Living the Drama

Living the Drama

Author: David J. Harding

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2010-04-15

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 0226316661

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For the middle class and the affluent, local ties seem to matter less and less these days, but in the inner city, your life can be irrevocably shaped by what block you live on. Living the Drama takes a close look at three neighborhoods in Boston to analyze the many complex ways that the context of community shapes the daily lives and long-term prospects of inner-city boys. David J. Harding studied sixty adolescent boys growing up in two very poor areas and one working-class area. In the first two, violence and neighborhood identification are inextricably linked as rivalries divide the city into spaces safe, neutral, or dangerous. Consequently, Harding discovers, social relationships are determined by residential space. Older boys who can navigate the dangers of the streets serve as role models, and friendships between peers grow out of mutual protection. The impact of community goes beyond the realm of same-sex bonding, Harding reveals, affecting the boys’ experiences in school and with the opposite sex. A unique glimpse into the world of urban adolescent boys, Living the Drama paints a detailed, insightful portrait of life in the inner city.


Theatre for Community, Conflict & Dialogue

Theatre for Community, Conflict & Dialogue

Author: Michael Rohd

Publisher: Heinemann Drama

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13:

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This book helps you provide opportunities for young people to open up and explore their feelings through theatre, offering a safe place for them to air their views with dignity, respect, and freedom.


Local Acts

Local Acts

Author: Jan Cohen-Cruz

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2005-03-25

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 0813537584

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An eclectic mix of art, theatre, dance, politics, experimentation, and ritual, community-based performance has become an increasingly popular art movement in the United States. Forged by the collaborative efforts of professional artists and local residents, this unique field brings performance together with a range of political, cultural, and social projects, such as community-organizing, cultural self-representation, and education. Local Acts presents a long-overdue survey of community-based performance from its early roots, through its flourishing during the politically-turbulent 1960s, to present-day popular culture. Drawing on nine case studies, including groups such as the African American Junebug Productions, the Appalachian Roadside Theater, and the Puerto Rican Teatro Pregones, Jan Cohen-Cruz provides detailed descriptions of performances and processes, first-person stories, and analysis. She shows how the ritual side of these endeavors reinforces a sense of community identification while the aesthetic side enables local residents to transgress cultural norms, to question group habits, and to incorporate a level of craft that makes the work accessible to individuals beyond any one community. The book concludes by exploring how community-based performance transcends even national boundaries, connecting the local United States with international theater and cultural movements.


Theatre and Empowerment

Theatre and Empowerment

Author: Richard Boon

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2004-08-19

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1139453513

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Theatre and Empowerment examines the ability of drama, theatre, dance and performance to empower communities of very different kinds, and it does so from a multi-cultural perspective. The communities involved include poverty-stricken children in Ethiopia and the Indian sub-continent, disenfranchised Native Americans in the USA and young black men in Britain, victims of violence in South Africa and Northern Ireland, and a threatened agricultural town in Italy. The book asserts the value of performance as a vital agent of necessary social change, and makes its arguments through the close examination, from 'inside' practice, of the success - not always complete - of specific projects in their practical and cultural contexts. Practitioners and commentators ask how performance in its widest sense can play a part in community activism on a scale larger than the individual, 'one-off' project by helping communities find their own liberating and creative voices.


Community Theatre

Community Theatre

Author: Eugene van Erven

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-09-11

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1134656351

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Community theatre is an important device for communities to collectively share stories, to participate in political dialogue, and to break down the increasing exclusion of marginalised groups of citizens. It is practised all over the world by growing numbers of people. Published at the same time as a video of the same name, this is a unique record of these theatre groups in action. Based on van Erven's own travels and experiences working with community theatre groups in six very different countries, this is the first study of their work and the methodological traditions which have developed around the world.


Sylvia

Sylvia

Author: Albert Ramsdell Gurney

Publisher: Dramatists Play Service, Inc.

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 92

ISBN-13: 9780822214960

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A romantic comedy on midlife relationships and a pet dog.


Feminist Visions and Queer Futures in Postcolonial Drama

Feminist Visions and Queer Futures in Postcolonial Drama

Author: Kanika Batra

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2011-04-13

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 1136887539

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In this timely study, Batra examines contemporary drama from India, Jamaica, and Nigeria in conjunction with feminist and incipient queer movements in these countries. Postcolonial drama, Batra contends, furthers the struggle for gender justice in both these movements by contesting the idea of the heterosexual, middle class, wage-earning male as the model citizen and by suggesting alternative conceptions of citizenship premised on working-class sexual identities. Further, Batra considers the possibility of Indian, Jamaican, and Nigerian drama generating a discourse on a rights-bearing conception of citizenship that derives from representations of non-biological, non-generational forms of kinship. Her study is one of the first to examine the ways in which postcolonial dramatists are creating the possibility of a dialogue between cultural activism, women’s movements, and an emerging discourse on queer sexualities.