Acting Aspect in Bangsawan Theatre
Author: Abdul Samat Salleh
Publisher:
Published: 2006
Total Pages: 420
ISBN-13:
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Modernization of Asian Theatres
Author: Yasushi Nagata
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2019-05-13
Total Pages: 262
ISBN-13: 9811360464
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis volume focuses on the theatre history of Asian countries, and discusses the specific context of theatre modernization in Asia. While Asian theatre is one of the primary interests within theatre scholarship in the world today, knowledge of Asian theatre history is very limited and often surprisingly incorrect. Therefore, this volume addresses a major gap in contemporary theatre studies. The volume discusses the conflict between tradition and modernity in theatre, suggesting that the problems of modernity are closely related to the idea of tradition. Although Asian countries preserved the traditional form and values of their respective theatres, they had to also confront the newly introduced values or mechanisms of European modernity. Several papers in this volume therefore provide critical surveys of the history of theatre modernization in Asian countries or regions—Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, India Malaysia, Singapore, and Uyghur. Other papers focus on specific case studies of the history of modernization, discussing contemporary Taiwanese performances, translations of modern French comedy into Chinese, the modernization of Chinese Xiqu, modern Okinawan plays, Malaysian traditional performances, Korean national theatre, and Japanese plays during World War II. Renowned academics and theatre critics have contributed to this volume, making it a valuable resource for researchers and students of theatre studies, literature, and cultural studies.
Communities of Imagination
Author: Catherine Diamond
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Published: 2016-11-30
Total Pages: 406
ISBN-13: 082486767X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAsian theatre is usually studied from the perspective of the major traditions of China, Japan, India, and Indonesia. Now, in this wide-ranging look at the contemporary theatre scene in Southeast Asia, Catherine Diamond shows that performance in some of the lesser known theatre traditions offers a vivid and fascinating picture of the rapidly changing societies in the region. Diamond examines how traditional, modern, and contemporary dramatic works, with their interconnected styles, stories, and ideas, are being presented for local audiences. She not only places performances in their historical and cultural contexts but also connects them to the social, political, linguistic, and religious movements of the last two decades. Each chapter addresses theatre in a different country and highlights performances exhibiting the unique conditions and concerns of a particular place and time. Most performances revolve in some manner around “contemporary modernity,” questioning what it means—for good or ill—to be a part of the globalized world. Chapters are grouped by three general and overlapping themes. The first, which includes Thailand, Vietnam, and Bali, is characterized by the increased participation of women in the performing arts—not only as performers but also as playwrights and directors. Cambodia, Singapore, and Myanmar are linked by a shared concern with the effects of censorship on theatre production. A third group, the Philippines, Laos, and Malaysia, is distinguished by a focus on nationalism: theatres are either contributing to official versions of historical and political events or creating alternative narratives that challenge those interpretations. Communities of Imagination shows the many influences of the past and how the past continues to affect cultural perceptions. It addresses major trends, suggesting why they have developed and why they are popular with the public. It also underscores how theatre continues to attract new practitioners and reflect the changing aspirations and anxieties of societies in immediate and provocative ways even as it is being marginalized by television, film, and the internet. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of theatre and performance, Asian literature, Southeast Asian studies, cultural studies, and gender studies. Travelers wishing to attend local performances as part of their experience abroad will find it an essential reference to theatres of the region.
On Actors and the Art of Acting
Author: George Henry Lewes
Publisher:
Published: 1875
Total Pages: 304
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKCollection of articles written at different periods emphasizing the effect of criticism on the acting profession.
Liberation of the Actor
Author: Peter Bridgmont
Publisher: Temple Lodge Publishing
Published: 1992
Total Pages: 168
ISBN-13: 9780904693331
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe artist was once a messenger of the gods. Breathing in, the Greek actor was lifted into a realm of thought and inspiration. And breathing out, the will was strengthened. Can modern actors again become messengers through their own power of description and dramatization? Anyone with an interest in the spoken word, acting, or the future of the theater in general will welcome this book. The author goes beyond simple character study and interpretation to reexamine the forgotten esoteric aspects of acting. Based on Rudolf Steiner's ideas on speech and drama, Bridgmont provides a new basis for the true liberation of actors today.
Alluring Monsters
Author: Rosalind Galt
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2021-11-16
Total Pages: 223
ISBN-13: 0231554044
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe pontianak, a terrifying female vampire ghost, is a powerful figure in Malay cultures, as loved and feared in Southeast Asia as Dracula is in the West. In animist tradition, she is a woman who has died in childbirth, and her vengeful return upsets gender norms and social hierarchies. The pontianak first appeared on screen in late colonial Singapore in a series of popular films that combine indigenous animism and transnational production with the cultural and political force of the horror genre. In Alluring Monsters, Rosalind Galt explores how and why the pontianak found new life in postcolonial Southeast Asian film and society. She argues that the figure speaks to a series of intersecting anxieties: about femininity and modernity, globalization and indigeneity, racial and national identities, the relationship of Islam to animism, and heritage and environmental destruction. The pontianak offers abundant feminist potential, but her disruptive gender politics also unsettle queer and feminist film theories by putting them in dialogue with Malay epistemologies. Reading the pontianak as a precolonial figure of disturbance within postcolonial cultures, Galt reveals the importance of cinema to histories and theories of decolonization. From the horror films made by Cathay Keris and Shaw Studios in the 1950s and 1960s to contemporary film, television, art, and fiction in Malaysia and Singapore, the pontianak in all her media forms sheds light on how postcolonial identities are both developed and contested. In tracing the entanglements of Malay feminist animisms with postcolonial visual cultures, Alluring Monsters reveals how a “pontianak theory” can reshape understandings of anticolonial aesthetics and world cinema.
Panggung Semar
Author: Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof
Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
Published: 2015-02-17
Total Pages: 172
ISBN-13: 1482830256
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAlthough stretching back into the unwritten and often mythic past, traditional Malay performing arts have, until recent times, been almost totally neglected. In recent years, the subject has begun to attract the serious scholarly interest it deserves. Such attention is timely, for the principal theatre genres, including Mak Yong, Wayang Kulit and the comparatively modern Bangsawan, have begun to suffer decline. Indeed, many of them are on the verge of extinction and, with time, will come the loss of an important facet of the native Malay genius. This volume by an acknowledged expert on Malaysian theatre, Ghulam-Sarwar Yousof, is a pioneering work on the subject, an invaluable contribution to Malay cultural studies. It discusses theatre from the perspectives of history, performance principles, functions and problems that have contributed to the decline of traditional performing arts in Malaysia. Also included is a chapter on Semangat, the Malay concept of soul, a seminal belief whose understanding allows for a deeper appreciation of Malay theatre and its role in traditional society. A vital forerunner of several books on the traditional performing arts and cultural traditions of the Malays, this volume is a landmark in cultural research by a Malaysian scholar.
Issues in Traditional Malaysian Culture
Author: Ghulam Sarwar Yousof
Publisher: Trafford Publishing
Published: 2013
Total Pages: 239
ISBN-13: 1466935111
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book contains a selection of non-academic materials on a wide range of topics related to Malaysian culture. Several of them deal with traditional Malay theatre genres, particularly mak yong, recognised by UNESCO as an item of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2005, the shadow play and bangsawan. Others record the contributions of prominent personalities as practitioners, preservers, teachers and transmitters of oral traditions. The author touches upon issues related to the precarious situation in the arts in a rapidly changing Malay society which has in general neglected traditional performing arts forms under pressures exerted by modenisation and the simultaneous wave of Islamicisation. His own involvement in teaching, research, documentation as well as preservation of many of these arts provides unique personal insights into some of the problems and pertinent issues. Other essays of a more general nature, touch upon the continuing and at times controversial relationships between Malay cultural manifestations and those in neighbouring countries, contributions of the minority Indian-Muslim community in Malaysia, and upon the role of the administration in the preservation of heritage. The brief accounts contained in this volume are presented in a direct and readable manner for the non-expert enthusiast of culture and the arts from the perspective of someone deeply and passionately involved.
Old Worlds, New Worlds
Author: A. Robert Lee
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 1999-02
Total Pages: 130
ISBN-13: 9789057550973
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFirst published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Bangsawan
Author: Sooi Beng Tan
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 1993
Total Pages: 320
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBangsawan - the first popular urban commercial theatre in Malaysia - merged in the late nineteenth century as an adaptation of the Parsi theatre of India which toured Malaya. The first indigenous theatre in Malaya to be modelled along Western lines, bangsawan engendered the development of the first Malay orchestra and the first Malay popular music in the country. This book traces the stylistic changes in bangsawan from the late nineteenth century to the 1980s and links these changes to the socio-political transformations in Malaysian society. A product of a period characterized by rapid and radical social changes occurring as a result of British intervention, bangsawan of the early twentieth century was heterogeneous, innovative, and constantly adapting to new situations and new audiences. Its conventions of plot structure, character types, costumes, speech, and stage setting corresponded with the new 'structure of feeling' in the society of that time. After a decline in the 1940s and 1950s caused by social hardships and uncertainties in the wake of World War II and the immediate post-war and Emergency periods, bangsawan was revived in the 1970s. However, this revival - spearheaded by the government and government institutions - has resulted in bangsawan being reshaped, Malayized for new national purposes, and projected as traditional theatre. This book is written in terms of a relatively recent trend in ethnomusicology which emphasizes diachronic analyses. The author is an ethnomusicologist at the Arts Centre, Universiti Sains Malaysia.
