Understanding Marsha Norman

Understanding Marsha Norman

Author: Lisa Tyler

Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press

Published: 2019-09-13

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13: 1643360035

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Best known for her Pulitzer Prize–winning play 'night, Mother and her acclaimed adaptations of The Secret Garden and The Color Purple for musical theater, Marsha Norman has produced an impressive oeuvre that includes not only works for the stage but also a novel and several television screenplays. The first book on the Louisville-born writer in twenty years, Understanding Marsha Norman introduces readers to her life and work while making a persuasive case for her preeminence among America's leading dramatic artists. Following a biographical introduction, the book examines such early plays as Getting Out, Third and Oak, and Circus Valentine, which, according to the playwright herself, taught her the skills she needed to write her more successful works—most notably the much-lauded two-character drama 'night, Mother, which centers around an apparently rational young woman's choice to commit suicide. Subsequent chapters examine Norman's underrated novel The Fortune Teller and three mid-career plays that rewrite the traditions of the Western, the biblical story of Sarah and Abraham, and the legend of Daniel Boone. Her more recent plays, including Trudy Blue, 140, and Last Dance, acknowledge the limitations of romantic relationships, while her forays into musical theater and television, including scripts for such programs as Law and Order: Criminal Intent and the Peabody-winning HBO series In Treatment, signal a dramatist who is ever willing to take risks and venture into new genres. At her best when writing about interesting and troubled women and their relationships with each other, Norman has received much less critical attention than male contemporaries such as Sam Shepard and David Mamet. This engaging and edifying book helps rectify that disparity.


Violence in American Drama

Violence in American Drama

Author: Alfonso Ceballos Muñoz

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2011-09-29

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 0786488972

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This interdisciplinary collection of 19 essays addresses violence on the American stage. Topics include the revolutionary period and the role of violence in establishing national identity, violence by and against ethnic groups, and females as perpetrators and victims, as well as state and psychological violence and violence within the family. The book works to assess whether representing violence may cause its cessation, or whether it generates further destruction. Featured playwrights include Susan Glaspell, Sophie Treadwell, Tennessee Williams, William Inge, Amiri Baraka, Luis Valdes, Cherrie Moraga, Sam Shepard, Tony Kushner, Neil LaBute, John Guare, Rebecca Gilman, and Heather MacDonald.


Sam Shepard and the Aesthetics of Performance

Sam Shepard and the Aesthetics of Performance

Author: E. Creedon

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-07-22

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 1137527412

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By concentrating on Sam Shepard's visual aesthetics, Emma Creedon argues that a consideration of Shepard's plays in the context of visual and theoretical Surrealism illuminates our understanding of his experimental approach to drama.


Performing Gender Violence

Performing Gender Violence

Author: B. Ozieblo

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2012-01-02

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1137010568

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Violence against women in plays bywomen has earned little mention. This revolutionary collection fills that gap, focusing on plays by American women dramatists, written in the last thirty years, that deal with different forms of gender violence. Each author discusses specific manifestations of violence in carefully selected plays: psychological, familial, war-time, and social injustice. This book encompasses the theatrical devices used to represent violence on the stage in an age of virtual, immediate reality as much as the problematics of gender violence in modern society.


Modern American Drama, 1945-2000

Modern American Drama, 1945-2000

Author: C. W. E. Bigsby

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2000-12-21

Total Pages: 476

ISBN-13: 9780521794107

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New edition of Modern American Drama completes the survey and comes up to 2000.


Staging Masculinity

Staging Masculinity

Author: Carla J. McDonough

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2006-07-05

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0786427361

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The men in plays such as Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman or Sam Shephard's True West are often presented as universal; little attention is given to the gender dynamics involved in the characters. This work looks at how contemporary playwrights, including Miller, Shepard, Eugene O'Neill, David Mamet, and August Wilson, stage masculinity in their works. It becomes apparent that male playwrights return often to the issues of troubled manhood, usually masked in other issues such as war, business or family. The plays indicate both the attractiveness of the model of traditional masculinity and the illusive nature of this image, which all too often fractures and fails the characters who pursue it. O'Neill's play The Hairy Ape and the character Yank receive much attention.


Memory in Play

Memory in Play

Author: A. Favorini

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2008-12-08

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0230617166

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This innovative study examines the role of memory in the history of theatre and drama. Favorini analyzes issues of memory in self-construction, collective memory, the clash of memory and history and even explores what the work of cognitive scientists can teach us about brain function and our response to drama.


The Intent to Live

The Intent to Live

Author: Larry Moss

Publisher: Bantam

Published: 2004-12-28

Total Pages: 378

ISBN-13: 055390115X

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“I call this book The Intent to Live because great actors don’t seem to be acting, they seem to be actually living.” –Larry Moss, from the Introduction When Oscar-winning actors Helen Hunt and Hilary Swank accepted their Academy Awards, each credited Larry Moss’s guidance as key to their career-making performances. There is a two-year waiting list for his advanced acting classes. But now everyone–professionals and amateurs alike–can discover Moss’s passionate, in-depth teaching. Inviting you to join him in the classroom and onstage, Moss shares the techniques he has developed over thirty years to help actors set their emotions, imagination, and behavior on fire, showing how the hard work of preparation pays off in performances that are spontaneous, fresh, and authentic. From the foundations of script analysis to the nuances of physicalization and sensory work, here are the case studies, exercises, and insights that enable you to connect personally with a script, develop your character from the inside out, overcome fear and inhibition, and master the technical skills required for success in the theater, television, and movies. Far more than a handbook, The Intent to Live is the personal credo of a master teacher. Moss’s respect for actors and love of the actor’s craft enliven every page, together with examples from a wealth of plays and films, both current and classic, and vivid appreciations of great performances. Whether you act for a living or simply want a deeper understanding of acting greatness, The Intent to Live will move, instruct, and inspire you.


World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre

World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre

Author: Irving Brown (Consulting Bibliographer)

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-11

Total Pages: 546

ISBN-13: 1136119000

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An annotated world theatre bibliography documenting significant theatre materials published world wide since 1945, plus an index to key names throughout the six volumes of the series.


Sam Shepard V8

Sam Shepard V8

Author: Johan Callens

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2005-06-28

Total Pages: 115

ISBN-13: 1135299064

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These issues consist of the edited Proceedings of the Shepard conference, organized by the Belgian-Luxembourg American Studies Association and the Free University of Brussels (VUB), which took place in Brussels, 28-30 May 1993. It will be of interest to undergraduates and postgraduates, professors, critics, theater practitioners, writers and those with a keen interest in the fields of literature, theater studies and cultural studies.