Siu Wang-Ngai
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9789888208265
- eISBN:
- 9789888268252
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888208265.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
Chinese opera embraces over 360 different styles of theatre that make one of the richest performance arts in the world. It combines music, speech, poetry, mime, acrobatics, stage fighting, vivid ...
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Chinese opera embraces over 360 different styles of theatre that make one of the richest performance arts in the world. It combines music, speech, poetry, mime, acrobatics, stage fighting, vivid face-painting and exquisite costumes. First experiences of Chinese opera can be baffling because its vocabulary of stagecraft is familiar only to the seasoned aficionado. Chinese Opera: The Actor's Craft makes the experience more accessible for everyone. This book uses breath-taking images of Chinese opera in performance by Hong Kong photographer Siu Wang-Ngai to illustrate and explain Chinese opera stage technique. The book explores costumes, gestures, mime, acrobatics, props and stage techniques. Each explanation is accompanied by an example of its use in an opera and is illustrated by in-performance photographs. Chinese Opera: The Actor's Craft provides the reader with a basic grammar for understanding uniquely Chinese solutions to staging drama.Less
Chinese opera embraces over 360 different styles of theatre that make one of the richest performance arts in the world. It combines music, speech, poetry, mime, acrobatics, stage fighting, vivid face-painting and exquisite costumes. First experiences of Chinese opera can be baffling because its vocabulary of stagecraft is familiar only to the seasoned aficionado. Chinese Opera: The Actor's Craft makes the experience more accessible for everyone. This book uses breath-taking images of Chinese opera in performance by Hong Kong photographer Siu Wang-Ngai to illustrate and explain Chinese opera stage technique. The book explores costumes, gestures, mime, acrobatics, props and stage techniques. Each explanation is accompanied by an example of its use in an opera and is illustrated by in-performance photographs. Chinese Opera: The Actor's Craft provides the reader with a basic grammar for understanding uniquely Chinese solutions to staging drama.
Bruce R. Smith
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198735526
- eISBN:
- 9780191822506
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198735526.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Shakespeare Studies, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Chapter 2 situates cutwork as part and parcel of how plays were laid out, written, rehearsed, acted, revised, and printed during Shakespeare’s career. A controlling metaphor in the chapter’s ...
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Chapter 2 situates cutwork as part and parcel of how plays were laid out, written, rehearsed, acted, revised, and printed during Shakespeare’s career. A controlling metaphor in the chapter’s investigation of these practices is costume construction. Other kinds of cuts are internally cued in scripts: speaking turns, speeches “aside,” announced changes in fictional location, multiple focal points in a single scene, and “discoveries.” The early modern term “re-modeling,” used in connection with fashions in clothing as well as fashions in stage plays, provides the cue for a consideration of various forms of cutwork across the past four hundred years. The chapter concludes with a survey of the reasons for this cutwork: historical changes in (1) the actor’s art, (2) rhetoric and syntax, (3) scenography, and (4) narrative structure. Hamlet is taken as a reference point in charting the history of cutwork in “re-modeling” Shakespeare.Less
Chapter 2 situates cutwork as part and parcel of how plays were laid out, written, rehearsed, acted, revised, and printed during Shakespeare’s career. A controlling metaphor in the chapter’s investigation of these practices is costume construction. Other kinds of cuts are internally cued in scripts: speaking turns, speeches “aside,” announced changes in fictional location, multiple focal points in a single scene, and “discoveries.” The early modern term “re-modeling,” used in connection with fashions in clothing as well as fashions in stage plays, provides the cue for a consideration of various forms of cutwork across the past four hundred years. The chapter concludes with a survey of the reasons for this cutwork: historical changes in (1) the actor’s art, (2) rhetoric and syntax, (3) scenography, and (4) narrative structure. Hamlet is taken as a reference point in charting the history of cutwork in “re-modeling” Shakespeare.
