Extraordinary Actors: Essays on Popular Performers

Neuausgabe 2004
ISBN: 978-0-85989-735-8
Verlag: UNIV OF EXETER

Buch, Englisch, 288 Seiten, Format (B × H): 165 mm x 241 mm, Gewicht: 612 g

Reihe: Exeter Performance Studies (Ha

Dangerous, outrageous, comic and committed, the extraordinary performers collected here have altered the history of popular entertainment in America and Europe. Some have rarely had their story told, others are familiar figures. The essays explore what made these performers extraordinary; how they were trained, how they practised their art, how they were received, celebrated, satirised and mythologised. From the explosive acting of Richard Burbage to the dislocating quirkiness of Peter Lorre, from the dangerous satire of commedia dell'arte troupes in Russia to the bittersweet collaboration of Morecambe and Wise, this volume explores what made these actors popular. Each contributor has taken care to set the performer and their work in cultural context, so that the collection as a whole charts the changing relationship between acting and popular culture over the last four hundred years.

Part One examines seventeenth and eighteenth century performers, as they built a sense of the excitement and possibility of theatre with audiences in Britain and Europe. The idea of acting, its art and popular practice was being formed during this period. Part Two explores nineteenth-century popular performers who became cultural icons and developed popular performance that contributed to the regeneration of national identity. Part Three looks at twentieth-century performers whose acting continued to reach popular audiences in remarkable ways, across national boundaries, as the acting industry underwent transformation in the face of technological change

This is a unique collection of essays on performers such as Richard Burbage, Sarah Siddons, Peter Lorre, George Formby, Laurel and Hardy, Morecombe and Wise. It provides an outstanding selection of contributors: Richard Boon, Colin Chambers, Chris Dymkowski, Ger Fitzgibbon, Viv Gardner, Baz Kershaw, Alexander Leggatt, Chris McCullough, Jan McDonald, Joel Schechter, Laurence Senelick, Martin White, Don Wilmeth

Autoren/Hrsg.

Banham, Martin

Milling, Jane

Weitere Mitwirkende

Banham, Martin

Boon, Richard

Chambers, Colin

Dymkowski, Christopher

Fitzgibbon, Ger

Gardner, Viv

Kershaw, Baz

Leggatt, Alexander

McCullough, Christopher

McDonald, Jan

Milling, Jane

Schechter, Joel

Senelick, Laurence

Steed, Maggie

White, Martin

Wilmeth, Don B.

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Freizeitsoziologie, Konsumsoziologie, Alltagssoziologie, Populärkultur
• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Einzelne Filmschauspieler, Filmregisseure, Drehbuchautoren

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Part I: The idea of acting extraordinary actors of the 17th and 18th century:

Introduction, Martin Banham, Richard Burbage, Alexander Leggatt

Commedia dell'arte in Russia - Popular Satiric Perfomers in the 18th Century, Laurence Senelick

Thomas Betterton - The Art of Playing, Jane Milling

PART II: The celebrated actor as cultural icon - extraordinary actors of the 19th century:

Introduction, Chris McCullough

British Invasions on the American Stage, Don Wilmeth

Acting and the Austere Joys of Motherhood - Sarah Siddons Performs Maternity, Jan McDonald

The Brothers Fay - Irish Acting and the Origins of the Abbey Theatre, Ger Fitzgibbon

Gertie Millar: Celebrity and Musical Comedy, Viv Gardner

PART III: Acting for popular audiences, the mass and the local extraordinary actors of the 20th century

Introduction, Jane Milling

Lena Ashwell and the Once A-Week Players - Popular Performers in London, Chris Dymkowski

Peter Lorre - A Clash of European and US Acting Styles, Chris McCullough

George Formby and the Northern Sublime, Baz Kershaw

Leo Fuchs - Yiddish Vaudevillian, Joel Schechter; Laurel and Hardy and Morecambe and Wise - Comedy Double Acts, Richard Boon

Playing on the Front Foot - Actors and Audience in British Popular Theatre 1970-1990, Colin Chambers and Maggie Steed

Mark Rylance - Popular acting at the Globe Theatre, Martin White.

Über Autor(innen)

Schechter, Joel
Joel Schechter is Professor of Theatre Arts at San Francisco State University. He is famous as a writer about clowns, jesters, satirists and their radical politics. Much of his work has been focused on contemporary global mayhem. He was previously Professor of Dramatic Literature at Yale School of Drama, lecturer in Performance Studies at New York University and the New School for Social Research. He was Editor in Chief of the Yale journal Theater from 1977-92.

Jane Milling is Lecturer in Drama, University of Exeter. She is co-author, with Graham Ley, of Modern Theories of Performance: From Stanislavski to Boal (Palgrave, 2001) and co-editor, with Peter Thomson, of Volume One of The Cambridge History of British Theatre: Origins to 1660 (CUP, 2003).

Martin Banham is Emeritus Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies, University of Leeds. He is editor of The Cambridge Guide to Theatre and co-editor of the journal African Theatre.