Brings theatre to life for students by showing the relationship and relevance of the performing arts to their everyday lives The Enjoyment of Theatre's balanced coverage of performance and history provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to theatre for both majors and nonmajors. This text establishes the aesthetic underpinnings of theatre art and then explores performance and production topics such as playwriting, acting, directing, design, and the theatre industry. The Enjoyment of Theatre also covers the full span of theatre's 2,500-year history. The authors make theatre come alive for students by showing them how theatre is relevant to their everyday lives. Learning Goals: Upon completing this book, readers will be able to: Understand today's theatre and the social impact of the theatre since its inception Explore theatre's cultural and economic context

"The Enjoyment of Theatre's" balanced coverage of performance and history provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to theatre for both majors and non-majors. This text covers the full span of theatre's 2,500-year history as well as performance/production topics such as playwriting, acting, directing, and the theatre industry. The 6th Edition features major revisions while continuing to bring students the expertise of a proven author team--one whose strong academic credentials combine with a wealth of theatre experience. Cameron and Gillespie make theatre come alive for all students by showing them how theatre is, and will continue to be, relevant to their everyday lives. New and Notable Features: " Offers a balance of history and performance to give students a context for understanding today's theatre and the social impact of the theatre since its inception. Features two 16-page color inserts with new color photographs of Broadway productions by New York's finest theatrical photographers bringing Broadway to life for students. New and unique "Explore Theatre: A Backstage Pass" is a peer-to-peer, interactive, DVD learning tool (available in a free package with the text) developed by students for students under the direction of an award winning teacher of theatre. Seventeen major content areas (director, actor, costume designer, etc.) are covered, with an eye towards introducing students to the people and processes that make theatre happen. Emphasizes theatre's cultural and economic context in extensively revised chapters throughout the book, to sugest how forces outside the theatre influence it. Integrates material on world theatre throughout the text rather than discussing it in a separate chapter. Includes new "Story of the Play"discussions that summarize some of the great plays that are used as examples in the book for students.

The Purpose and Aim of Drama -- What is a Play -- Conflict: the Essence of Drama -- Structure of a Play -- Tragedy -- Comedy -- Serious Drama, Comedy Drama, and Other Tupes -- Literary Movements and Reality in Drama -- How to Judge a Play.

This book is designed for the college student who may be unacquainted with many plays and has seen a limited number of theatre productions. Focusing primarily on four plays—Macbeth, A Raisin in the Sun, Rent, and You Can’t Take It with You—this textbook aims to inform the student about theatre arts, stimulate interest in the art form, lead to critical thinking about theatre, and prepare the student to be a more informed and critical theatregoer. At the beginning of the text, each play is described with plot synopses (and suggested video versions), and then the four representative works are referred to throughout the book. This second edition also features revised and expanded chapters throughout, including on the technical aspects of theatre, the role of the audience and critic,and the diversity of theatre today.

Now available in paperback for the first time this edition of the World Encyclopedia of Contemporary Theatre series examines theatrical developments in Africa since 1945. Entries on thirty-two African countries are featured in this volume, preceded by specialist introductory essays on Anglophone Africa, Francophone Africa, History and Culture, Cosmology, Music, Dance, Theatre for Young Audiences and Puppetry. There are also special introductory general essays on African theatre written by Nobel Prize Laureate Wole Soyinka and the outstanding Congolese playwright, Sony Labou Tansi, before his untimely death in 1995. More up-to-date and more wide-ranging than any other publication, this is undoubtedly a major ground-breaking survey of contemporary African theatre.

The 'in-yer-face' plays of the mid-1990s announced a new generation shaped by Thatcherism and defined by antipathy to social ideals and political involvement. They have generated thoughtful and lively responses from playwrights. The resulting dialogue has brought politics to the forefront of British drama and reinvigorated British theatre.

Although we associate the Third Reich above all with suffering, pain and fear, pleasure played a central role in its social and cultural dynamics. This book explores the relationship between the rationing of pleasures as a means of political stabilization and the pressure on the Nazi regime to cater to popular cultural expectations.

Explores how and why narrative fiction engages empathy, including Theory of MindOffers a broad overview of current scientific work on the effects of fiction-reading on empathy, including Theory of MindProvides an original intervention in the field of literary theory, centring on the reflexive properties of the fictional strangerIncludes stand-alone close readings of three novels by important French authorsThis book studies recent psychological findings which suggest that reading fiction cultivates empathy, encouraging us to be critically reflective, suspicious readers as well as participatory, 'nave' readers. Scott draws on literary theory and close readings to argue that engagement with fictional stories also teaches us to resist uncritical forms of empathy and reminds us of the limitations of our ability to understand other people. The book treats figures of the stranger in Balzac's La Fille aux yeux d'or, Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir and Sand's Indiana as emblematic of the strangeness of narrative fiction, both drawing us in and keeping us at a distance.