Anthropocene Theater and the Shakespearean Stage

Anthropocene Theater and the Shakespearean Stage

Author: William H. Steffen

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2023-02-20

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0192699954

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Anthropocene Theater and the Shakespearean Stage revises the anthropocentric narrative of early globalization from the perspective of the non-human world in order to demonstrate Nature's agency in determining ecological, economic, and colonial outcomes. It welcomes readers to reimagine theater history in broader terms, and to account for more non-human and atmospheric players in the otherwise anthropocentric history of Shakespearean performance. This book analyses plays, horticultural manuals, cosmetic recipes, Puritan polemics, and travel writing in order to demonstrate how the material practices of the stage both catalyze and resist early forms of globalization in an ecological arena. William Steffen addresses the role of an understudied ecological performance history in determining Shakespeare's iconic cultural status, and models how non-human players have undermined Shakespeare's authoritative role in colonial discourse. Finally, this book makes a celebratory argument for the humanities in the age of climate change, and invites interdisciplinary engagement a research community that is compelled to find strategies for cultivating a hopeful tomorrow amidst unprecedented anthropogenic environmental changes.


Performing Shakespearean Appropriations

Performing Shakespearean Appropriations

Author: Darlena Ciraulo

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2022-06-29

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 1683933613

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This collection of essays brings together innovative scholarship on Shakespeare’s afterlives in tribute to Christy Desmet. Contributors explore the production and consumption of Shakespeare in acts of adaptation and appropriation across a range of performance topics, from book history to the novel to television, cinema, and digital media.


Theatre Pedagogy in the Era of Climate Crisis

Theatre Pedagogy in the Era of Climate Crisis

Author: Conrad Alexandrowicz

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-05-03

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 100037646X

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This volume explores whether theatre pedagogy can and should be transformed in response to the global climate crisis. Conrad Alexandrowicz and David Fancy present an innovative re-imagining of the ways in which the art of theatre, and the pedagogical apparatus that feeds and supports it, might contribute to global efforts in climate protest and action. Comprised of contributions from a broad range of scholars and practitioners, the volume explores whether an adherence to aesthetic values can be preserved when art is instrumentalized as protest and considers theatre as a tool to be employed by the School Strike for Climate movement. Considering perspectives from areas including performance, directing, production, design, theory and history, this book will prompt vital discussions which could transform curricular design and implementation in the light of the climate crisis. Theatre Pedagogy in the Era of Climate Crisis will be of great interest to students, scholars and practitioners of climate change and theatre and performance studies.


Far Away (Donmar Edition)

Far Away (Donmar Edition)

Author: Caryl Churchill

Publisher:

Published: 2020-02-06

Total Pages: 64

ISBN-13: 9781848428737

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Caryl Churchill's dazzling play about a world sliding into chaos, in a new edition published alongside the play's revival at the Donmar Warehouse, London, in 2020.


How to Think Like Shakespeare

How to Think Like Shakespeare

Author: Scott Newstok

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2021-08-31

Total Pages: 206

ISBN-13: 0691227691

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"This book offers a short, spirited defense of rhetoric and the liberal arts as catalysts for precision, invention, and empathy in today's world. The author, a professor of Shakespeare studies at a liberal arts college and a parent of school-age children, argues that high-stakes testing and a culture of assessment have altered how and what students are taught, as courses across the arts, humanities, and sciences increasingly are set aside to make room for joyless, mechanical reading and math instruction. Students have been robbed of a complete education, their imaginations stunted by this myopic focus on bare literacy and numeracy. Education is about thinking, Newstok argues, rather than the mastery of a set of rigidly defined skills, and the seemingly rigid pedagogy of the English Renaissance produced some of the most compelling and influential examples of liberated thinking. Each of the fourteen chapters explores an essential element of Shakespeare's world and work, aligns it with the ideas of other thinkers and writers in modern times, and suggests opportunities for further reading. Chapters on craft, technology, attention, freedom, and related topics combine past and present ideas about education to build a case for the value of the past, the pleasure of thinking, and the limitations of modern educational practices and prejudices"--


Titus Andronicus & Timon of Athens

Titus Andronicus & Timon of Athens

Author: William Shakespeare

Publisher: Modern Library

Published: 2011-09-13

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1588368823

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“These words are razors to my wounded heart.” —Titus Andronicus “We have seen better days.” —Timon of Athens Eminent Shakespearean scholars Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen provide fresh new editions of the two great tragedies: Titus Adronicus, a graphic story of revenge, and Timon of Athens, a cautionary tale about false friends and unearned loyalty. THIS VOLUME ALSO INCLUDES MORE THAN A HUNDRED PAGES OF EXCLUSIVE FEATURES: • original Introductions to Titus Andronicus and Timon of Athens • incisive scene-by-scene synopsis and analysis with vital facts about the work • commentary on past and current productions based on interviews with leading directors, actors, and designers • photographs of key RSC productions • an overview of Shakespeare’s theatrical career and chronology of his plays Ideal for students, theater professionals, and general readers, these modern and accessible editions from the Royal Shakespeare Company set a new standard in Shakespearean literature for the twenty-first century.


Shakespeare and Ecology

Shakespeare and Ecology

Author: Randall Martin

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015-09-17

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0191088099

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Shakespeare and Ecology is the first book to explore the topical contexts that shaped the environmental knowledge and politics of Shakespeare and his audiences. Early modern England experienced unprecedented environmental challenges including climate change, population growth, resource shortfalls, and habitat destruction which anticipate today's globally magnified crises. Shakespeare wove these events into the poetic textures and embodied action of his drama, contributing to the formation of a public ecological consciousness, while opening creative pathways for re-imagining future human relationships with the natural world and non-human life. This book begins with an overview of ecological modernity across Shakespeare's work before focusing on three major environmental controversies in particular plays: deforestation in The Merry Wives of Windsor and The Tempest; profit-driven agriculture in As You Like It; and gunpowder warfare and remedial cultivation in Henry IV Parts One and Two, Henry V, and Macbeth. A fourth chapter examines the interdependency of local and global eco-relations in Cymbeline, and the final chapter explores Darwinian micro-ecologies in Hamlet and Antony and Cleopatra. An epilogue suggests that Shakespeare's greatest potential for mobilizing modern ecological ideas and practices lies in contemporary performance. Shakespeare and Ecology illuminates the historical antecedents of modern ecological knowledge and activism, and explores Shakespeare's capacity for generating imaginative and performative responses to today's environmental challenges.


Ocean

Ocean

Author: Steve Mentz

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2020-03-19

Total Pages: 183

ISBN-13: 1501348647

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Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. The ocean comprises the largest object on our planet. Retelling human history from an oceanic rather than terrestrial point of view unsettles our relationship with the natural environment. Our engagement with the world's oceans can be destructive, as with today's deluge of plastic trash and acidification, but the mismatch between small bodies and vast seas also emphasizes the frailty and resilience of human experience. From ancient stories of shipwrecked sailors to the containerized future of 21st-century commerce, Ocean splashes the histories we thought we knew into salty and unfamiliar places. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.


Imagined Theatres

Imagined Theatres

Author: Daniel Sack

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-04-07

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 1351965603

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Imagined Theatres collects theoretical dramas written by some of the leading scholars and artists of the contemporary stage. These dialogues, prose poems, and microfictions describe imaginary performance events that explore what might be possible and impossible in the theatre. Each scenario is mirrored by a brief accompanying reflection, asking what they might mean for our thinking about the theatre. These many possible worlds circle around questions that include: In what way is writing itself a performance? How do we understand the relationship between real performances that engender imaginary reflections and imaginary conceptions that form the basis for real theatrical productions? Are we not always imagining theatres when we read or even when we sit in the theatre, watching whatever event we imagine we are seeing?


Four Shakespearean Period Pieces

Four Shakespearean Period Pieces

Author: Margreta de Grazia

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2021-05-14

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 022678522X

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"Margreta de Grazia continues to change the course of Shakespeare studies in this book, where she focuses on four key terms: anachronism, chronology, periods, and the grand secular narrative. These 'unassailable' terms, once considered the bedrock of what we 'know' and how we study Shakespeare, are now under debate in our particular moment in the study of the past"--