The Theatre Of Imagining

This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the fascinating and strikingly diverse history of imagination in the context of theatre and drama. Key questions that the book explores are: How do spectators engage with the drama in performance, and how does the historical context influence the dramaturgy of imagination? In addition to offering a study of the cultural history and theory of imagination in a European context including its philosophical, physiological, cultural and political implications, the book examines the cultural enactment of imagination in the drama text and offers practical strategies for analyzing the aesthetic practice of imagination in drama texts. It covers the early modern to the late modernist period and includes three in-depth case studies: William Shakespeare’s Macbeth (c.1606); Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879); and Eugène Ionesco’s The Killer (1957).

Offstage Space, Narrative, and the Theatre of the Imagination is a study of extrascenic space and how playwrights have used narrative as an alternative to conventional scenic enactment. The book covers the work of writers as diverse as Euripides, Plautus, Shakespeare, Susan Glaspell, Gertrude Stein, Bertolt Brecht, Samuel Beckett, Marguerite Duras, Brian Friel, and Thomas Bernhard. William Gruber offers a wide-ranging overview of the dramaturgical choices dramatists make when they substitute imagined events for perceptual ones.

This ain't no Dreamgirls," Rhodessa Jones warns participants in the Medea Project, the theater program for incarcerated women that she founded and directs. Her expectations are grounded in reality, tempered, for example, by the fact that women are the fastest growing population in U.S. prisons. Still, Jones believes that by engaging incarcerated women in the process of developing and staging dramatic works based on their own stories, she can push them toward tapping into their own creativity, confronting the problems that landed them in prison, and taking control of their lives. Rena Fraden chronicles the collaborative process of transforming incarcerated women's stories into productions that incorporate Greek mythology, hip-hop music, dance, and autobiography. She captures a diverse array of voices, including those of Jones and other artists, the sheriff and prison guards, and, most vividly, the women themselves. Through compelling narrative and thoughtful commentary, Fraden investigates the Medea Project's blend of art and activism and considers its limits and possibilities for enacting social change. Rhodessa Jones is co-artistic director of the San Francisco-based performance company Cultural Odyssey and founder of the Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women. An award-winning performer, she has taught at the Yale School of Drama and the New College of California.

There is extraordinary diversity, depth, and complexity in the encounter between theatre, performance, and human rights. Through an examination of a rich repertoire of plays and performance practices from and about countries across six continents, the contributors open the way toward understanding the character and significance of this encounter.

This book explores the ways that pre-existing ‘national’ works or ‘national theatre’ sites can offer a rich source of material for speaking to the contemporary moment because of the resonances or associations they offer of a different time, place, politics, or culture. Featuring a broad international scope, it offers a series of thought-provoking essays that explore how playwrights, directors, theatre-makers, and performance artists have re-staged or re-worked a classic national play, performance, theatrical form, or theatre space in order to engage with conceptions of and questions around the nation, nationalism, and national identity in the contemporary moment, opening up new ways of thinking about or problematizing questions around the nation and national identity. Chapters ask how productions engage with a particular moment in the national psyche in the context of internationalism and globalization, for example, as well as how productions explore the interconnectivity of nations, intercultural agendas, or cosmopolitanism. They also explore questions relating to the presence of migrants, exiles, or refugees, and the legacy of colonial histories and post-colonial subjectivities. The volume highlights how theatre and performance has the ability to contest and unsettle ideas of the nation and national identity through the use of various sites, stagings, and performance strategies, and how contemporary theatres have portrayed national agendas and characters at a time of intense cultural flux and repositioning.

"Based on papers given at the conference 'Imagining the City' held in Cambridge in 2004"--P. [4] of cover, v. 1.

Today’s teachers need to prepare students for a world that places increasingly higher literacy demands on its citizens. In this timely book, the authors explore content-area literacy and instruction in English, music, science, mathematics, social studies, visual arts, technology, and theatre. Each of the chapters has been written by teacher educators who are experts in their discipline. Their key recommendations reflect the aims and instructional frameworks unique to content-area learning. This resource focuses on how literacy specialists and content-area educators can combine their talents to teach all readers and writers in the middle and secondary school classroom. The text features vignettes from classroom practice with visuals to demonstrate, for example, how we read a painting or hear the discourse of a song. Additional contributors: Marta Adair, Diane L. Asay, Sharon R. Gray, Sirpa Grierson, Scott Hendrickson, Steven L. Shumway, Geoffrey A. Wright Roni Jo Draperis an associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education in the David O. McKay School of Education.Paul Broomheadis associate professor and coordinator of the Music Education Division in the School of Music.Amy Petersen Jensenis an associate professor in the College of Fine Arts and Communications.Jeffery D. Nokesis an assistant professor in the History Department.Daniel Siebertis an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics Education. All editors are at Brigham Young University, Utah. “This is a must-read for educators engaged in professional development efforts aimed at improving students’ learning across the content areas. The editors and chapter authors are to be applauded for taking up the call to place content-area literacy squarely in the disciplines.” —From the Foreword byThomas W. Bean, University of Nevada, Las Vegas “A great tool for developing disciplinary literacy.” —Douglas Fisher, San Diego State University “Draper and her colleagues successfully convey the complex and subject-specific nature of effective content area literacy instruction. This book reminds us in refreshing ways that there is more to effective reading than decoding and prior knowledge.” —George G. Hruby, Executive Director, Collaborative Center for Literacy Development, University of Kentucky “From its grounding in inquiry and collaboration, to its contemporary views of literacy and text, this book is an important response to recent calls to redress century-old recommendations for teaching reading. It is exciting to recommend(Re)ImaginingContent-Area Literacy Instructionfor any course or in-service project with a focus on content-area literacy instruction.” —Kathleen Hinchman, Syracuse University, School of Education

Imagining the Arctic explores the culture and politics of polar exploration and the making of its heroes. Leading explorers, the celebrity figures of their day, went to great lengths to convince their contemporaries of the merits of polar voyages. Much of exploration was in fact theatre: a series of performances to capture public attention and persuade governments to finance ambitious proposals. The achievements of explorers were promoted, celebrated, and manipulated, whilst explorers themselves became the subject of huge attention. Huw Lewis-Jones draws upon recovered texts and striking images, many reproduced for the first time since the nineteenth century, to show how exploration was projected through a series of spectacular visuals, helping us to reconstruct the ways that heroes and the wilderness were imagined. Elegantly written and richly illustrated, Imagining the Arctic offers original insights into our understanding of exploration and its pull on the public imagination.