The Theater Of Transformation

The Theater of Transformation: Postmodernism in American Drama offers a fresh and innovative reading of the contemporary experimental American theater scene and navigates through the contested and contentious relationship between postmodernism and contemporary drama. This book addresses gender and class as well as racial issues in the context of a theoretical discussion of dramatic texts, textuality, and performance. Transformation is contemporary drama's answer to the questions of postmodernism and a major technique in the development of a postmodern language for the stage. In order to demonstrate the multi-faceted nature of the postmodern theater of transformation, this study draws on a wide range of plays: from early experimental plays of the 1960s by Jean-Claude van Itallie through feminist plays by Megan Terry and Rochelle Owens to more recent drama by the African-American playwright Suzan-Lori Parks. The Theater of Transformation: Postmodernism in American Drama is written for anyone interested in contemporary American drama and theater as well as in postmodernism and contemporary literary theory. It appeals even more broadly to a readership intrigued by the ubiquitous aspects of popular culture, by feminism and ethnicity, and by issues pertaining to the so-called 'society of spectacle' and the study of contemporary media.

Are artists seismographs during processes of transformation? Is theatre a mirror of society? And how does it influence society offstage? To address these questions, this collection brings together analyses of cultural policy in post-apartheid South Africa and actors of the performing arts discussing political theatre and cultural activism. Case studies grant inside views of the State Theatre in Pretoria, the Market Theatre in Johannesburg and the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town, followed by a documentation of panel discussions on the Soweto Theatre. The texts collected here bring to the surface new faces and voices who advance the performing arts with their images and lexicons revolving around topics such as patriarchy, femicide and xenophobia.

Sue Jennings and her three children spent two years on a fieldwork expedition to the Senoi Temiar people of Malaysia: Theatre, Ritual and Transformation is a fascinating account of that experience. She describes how the Temiar regularly perform seances which are enacted through dreams, dance, music and drama, and explains that they see the seance as playing a valuable preventative role in people's lives, as well as being a medium of healing and cure. Her account brings together the insights of drama, therapy and theatre with those of social anthropology to provide an invaluable theoretical framework for understanding theatre and ritual and their links with healing.

"At the O'Neill, we were all engaged with full-hearted passion in sometimes the silliest of exercises, and all in service of finding that wiggly, elusive creature, a new play."—Meryl Streep "I would not be who or where I am today without the O'Neill."—Michael Douglas As the old ways of the commercial theater were dying and American playwriting was in crisis, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center arose as a midwife to new plays and musicals, introducing some of the most exciting talents of our time (including August Wilson, Wendy Wasserstein, and Christopher Durang) and developing works that went on to win Pulitzer Prizes and Tony Awards. Along the way, it collaborated with then-unknown performers (like Meryl Streep, Michael Douglas, Courtney Vance, and Angela Bassett) and inspired Robert Redford in his creation of the Sundance Institute. This is the story of a theatrical laboratory, a place that transformed American theater, film, and television.

In the 1880s, socio-economic and technological changes in the United States contributed to the rejection of Christian architectural traditions and the development of the radically new auditorium church. Jeanne Kilde links this shift in evangelical Protestant architecture to changes in worship style and religious mission.

This book is a collection of chapters from the IFIP working groups 13.8 and 9.4. The 10 papers included present experiences and research on the topic of digital transformation and innovation practices in the global south. The topics span from digital transformation initiatives to novel innovative technological developments, practices and applications of marginalised people in the global south.

Shows how the themes of drama, play, trance, music and dance have been found to be fundamental to the practice of good health in a Malaysian culture, and how this can be applied to the more general notions of therapy, including dramatherapy. .

Ovid is today best known for his grand epic, Metamorphoses, and elegiac works like the Ars Amatoria and Heroides. Yet he also wrote a Medea, now unfortunately lost. This play kindled in him a lifelong interest in the genre of tragedy, which informed his later poetry and enabled him to continue his career as a tragedian – if only on the page instead of the stage. This book surveys tragic characters, motifs and modalities in the Heroides and the Metamorphoses. In writing love letters, Ovid's heroines and heroes display their suffering in an epistolary theater. In telling transformation stories, Ovid offers an exploded view of the traditional theater, although his characters never stray too far from their dramatic origins. Both works constitute an intratextual network of tragic stories that anticipate the theatrical excesses of Seneca and reflect the all-encompassing spirit of Roman imperium.