'. . . history is my passion. Writing it, teaching it, reading it fills the days and years of my life. In all passions, there is pain and pleasure.' Greg Dening In this collection of writings-some new, some previously published-Greg Dening reflects on his experiences both as a historian and a participant in history. Performances brings together the personal and the scholarly, demonstrating how our lives are saturated with history, how we can only understand our present through our consciousness of the past and how in thinking about the past we mirror the time and place of our own living. Each of these essays can be enjoyed on its own, yet throughout them all run the common themes of the intricate relationships between past and present, the personal and the political, historical research and the imagination. Dening writes with elegance and candour, inviting readers to reflect upon their own participation in the 'performance' of history.
Passing Performances gathers a range of critical and biographical essays on notable personalities whose major contributions to the stage occurred before 1969, the year of the Stonewall riots that kicked off the gay rights movement in the United States. How these theater practitioners variously "passed"-- i.e., managed unconventional sexual inclinations both on- and offstage--significantly determined the course of their personal and professional lives and thus the course of U.S. theater history. The actors, directors, producers, and agents examined here include Edwin Forrest, Charlotte Cushman, and Adah Isaacs Menken, whose personal lives and careers traded on the same-sex erotics of "true love" in the antebellum period; Elisabeth Marbury, Elsie de Wolfe, Elsie Janis, Nance O'Neil, and Alla Nazimova, whose intimate female liaisons were variously interpreted around the turn of the century; the "lavender marriages" of Alfred Lunt to Lynne Fontanne and Guthrie McClintic to Katharine Cornell; the lesbian collaborations of Margaret Webster and Cheryl Crawford; the comic antics of Monty Woolley, which negotiated codified constructions of homosexual perversion in the post-Freudian interwar years; and the on- and offstage performances of Mary Martin and Joe Cino, which resisted the paranoid enforcements of heterosexual normality in the McCarthy era. Central to these investigations are the complex connections of performances of sexuality and gender and their different implications for men and women practitioners working under pervasive sexism and homophobia. The volume also includes striking archival photographs of the performers and their performances, and an index to facilitate the cross-referencing of subjects' intersecting careers. Passing Performances will engage both general and academic readers interested in theater, gay and lesbian history, American studies, and biography. Robert A. Schanke is Professor of Theatre and Chair of the Division of Fine Arts, Central College, Iowa. Kim Marra is Associate Professor of Theatre Arts, University of Iowa.
(Faber Piano Adventures ). Book 1 covers fundamental rhythms, all the notes of the grand staff, C position, G position. Contents include: Aloha Oe * Amazing Grace * Bagpipes * Bus Stop Boogie * Camptown Races * Chant of the Monk * Chant of the Monks * Chinese Dragon * Chord Crossings * Dreamscape * Eine Kleine Nachtmusik * English Minuet * Fife and Drums * Forest Drums * French Minuet.
A director's brilliant inquiry into the problems--and solutions--of staging, filming, and acting classics for modern audiences. 90 black-and-white and color illustrations.
Most music we hear comes to us via a recording medium on which sound has been stored. Such remoteness of music heard from music made has become so commonplace it is rarely considered. Musical Performance: A Philosophical Study considers the implications of this separation for live musical performance and music-making. Rather than examining the composition or perception of music as most philosophical accounts of music do, Stan Godlovitch takes up the problem of how the tradition of active music playing and performing has been challenged by technology and what problems this poses for philosophical aesthetics. Where does does the value of musical performance lie? Is human performance of music a mere transfer medium? Is the performance of music more expressive than recorded music? Musical Performance poses questions such as these to develop a fascinating account of music today. musicians - but via some recording medium on which sound has been stored.
Throughout its modern history, Russia has seen a succession of highly performative social acts that play out prominently in the public sphere. This innovative volume brings the fields of performance studies and Russian studies into dialog for the first time and shows that performance is a vital means for understanding Russia's culture from the reign of Peter the Great to the era of Putin. These twenty-seven essays encompass a diverse range of topics, from dance and classical music to live poetry and from viral video to public jubilees and political protest. As a whole they comprise an integrated, compelling intervention in Russian studies. Challenging the primacy of the written word in this field, the volume fosters a larger intellectual community informed by theories and practices of performance from anthropology, art history, dance studies, film studies, cultural and social history, literary studies, musicology, political science, theater studies, and sociology.
NOW AT YOUR FINGERTIPS: Every performance test for completing a home energy audit. If you're a professional in today's fast-evolving industry of high performance construction and retrofits, then you've probably found yourself wondering a few things: Who can show me how to run that test? How do I get the most out of the equipment I own? Why do the tests work, and how do I explain them? What quality control methods should I use? Which tools will make my job faster and easier? With this guide, experienced and new diagnosticians alike will get step-by-step details on advanced testing, complete with best practices, important concepts and pitfalls, ways to present data to the client, Step-By-Step photographs, and time-saving tips, plus quiz questions for each diagnostic!
A novel about three women at turning points in their lives, and the one night that changes everything. One night, three women go to the theater to see a play. Wildfires are burning in the hills outside, but inside the theater it is time for the performance to take over. Margot is a successful, flinty professor on the cusp of retirement, distracted by her fraught relationship with her adult son and her ailing husband. After a traumatic past, Ivy is is now a philanthropist with a seemingly perfect life. Summer is a young drama student, an usher at the theater, and frantically worried for her girlfriend whose parents live in the fire zone. While the performance unfolds on stage, so does the compelling trajectory that will bring these three women together, changing them all. Deliciously intimate and yet emotionally wide-ranging, The Performance is a novel that both explores the inner lives of women as it underscores the power of art and memory to transform us.
"Performance" has multiple and often overlapping meanings that signify a wide variety of social behaviors. In this invitation to reflect on the power of performance, Diana Taylor explores many of its uses and iterations: artistic, economic, sexual, political, and technological performance; the performance of everyday life; and the gendered, sexed, and racialized performance of bodies. This book performs its argument. Images and texts interact to show how performance is at once a creative act, a means to comprehend power, a method of transmitting memory and identity, and a way of understanding the world.
Performance and Professional Wrestling is the first edited volume to consider professional wrestling explicitly from the vantage point of theatre and performance studies. Moving beyond simply noting its performative qualities or reading it via other performance genres, this collection of essays offers a complete critical reassessment of the popular sport. Topics such as the suspension of disbelief, simulation, silence and speech, physical culture, and the performance of pain within the squared circle are explored in relation to professional wrestling, with work by both scholars and practitioners grouped into seven short sections: Audience Circulation Lucha Gender Queerness Bodies Race A significant re-reading of wrestling as a performing art, Performance and Professional Wrestling makes essential reading for scholars and students intrigued by this uniquely theatrical sport.
