How The World Became A Stage

What is special, distinct, modern about modernity? In How the World Became a Stage, William Egginton argues that the experience of modernity is fundamentally spatial rather than subjective and proposes replacing the vocabulary of subjectivity with the concepts of presence and theatricality. Following a Heideggerian injunctive to search for the roots of epochal change not in philosophies so much as in basic skills and practices, he describes the spatiality of modernity on the basis of a close historical analysis of the practices of spectacle from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period, paying particular attention to stage practices in France and Spain. He recounts how the space in which the world is disclosed changed from the full, magically charged space of presence to the empty, fungible, and theatrical space of the stage.

William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition arranged around scant facts. With a steady hand and his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through this colorful muddle to reveal the man himself. Bryson documents the efforts of earlier scholars, from today's most respected academics to eccentrics like Delia Bacon, an American who developed a firm but unsubstantiated conviction that her namesake, Francis Bacon, was the true author of Shakespeare's plays. Emulating the style of his famous travelogues, Bryson records episodes in his research, including a visit to a bunkerlike room in Washington, D.C., where the world's largest collection of First Folios is housed. Bryson celebrates Shakespeare as a writer of unimaginable talent and enormous inventiveness, a coiner of phrases ("vanish into thin air," "foregone conclusion," "one fell swoop") that even today have common currency. His Shakespeare is like no one else's—the beneficiary of Bryson's genial nature, his engaging skepticism, and a gift for storytelling unrivaled in our time.

The familiar figure of Shakespeare, the world’s greatest dramatist, belongs to universal culture. Little is known of his life, more of his plays, yet countless analyses and explanations of them have been written by distinguished experts on literature and aesthetics. Rónaszegi has no wish to join the ranks of these scholars and has instead chosen an unusual format. In his own words, he has written ‘a sketch novel’, albeit one that is filled with erudition, perceptiveness, appraisal, and fascinating information. Every one of Shakespeare’s plays contains a reference to the theatre and acting, the most famous being the lines from As You Like It: ‘All the world’s a stage.’ But it was not acting itself that inspired the playwright, nor was he absorbed in the minutiae of everyday theatrical life – Shakespeare’s great insight is that the whole of human life is nothing more than endless posturing and posing. One moment we are masking our personalities and concealing our intentions, while the next we are acting in character or responding to the expectations of those around us. We perform not to an audience but to ourselves and to one another. This, then, is the real secret that Rónaszegi uncovers, while modestly acknowledging in the course of his brilliant narrative that no one will ever be able to unravel the mystery of Shakespeare’s genius. 1

Nadia Anwar analyzes selected post-independence Nigerian dramas using the conceptual framework of metatheatre, a theatrical strategy that foregrounds the process of play-making by breaking the dramatic illusion. She argues that distancing, as a function of metatheatre, creates a balanced theatrical experience and environment in terms of the emotive and cognitive levels of reception of a particular performance. Anwar's book is the first in-depth study to apply the concept of metatheatre to Nigerian drama. She brings the perspectives of Bertolt Brecht, Thomas J. Scheff, and other theoreticians of dramatic distancing to the analysis of plays by authors such as Wole Soyinka, Ola Rotimi, Femi Osofisan, Esiaba Irobi, and Stella ‘Dia Oyedepo.

Backstage with one of Canada’s greatest stage managers Whenever You’re Ready is an intimate account of the career of Nora Polley, who — in her 52 years at the Stratford Festival — has learned from, worked with, and cared for some of the greatest directors, actors, stage managers, and productions in Canadian theatrical history. In so doing, Nora became one of the greatest stage managers this country has ever seen. Here is an account of the Stratford Festival’s history like no other. From her childhood forays into a theater her father, Victor, worked tirelessly to help maintain, to her unexpected apprenticeship and the equally unexpected 40 years of stage management it ushered in, this is the Stratford Festival seen exclusively through Nora’s eyes. Here is an immersive account of a life spent in service of the theater, told from the ground floor: where actors struggle with lines and anxieties, where directors lose themselves in the work, where the next season is always uncertain, and where Nora — a stage manager, a custodian, a confidante, a pillar, a rock — finds her rhythm, her patience, her perseverance, her love, her consistency, and her invisibility. These are the qualities that make a stage manager great and, whenever you’re ready, this book will show you why.

A fresh, creative introduction to theological ethics. Offering an imaginative approach through dialogue with theatrical theory and practice, Vander Lugt demonstrates a new way to integrate actor-oriented and action-oriented approaches to Christian ethics within a comprehensive theodramatic model. This model affirms that life is a drama performed in the company of God and others, providing rich metaphors for relating theology to everyday formation and performance in this drama. This book contains not only a fruitful exchange between theological ethics and theatre, but it also presents a promising method for interdisciplinary dialogue between theology and the arts that will be valuable for students and practitioners across many different fields.

This collection of 14 essays explores drama from around the world that depicts the United States and Americans. From eighteenth century German dramas about Native Americans through post-Revolutionary War British plays, to the theaters of contemporary Japan, Mexico, Serbia, Ireland, Ghana and other nations, the contributors consider conflicting representations of Americans. Often critical, sometimes flattering, and occasionally insulting, these various international views highlight perceptions of America abroad and how they influence the world's stages.

The Dramaturgy of the Real brings together an incredible range of international theatre thinking, plays and performance texts, many published here for the first time, that ask questions about how we have come to understand reality and truth in the twenty-first century and analyze the presentation of non-fiction on the international stage.