Cultural value in twenty-first-century England
Cultural value in twenty-first-century England

Author: Kate McLuskie

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2015-11-01

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 1526103001

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This book deals with Shakespeare’s role in contemporary culture. It looks in detail at the way that Shakespeare’s plays inform modern ideas of cultural value and the work required to make Shakespeare part of modern culture. It is unique in using social policy, anthropology and economics, as well as close readings of the playwright, to show how a text from the past becomes part of contemporary culture and how Shakespeare’s writing informs modern ideas of cultural value. It goes beyond the twentieth-century cultural studies debates that argued the case for and against Shakespeare’s status, to show how he can exist both as a free artistic resource and as a branded product in the cultural marketplace. It will appeal not only to scholars studying Shakespeare, but also to educators and any reader interested in contemporary cultural policy.

Britain at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century
Britain at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2016-08-22

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 9004333975

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At the turn of the twenty-first century Britain is in a state of change. It is being transformed by the ongoing process of devolution as well as by its increasing multi-ethnicity. At the same time the relationship with the European Union remains controversial. This book charts these transformations in the context of the changes Britain experienced a century ago, at the turn of the twentieth century. Focusing on British politics, culture and literature the articles examine a range of topics, including models of utopian and apocalyptic thought, the contemporary celebrity cult, the state of literary theory in Britain and the recent “boom” in lyrical poetry and the “drama of blood and sperm”.

Livecasting in Twenty-First-Century British Theatre
Livecasting in Twenty-First-Century British Theatre

Author: Heidi Lucja Liedke

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2023-06-15

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1350340979

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This significant contribution to the study of the live and recorded broadcasting of stage plays focuses on National Theatre Live a decade after its launch in 2009. Assessing livecasting through the concepts of spectacle, materiality and engagement, it examines the role played by audiences in livecasting. Illustrated by in-depth analyses of recent NT Live shows, including A Midsummer Night's Dream (2019), Antony and Cleopatra (2018) and Small Island (2019), the book is complemented by insights from practitioners involved in the making of the livecasts. Finally, livecasting is contextualized within recently emerged forms of Covidian (virtual) theatre during the pandemic in order to offer some thoughts on the future of the genre of theatrical performance. Combining lively analyses of recent theatre performances with auto-ethnographic accounts, Heidi Lucja Liedke turns to 20th-century thinkers such as Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht in order to understand livecasting's place in a continuum of developments taking place on the borders of media, film and performance for the past 100 years. As well as embedding livecasting in its historical context of 19th-century electrophone technology, Liedke assesses its position in contemporary discourses on the meaning of theatre for spectators in the pre- and post-pandemic moment, and points towards the form's future.

Growing Sideways in Twenty-first Century British Culture
Growing Sideways in Twenty-first Century British Culture

Author: Anne Malewski

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published: 2021-12-15

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 9027258406

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This volume examines changing boundaries between childhood and adulthood in British society and culture at the beginning of the twenty-first century − where these age boundaries are widely debated, policed, and contested − to investigate alternatives to conventional ideas of growing up. Building on observations, especially in children’s literature criticism, that human growth is shaped by a grand narrative that privileges adulthood, and on terminologies of non-normative growth, particularly in queer theory, this monograph develops growing sideways as a concept that queers this grand narrative by destabilising childhood and adulthood, and the boundaries between them. The concept is refined through close readings of twenty-first century British children’s literature, television series, film, and participatory events, troubling age boundaries via specific strategies in three conceptual areas: appearance, play, and space. Exploring power structures around age and gender, this monograph traces growing sideways as a distinct and important alternative discourse of human growth.

Shakespeare's Cultural Capital
Shakespeare's Cultural Capital

Author: Dominic Shellard

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-04-18

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 1137583169

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Shakespeare is a cultural phenomenon and arguably the most renowned playwright in history. In this edited collection, Shellard and Keenan bring together a collection of essays from international scholars that examine the direct and indirect economic and cultural impact of Shakespeare in the marketplace in the UK and beyond. From the marketing of Shakespeare’s plays on and off stage, to the wider impact of Shakespeare in fields such as education, and the commercial use of Shakespeare as a brand in the advertising and tourist industries, this volume makes an important contribution to our understanding of the Shakespeare industry 400 years after his death. With a foreword from the celebrated cultural economist Bruno Frey and nine essays exploring the cultural and economic impact of Shakespeare in his own day and the present, Shakespeare’s Cultural Capital forms a unique offering to the study of cultural economics and Shakespeare.

The Contemporary History Play
The Contemporary History Play

Author: Benjamin Poore

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2024-05-30

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 1350169641

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Something exciting is happening with the contemporary history play. New writing by playwrights such as Jackie Sibblies Drury, Samuel Adamson, Hannah Khalil, Cordelia Lynn, and Lucy Kirkwood, makes powerful theatrical use of the past, but does not fit into critics' familiar categories of historical drama. In this book, Benjamin Poore provides readers with tools to name and critically analyse these changes. The Contemporary History Play contends that many history plays are becoming more complex and layered in their aesthetic approaches, as playwrights work through the experience of being surrounded by numerous and varied forms of historical representation in the twenty-first century. For theatre scholars, this book offers a means of interpreting how new writing relies on the past and notions of historicity to generate meaning and resonance in the present. For playwrights and students of playwriting, the book is a guide to the history play's recent past, and to the state of the art: what techniques and formulas have been popular, the tropes that are widely used, and how artists have found ways of renewing or overturning established conventions.

Memorialising Shakespeare
Memorialising Shakespeare

Author: Edmund G. C. King

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-01-01

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 3030840131

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This book is the first comprehensive account of global Shakespeare commemoration in the period between 1916 and 2016. Combining historical analysis with insights into current practice, Memorialising Shakespeare covers Shakespeare commemoration in China, Ukraine, Egypt, and France, as well as Great Britain and the United States. Chapter authors discuss a broad range of commemorative activities—from pageants, dance, dramatic performances, and sculpture, to conferences, exhibitions, and more private acts of engagement, such as reading and diary writing. Themes covered include Shakespeare’s role in the formation of cultural memory and national and global identities, as well as Shakespeare’s relationship to decolonisation and race. A significant feature of the book is the inclusion of chapters from organisers of recent Shakespeare commemoration events, reflecting on their own practice. Together, the chapters in Memorialising Shakespeare show what has been at stake when communities, identity groups, and institutions have come together to commemorate Shakespeare.

The British Army, Manpower and Society into the Twenty-first Century
The British Army, Manpower and Society into the Twenty-first Century

Author: Hew Strachan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-06-30

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1135302057

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These essays set the relationship between the Army and society in the context of the 20th century as a whole. They then consider the key areas of current controversy - the pressure on the Army caused by changes in society, the Army's "right to be different", race, homosexuality and gender.