Bøker i Studies Theatre Hist & Culture-serien

"Polish Theatre Revisited explores nineteenth-century Polish theatre through the lens of theatre audiences. ¡uksza places special emphasis on the most engaged spectators, known as "theatremaniacs"-from what they wore, to what they bought, to what they ate. Her source material is elusive ephemera from fans' lives, such as notes scribbled on a weekly list of shows in the Warsaw theatres, collections of theatre postcards, and recipes for sweets named after famous actors. The fannish behavior of "theatremaniacs" was usually deemed excessive or in poor taste by people in positions of power, as it clashed with the ongoing embourgeoisement of the theatre and the disciplining of audiences. It was increasingly associated with "lowbrow" cultural fields, such as sports. Nevertheless, the theatre was one of the key areas where early fan cultures emerged, and "theatremaniacs" indulged in diverse fan practices in opposition to the forces reforming the theatre and its spectatorship. Polish Theatre Revisited brings back to life the passionate audiences of Polish playhouses in the nineteenth century, and presents a history in which fans come out of the shadows"--

Symptoms of the Self offers the first full study of the stage consumptive. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in France, Britain, and North America, tuberculosis was a leading killer. The consumptive character became a vehicle through which standards of health, beauty, and virtue were imposed; constructions of class, gender, and sexuality were debated; the boundaries of nationhood were transgressed or maintained; and an exceedingly fragile whiteness was held up as a dominant social ideal. By telling the story of tuberculosis on the transatlantic stage, Symptoms of the Self uncovers some of the wellsprings of modern Western theatrical practice--and of ideas about the self that still affect the way human beings live and die.

Provides the first in-depth study of the historic American Negro Theatre (ANT) and its lasting influence on American popular culture. Founded in 1940 in Harlem, the ANT successfully balanced expressions of African American consciousness with efforts to gain white support for the burgeoning civil rights movement.

Discusses the objectives of theatre studies by focusing on the communicative encounter between performer and spectator - the theatrical event. A theatrical event includes the presentation of a performance and the attention of an audience; in this sense, every performance that is watched by an audience is a theatrical event.