Impossible Vacation
Impossible Vacation

Author: Spalding Gray

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2011-11-02

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0307800687

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Having detailed the agonies of writing a book in his monologue Monster in a Box, Spalding Gray now gives us the monster itself: a convulsively funny, unexpectedly moving novel about a man eternally searching for a moment of protected pleasure even as he is permanently incapable of finding it. Brewster North witnesses his mother's madness but misses her suicide; searches frantically for enlightenment in the Poconos and zipless sex in India; suffers family ennui in Rhode Island and a nervous breakdown in Amsterdam. In the process he emerges as a hilariously complex everyman. And as Gray narrates his hero's free fall, he confirms his own stature as one of our funniest, most eccentric, and most engaging storytellers.

Bodies in Commotion
Bodies in Commotion

Author: Carrie Sandahl

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 2009-12-10

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 0472021729

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"A testament to the synergy of two evolving fields. From the study of staged performances to examinations of the performing body in everyday life, this book demonstrates the enormous profitability of moving beyond disability as metaphor. . . . It's a lesson that many of our cultural institutions desperately need to learn." -Martin F. Norden, University of Massachusetts-Amherst This groundbreaking collection imagines disabled bodies as "bodies in commotion"-bodies that dance across artistic and discursive boundaries, challenging our understanding of both disability and performance. In the book's essays, leading critics and artists explore topics that range from theater and dance to multi-media performance art, agit-prop, American Sign Language theater, and wheelchair sports. Bodies in Commotion is the first collection to consider the mutually interpretive qualities of these two emerging fields, producing a dynamic new resource for artists, activists, and scholars.

Family Plots
Family Plots

Author: Dana Heller

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2015-12-22

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1512816809

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Family Plots traces the fault lines of the Freudian family romance and holds that the "family plot" is very much alive in post-World War II American culture. It cuts across all genres, insinuating, criticizing, reinforcing, and reinventing itself in all forms of cultural production and consumption. The family romance is everywhere because the family itself is nowhere.

Theory/Theatre: An Introduction
Theory/Theatre: An Introduction

Author: Mark Fortier

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-01-31

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 1134719221

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Theory/Theatre: An Introduction provides a unique and engaging introduction to literary theory as it relates to theatre and performance. Mark Fortier lucidly examines current theoretical approaches, from semiotics, poststructuralism, to cultural materialism, postcolonial studies and feminist theory. Drawing upon examples from Shakespeare and Aphra Behn, to Chekhov, Artaud, Cixous and Churchill, the author examines the specific realities of theatre in order to come to a richer understanding of the relations between performance and cultural theory. Theory/Theatre: An Introduction is the only study of its kind and will be invaluable reading for new students and scholars of performance studies.

Theory/Theatre
Theory/Theatre

Author: Mark Fortier

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2005-07-08

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1134523645

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This is a new and enlarged edition of Mark Fortier's very successful and widely used essential text for students. Theory/Theatre provides a unique and engaging introduction to literary theory as it relates to theatre and performance. Fortier lucidly examines current theoretical approaches, from semiotics, poststructuralism, through cultural materialism, postcolonial studies and feminist theory. This new edition includes: * More detailed explanation of key ideas * New 'Putting it into practice' sections at the end of each chapter so you can approach performances from specific theoretical perspectives * Annotated further reading section and glossary. Theory/Theatre is still the only study of its kind and is invaluable reading for beginning students and scholars of performance studies.

A Philosophical Autofiction
A Philosophical Autofiction

Author: Spencer Golub

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-01-04

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 3030056120

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This is a book about what becomes of the truth when it succumbs to generational memory loss and to the fictions that intervene to cause and fill the gaps. It is a book about the impossibility of writing an autobiography when there is a prepossessing cultural and familial 'we' interfering with the 'I' and an 'I' that does not know itself as a self, except metastatically — as people and characters it has played but not actually been. A highly original combination of close readings and performative autobiography, this book takes performance philosophy to an alternative next step, by having its ideas read back to it by experience, and through assorted fictions. It is a philosophical thought experiment in uncertainty whose literary, theatrical, and cinematic trappings illustrate and finally become what this uncertainty is, the thought experiment having become the life that was, that came before, and that outlives the 'I am'.

The Journals of Spalding Gray
The Journals of Spalding Gray

Author: Spalding Gray

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2012-10-02

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 0307474917

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Riveting, funny, heartbreaking, at once raw and lyrical: these journals reveal the extraordinary inner life of the actor-writer who invented the autobiographical monologue and perfected the form in such celebrated works as Swimming to Cambodia. Begun when he was twenty-five, Spalding Gray's journals reflect on his childhood; his craving for success; the downtown New York arts scene of the 1970s; his love affairs, marriages, and fatherhood; his travels in Europe and Asia; and throughout, his passion for the theater, where he worked to balance his compulsion to tell all with his fear of having his deepest secrets exposed. The Journals of Spalding Gray gives us a haunting portrait of a creative genius who we thought had told us everything about himself—until now.

American Theatre Ensembles Volume 2
American Theatre Ensembles Volume 2

Author: Mike Vanden Heuvel

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-01-28

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1350051640

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A companion to American Theatre Ensembles Volume 1, this volume charts the development and achievements of theatre companies working after 1995, bringing together the diffuse generation of ensembles working within a context of media saturation and epistemological and social fragmentation. Ensembles examined include Rude Mechs, The Builders Association, Pig Iron, Radiohole, The Civilians and 600 Highwaymen. Introductory chapters provide a sweeping overview of ensemble-based creation within the general historical and cultural contexts of the period, followed by a detailed study of the evolution of ensemble-based work. Contributors examine matters such as influence, funding, production and legacies, as well as the forms of collective devising and creation, while presenting close readings of the companies' most prominent works. The volume features detailed case studies of the 6 companies from the period and cover: * A history of development and methods * Key productions and projects * Critical reception * A chronology of significant productions US ensemble companies since 1995 have revolutionized the form and content of contemporary performance, influencing experimental as well as mainstream practice. This volume provides the first encompassing study of this vital development in contemporary American theatre by mapping its evolution and key developments.

Seven Visual Steps to Yes
Seven Visual Steps to Yes

Author: Janet Miller Wiseman

Publisher: Outskirts Press

Published: 2016-08-26

Total Pages: 157

ISBN-13: 1478781904

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Adnan wants to build an in-law apartment for Sherrie’s mother to live in. Sherrie wants no more mortgage debt. For vacation, Laura wants to hike Mount Katahdin to scatter her father’s ashes and to lose baby-belly-weight. Caleb, her husband, wants to rest on Martha’s Vineyard to recover from his exhausting work as environmental field engineer. You’ll read many real life vignettes while learning the SEVEN VISUAL STEPS which are engaging, sometimes hilarious and always instructive. Knowledge Empowers. “For over 30 years I have been sending couples who desire divorce mediation, but who are in various stages of confusion and ambivalence, to Janet Miller Wiseman, as decision-making mediator, so she can help them decide the future directions of their marriages. After another successful result, I asked her what she did when I send people to her. “We discover when they need a divorce or something more fundamental. When a divorce is what is needed, I send them back to you for divorce mediation” was her wise reply. —John Adams Fiske, Attorney, Cambridge, MA. “In the case of Bill and Sally, in the book, we were able to provide knowledge and clarity for the parties in the framework of the Seven Visual Steps, thereby addressing their deepest fears, and allowing them to reach mutually agreeable terms. Janet’s book should be read by everyone searching for a tried and true method of negotiation and decision-making.” —Chris Chen, CDFA, CFP, Insight Financial Strategists, Arlington, MA.