Oliver always dreads Great-Aunt Mildred's visit and wishes that she did not have to come for tea. Luckily for Oliver, he has a pungent plan - a plan that involves his best friend Bloo. However, Bloo is no ordinary friend. Not only is he extraordinary and cool, he has a unique power that gets Oliver out of all sorts of trouble. With a rumble and a grumble and an almighty stink, another foul-smelling wish is about to come true.
Oliver is a little dog who has an animal family, and a people family, and a number of problems that make him feel that he is a lesser being. He writes his thoughts down and he goes through an experience that brings him to greater awareness and happiness. The drawings and writing and antics of the animals in this book are intended to provide a bit of fun and a smile for the children. While they smile they can discover personal responsibility, and their own spirituality, and their own healing energy, which they can direct towards their own healing. Even better; they too can contribute to the very much needed healing of the world that is their inheritance. I have asked the children, with 'Oliver's help', to join with me in raising the existing consciousness of the world in to a lighter consciousness of love, light, and peace. I am sure they will, and that they and this book will make a difference.
Oscar Wilde famously spoke of 'the critic as artist' whilst Terry Eagleton once celebrated 'the critic as clown'. This exciting new volume brings together a range of writings that seek to radically re-imagine the often pale figure of the literary critic. In doing so we here glimpse a host of unfamiliar figures from the critic as pedestrian to the critic as suicide through the critic as revivalist and even the critic as bodger. The result is a book that seeks to locate the truly critical critic -- or, to be paradoxical, the critic as critic; the critic who is a critic of criticism as conventionally understood. This is the final volume of the immensely successful 'Critical Inventions' series.
There is no fourth wall in popular performance. The show is firmly rooted in the here and now, and the performers address the audience directly, while the audience answer back with laughter, applause or heckling. Performer and role are interlaced, so that we are left uncertain about just how the persona we see onstage might relate to the private person who presents it to us. Popular Performance defines and surveys varieties of performance where the main purpose is to entertain, and where there is no shame in being trivial, frivolous or nonsensical as long as people go home happy at the end of the show. Contributions by new and established scholars focus particularly on how it is made, explaining the techniques of performance and production that make it so appealing to audiences. With sections examining how popular performance works in a range of historical and contemporary examples, readers will gain insights into: * performance forms associated with the variety tradition: music hall, vaudeville, cabaret, variety * performance forms associated with circus: wild west shows, clowning * issues relating to the identity of the performer in relation to magic, burlesque, pantomime in contemporary performance * issues relating to venue and audience in relation to contemporary street theatre, stand-up, and live sketch comedy.
