From the 1920s through the 1950s, two individuals, Joseph Urban and Norman Bel Geddes, did more, by far, to create the image of America” and make it synonymous with modernity than any of their contemporaries. Urban and Bel Geddes were leading Broadway stage designers and directors who turned their prodigious talents to other projects, becoming mavericks first in industrial design and then in commercial design, fashion, architecture, and more. The two men gave shape to the most quintesse...

First published in 1999, this volume aims to develop the field of theatre studies by promoting the study of performative elements and thus fostering their consideration in the critical interpretation of dramatic literature. The authors additionally suggest ways of approaching and evaluating the work of individual performers, as well as of directors, designers and producers. It is an archival guide which covers manuscript and ephemera, rather than published texts, and attempts to indicate t...

This Introduction is an exciting journey through the different styles of theatre that twentieth-century and contemporary directors have created. It discusses artistic and political values, rehearsal methods and the diverging relationships with actors, designers, other collaborators and audiences, and treatment of dramatic material. Offering a compelling analysis of theatrical practice, Christopher Innes and Maria Shevtsova explore the different rehearsal and staging principles and methods ...

Unrivalled in its coverage of recent work and writers, The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary American Playwrights surveys and analyses the breadth, vitality and development of theatrical work to emerge from America over the last fifty years.This authoritative guide leads you through the work of 25 major contemporary American playwrights, discussing more than 140 plays in detail. Written by a team of 25 eminent international scholars, each chapter provides:· a biogr...

Edward Gordon Craig's ideas regarding set and lighting have had an enormous impact on the development of the theatre we know today. In this new and updated edition of his well-known study of Edward Gordon Craig, Professor Christopher Innes shows how Craig's stage work and theoretical writings were crucial to the development of modern theatre. This book contains extensive documentation and re-evaluates his significance as an artist, actor, director and writer. Craig is placed in historical ...

Examining the development of avant garde theatre from its inception in the 1890s right up to the present day, Christopher Innes exposes a central paradox of modern theatre; that the motivating force of theatrical experimentation is primitivism. What links the work of Strindberg, Artaud, Brook and Mnouchkine is an idealisation of the elemental and a desire to find ritual in archaic traditions. This widespread primitivism is the key to understanding both the political and aesthetic aspects o...

A Sourcebook on Naturalist Theatre provides essential primary sources which document one of the key movements in modern theatre. Christopher Innes has selected three writers to exemplify the movement, and six plays in particular:* Henrik Ibsen - A Dolls House and Hedda Gabler* Anton Chekhov - The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard* George Bernard Shaw - Mrs Warren's Profession and Heartbreak House.Innes'...

The Cambridge Companion to George Bernard Shaw is an indispensable guide to one of the most influential and important dramatists of the theatre. The volume offers a broad-ranging study of Shaw with essays by a team of leading scholars. The Companion covers all aspects of Shaw's drama, focusing on both the political and theatrical context, while the extensive illustrations showcase productions from the Shaw Festival in Canada. In addition to situating Shaw's work in its own time, the Compan...

"A theatre which is able to speak to each spectator in a different and penetrating language is not a fantastic idea, nor a utopia. This is the theatre for which many of us, directors and leaders of groups, trained for a long time....." - from the IntroductionOn Directing is Eugenio Barba's unprecedented account of his own life and work. This is a major retrospective of Barba's working methods, his practical techniques, and the life experiences which fed directly i...

Is a tower block, your unmade bed, your lavatory basin, or the bicycle chained to the gate next door a work of art? Why should a novel have a beginning, a middle, and an end; or even a story? Whether we recognise it or not, virtually every aspect of our life today has been influenced in part by the aesthetic legacy of Modernism. In this Very Short Introduction Christopher Butler examines how and why Modernism began, explaining what it is and showing how it has gradually informed a...

This Companion has long been a standard introduction to the field. This second edition is updated and enhanced with four new chapters, addressing the key themes being researched, taught and studied in modernism. Its interdisciplinary approach is central to its success as it brings together readings of the many varieties of modernism. Chapters address the major literary genres, the intellectual, religious and political contexts, and parallel developments in film, painting and music. The cat...

A revelatory biography of the American master as told through the lens of his greatest novel.Henry James (1843–1916) has had many biographers, but Michael Gorra has taken an original approach to this great American progenitor of the modern novel, combining elements of biography, criticism, and travelogue in re-creating the dramatic backstory of James’s masterpiece, Portrait of a Lady (1881). Gorra, an eminent literary critic, shows how this novel—the scandalous story of th...