Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
1,482
result(s) for
"Stage direction"
Sort by:
‘Look! … Things People Can’t See!’ Wordbooks, Reader-Listenership, and Invisible Theatre in Handel’s Oratorios
In eighteenth-century England, anyone attending an opera, an oratorio, or even a church service would typically have had a printed ‘wordbook’ made available to them to read during the performance. Such wordbooks, whether available for purchase or distributed free of charge, contained the words to be sung (the libretto), usually with translations if necessary, and sometimes also explanatory footnotes, prefaces or plot summaries, or lists of dramatis personae. Examining several oratorios of George Frideric Handel, especially Saul and Theodora, this article asks how the wordbook influenced the drama of a performed work and to what extent this impact made it necessary to have an actively reading audience. The article also explores the use of stage directions in oratorio wordbooks, arguing that they provide rich opportunities for the audience’s imagination by suggesting images that the performance alone cannot provide (since English oratorio probably included no stage action). It notes the wordbook’s necessity in determining which singer is portraying which character, as well as the expressive and dramatic use to which these character identifications can be put. And it compares the practices of different oratorio librettists, suggesting great sensitivity to the unique imaginative power of the oratorio-with-wordbook medium.
Journal Article
Divine Spectacle: Staging Noah's Ark in Baroque Seville
This essay examines the biblical comedia titled El arca de Noé, written collaboratively by Jerónimo de Cancer, Antonio Martínez de Meneses, and Pedro Rosete Niño, Within the context of its 1644 performance at the Corral de la Montería in Seville. La Montería was a royal theater built within the Alcázar of Seville and differed significantly from the typical corral de comedias of the time. Attending to the uniqueness of this city and playhouse provides insight into the reception of El arca de Noé there. My analysis focuses on two aspects of the 1644 staging. First, I describe the various theatrical effects called for in the play, some of which would have been more difficult in a public corral, but for which the Montería's construction and stage machinery were ideal. Second, I examine the references within the dialogue that, as I argue, would have been understood at the time as references to Seville and La Montería.
Journal Article
Theater in the dark : shadow, gloom and blackout in contemporary theatre
\" This edited collection of essays explores how theatre works in the dark, examining performances that blur the boundary between stage and auditorium by turning out the lights, and the significance of seeing and listening in darkness to some of this new century's most exciting and innovative theatre artists. Theatre in the Dark responds to the rising tide of experimentation in dark theatre aesthetics, bringing together, for the first time, leading and emerging practitioners and researchers in a volume dedicated to theatre in the dark. As well as examining the history of how theatre lowered the lights in order to see differently, the book also explores the work of a growing number of theatre makers experimenting with the aesthetic potential of darkness, including Sound&Fury, Lundahl & Seitl, Chris Goode, David Rosenberg and Glen Neath. The book is divided into three parts: Dark Aesthetics Dark Phenomena Dark Culture Opening up a field of research that considers the aesthetics and phenomenology of dark theatre performances, along with their contexts, Theatre in the Dark proposes and explores areas for discussion and debate that will appeal to researchers, practitioners and audiences alike. \"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Intercultural Adaptations of Sophocles’ Antigone: Antigone Mania by Rabijita Gogoi
Among the recent adaptations of Sophocles’ Antigone is Antigone Mania, an Assamese language production directed by Rabijita Gogoi and presented by Jirsong Theatre of Assam in Northeast India. The cultural disparities between Eastern and Western contexts lead to significant modifications in the depiction of conflicts and characterization from the original play. Consequently, Antigone Mania transcends a mere translation of Sophocles’ text, emerging instead as a distinctive creative reinterpretation replete with innovative possibilities. This essay examines how director Rabijita Gogoi has reshaped Sophocles’ original work through her unique performance praxis, resulting in a contemporary text that speaks to current social and cultural dynamics. Long before Gogoi’s rendition, Prafulladatta Goswami and Satya Prasad Barua had adapted Sophocles’ Antigone into Assamese. This essay provides a comparative analysis of Sophocles’ Antigone and adaptations by Rabijita Gogoi, Prafulladatta Goswami, and Satya Prasad Barua, emphasizing the theme of interculturalism and the varying interpretations that arise from different cultural contexts.
Journal Article
Bruce Mason and the Queer Baroque
Mason uses the baroque in part, I suggest, as a displaced form of queerness.2 When Mason was commissioned by Elric Hooper to write his last staged play, The Blood of the Lamb (1980), he ...Spent two whole weeks on a ludicrous safari to the Court of Marie Antoinette, preparing the true story of the theft of the Queen's necklace-Louis XVI had swallowed it stone by stone (genre: gastronomic farce). (Blood 7) Very little of this survives in the final play though food throughout is lavishly evoked, if not actually served; Mason's stage directions call for exuberantly playful uses of Mozart; and, as Howard McNaughton observes, the set piece speeches in the play are really designed as verbal arias. Mason was also a queer artist, but he never wrote the role of an \"out\" queer male; though, as John Smythe shows in his survey of Mason's plays, there is enough in the archive to document Mason's affairs with men, including at least one significant, long-term relationship\". The father exuberantly embraces the role of the mock-doctor, reviving tropes and sight-gags from vaudeville and stage farce, appearing \"bowler-hatted, frock-coated, holding a bulging and jingling carpet-bag\".
Journal Article