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Scenes from Bourgeois Life proposes that theatre spectatorship has made a significant contribution to the historical development of a distinctive bourgeois sensibility, characterized by the cultivation of distance. In Nicholas Ridout’s formulation, this distance is produced and maintained at two different scales. First is the distance of the colonial relation, not just in miles between Jamaica and London, but also the social, economic, and psychological distances involved in that relation. The second is the distance of spectatorship, not only of the modern theatregoer as consumer, but the larger and pervasive disposition to observe, comment, and sit in judgment, which becomes characteristic of the bourgeois relation to the rest of the world. This engagingly written study of history, class, and spectatorship offers compelling proof of “why theater matters,” and demonstrates the importance of examining the question historically.
A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist uses data, facts, and science to deliver hilarious, fascinating answers to some of the most famous questions in pop music history. “Is there life on Mars? Where have all the flowers gone? Pop songs can pose excellent questions and James Ball has given them the answers they deserve.”—The Times (UK) Some of the most famous questions of our time have come to us in pop songs. “What is love?” “How soon is now?” “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” But do you know the answers? Breaking down lyrics from Bob Dylan, Queen, Rihanna, the Ting Tings, Billy Joel, and a variety of other genre- and decade-spanning artists with colorful graphs and Venn diagrams,Pop Science reveals the exact points where lowbrow pop culture and the highest science and philosophy meet. By revealing the economic status of doggies in windows, what war is good for, and what becomes of the brokenhearted, James Ball uncovers what we have always known—that pop music is the key to life itself.
2016 marked the birth of the post-truth era. Sophistry and spin have coloured politics since the dawn of time, but two shock events - the Brexit vote and Donald Trump's elevation to US President - heralded a departure into murkier territory. From Trump denying video evidence of his own words, to the infamous Leave claims of £350 million for the NHS, politics has rarely seen so many stretching the truth with such impunity. Bullshit gets you noticed. Bullshit makes you rich. Bullshit can even pave your way to the Oval Office. This is bigger than fake news and bigger than social media. It's about the slow rise of a political, media and online infrastructure that has devalued truth. This is the story of bullshit: what's being spread, who's spreading it, why it works - and what we can do to tackle it.
Examining how technological developments in performance practices affect spectator experience of Shakespeare and early modern drama.
SOAR...IF YOU DARE--When was the last time someone said to you: "Hey you. Why don't you take some time & figure out what you want out of life & how you can get it?" Or who ever told you: "Guess what? You can be or do whatever you want to be--you really can. Do you know that?" Well, that's exactly the message of SOAR...IF YOU DARE--YOU REALLY CAN. SOAR...IF YOU DARE was written because so many individuals have lost the kid in themselves, stopped imagining, & no longer see themselves attaining their wildest dreams. Most people don't get what they want out of life & while this is remarkable, what's even more incredible is that often it's because of unseen obstacles they don't even know exist. S...
What is love? How soon is now? How do you solve a problem like Maria? They're some of the most famous questions ever asked. But do you know the answer to them? In Should I Stay or Should I Go?, award-winning journalist James Ball travels from the economic status of doggies in windows, to what war is good for and what becomes of the broken hearted to find out the definitive, fascinating and hilarious answers.
"What is the role of performance in diplomacy? How can we advance interventions into global politics by artists, scholars, and activists? Performing Statecraft investigates the performances of states, their leaders, and their citizens on an expanded field of the global art of statecraft. This book draws together scholarship on the use of theatre as a soft power tool, arts activism on the world stage, sports performance by heads of state, the performativity of national dress, speechmaking and colonialism, war and medicine, indigenous sovereignties, and performed nationalisms"--
Reuben Ball, son of Benjamin Ball, was born in about 1780, probably in Fauquier County, Virginia. He married Mary Harding in 1801 in Green County, Kentucky. Ancestors, descendants and relatives lived mainly in Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri and Nebraska.
What are the stakes of cultural production in a time of war? How is artistic expression prone to manipulation by the state and international humanitarian organizations? In the charged political terrain of post-genocide Rwanda, post-civil war Uganda, and recent violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Laura Edmondson explores performance through the lens of empire. Instead of celebrating theatre productions as expression of cultural agency and resilience, Edmondson traces their humanitarian imperatives to a place where global narratives of violence take precedence over local traditions and audiences. Working at the intersection of performance and trauma, Edmondson reveals how artists and cultural workers manipulate narratives in the shadow of empire and how empire, in turn, infiltrates creative capacities.
This book is an innovative study that places performance and dance studies in conversation with ecology by exploring the significance of dirt in performance. Focusing on a range of 20th- and 21st-century performances that include modern dance, dance-theatre, Butoh, and everyday life, this book demonstrates how the choreography of dirt makes biological, geographical, and cultural meaning, what the author terms "biogeocultography". Whether it’s the Foundling Father digging into the earth’s strata in Suzan-Lori Park’s The America Play (1994), peat hurling through the air in Pina Bausch’s The Rite of Spring (1975), dancers frantically shovelling out fistfuls of dirt in Eveoke Dance Theat...