An inspiring, real world guide for artists that shows how to build a successful, stable career in the performing arts, from the President and CEO of The Music Center in Los Angeles.     While performing artists have many educational opportunities to perfect their craft, they are often on their own when it comes to learning the business skills necessary to launch their careers. In The Artist's Compass, Rachel Moore shares how to make life as a performer more successful, secure, and sustainable by approaching a career in the arts like an entrepreneur. She teaches aspiring performers how to take charge of their own careers and how to create their own brand and marketing platform to achieve personal and professional success.     Moore combines her artistic and corporate experience to address the finer points of building a career in a challenging industry. The Artist's Compass is the essential success guide for aspiring artists, driving home the point that honing professional skills beyond the stage is not forsaking one's art, but for the sake of one's art.

This Companion provides a comprehensive overview of African American theatre, from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Along the way, it chronicles the evolution of African American theatre and its engagement with the wider community, including discussions of slave rebellions on the national stage, African Americans on Broadway, the Harlem Renaissance, African American women dramatists, and the 'New Negro' and 'Black Arts' movements. Leading scholars spotlight the producers, directors, playwrights and actors whose efforts helped to fashion a more accurate appearance of black life on stage, and reveal the impact of African American theatre both within the United States and further afield. Chapters also address recent theatre productions in the context of political and cultural change and ask where African American theatre is heading in the twenty-first century.

The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater collects a critical mass of border-crossing scholarship on the intersections of dance and theatre. Taking corporeality as an idea that unites the work of dance and theater scholars and artists, and embodiment as a negotiation of power dynamics with important stakes, these essays focus on the politics and poetics of the moving body in performance both on and off stage. Contemporary stage performances have sparked global interest in new experiments between dance and theater, and this volume situates this interest in its historical context by extensively investigating other such moments: from pagan mimes of late antiquity to early modern archives to Bolshevik Russia to post-Sandinista Nicaragua to Chinese opera on the international stage, to contemporary flash mobs and television dance contests. Ideologically, the essays investigate critical race theory, affect theory, cognitive science, historiography, dance dramaturgy, spatiality, gender, somatics, ritual, and biopolitics among other modes of inquiry. In terms of aesthetics, they examine many genres such as musical theater, contemporary dance, improvisation, experimental theater, television, African total theater, modern dance, new Indian dance theater aesthetics, philanthroproductions, Butoh, carnival, equestrian performance, tanztheater, Korean Talchum, Nazi Movement Choirs, Lindy Hop, Bomba, Caroline Masques, political demonstrations, and Hip Hop.The volume includes innovative essays from both young and seasoned scholars and scholar/practitioners who are working at the cutting edges of their fields. The handbook brings together essays that offer new insight into well-studied areas, challenge current knowledge, attend to neglected practices or moments in time, and that identify emergent themes. The overall result is a better understanding of the roles of dance and theater in the performative production of meaning.

America has gone Hamilton crazy. Lin-Manuel Miranda's Tony-winning musical has spawned sold-out performances, a triple platinum cast album, and a score so catchy that it is being used to teach U.S. history in classrooms across the country. But just how historically accurate is Hamilton? And how is the show itself making history? Historians on Hamilton brings together a collection of top scholars to explain the Hamilton phenomenon and explore what it might mean for our understanding of America's history. The contributors examine what the musical got right, what it got wrong, and why it matters. Does Hamilton's hip-hop take on the Founding Fathers misrepresent our nation's past, or does it offer a bold positive vision for our nation's future? Can a musical so unabashedly contemporary and deliberately anachronistic still communicate historical truths about American culture and politics? And is Hamilton as revolutionary as its creators and many commentators claim? Perfect for students, teachers, theatre fans, hip-hop heads, and history buffs alike, these short and lively essays examine why Hamilton became an Obama-era sensation and consider its continued relevance in the age of Trump. Whether you are a fan or a skeptic, you will come away from this collection with a new appreciation for the meaning and importance of the Hamilton phenomenon.

A timely and kaleidoscopic reflection on the importance of the arts in our society In the midst of a devastating pandemic, as theaters, art galleries and museums, dance stages and concert halls shuttered their doors indefinitely and institutional funding for entertainment and culture evaporated almost overnight, a cohort of highly acclaimed scholars, artists, cultural critics, and a journalist sat down to ponder an urgent question: Are the arts essential? Across twenty-five highly engaging essays, these luminaries join together to address this question and to share their own ideas, experiences, and ambitions for the arts. Darren Walker discusses the ideals of justice and fairness advanced through the arts; Mary Schmidt Campbell shows us how artists and cultural institutions helped New York overcome the economic crisis of the 1970s, bringing new investment and creativity to the city; Deborah Willis traces histories of oppression and disenfranchisement documented by photographers; and Oskar Eustis offers a brief history lesson on how theaters have built communities since the Golden Age of Athens. Other topics include the vibrancy and diversity of Muslim culture in America during a time of rising Islamophobia; the strengthening of the common good through the art and cultural heritages of indigenous communities; digital data aggregation informing and influencing new art forms; and the jazz lyricisms of a theater piece inspired by a composer's two-month coma. Drawing on their experiences across the spectrum of the arts, from the performing and visual arts to poetry and literature, the contributors remind readers that the arts are everywhere and, in one important way after another, they question, charge and change us. These impassioned essays remind us of the human connections the arts can forge--how we find each other through the arts, across the most difficult divides, and how the arts can offer hope in the most challenging times. What answer does this convocation offer to Are the Arts Essential? A resounding Yes.

Understanding Greek Tragic Theatre, a revised edition of Greek Tragic Theatre (1992), is intended for those interested in how Greek tragedy works. By analysing the way the plays were performed in fifth-century Athens, Rush Rehm encourages classicists, actors, and directors to approach Greek tragedy by considering its original context. Emphasizing the political nature of tragedy as a theatre of, by, and for the polis, Rehm characterizes Athens as a performance culture, one in which the theatre stood alongside other public forums as a place to confront matters of import and moment. In treating the various social, religious and practical aspects of tragic production, he shows how these elements promoted a vision of the theatre as integral to the life of the city - a theatre whose focus was on the audience. The second half of the book examines four exemplary plays, Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy, Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus, and Euripides' Suppliant Women and Ion. Without ignoring the scholarly tradition, Rehm focuses on how each tragedy unfolds in performance, generating different relationships between the characters (and chorus) on stage and the audience in the theatre.

How does protest engage with theatre? What does theatre have to gain from protest? Theatre and protest are often closely interlinked in the contemporary cultural and political landscape, and the line between protest and performance is often difficult to draw. Yet this relationship is also beset with doubts about theatre's capacity to intervene in the social world. This fresh and insightful text thinks through the intersections and tensions between theatre and protest. Exploring the cross-fertilization of international theatre and protest across the 12th and 21st centuries, Lara Shalson illuminates how and why these two are mutually influencing and enriching forms.

Improvisation is a tool for many things: performance training, rehearsal practice, playwriting, therapeutic interaction and somatic discovery. This book opens up the significance of improvisation across cultures, histories and ways of performing our life, offering key insights into the what, the how and the why of performance. It traces the origins of improvisation and its influences, both as a social and political phenomenon and its position in performance training. Including history, theory and practice, this new edition encompasses Theatre and performance studies as well as drama, acknowledging the rapid reconfiguration of these fields in recent years. Its coverage also now extends to improvisation in the USA, cinema, LARPing, street events and the improvising audience, while also looking at improv's relationship to stand-up comedy, jazz, poetry and free movement practices. With an index of exercises and an extensive bibliography, this book is indispensable to students of improvisation.

There are many monologues books on the market but very few provide rich material for comedy. This collection from up and coming comedian & actress Katy Wix plugs that gap and provides female performers with the kind of wonderfully warm and interesting characters that they need - and deserve.A comedian and writer, Wix has for the past few years been writing audition speeches for students at drama schools including RADA, LAMDA, Drama Centre and The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. A book of contemporary comedy monologues does not exist for today's actor or indeed a book comprising solely of showcase speeches. This is a collection of very funny and original audition speeches filling a significant gap in the market: made up of monologues for various age ranges, each with a running time of two to three minutes. The brevity in length makes these ideal for auditions or showcases and the variety in age and style encompasses different comedic approaches; from the very quirky to the more traditional - perfect for every type of performer.

This book is organized a little differently than most published collections of monologues. Each chapter is arranged in several sections:
About the Playwright
List of Plays
Playwright Information
Performing the Monologues
The Monologues

In this volume of the Good Audition Guides, you'll find fifty fantastic speeches for women, all written since the year 2000, by some of our most exciting dramatic voices. Playwrights featured in Contemporary Monologues for Women include Mike Bartlett, Alexi Kaye Campbell, Caryl Churchill, Helen Edmundson, debbie tucker green, Ella Hickson, Lucy Kirkwood, Rona Munro, Joanna Murray-Smith and Enda Walsh, and the plays themselves were premiered at the very best theatres across the UK including the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Bush, Soho and Hampstead Theatres, Manchester Royal Exchange, the Traverse in Edinburgh, the Abbey in Dublin, and many on the stages of the Royal Court. Drawing on her experience as an actor, director and teacher at several leading drama schools, Trilby James prefaces each speech with a thorough introduction including the vital information you need to place the piece in context (the who, what, when, where and why) and suggestions about how to perform the scene to its maximum effect (including the character's objectives and keywords). Contemporary Monologues for Women also features an introduction on the whole process of selecting and preparing your speech, and approaching the audition itself. The result is the most comprehensive and useful contemporary monologue book now available.

Things We Said Today features the scripts for award-winning playwright Neil LaBute's groundbreaking DirecTV project 10x10--a series of short films written and directed by LaBute based on 10 compelling original monologues, five each for men and women. Also included are five short plays displaying the power and scope of LaBute's creative vision. In Pick One, three white guys come up with a way to solve America's problems; in The Possible one young woman seduces another's boyfriend for an unexpected reason. Call Back features an actress and actor who spar about a past encounter that she, unnervingly, remembers much better than he does. Good Luck (In Farsi), "a pleasingly astringent study in competitiveness and vanity" (New York Times) has two actresses pulling out all the stops in a pre-audition psych out; and in Squeeze Play a father and his son's baseball coach strike a mutually beneficial deal. Rounding out the collection are two monologues commissioned as part of Centerstage's "My America" project. "Mr. LaBute is writing some of the freshest and most illuminating dialogue to be heard anywhere these days." --Ben Brantley, New York Times

Selected from the Renaissance period, these selections go from monologues for women, including The alchemist and The witch of Edmonton, to monologues for men, including Catiline and Such stuff as dreams are made of.

In this volume of the Good Audition Guides, you'll find fifty fantastic speeches for men, all written since the year 2000, by some of our most exciting dramatic voices.

Voices of Color is a trailblazing collection of scenes and monologues by African American playwrights. This major omnibus of contemporary American writing will serve as a primary resource for African American artists in search of their own voice for the stage. Actors and directors will now have access to a much larger spectrum of work in which to shine. Readers will be introduced to a rich, vibrant medley of work of the human spirit. And schools, colleges and libraries will, at last, have the book we all need to fully explore America's potential for drama.

The monologue. It's an established tradition in theatrical drama. From the Greeks to the present day, the monologue functioned as the sole means of insight into a character's psyche. The monologue is a direct representation of their mind. In theatrical drama, the monologue is a sublime expression: an affirmation of self. It is through the monologue that the character speaking actualizes him / herself. As theatre segued into film and the development of sound film technology, film could speak. And speak it did - to millions throughout the world. But what was to happen to the monologue? Its fate as a dramatic tool was uncertain. Although it had proven brilliant as a theatrical device - a structural point upon which a dramatist would often make the most potent characterization - on film, it was one man or woman standing alone, talking to themselves aloud. It didn't work: it was uneventful as cinema, boring to look at and dragged the pace to a standstill.The monologue persisted in a certain kind of static, talky, theatrically based type of cinema that rapidly dwindled in appeal as directors began exploring the possibilities of the sound film medium. Yet there emerged a new problem. Even in film there was the need for monologues. This time it wasn't to vocalize the internal thoughts and feelings of the speaker but to make a heavily dramatic point or statement. No longer self-talk, it began to politicize the use of film dialogue. Now, the monologue was an argument, a summation, an assault. No longer self-talk, it was bold statement. The film monologue was transfigured from self-assertion to self-actualization. In theatre it had been contemplative and revelatory, but in film it became not only the prime means to socio-political "message" or discourse but a defiant statement of principle and moral worth: a revelation of a truth about the character speaking and the film itself. It was now a potent dramatic tool again, fresh, invigorating and powerful. The 50 monologues collected in this book represent the scope of its potential: from the dramatic, political, feminist to the comical, emotional and fantastical.There's a diverse wealth of spoken-word art in this anthology. Each monologue is introduced as to historical context, set-up and character to give an indication of how each monologue is framed. The monologues are arranged alphabetically by film title and survey some 60 years of sound film. So... on to 50 Sensational Movie Monologues.

The most comprehensive sourcebook of Shakespeare's monologues ever available in one volume. A detailed guide to approaching Shakespearean text, Speak the Speech! contains everything an actor needs to select and prepare a Shakespeare monologue for classwork, auditions, or performance. Included herein are over 150 monologues. Each one is placed in context with a brief introduction, is carefully punctuated in the manner that best illustrates its meaning, and is painstakingly and thoroughly annotated. Each is also accompanied by commentary that will spark the actor's imagination by exploring how the interrelationship of meter and the choice of words and sounds yields clues to character and performance. And throughout the book sidebars relate historical, topical, technical, and other useful and entertaining information relevant to the text. In addition, the authors include an overview of poetic and rhetorical elements, brief synopses of all the plays, and a comprehensive index along with other guidelines that will help readers locate the perfect monologue for their needs. More than just an actor's toolkit, Speak the Speech! is also an entertaining resource that will help demystify Shakespeare's language for the student and theater lover alike.

Within intellectual paradigms that privilege mind over matter, dance has long appeared as a marginal, derivative, or primitive art. Drawing support from theorists and artists who embrace matter as dynamic and agential, this book offers a visionary definition of dance that illuminates its constitutive work in the ongoing evolution of human persons. Why We Dance introduces a philosophy of bodily becoming that posits bodily movement as the source and telos of human life. Within this philosophy, dance appears as an activity that humans evolved to do as the enabling condition of their best bodily becoming. Weaving theoretical reflection with accounts of lived experience, this book positions dance as a catalyst in the development of human consciousness, compassion, ritual proclivity, and ecological adaptability. Aligning with trends in new materialism, affect theory, and feminist philosophy, as well as advances in dance and religious studies, this work reveals the vital role dance can play in reversing the trajectory of ecological self-destruction along which human civilization is racing.

Dance in TV advertisements has long been familiar to Americans as a silhouette dancing against a colored screen, exhibiting moves from air guitar to breakdance tricks, all in service of selling the latest Apple product. But as author Colleen T. Dunagan shows in Consuming Dance, the advertising industry used dance to market items long before iPods. In this book, Dunagan lays out a comprehensive history and analysis of dance commercials to demonstrate the ways in which the form articulates with, informs, and reflects U.S. culture. In doing so, she examines dance commercials as cultural products, looking at the ways in which dance engages with television, film, and advertising in the production of cultural meaning. Throughout the book, Dunagan interweaves semiotics, choreographic analysis, cultural studies, and critical theory in an examination of contemporary dance commercials while placing the analysis within a historical context. She draws upon connections between individual dance-commercials and the discursive and production histories to provide a thorough look into brand identity and advertising's role in constructing social identities.

Ballet and Modern Dance meets the needs of both students and inquisitive dance goers through a narrative focused on the development of Western theatrical dance from the Renaissance to the first decades of the 21st century, incorporating the most recent scholarship and projecting trends. The text is illuminated by excerpts from primary sources and embellished by 65 photos. A section of biographical profiles at the end of the book serves as a supplementary reference source. Intended to be entertaining as well as enlightening the book seeks an additional objective which is the value of dance history as a field of study.

Karen Clippinger's first edition of Dance Anatomy and Kinesiology was hailed as the definitive text on the topic. This new edition builds on that success by retaining its scientific perspective while making the material more accessible to students and teachers. What's New? * A suite of online instructor and student ancillaries to support the text * An improved organization that will help teachers better cover the content in their courses * A reduction of the scientific depth to produce a more reader-friendly book that focuses on the musculoskeletal anatomy and kinesiology that dancers need to know * Graphics, photos, and anatomical illustrations that demonstrate muscle movements and technique considerations and set the book apart from others in its field Primary Focus While much is new in this second edition, Clippinger retains her emphasis on presenting the anatomical and kinesiological material that is essential for dancers to understand. The text includes descriptions of joint structure, key muscles, common alignment problems, select joint mechanics, and movement analysis and includes sample strength and flexibility exercises for each region of the body. Accessible to a Wider Audience Clippinger has made this second edition more engaging to a wider audience and narrowed the scope of the material so it can be more readily covered in a single undergraduate course. And while many of the text examples are dance-specific, its applied nature and its many illustrations make it a great reference for Pilates, yoga, and fitness instructors as well as dance educators and dedicated dancers. New Ancillaries * An instructor guide featuring a sample syllabus and course outline, chapter outlines, lab assignments, answers to review questions, and sample tests * A presentation package providing slides with text and graphics that reinforce key points * A student web resource including assignments, outlines, study sheets, and 20 video clips that demonstrate technique and correction guidelines This new edition will give teachers a clearer picture of the anatomical and kinesiological factors that aid in generating technique cues and identifying technique problems. It will provide dancers with a better understanding of overcoming technique challenges and preventing injuries. Its solid grounding in the sciences, along with the art and accessible text, will help teachers become more effective and empower dancers to realize their potential and artistic vision. Quotes The first edition of Dance Anatomy and Kinesiology was hailed by reviewers as "most likely to become the definitive text in dance anatomy, kinesiology, and conditioning classes" (Journal of Dance Medicine and Science); "a must for any dance teacher who is serious about helping their students" (Australia Dance Teacher Magazine); and "the most substantive dance science resource to date" (Journal of Dance Education).

If we imagine multiple ways of being together, how might that shift choreographic practices and help us imagine ways groups assemble in more varied ways than just pairing another man with another woman? How might dancing queerly ask us to imagine futures through something other than heterosexuality and reproduction? How does challenging gender binaries always mean thinking about race, thinking about the postcolonial, about ableism? What are the arbitrary rules structuring dance in all its arenas, whether concert and social or commercial and competition, and how do we see those invisible structures and work to disrupt them?Queer Dance brings together artists and scholars in a multi-platformed project-book, accompanying website, and live performance series to ask, "How does dancing queerly progressively challenge us?" The artists and scholars whose writing appears in the book and whose performances and filmed interviews appear online stage a range of genders and sexualities that challenge and destabilize social norms. Engaging with dance making, dance scholarship, queer studies, and other fields, Queer Dance asks how identities, communities, and artmaking and scholarly practices might consider what queer work the body does and can do. There is great power in claiming queerness in the press of bodies touching or in the exceeding of the body best measured in sweat and exhaustion. How does queerness exist in the realm of affect and touch, and what then might we explore about queerness through these pleasurable and complex bodily ways of knowing?

American Society for Aesthetics Selma Jeanne Cohen Prize in Dance Aesthetics Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award Dancing in Blackness is a professional dancer's personal journey over four decades, across three continents and 23 countries, and through defining moments in the story of black dance in America. In this memoir, Halifu Osumare reflects on what blackness and dance have meant to her life and international career. Osumare's story begins in 1960s San Francisco amid the Black Arts Movement, black militancy, and hippie counterculture. It was there, she says, that she chose dance as her own revolutionary statement. Osumare describes her experiences as a young black dancer in Europe teaching "jazz ballet" and establishing her own dance company in Copenhagen. Moving to New York City, she danced with the Rod Rodgers Dance Company and took part in integrating the programs at the Lincoln Center. After doing dance fieldwork in Ghana, Osumare returned to California and helped develop Oakland?s black dance scene. Osumare introduces readers to some of the major artistic movers and shakers she collaborated with throughout her career, including Katherine Dunham, Pearl Primus, Jean-Leon Destine, Alvin Ailey, and Donald McKayle. Now a black studies scholar, Osumare uses her extraordinary experiences to reveal the overlooked ways that dance has been a vital tool in the black struggle for recognition, justice, and self-empowerment. Her memoir is the inspiring story of an accomplished dance artist who has boldly developed and proclaimed her identity as a black woman.