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This volume examines a cultural phenomenon, asking: What made 'The Book of Mormon' such a success? In what ways does the work utilize established artistic traditions (musical theatre, comic tropes), but revise them to create something new? What cultural buttons does the work push in religion and world affairs? What artistic and social boundaries - and the transgression of those boundaries - give the work its edge? What is the effect of the work on particular audiences: in the theatre, in academia, in religious/Mormon studies, and beyond?

This book studies the HBO program Girls from multiple perspectives by comparing the series to similar programs from the past and present by examining it through the lenses of gender, race, sexuality, and culture.

This collection highlights the fluidity of masculinity in American popular culture at the turn of the new millennium and beyond by examining possibilities for male identity formation. Each chapter mines American popular culture -- theatre, film, literature, music, advertising, internet content, television, photography, and current events -- to pose questions about the process of gender creation and the contestation of masculinities as constantly changing political forms. The first section explores masculinities within late capitalism and includes studies of Seinfeld, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and reality television. The second section addresses identity when masculinity intersects with race, religion, disability, and sexuality, including chapters on Barack Obama, the O.J. trial, and popular movies.

This collection highlights the fluidity of masculinity in American popular culture at the turn of the new millennium and beyond by examining possibilities for male identity formation. Each chapter mines American popular culture-theatre, film, literature, music, advertising, internet content, television, photography, and current events-to pose questions about the process of gender creation and the contestation of masculinities as constantly changing political forms. The first section explores masculinities within late capitalism and includes studies of Seinfeld, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and reality television. The second section addresses identity when masculinity intersects with race, religion, disability, and sexuality, including chapters on Barack Obama, the O.J. trial, and popular movies.

In the 1990s, a group of young playwrights dubbed the In-Yer-Face generation shook up British theatre, but as their Zeitgeist passed, critics wondered if their plays were any good or of long-term worth. To show the lasting value of the In-Yer-Face generation within the context of the past half-century of British theatre, this study demonstrates how these plays—Anthony Neilson's Penetrator (1993), Mark Ravenhill's Shopping and Fucking (1996), and Patrick Marber's Closer (1997)—respond and add to the work of the foremost theatrical figure of the era, Harold Pinter. Pinter navigated a successful forty-year career, earning the Nobel Prize for Literature (2005) by keeping on the cutting edge of dramatic innovation and influencing playwrights who followed him. Pinter influences Neilson, Ravenhill, and Marber, but not only in a traditional manner: while, historically, influence flows from A to B (writer-to-writer or text-to-text), this study proposes an element of reciprocity between texts and generations. These confluences—what Mary Orr terms positive influence—validate the In-Yer-Face plays as contributions to British theater and culture, while also responding to recent debates in Pinter scholarship. Each confluence between Pinter and the In-Yer-Face plays constitutes positive influence because it calls for cultural change in different ways. Anthony Neilson's Penetrator reworks Pinter's \"room play\" form to affirm new ideas about masculine identity; Ravenhill's Shopping and Fucking becomes a homecoming play wherein the postmodern family cannot escape its late capitalist trappings like Ruth from The Homecoming (1965) could a generational or two earlier; Marber's Closer adds a fourth character to Betrayal's (1978) love-triangle exploration of sex and deceit, furthering Pinter's examination of female identity and characterization. In fact, starting with Anthony Neilson's reworking of the room play form, we awake to an evolution in Pinter's writing that unfolds in this study: from the overt masculinity of the early room plays, to Ruth's emerging female power, to the more natural and open-ended characterization of Emma in Betrayal, to the chilling mix of family life and atrocity in Pinter's later political works. Finally, in a post-In-Yer-Face example of Pinter-imitation sans positive influence that contrasts with the three preceding chapters, Ravenhill's The Cut (2006) and Jez Butterworth's The Winterling (2006) utilize Pinteresque forms without infusing any new ideas.

Filmed over several days in upstate New York, this excellent DVD series showcases five master teachers from MICHA (the Michael Chekhov Association) instructing a group of experienced actors in different aspects of Chekhov's technique. [...]during the taping of the workshops, no one hides the fact that a video is being filmed; we see the camera and sound operators in action. [...]the participating actors are professional in their approach and willing to take risks, which allows them to provide exemplars of the kinds of honest and engaging discoveries that are made possible through the Chekhov technique.

Just down the street from the Pasadena Playhouse a statue honors hometown hero Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play in modern-era major league baseball, in 1947.