Examining humor in depictions of the Civil War from the war years to the present, this review covers a wide range of literature, film and television in historical context.
Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice presents the most current international scholarship on the complexity and subversive potential of women's comedic speech, literature, and performance.
This vintage book contains instructions for mastering a variety of imaginative magic tricks that use coins, cards, balls, silks, and other common objects.
A seriously funny look at the roots of American EntertainmentWhen Groucho Marx and Charlie Chaplin were born, variety entertainment had been going on for decades in America, and like Harry Houdini, Milton Berle, Mae West, and countless others, these performers got their start on the vaudeville stage.
The Comic Event approaches comedy as dynamic phenomenon that involves the gathering of elements of performance, signifiers, timings, tones, gestures, previous comic bits, and other self-conscious structures into an "e;event"e; that triggers, by virtue of a "e;cut,"e; an expected/unexpected resolution.
This raw and emotional tale is a roller coaster through the depths of addiction, tragedy, hard work, and redemption that truly reflects Joe's spirit and determination to stay clean in a world where he is surrounded by temptation.
Situation Comedy, Character, and Psychoanalysis puts the sitcom character on the analyst's couch and closely examines the characters of Basil Fawlty, Lucy Ricardo and Kim from Australia's Kath & Kim, in order to reveal the essential elements that must exist in a sitcom before even the first joke is written.
In Dance for Sports, author, teacher, dancer, athlete, and researcher Margo Apostolos offers a new training approach for athletes and coaches that synthesizes common techniques between athletics and dance.
The Modern Feminine in the Medusa Satire of Fanny Fern argues that Sara Parton and her literary alter ego, Fanny Fern, occupy a star-power position within the antebellum literary marketplace dominated by women authors of sentimental fiction, writers Nathaniel Hawthorne (in)famously called "e;the damn mob of scribbling women.
The early years of the twenty-first century have witnessed a proliferation of non-fiction, reality-based performance genres, including documentary and verbatim theatre, site-specific theatre, autobiographical theatre, and immersive theatre.
Clown: The Physical Comedian is a detailed and comprehensive workbook for those interested in the art of clowning and physical theatre, including actors, directors, improvisers, stand-up comedians, circus artists, mask performers and devisers of new work.
The Magpie and the Wardrobe A Curiosity of Folklore, Magic and Spells, is a lovingly curated compendium of time-honoured traditions and curious customs that have bewitched us for generations.
When the Nicholas Brothers danced, uptown at the Cotton Club, downtown at the Roxy, in segregated movie theatres in the South, and dance halls across the country, audiences cheered, clapped, stomped their feet, and shouted out uncontrollably.
Alternative Comedy Now and Then: Critical Perspectives is the first academic collection focusing on the history and legacy of the alternative comedy movement in Britain that began in 1979 and continues to influence contemporary stand-up comedy.
This book offers a series of compelling responses to the Jasmin Vardimon Company's production of Justitia, a multilayered, multimedia dance theatre piece.
Examining humor in depictions of the Civil War from the war years to the present, this review covers a wide range of literature, film and television in historical context.
This book develops a model to examine the language of humour, which is multimodal and accounts for the possibility of transmutation of humour as it is performed through editorial cartoons.
Through popular movies starring Bruce Lee and songs like the disco hit "e;Kung Fu Fighting,"e; martial arts have found a central place in the Western cultural imagination.
Given that slaveholders prohibited the creation of African-style performing objects, is there a traceable connection between traditional African puppets, masks, and performing objects and contemporary African American puppetry?
Marking Time: Performance, archaeology and the city charts a genealogy of alternative practices of theatre-making since the 1960s in one particular city Cardiff.
'The course of true love never did run smooth' so says Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and for more than 2000 years the problems faced by young men and women fighting to find and keep an appropriate sexual partner have been a theatrical staple.
Originally published in 1953 by Harper and Brothers, 'Classic Secrets of Magic' exposes the mystery behind some of the most well-known magical tricks, such as the 'Ambitious Card', the 'Chink-a-Chink' and the 'Four Ace Trick'.
Departing from a refreshing look at the ideas of Antonin Artaud, this book provides a thorough analysis of how both Sarah Kane and Samuel Beckett are indebted to his legacy.
This edited collection from leading scholars in the fields of media, communications, cultural studies and a number of aligned areas looks to the intersection of capitalism, crime and the media.
This antiquarian book contains a detailed and novice-friendly guide to ventriloquism, with information on voice exercises, selecting dummies, common techniques and tricks, performing, sketches, and much more.
Billy Wilder's classic screwball comedy Some Like it Hot (1959), starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe, tells the story of two struggling Jazz musicians who accidentally witness a mob massacre in Chicago who then, disguised as women, join a female band to escape the gangsters' pursuit.
