Shakespeare's theatrical production, from its casting and auditions, via rehearsals, costumes, and props, to its premiere and audience reception. Shakespeare on Theatre eavesdrops on the urgently whispered noises-off in the "tiring-house" and inhales the heady aroma of the Globe's first audiences.

Shakespeare Comes to Broadmoor

Shakespeare Comes to Broadmoor
Author: Murray Cox
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Total Pages: 312
Release: 1992-01-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9781853021350

Between 1989 and 1991 several of Shakespeare's tragedies were performed in the central hall of Broadmoor Hospital. This book sets these important events on record. It offers insights into the impact of such drama, in such a setting, upon actors and audience. It includes interviews with the directors and the actors playing the title roles, as well as a description of the hospital and its community of patients and staff. The performances were given by actors from The Royal Shakespeare Company (Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet), The Royal National Theatre (King Lear) and the Wilde Community Theatre Company, a local amateur drama group (Measure for Measure). An account is given of `workshops' which took place after the performances. And a collage of comment, by actors and audience, is presented as a stream of corporate consciousness. The final section of the book has a more academic timbre, including chapters on performance and projective possibilities, the nature and scope of dramatherapy, and contributions on the place of drama in custodial settings by specialists from a variety of disciplines.

Wartime Shakespeare

Wartime Shakespeare
Author: Amy Lidster
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2023-10-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1009356062

First transhistorical monograph to examine and theorize how Shakespeare has been mobilized in performance during wartime.

Shakespeare's Tercentenary

Shakespeare's Tercentenary
Author: Monika Smialkowska
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2023-12-31
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1009280872

Uncovers how global Shakespeare Tercentenary commemorations addressed crises of imperial and national identities during the First World War.

Weathering Shakespeare

Weathering Shakespeare
Author: Evelyn O'Malley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2020-12-24
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1350078077

From The Pastoral Players' 1884 performance of As You Like It to contemporary site-specific productions activist interventions, there is a rich history of open air performances of Shakespeare's plays beyond their early modern origins. Weathering Shakespeare reveals how new insights from the environmental humanities can transform our understanding of this popular performance practice. Drawing on audience accounts of outdoor productions of those plays most commonly chosen for open air performance – including A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest – the book examines how performers and audiences alike have reacted to unpredictable natural environments.

Shakespeare in Performance

Shakespeare in Performance
Author: Eric C. Brown
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2014-08-11
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1443865796

The fourteen essays included in this collection offer a range of contributions from both new and well-established scholars to the topic of Shakespeare and performance. From traditional studies of theatrical history and adaptation to explorations of Shakespeare’s plays in the circus, musical extravaganzas, the cinema, and drama at large, the collection embraces a number of performance spaces, times, and media. Shakespeare in Performance includes essays looking not only at sixteenth- and seventeenth-century stagings of the plays in England, but at productions of Shakespeare across time in the United States, France, Italy, Hungary, and Africa, underscoring the multiple embodiments and voices of Shakespeare’s art and including a variety of cultural approaches. The work is ultimately occupied with a number of questions generated by these continual iterations of Shakespeare. How can we write and trace what is ephemeral? To what purpose do we maintain the memory of past performances? How does the transmediation of Shakespeare inform the most basic interpretive acts? What motivates Shakespearean theatre across political borders? What kinds of meaning are produced by décor, movement, the actor’s virtuosity, the producer’s choices, or the audience’s response? Each essay thus, to some degree, describes and voices the now unseen.