Theatre Now

A fresh, accessible, twenty-first century guide to theatre with a balance of practical, experiential, historical, and scholarly approaches. The book offers ways to make theatre active, immersive, and stimulating for students, ensuring they gain an appreciation for how it functions and a sense of the durability and reach of its impact and presence.

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Theatre Now: Reading It, Seeing It, Doing It is a fresh, accessible, twenty-first century guide to theatre with a balance of practical, experiential, historical, and scholarly approaches. The book provides strategies to get beyond simply lecturing about theatre, and instead offers ways to make it active, immersive, and stimulating for students, ensuring they leave the classroom with not only an understanding of the major tenets of theatre as an art form, but also an appreciation for the nuts and bolts of how theatre functions, as well as a sense of the durability and reach of its impact and presence.

The opening chapter begins to define and categorise theatre, exploring how it can cover a range of happenings, events, and experiences that extend beyond plays and musicals. Additional chapters explore major figures, innovations, and movements within the theatre over time, and the function of the artists, disciplines, and vocations that go into creating theatre. Students learn how to read a play, analyse a script, and assess live performance as an informed audience member. Dedicated chapters examine the formation and evolution of musical theatre, provide students with an extensive list of seminal contemporary plays, and help them apply playwriting practices and strategies to create an original play.

Engaging and enlightening, Theatre Now is an exemplary resource for theatre majors at all levels, as well as students enrolled in theatre appreciation courses.