James Slowiak, Jairo Cuesta: Jerzy Grotowski (2007)
Filed under book | Tags: · audience, experimental theatre, paratheatre, participation, poland, poor theatre, spectatorship, theatre, theatre laboratory
Written by two theatre professionals who worked intimately with Grotowski over the last twenty-five years of his life, this book fills a gap in the published writings about this master director and teacher.
In this book, the writers demonstrate Grotowski’s significance and how his frank rhetoric, his revolutionary theories, his landmark productions, and pioneering cultural projects continue to cause controversy and provide fertile topics for discussion and further experimentation in theatre studios, classrooms, and on stages around the world.
The book introduces Grotowski to a new generation of theatre students, outlining his contributions to twentieth century performance and placing them in context and in perspective.
Publisher Routledge, 2007
Routledge Performance Practitioners series
ISBN 0203962745, 9780203962749
208 pages
Grotowski at Wikipedia
review (Kermit Dunkelberg, TDR: The Drama Review)
Jan Cohen-Cruz (ed.): Radical Street Performance: An International Anthology (1998)
Filed under book | Tags: · activism, agitprop, art, art criticism, audience, circus, direct action, guerrilla theatre, performance, performance art, politics, puppetry, street theatre, theatre, women
“Radical Street Performance is the first volume to collect together the writings by activists, directors, performers, critics, scholars and journalists who have documented street theatre around the world.
More than thirty essays explore agit-prop, invisible theatre, demonstrations and rallies, direct action, puppetry, parades and pageants, performance art, guerrilla theatre, circuses.
These essays look at performances in Europe, Africa, China, India and both the Americas. They describe engagement with issues as diverse as abortion, colonialism, the environment and homophobia, to name only a few. Introduced by editor Jan Cohen-Cruz, the essays are organized into thematic sections: Agitating; Witnessing; Involving; Imagining; and Popularizing.”
Publisher Routledge, 1998
Performance Theory series
ISBN 0415152313, 9780415152310
302 pages
PDF (no OCR)
Comment (0)James H. Johnson: Listening in Paris: A Cultural History (1996)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1700s, 1800s, audience, cultural history, france, listening, music, music history, paris, silence, sociology of music, spectatorship
Beginning with the simple question, “Why did audiences grow silent?” Listening in Paris gives a spectator’s-eye view of opera and concert life from the Old Regime to the Romantic era, describing the transformation in musical experience from social event to profound aesthetic encounter. James H. Johnson recreates the experience of audiences during these rich decades with brio and wit. Woven into the narrative is an analysis of the political, musical, and aesthetic factors that produced more engaged listening. Johnson shows the gradual pacification of audiences from loud and unruly listeners to the attentive public we know today.
Drawing from a wide range of sources–novels, memoirs, police files, personal correspondence, newspaper reviews, architectural plans, and the like–Johnson brings the performances to life: the hubbub of eighteenth-century opera, the exuberance of Revolutionary audiences, Napoleon’s musical authoritarianism, the bourgeoisie’s polite consideration. He singles out the music of Gluck, Haydn, Rossini, and Beethoven as especially important in forging new ways of hearing. This book’s theoretical edge will appeal to cultural and intellectual historians in many fields and periods.
Publisher University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, 1996
Volume 21 of Studies on the History of Society and Culture series
ISBN 0520918231, 9780520918238
384 pages