Theatre / Edition 9

by Robert Cohen

Overview

This lively introduction to theatre offers equal measures of appreciation of theatrical arts, history of performance, and descriptions of the collaborative theatrical crafts. The author’s enthusiasm for and knowledge of the current theatre, highlighted by contemporary production shots from around the world, put the students in the front row. The text includes extensive excerpts from seven plays: Prometheus Bound, Oedipus Tyrannos, The York Cycle, Romeo and Juliet, The Bourgeois Gentleman, The Three Sisters, and Happy Days, as well as shorter excerpts from The Rover and A Doll's House.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780073382180
Publisher:	McGraw-Hill Higher Education
Publication date:	06/16/2010
Edition description:	Older Edition
Pages:	512
Product dimensions:	7.90(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

ROBERT COHEN was the founding chair Drama at the University of California at Irvine, where he continues to serve as the department's Claire Trevor Professor of Drama. He has also been a resident acting teacher at the Actors Center in New York, the Shanghai Theatre Academy, the Korean National Arts University, and the national theatre academies of Hungary, Finland, and Estonia. He is an accomplished stage director, scholar, playwright, drama critic, and teacher.

A director by training (Doctor of Fine Arts, Yale Drama School), Cohen has staged thirteen professional productions at the Utah and Colorado Shakespeare Festivals, plus well over a hundred productions at Stages Theatre Center (Hollywood), Virginia Museum Theatre (Richmond), Theatre 40 (Beverly Hills), Image Theatre (Boston), Summer Repertory Theatre (Santa Rosa), the Medieval Drama Project (Irvine), the Manhattan Theatre Source, various universities, and several operas, videos and films.

In addition to Theatre and Theatre: Brief Edition, he is also the author of many theatre books, including Acting One, Advanced Acting, Acting in Shakespeare, Acting Professionally, Acting Power, More Power to You, Giraudoux: Three Faces of Destiny, Creative Play Direction, and two dramatic anthologies. His essays have appeared in Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics, Theatre Forum, Theatre Survey, Modern Drama, Theater der Zeit, Essays in Theatre, On Stage Studies, The Drama Review, Contemporary Literature, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Slavic and East European Performance, Experiment and Innovation, and Dramatic Theory and Criticism.

Cohen’s play, The Prince, published by Dramatic Publishing Company, has been professionally produced in Long Beach, Pittsburgh, Budapest, and in staged readings in New York and Los Angeles; his dramatic translations (The Bourgeois Gentleman, The Misanthrope, Clizia, Tibi’s Law) and opera translations (The Magic Flute, Carmen) have been both produced and published widely.

For the past twenty years, Cohen has been the Southern California drama critic for Plays International, reviewing over two hundred plays. In 1999, he received the national Career Achievement award from ATHE - the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.

Table of Contents

	Preface	vii
	Introduction	1
Part 1	The Theatre: Its Elements	7
Chapter 1	What Is the Theatre?	9
	The Theatre Building	10
	The Company, or Troupe, of Players	12
	The Occupation of Theatre	13
	Work	14
	Art	17
	Impersonation	17
	Performance	21
Chapter 2	What Is a Play?	29
	Classifying Plays	30
	Duration	30
	Genre	31
	Structure	40
	The Components of a Play	40
	The Order of a Play	45
Part 2	The Past	55
Chapter 3	The Greeks	59
	The Greek Theatre	59
	Origins and Evolution	61
	The Birth of the Dithyramb	62
	The Classic Period	65
	The Theatron	68
	The Spectacle	70
	The Greek Plays	73
	The Three Greek Tragedians	75
	Prometheus Bound	75
	Oedipus Tyrannos	83
	The Roman Theatre	91
Chapter 4	The Middle Ages	95
	The Quem Queritis: From Trope to Drama	97
	Out of the Church	99
	The Corpus Christi Plays at York	101
	The York Cycle	106
	The Creation and the Fall of Lucifer	106
	Man's Disobedience and Fall	111
Chapter 5	The Shakespearean Era	115
	The Renaissance	115
	Shakespeare	116
	The Theatres	118
	The Players	124
	The Plays	127
	The Plays of Shakespeare	131
	Romeo and Juliet	131
	Italy: The Commedia Dell'Arte	148
Chapter 6	The Theatre of Asia	151
	Theatre in Asia	152
	The Drama of India	154
	Sanskrit Dance-Theatre	155
	Kathakali	155
	Chinese Opera: Xiqu	157
	Xiqu's Origins	157
	Staging of Xiqu	158
	The Drama of Japan	163
	No	163
	Kabuki	166
Chapter 7	The Royal Theatre	177
	A Theatre for Courts and Kings	178
	The Audiences	181
	The Dramaturgy	181
	Staging Practices	182
	The French Theatre	183
	The Royal Court and the Tennis Court	183
	The Public Theatre Audience	184
	Moliere	186
	The Bourgeois Gentleman	188
	England: The Restoration Theatre	202
	The Way of the World	204
Part 3	The Present	207
Chapter 8	The Modern Theatre: Realism	211
	Realism	213
	A Laboratory	214
	Pioneers of Realism	216
	Naturalism	218
	Anton Chekhov	221
	The Three Sisters	222
	American Realism	235
Chapter 9	The Modern Theatre: Antirealism	237
	The Symbolist Beginnings	237
	The Era of "Isms"	240
	The Era of Stylization	241
	Early Isms and Stylizations: A Sampling of Six Plays	243
	The French Avant-Garde: Ubu Roi	243
	Intellectual Comedy: Man and Superman	245
	Expressionism: The Hairy Ape	247
	Theatricalism: Six Characters in Search of an Author	250
	Theatre of Cruelty: Jet of Blood	251
	Philosophical Melodrama: No Exit	253
	Postwar Absurdity and Alienation	255
	Theatre of the Absurd	255
	Samuel Beckett	256
	Happy Days	260
	Theatre of Alienation	269
	Bertolt Brecht	269
	Future Directions in Antirealistic Theatre	272
Chapter 10	The Musical Theatre	275
	The Development of the Broadway Musical: America's Contribution	277
	The First Phase of the Golden Age: Musical Comedy	278
	The Second Phase of the Golden Age: Musical Drama	279
	The Modern Musical	281
	Stephen Sondheim	281
	The Modern Musical: 1960s to 2000 and Beyond	284
Chapter 11	Theatre Today: What, Who, and Where?	291
	What's Happening?	291
	The Modern and the Postmodern	292
	The Crisis of Today's Theatre	293
	A Theatre of Revival	293
	A Theatre of Postmodern Experiment	295
	An Open Theatre	299
	Who's Doing It?	310
	Pina Bausch and Martha Clarke: Dance-Theatre	311
	Eric Bogosian, Spaulding Gray, John Leguizamo, Sherry Glaser, and Anna Deveare Smith: The One-Person Show	312
	Ariane Mnouchkine: Theatre de Soleil	314
	Julie Taymor: Making the Avant-Garde Commercial	316
	Robert Wilson and Performance Art	318
	Peter Brook: Intercultural Theatre	321
	Where Is It Happening?	324
	Broadway	324
	Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway	326
	The Nonprofit Professional Theatre	327
	Shakespeare Festivals	336
	Summer and Dinner Theatres	338
	Amateur Theatre: Academic and Community	338
	Theatre Abroad	340
	Conclusions on the Current Theatre?	352
Part 4	The Practitioners	353
Chapter 12	The Actor	355
	What Is Acting?	356
	The Two Notions of Acting	356
	Virtuosity	362
	Magic	365
	Becoming an Actor	365
	The Actor's Instrument	365
	The Actor's Approach	371
	The Actor's Routine	373
	The Audition	373
	The Rehearsal	373
	The Performance	376
	The Actor in Life	379
Chapter 13	The Playwright	381
	We Are All Playwrights	382
	The Playwright's Career	383
	Literary and Nonliterary Aspects of Playwriting	384
	Playwriting as Event Writing	385
	The Qualities of a Fine Play	386
	Credibility and Intrigue	386
	Speakability, Stageability, and Flow	390
	Richness	391
	Gravity and Pertinence	393
	Compression, Economy, and Intensity	394
	Celebration	396
	The Playwright's Process	396
	Dialogue	397
	Conflict	397
	Structure	398
	The Playwright's Rewards	398
	Contemporary American Playwrights	399
	August Wilson	399
	Arthur Miller	400
	Neil Simon	400
	Edward Albee	402
	Lanford Wilson	402
	John Guare	403
	Terrence McNally	404
	Sam Shepard	404
	David Mamet	405
	Wendy Wasserstein	405
	Paula Vogel	406
	Beth Henley	408
	George C. Wolfe	408
	Tony Kushner	408
	David Henry Hwang	410
Chapter 14	Designers and Technicians	411
	Theatre Architecture	412
	Staging Formats	413
	Other Architectural Considerations	416
	Scenery	417
	Scenic Materials	423
	The Scene Designer at Work	427
	Lighting	427
	Photo Essay: Broadway Designer Tony Walton	428
	Modern Lighting Design	432
	The Lighting Designer at Work	434
	Costume	436
	The Functions of Costume	436
	The Costume Designer at Work	439
	Photo Essay: Broadway Designer Patricia Zipprodt	442
	Makeup	445
	Sound Design	448
	Special Effects	449
	New Computer Technologies in Theatre Design	449
	Technical Production	451
Chapter 15	The Director	455
	The Arrival of the Director: A Historical Overview	457
Phase 1	The Teacher-Directors	457
Phase 2	The Realistic Directors	457
Phase 3	The Stylizing Directors	458
	The Contemporary Director	460
	Directorial Functions	460
	Producer and Director	460
	Directorial Vision	461
	Preparatory Phase	461
	Photo Essay: Making Theatre--A Play Is Put Together	466
	Implementation Phase	485
	The Training of a Director	493
Chapter 16	The Critic	495
	Critical Perspectives	496
	A Play's Relation to Society	496
	A Play's Relation to the Individual	497
	A Play's Relation to Art	497
	A Play's Relation to Theatre	499
	A Play as Entertainment	500
	Critical Focus	501
	Professional Criticism	501
	Student Criticism	506
	We Are the Critics	506
Appendix	Writing on Theatre	1
	Glossary	1
	Selected Bibliography	1
	Credits	1
	Index	1

Editorial Reviews

A lively, colorful introduction to theater appreciation, with an overview of theatrical history, vivid accounts of the current theater scene, and descriptions of the collaborative theatrical crafts. Integral to the text are analysis with excerpts of seven plays, including , , and , plus profiles of the work of all types of theater professionals. This fifth edition features a new chapter on musical theater, expanded coverage of Asian theater, and a brief guide to theatergoing. The author is professor of drama at UC-Irvine. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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