Props
1st Edition
Published on 16. September 2017
224 pages
978-1-137-41337-6 (ISBN)
Description
This diverse book brings together theoretical and practical viewpoints on objects in performance, how they can be part of theatre scenery, equal partners in performance, or autonomous things. Through close analysis of specific performances, Eleanor Margolies examines actor training, scenography, materials, construction techniques and object theatre. The text investigates a number of critical questions, including: what the difference is between a theatre prop and an everyday object, how audiences respond to the various ways that props are used by actors and designers, and whether devising with 'stuff' affect the making process or the attitudes to materiality embodied in performance.With discussions of papier mche and collapsing chairs, fake food and stage blood, Props is an essential sourcebook for students, practitioners and researchers of theatre, design and prop-making.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Illustrations
40 bw illus
ISBN-13
978-1-137-41337-6 (9781137413376)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Persons
Content
- Cover
- Contents
- Series Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction
- Prop, object, thing or puppet?
- The 'action force' of a prop
- The prop as text and constraint
- The neglect of materiality
- Craft knowledge
- Beyond the visual and aural: phenomenological approaches
- The spectrum of animation
- 2 The Object in Actor Training and Rehearsal
- Object as text: emotional memory
- In America: Lee Strasberg, Uta Hagen and the disappearance of the object
- Finding a sequence of physical actions
- The object as score recording social and material history: Brecht
- Object as constraint
- 3 Improvising with Stuff
- Improbable Theatre: working with the material imagination
- Devising with Theatre de Complicite
- Improvising with tables
- 4 An Abundance of Little Objects
- Cup and saucer drama
- Ibsen's timed explosions
- Revisiting realism in contemporary productions
- 'Period. Question Mark?' Tobias Hoheisel
- 5 Other Realities
- Ancient Greek performance
- Medieval mystery plays in England
- Early modern drama and Shakespeare
- Georgian spectacles
- Futurist playgrounds
- Brecht and designers
- 6 Inside the Prop Workshop
- Who does what?
- Prop buying
- Making props: substitution, reproduction and imitation
- Plasticity
- Papier mâché
- Polymer plastics
- Bakelite till kingdom come
- Implications for contemporary prop-making
- 'Stage Properties' Dutton Cook
- 7 Consumables and Breakaways
- 'As if the point were to strike a match!'
- The phenomenological reappearance of the body
- Constructing reality
- Cooking for the audience
- Glamour and mess
- 8 A Scenographic Approach to the Object
- Tadeusz Kantor: reality of the lowest rank
- Language as raw material
- Bio-Objects
- Richard Foreman: ontologies of objects
- 9 Object Theatre
- Some practitioners: an incomplete list
- The antecedents of object theatre
- Playing with scale and the cinematic
- The ascetic gesture
- Objects as linguistic elements
- The real object
- 10 Props without Actors
- The prop in the museum
- Immersive sets
- Touch tours
- 11 The Props Cupboard
- 'A human skull' Aoife Monks
- 12 Conclusion
- An object that fits in the hand
- Objects too large to handle cleverly
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
