Literary Criticism : Drama

Alternative worlds in films such as The Wizard of Oz, It’s a Wonderful Life, Donnie Darko and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind offer similarities and resonances to our world, but provide a way for filmmakers to address the human condition by forming a sincere and serious connection with everyday life. An illuminating new book explores the history, background and meaning of films that feature alternative worlds – films in which characters cross back and forth between another world and our own, which bring out correspondences and resonances between the worlds they depict. The popularity of such films suggests a need to engage with important themes during troubling times, as well as to be entertained and transported, says author James Walters – rather than merely constituting part of the wider trend of adults finding comfort in books and films ostensibly for children. The films discussed in the book use the fantasy of an alternative world to debate a series of universal conditions associated with human experience: insecurity, ambition, loneliness, apprehension, bravery, vanity, inarticulateness, anxiety, ambiguity, introversion, love, and so on. Because these films are often viewed as Hollywood ‘product’ they don’t always have the intellectual cachet of European films dealing with similar themes, but Walters suggests that there is complexity and depth behind these superficially light films. Traditionally, Realist cinema has dealt with weighty issues, but increasingly films featuring alternative worlds offer an engaging way of dealing with ‘serious’ content and issues. In each of the films discussed the flight from the real world results in characters having to face reality again, equipped with new knowledge and experience, enabling them to find a way of living there from that day on. more...

Price: $20.00

Beyond Auteurism is a comprehensive study of nine film authors from France, Italy and Spain who since the 1980s have blurred the boundaries between art-house and mainstream, and national and transnational film production. Maule examines how the individuals have maintained a dialectical relationship with the authorial tradition of the national cinema to which each belongs. In considering this tradition, Maule seeks to illustrate that the film author is not only the most important symbol of European cinema’s cultural tradition and commitment, but is also a crucial part of Europe’s efforts to develop its cinema within domestic and international film industries. The book studies the work, practices and styles of European film-makers including Luc Besson, Claire Denis, Gabriele Salvatores and Alejandro Amenábar. Beyond Auteurism offers an important contribution to a historicized and contextualized view of film authorship from a theoretical framework that rejects Western-centred and essentialist views of cinematic practices and contexts. more...

Price: $20.00

Greenberg offers a powerful interpretation of the classical stage in its relationship to the emergence of absolutism in Europe. The originality and strength of the book reside in its fascinating integration of texts dealing with political theory, psychoanalysis, history, and literature. more...

Price: $57.00

Theatre in Education emerged in the mid-sixties as a unique hybrid of performance and child-centred learning. Contemporary Theatre in Education charts the creation and adaptation of this 'hybrid' through the changing political, economic and educational environment. It also takes a 'snapshot' of the TIE being created today, considering all the projects being performed in Wales during a single month. The projects are analysed and every TIE director interviewed about the work and the policies of their companies. It becomes very clear that that the distinction between TIE and Children’s Theatre is being blurred. Is it possible for the hybrid to survive? Or have the economics of schools, the post-National Curriculum educational philosophy and the lack of understanding from a new breed of teachers created an environment that has forced a mutation? Perhaps theatre in education has just evolved, but perhaps just forty years after it began it is facing extinction. This book will be of relevance to any who works with TIE or drama in schools as a practitioner or a teacher. It is also an invaluable resource for any school, college or university student studying the application of theatre in a school environment. more...

Price: $40.00

One of the most provocative writers on women's performances of Shakespeare on stage and film in Britain today, Rutter speculates on how the theatre `plays' women's bodies and how audiences read them. more...

Price: $48.95