An unusual study of the tradition of blackface in stage performance.

Performing Blackness offers a challenging interpretation of black cultural expression since the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. Exploring drama, music, poetry, sermons, and criticism, Benston offers an exciting meditation on modern black performance's role in realising African-American aspirations for autonomy and authority. Artists covered include: * John Coltrane * Ntozake Shange * Ed Bullins * Amiri Baraka * Adrienne Kennedy * Michael Harper. Performing Blackness is an exciting contribution to the ongoing debate about the vitality and importance of black culture.

'One of our most brilliant contemporary thinkers' Claudia Rankine 'An unrelenting exploration of slavery and freedom' New Yorker In this radical re-evaluation of American history, Saidiya Hartman draws together a striking portrait of nineteenth-century slavery and its many afterlives. Through close examination of a variety of 'scenes', ranging from the auction block and the minstrel show to plantation diaries and legal cases, Scenes of Subjection investigates the interconnected nature of historical enslavement and present-day racism. With bold and persuasively argued possibilities for Black resistance and transformation, this book shows how far we have yet to go to dismantle the pervasive legacy of slavery.

Teaching Critical Performance Theory offers teaching strategies for professors and artist-scholars across performance, design and technology, and theatre studies disciplines. The book’s seventeen chapters collectively ask: What use is theory to an emerging theatre artist or scholar? Which theories should be taught, and to whom? How can theory pedagogies shape and respond to the evolving needs of the academy, the field, and the community? This broad field of enquiry is divided into four sections covering course design, classroom teaching, the studio space, and applied theatre contexts. Through a range of intriguing case studies that encourage thoughtful theatre practice, this book explores themes surrounding situated learning, dramaturgy and technology, disability and inclusivity, feminist approaches, race and performance, ethics, and critical theory in theatre history. Written as an invaluable resource for professionals and postgraduates engaged in performance theory, this collection of informative essays will also provide critical reading for those interested in drama and theatre studies more broadly.

This collection reflects not only the multidisciplinary nature of current thinking about performance, but also the complex and contested nature of the concept itself.

The banjo has been called by many names over its history, but they all refer to the same sound—strings humming over skin—that has eased souls and electrified crowds for centuries. The Banjo invites us to hear that sound afresh in a biography of one of America’s iconic folk instruments. Attuned to a rich heritage spanning continents and cultures, Laurent Dubois traces the banjo from humble origins, revealing how it became one of the great stars of American musical life. In the seventeenth century, enslaved people in the Caribbean and North America drew on their memories of varied African musical traditions to construct instruments from carved-out gourds covered with animal skin. Providing a much-needed sense of rootedness, solidarity, and consolation, banjo picking became an essential part of black plantation life. White musicians took up the banjo in the nineteenth century, when it became the foundation of the minstrel show and began to be produced industrially on a large scale. Even as this instrument found its way into rural white communities, however, the banjo remained central to African American musical performance. Twentieth-century musicians incorporated the instrument into styles ranging from ragtime and jazz to Dixieland, bluegrass, reggae, and pop. Versatile and enduring, the banjo combines rhythm and melody into a single unmistakable sound that resonates with strength and purpose. From the earliest days of American history, the banjo’s sound has allowed folk musicians to create community and joy even while protesting oppression and injustice.

Workouts for Stepping into Emotionally Focused Therapy is a companion to Stepping into Emotionally Focused Therapy: Key Ingredients of Change (2nd ed.). Inspired by Deliberate Practice, it is filled with exercises called workouts first with couples (EFCT), followed by a series of workouts in that same skill or move with individuals (EFIT). The workouts are more than skill-drills. They are clear, tangible ways for the reader-practitioner to become emotionally engaged within self and in attunement with each client scenario and to strengthen their EFT muscles with the practice of each of these EFT ingredients of change. Part 1 includes workouts of ten micro-skills across a wide range of client scenarios, including diversity of racial, ethnic, gender, sexual orientation, religious, neurodiversity, and other contextual diversity. Workouts with the five moves of the EFT Tango, from beginning of therapy to the completion of Stage 2 change, first with a couple and then with an individual, make up Part 2. The reader-practitioner has opportunity in Part 3 to apply the macro-intervention to Stages 1 and 2 change in their own lives, to explore barriers to following and deepening emotions, and to utilize a series of antidotes for typical EFT therapist challenges and goal-setting. Containing practical handles for the new clinician or graduate student wanting to integrate EFT into their practice, it is also stimulating and relevant for seasoned therapists and counselors seeking to sharpen EFT skills and develop confidence in the model with both couples and individuals.

Throughout his plays, Shakespeare placed an extraordinary emphasis on the power of the face to reveal or conceal moral character and emotion, repeatedly inviting the audience to attend carefully to facial features and expressions. The essays collected here disclose that an attention to the power of the face in Shakespeare’s England helps explain moments when Shakespeare’s language of the self becomes intertwined with his language of the face. As the range of these essays demonstrates, an attention to Shakespeare’s treatment of faces has implications for our understanding of the historical and cultural context in which he wrote, as well as the significance of the face for the ongoing interpretation and production of the plays. Engaging with a variety of critical strands that have emerged from the so-called turn to the body, the contributors to this volume argue that Shakespeare’s invitation to look to the face for clues to inner character is not an invitation to seek a static text beneath an external image, but rather to experience the power of the face to initiate reflection, judgment, and action. The evidence of the plays suggests that Shakespeare understood that this experience was extremely complex and mysterious. By turning attention to the face, the collection offers important new analyses of a key feature of Shakespeare’s dramatic attention to the part of the body that garnered the most commentary in early modern England. By bringing together critics interested in material culture studies with those focused on philosophies of self and other and historians and theorists of performance, Shakespeare and the Power of the Face constitutes a significant contribution to our growing understanding of attitudes towards embodiment in Shakespeare’s England.

John Coltrane's A Love Supreme is widely considered one of the greatest jazz albums of all time. In Beyond A Love Supreme, author Tony Whyton explores both the musical aspects of A Love Supreme, and the album's seminal importance in jazz history, as well as its broader musical and cultural impact.

This collection reflects not only the multidisciplinary nature of current thinking about performance, but also the complex and contested nature of the concept itself.