Scandal On Stage

New plays and operas have often tried to upset the status quo or disturb the assumptions of theatre audiences. Yet, as this study explores, the reactions of the audience or of the authorities are often more extreme than the creators had envisaged, to include outrage, riots, protests or censorship. Scandal on Stage looks at ten famous theater scandals of the past two centuries in Germany and France as symptoms of contemporary social, political, ethical, and aesthetic upheavals. The writers and composers concerned, including Schiller, Stravinsky, Strauss, Brecht and Weil, portrayed new artistic and ideological ideas that came into conflict with the expectations of their audiences. In a comparative perspective, Theodore Ziolkowski shows how theatrical scandals reflect or challenge cultural and ethical assumptions and asks whether theatre can still be, as Schiller wrote, a moral institution: one that successfully makes its audience think differently about social, political and ethical questions.

Giallo - stage play (11 pagine) - The King of Nova Alba, in this new stage-play version of the story, approaches Sherlock Holmes to discover who killed the king’s predecessor. Shakespeare wrote comedies, tragedies and histories but he never got around to writing a whodunnit, and this mixture of the Bard and Baker Street fills the gap in his oeuvre. The King of Nova Alba approaches Sherlock Holmes. The current king’s predecessor on the Nova Alban throne, King Duncan, came to a violent end and Holmes’s petitioner is the prime suspect. He wants Sherlock Holmes to find the true killer. There is many a twist in a familiar tale, before Holmes reveals the utterly unexpected truth. Two years after Delos’s publication of the story version of "A Scandal in Nova Alba", here it is as at last as a stage-play. Orlando Pearson, creator of the well-known Redacted Sherlock Holmes series, commutes into London during the day and communes with the spirits of Baker Street by night. An international businessman, his interests include classical music, history, literature, current affairs, sport and economics. All these themes find their way into his stories which are being translated into German and Italian. Mr Pearson is married with two children and lives near Wisteria Lodge.

What better sleuther team than a ghost whisperer and her lovable ghostly sidekick of questionable morals? Sometimes it pays to have friends in paranormal places! Indigo Eady can't live on Ramen noodles forever...She jumps on the first job offered. All she has to do is work undercover at Sabrina Shores Theatre, find a ghost thief, and cross him over. Easy peasy, right? Until an actor is murdered and Indigo’s fingerprints are all over the pistol like ink on a Rorschach test. Forced to dust off her rusty sleuthing skills to clear herself, Indigo enlists the help of her ghost friend Franny and her hunky ex-boyfriend Badger to help solve the crime. Now, how to keep her investigation from the handsome inspector? *** Indigo Eady is a reluctant ghost whisperer, but she’s grown quite attached to Franny Bishop, a former Victorian ghost madam of some repute. Franny’s afterlife makes Indigo’s life look like she has one foot in the grave. Much to Indigo’s chagrin, Franny is determined to find her a man. After all, there are plenty of handsome men around ripe for the picking, and Franny’s an expert. In the meantime, Indigo and Franny have murders to solve.

In Elizabethan England, dramatists and painters were both achieving the greatest degree of artistic excellence yet witnessed, but they were also in a state of transition, vying for social status and patronage, as well as struggling against religious reformers' accusations of idolatry and eroticism. This interdisciplinary study brings to light the radical, inventive ways in which dramatists such as Shakespeare, Lyly, and Marston appropriated painting and subtly competed with painters to advance their own art and defend theater against Puritan attacks. They transformed painting into a provocative stage property and trope that enhanced the language of their scripts and the audience's imaginative participation in the drama. At the same time, they reflected a profound ambivalence towards painting by staging scenes with painters and pictures that emphasized the dangerous powers inherent in visual images and image-making.

Theatre scandals may cause dynamic changes within cultural systems. The case studies in this volume present a wide cultural and chronological variety of such scandals, illustrating the various causes, processes and interactions that characterize these shocking moments in theatre history.

Driven by a passion for music, for excellence, and for fame, violin soloists are immersed from early childhood in high-pressure competitions, regular public appearances, and arduous daily practice. An in-depth study of nearly one hundred such children, Producing Excellence illuminates the process these young violinists undergo to become elite international soloists. A musician and a parent of a young violinist, sociologist Izabela Wagner offers an inside look at how her young subjects set out on the long road to becoming a soloist. The remarkable research she conducted—at rehearsals, lessons, and in other educational settings—enabled her to gain deep insight into what distinguishes these talented prodigies and their training. She notes, for instance, the importance of a family culture steeped in the values of the musical world. Indeed, more than half of these students come from a family of professional musicians and were raised in an atmosphere marked by the importance of instrumental practice, the vitality of music as a vocation, and especially the veneration of famous artists. Wagner also highlights the highly structured, rigorous training system of identifying, nurturing, and rewarding talent, even as she underscores the social, economic, and cultural factors that make success in this system possible. Offering an intimate portrait of the students, their parents, and their instructors, Producing Excellence sheds new light on the development of exceptional musical talent, as well as draw much larger conclusions as to “producing prodigy” in other competition-prone areas, such as sports, sciences, the professions, and other arts. Wagner’s insights make this book valuable for academics interested in the study of occupations, and her clear, lively writing is perfect for general readers curious about the ins and outs of training to be a violin soloist.

This book is an exploration of media scandals in contemporary Japanese society. In shedding new light on the study of scandal in Japan, the book offers a novel view of scandal as a specific mediatized ritual which follows moral disturbances throughout Japanese history. Media and society are analyzed largely in terms of social performances, while the focus is on how Japanese transgressors talk and act when explaining their scandals to the public. A detailed analysis of three case studies is provided: the drug scandal of the popular Japanese celebrity Sakai Noriko; the donation scandal centering the heavyweight politician Ozawa Ichirō; and the Olympus accounting fraud revealed by the British CEO Michael Woodford. This book will appeal to students and scholars of Japanese culture and society, anthropology, communication and media studies.

This book offers the first major discussion of metatheatre in Australian drama of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It highlights metatheatre’s capacity to illuminate the wider social, cultural, and artistic contexts in which plays have been produced. Drawing from existing scholarly arguments about the value of considering metatheatre holistically, this book deploys a range of critical approaches, combining textual and production analysis, archival research, interviews, and reflections gained from observing rehearsals. Focusing on four plays and their Australian productions, the book uses these examples to showcase how metatheatre has been utilised to generate powerful elements of critique, particularly of Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations. It highlights metatheatre’s vital place in Australian dramatic and theatrical history and connects this Australian tradition to wider concepts in the development of contemporary theatre. This illuminating text will be of interest to students and scholars of Australian theatre (historic and contemporary) as well as those researching and studying drama and theatre studies more broadly.