Excerpts from and citations to reviews of more than 8,000 books each year, drawn from coverage of 109 publications. Book Review Digest provides citations to and excerpts of reviews of current juvenile and adult fiction and nonfiction in the English language. Reviews of the following types of books are excluded: government publications, textbooks, and technical books in the sciences and law. Reviews of books on science for the general reader, however, are included. The reviews originate in a group of selected periodicals in the humanities, social sciences, and general science published in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. - Publisher.
"Applied Theatre is the first study to assist practitioners and students to develop critical frameworks for planning and implementing their own theatrical projects. This reader-friendly text considers an international range of case studies in applied theatre through discussion questions, practical activities and detailed analysis of specific theatre projects globally."--Provided by the publisher.
Shortlisted for the 2022 TaPRA David Bradby Monograph Prize Applied Theatre: A Pedagogy of Utopia offers a critical consideration of long-term applied and participatory theatre projects. In doing so, it provides a timely analysis of concepts that inform applied theatre and outlines a new way of thinking about making theatre with differing groups of participants. The book problematizes key concepts including safe spaces, voice, ethical practice and resistance. Selina Busby analyses applied theatre projects in India, the USA and the UK, in youth theatres, homeless shelters, prisons and with those living in informal housing settlements to consider her key question: what might a pedagogy of utopia look like? Drawing on 20 years of practice in a range of contexts, this book focuses on long-term interventions that raise troubling questions about applied theatre, cultural colonialism and power, while arguing that community or participatory theatre conversely has the potential to generate a resilient sense of optimism, or what Busby terms, a 'nebulous utopia'.
Key Concepts in Theatre Drama Education provides the first comprehensive survey of contemporary research trends in theatre/drama education. It is an intriguing rainbow of thought, celebrating a journey across three fields of scholarship: theatre, education and modes of knowing. Hitherto no other collection of key concepts has been published in theatre /drama education. Fifty seven entries, written by sixty scholars from across the world aim to convey the zeitgeist of the field. The book’s key innovation lies in its method of writing, through collaborative networking, an open peer-review process, and meaning-making involving all contributors. Within the framework of key-concept entries, readers will find valuable judgments and the viewpoints of researchers from North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, New Zealand and Australia. The volume clearly shows that drama/theatre educators and researchers have created a language, with its own grammar and lucid syntax. The concepts outlined convey the current knowledge of scholars, highlighting what they consider significant. Entries cover interdependent topics on teaching and learning, aesthetics and ethics, curricula and history, culture and community, various populations and their needs, theatre for young people, digital technology, narrative and pedagogy, research methods, Shakespeare and Brecht, other various modes of theatre and the education of theatre teachers. It aims to serve as the standard reference book for theatre/drama education researchers, policymakers, practitioners and students around the world. A basic companion for researchers, students, and teachers, this sourcebook outlines the key concepts that make the field prominent in the sphere of Arts Education.
Renaissance Drama explores the rich variety of theatrical and performance traditions and practices in early modern Europe and intersecting cultures. Volume 41 features articles that extend the scope of our understanding of early modern playing, theatre history, and dramatic texts and interpretation, encouraging innovative theoretical and methodological approaches to these traditions, examining familiar works, and revisiting well-known texts from fresh perspectives.
This book explores and interrogates access and diversity in applied theatre and drama education. Access is persistently framed as a strategy to share power and to extend equality, but in the context of current and recent power struggles, it is also seen as a discourse that reinforces marginalisation and exclusion. The political bind of access is also a conceptual problem. It is impossible to refuse to engage in strategies to extend access to institutions, representations, buildings, education, discourse, etc. We cannot oppose access or strategies for access without reinforcing marginalisation and exclusion. We can’t not want access for ourselves or for others. However, we are then in danger of remaining immersed in a distribution of power that reinforces and naturalises inequality as difference. For applied theatre and drama education, the act of creating, teaching, and learning is intrinsically connected to choice, along with the agency and capacity to choose. What is less clear, and what still interests us, is how the distribution of power and representation creates the schema for an analysis of access and diversity. This book was originally published as a special issue of Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance.
Nobody can ignore the fact that Myra is dying, but in the meantime, life goes on. There are boilers to be fixed, cats to be fed, and the perfect funeral to be planned. As a mother researches burial spots and biodegradable coffins, her family is finally forced to communicate with her and each other as they face up to the future. A dark comedy about death and life going on.
In Theater as Data, Miguel Escobar Varela explores the use of computational methods and digital data in theater research. He considers the implications of these new approaches, and explains the roles that statistics and visualizations play. Reflecting on recent debates in the humanities, the author suggests that there are two ways of using data, both of which have a place in theater research. Data-driven methods are closer to the pursuit of verifiable results common in the sciences; and data-assisted methods are closer to the interpretive traditions of the humanities. The book surveys four major areas within theater scholarship: texts (not only playscripts but also theater reviews and program booklets); relationships (both the links between fictional characters and the collaborative networks of artists and producers); motion (the movement of performers and objects on stage); and locations (the coordinates of performance events, venues, and touring circuits). Theater as Data examines important contributions to theater studies from similar computational research, including in classical French drama, collaboration networks in Australian theater, contemporary Portuguese choreography, and global productions of Ibsen. This overview is complemented by short descriptions of the author’s own work in the computational analysis of theater practices in Singapore and Indonesia. The author ends by considering the future of computational theater research, underlining the importance of open data and digital sustainability practices, and encouraging readers to consider the benefits of learning to code. A web companion offers illustrative data, programming tutorials, and videos.
The first comprehensive study of August Wilson's drama introduces the major themes and motifs that unite Wilson's ten-play cycle about African American life in each decade of the twentieth century. Framed by Wilson's life experiences and informed by his extensive interviews, this book provides fresh, coherent, detailed readings of each play, well-situated in the extant scholarship. It also provides an overview of the cycle as a whole, demonstrating how it comprises a compelling interrogation of American culture and historiography. Keenly aware of the musical paradigms informing Wilson's dramatic technique, Nadel shows how jazz and, particularly, the blues provide the structural mechanisms that allow Wilson to examine alternative notions of time, property, and law. Wilson's improvisational logics become crucial to expressing his notions of black identity and resituating the relationship of literal to figurative in the African American community. The final two chapters include contributions by scholars Harry J. Elam, Jr. and Donald E. Pease
