Theatre Books: Online Versions & Excerpts

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Introduction : eventful knowledge and the post-ritual turn / Mark Franko -- Critical historiographies/new formations -- Going back to Bateson : toward a semiotics of (post- )ritual performance / Sally A. Ness -- Performative interventions : African community theatre in the age of AIDS / Ola Johansson -- Ritually failing : Turner's theatrical communitas / Andrew C. Wegley -- Situation and event : the destinations of sense / Tyrus Miller -- Case studies from the performative and visual archives -- The terrorist event / Bill Nichols -- Gojira vs Godzilla : catastrophic allegories / Aaron Kerner -- Given movement : dance and the event / Mark Franko -- Illness as danced urban ritual / Janice Ross -- Post-colonial torture : rituals of viewing at Abu Ghraib / Catherine M. Soussloff.

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"Human beings have speech, we have consciousness, but 130,000 years ago we had nothing: why? Theatre and Consciousness argues that the functioning of human consciousness in interpreting and staging a theatrical performance is among the most highly selective and adaptive operations known to science. The emergence of the human mind out of discontinuous, pulsing, neuronal brain patterns is a study in complexity theory, possibly as complicated as the organization of the universe. According to this book, the theatre as a substrate of consciousness is one element that defines modern man as a reflective species, having evolved over 190,000,000 years. The emergence of Homo Sapiens is unique and fundamentally unpredictable; our developed speech is closer to birdsong than to any other species' communication on earth, we have survived five galactic beam-splitters from space, and our evolutionary, discontinuous cortex has found a pattern to existence that may include up to twenty-six folded dimensions of string-theory space. This book asserts that the story of theatre is the story of the evolution of our second generation star."

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"Spectators of ourselves" : theatricality and self-knowledge -- Feeling public : sensation theater, commodity culture, and the Victorian public sphere -- National theaters : Daniel Deronda and the theatricality of nationhood -- A political masquerade : Disraeli, Victoria, and the Royal Titles Bill -- Natural celebrities : Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, and the power of personality

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"Moliére's anticlerical comedy Tartuffe is the unique prism through which Sheryl Kroen views postrevolutionary France in the years of the Restoration. Following the lead of the French men and women who turned to this play in the 1820s to make sense of their world, Kroen exposes the crisis of legitimacy defining the regime in these years and demonstrates how the people of the time made steps toward a democratic resolution to this crisis. Moving from the town squares, where state and ecclesiastical officials orchestrated their public spectacles in favor of the monarchy, to the theaters, where the French used Tartuffe to mock the restored monarch and the church, this cultural history of the Restoration offers a rich and colorful portrait of a period in which critical legacies of the revolutionary period were played out and cemented."

"Includes numerous signed essays, alphabetically arranged, and written or reviewed by subject experts and edited to form a consistent, readable, and straightforward reference. Entries cover topics and persons in major areas of popular culture: film; music; print culture; social life; sports; television and radio; and art and performance (which include theater, dance, stand-up comedy, and other live performance)."

Volumes for each decade, 1900-1909 through 1990-1999, with chapters about: - World Events - The Arts - Business & the Economy - Education - Fashion - Government & Politics - Law & Justice - Lifestyles & Social Trends - Media - Medicine & Health - Religion - Science & Technology - Sports

A cross-disciplinary source for a single, consistent reference to document and analyze periods of contemporary American social history. Covers the first decade of the 21st Century and includes key events and social history.
Ch 1. Arts and entertainment -- ch 2. Business and the economy -- ch 3. Education -- ch 4. Government, politics, and law -- ch 5. Lifestyles and social trends -- ch 6. Medicine and health -- ch 7. Science and technology -- ch 8. Sports

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"A scholarly inquiry into how portrayals of the Pilgrims evolved from glorification to more accurate reconstruction of history through performance."