Performing Arts

The growth of TV platforms in terrestrial, satellite, and cable formats will soon move into digital transmission. These all offer opportunities for greater commercialisation through advertising on media that have not previously been exploited. This book looks to the future in considering how effective codes of practice and regulation will develop. more...

Price: $59.95

African American Performance and Theater History is an anthology of critical writings that explores the intersections of race, theater, and performance in America. Assembled by two esteemed scholars in black theater, Harry J. Elam, Jr. and David Krasner, and composed of essays from acknowledged authorities in the field, this anthology is organized into four sections representative of the ways black theater, drama, and performance interact and enact continual social, cultural, and political dialogues. Ranging from a discussion of dramatic performances of Uncle Tom's Cabin to the Black Art Movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, articles gathered in the first section, "Social Protest and the Politics of Representation," discuss the ways in which African American theater and performance have operated as social weapons and tools of protest. The second section of the volume, "Cultural Traditions, Cultural Memory and Performance," features, among other essays, Joseph Roach's chronicle of the slave performances at Congo Square in New Orleans and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s critique of August Wilson's cultural polemics. "Intersections of Race and Gender," the third section, includes analyses of the intersections of race and gender on the minstrel stage, the plight of black female choreographers at the inception of Modern Dance, and contemporary representations of black homosexuality by PomoAfro Homo. Using theories of performance and performativity, articles in the fourth section, "African American Performativity and the Performance of Race," probe into the ways blackness and racial identity have been constructed in and through performance. The final section is a round-table assessment of the past and present state of African American Theater and Performance Studies by some of the leading senior scholars in the field--James V. Hatch, Sandra L. Richards, and Margaret B. Wilkerson. Revealing the dynamic relationship between race and theater, this volume illustrates how the social more...

Price: $24.95

This book acts as a forum for investigating how African Theatre works and what its place is in this postmodern society. It provides the subject with a degree of detail unmatched in previous books, reflecting a new approach to the study of the performing arts in this region. The book provides an opportunity to discover contemporary material from experts, critics and artists from across the world. The contributions are in a language and style that allow them to be read either as aids to formal study or as elements of discussion to interest the general reader. more...

Price: $29.95

At a stage of major change in the world of television (the coming of digital TV, multiple channels, mobile TV on cellphones) this book seeks to take stock of the impact of the advent and presence of television on daily life over the past fifty years, or slightly longer. The author takes as her standpoint, or rather places at the centre of her analysis and considerations, the human experience and the way in which the medium of television has radically changed it. Connection; mobility; plurality. The discourse developed in the various chapters of the book focus on this triad of conceptual categories, which govern the most important ways in which television can effect a transformation at the level of experience. It can establish connections between individuals and distant events; encourage the formation of 'imagined communities' on a varying scale (worldwide, national, local or based on a common identity); create enabling conditions for travel to distant places and for vicarious and 'imaginary' journeys; and function as a genuine multiplier of opportunities and of forms of indirect social experience, in the sense of 'pluralising' the worlds of an imaginary life. The three categories in turn flow into the category of 'imagination', perceived as the big engine that drives modern mediatized society – television supplying ample fuel for this purpose. 'The Age of Television: Experiences and theories', is in its own special way a book of theory. Each chapter draws on classic concepts and theories from international television studies – from the flow to televised ceremonies and cultural imperialism – but without any undue reverence. The book is written with students in mind and thus undeniably conveys a pedagogic message: the author seeks to demonstrate how theories are a means of learning that is at the same time indispensable and flexible, open to criticism and to reworking in a new context. The logical and coherent str more...

Price: $40.00

This new volume of three of Euripides' most celebrated plays offers graceful, economical, metrical translations that convey the wide range of effects of the playwright's verse, from the idiomatic speech of its dialogue to the high formality of its choral odes. more...

Price: $9.95