This book explores an unacknowledged gap in theatre study and praxis, and establishes an inceptive model for transforming a playscript into a theatrical production involving deaf and hearing artists. The book stipulates that theatrical productions of this nature should strive to go beyond accessibility towards inclusivity by considering deaf perspectives at every stage of the process: When deaf actors are cast in roles assumed to be hearing, how does this change the world of the play? How does the inclusion of a visual language affect staging decisions? How can truly equal access to two different language modalities be achieved for diverse production teams and audiences? Because deaf artists should be involved in the leadership and creative decision making throughout the process, this book is co-written by a deaf and hearing team. The main topics of the book include pre-production preparation, the rehearsal process, and performance. As deaf theatre artists move increasingly into the foreground, it’s time for the hearing theatre world to learn how to undertake productions that successfully bridge the deaf and hearing worlds. By including the perspective of directors, actors, designers, and audience members, this guide lays out an ideal process towards achieving that goal.

At head of title: "The Royal Court Theatre presents."

A work of startling originality when it debuted in 1938, Thornton Wilder's Our Town evolved to be seen by some as a vintage slice of early 20th Century Americana, rather than being fully appreciated for its complex and eternal themes and its deceptively simple form. This unique and timely book shines a light on the play's continued impact in the 21st century and makes a case for the healing powers of Wilder's text to a world confronting multiple crises. Through extensive interviews with more than 100 artists about their own experience of the play and its impact on them professionally and personally – and including background on the play's early years and its pervasiveness in American culture – Another Day's Begun shows why this particular work remains so important, essential, and beloved. Every production of Our Town has a story to tell beyond Wilder's own. One year after the tragedy of 9/11, Paul Newman, in his final stage appearance, played the Stage Manager in Our Town on Broadway. Director David Cromer's 2008 Chicago interpretation would play in five more cities, ultimately becoming New York's longest-running Our Town ever. In 2013, incarcerated men at Sing Sing Correctional Facility brought Grover's Corners inside a maximum security prison. After the 2017 arena bombing in Manchester UK, the Royal Exchange Theatre chose Our Town as its offering to the stricken community. 80 years after it was written, more than 110 years after its actions take place, Our Town continues to assert itself as an essential play about how we must embrace and appreciate the value of life itself. Another Day's Begun explains how this American classic has the power to inspire, heal and endure in the modern day, onstage and beyond.

In Magic to Do, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of Pippin's opening, two-time Pulitzer Prize jury member Elysa Gardner turns her attention to this innovative show, the musical retelling of the story of Prince Pippin, son of Charlemagne, and his quest for an "extraordinary life." Magic to Do dives deep into the legendary clashes, backstage drama, and incredible artistic synergy that produced one of Broadway's most influential musicals, a show that paved the way for the pop-informed musicals that we know and love today. Full of big personalities, brilliant creative minds, and never-before-told stories, Magic to Do is an intimate look at a moment in history, a time and a place in which popular culture was as defined by conflict—between the young and the old, idealism and cynicism, creation and destruction—as anything else. Gardner draws out this friction through her examination of the creative struggles between Pippin's director/choreographer, the iconic Bob Fosse, for whom the show would mark a massive career resurgence, and its young composer/lyricist, Stephen Schwartz (of Wicked fame), who was making his Broadway debut. Magic to Do, named for the opening song of the musical, clearly marks the lasting cultural significance of Pippin, which derives in large part from the timelessness of the search for self, one that presents itself anew to each succeeding generation, accounting for the show's enduring popularity around the world. Infused with R&B sounds and a universal message, it is fair to say that, without Pippin, there is no Spring Awakening, Dear Evan Hansen, or even Hamilton.

Plays of Our Own is the first anthology of its kind containing an eclectic range of plays by Deaf and hard-of-hearing writers. These writers have made major, positive contributions to world drama or Deaf theatre arts. Their topics range from those completely unrelated to deafness to those with strong Deaf-related themes such as a dreamy, headstrong girl surviving a male-dominated world in Depression-era Ireland; a famous Spanish artist losing his hearing while creating his most controversial art; a Deaf African-American woman dealing with AIDS in her family; and a Deaf peddler ridiculed and rejected by his own kind for selling ABC fingerspelling cards. The plays are varied in style – a Kabuki western, an ensemble-created variety show, a visual-gestural play with no spoken nor signed language, a cartoon tragicomedy, historical and domestic dramas, and a situation comedy. This volume contains the well-known Deaf theatre classics, My Third Eye and A Play of Our Own. At long last, directors, producers, Deaf and hearing students, professors, and researchers will be able to pick up a book of "Deaf plays" for production consideration, Deaf culture or multicultural analysis, or the simple pleasure of reading.

Drawing upon the empirical scholarship and research expertise of contributors from all settled continents and from diverse life settings and economies, Viral Loads illustrates how the COVID-19 pandemic, and responses to it, lay bare and load onto people’s lived realities in countries around the world. A crosscutting theme pertains to how social unevenness and gross economic disparities are shaping global and local responses to the pandemic, and illustrate the effects of both the virus and efforts to contain it in ways that amplify these inequalities. At the same time, the contributions highlight the nature of contemporary social life, including virtual communication, the nature of communities, neoliberalism and contemporary political economies, and the shifting nature of nation states and the role of government. Over half of the world’s population has been affected by restrictions of movement, with physical distancing requirements and self-isolation recommendations impacting profoundly on everyday life but also on the economy, resulting also, in turn, with dramatic shifts in the economy and in mass unemployment. By reflecting on how the pandemic has interrupted daily lives, state infrastructures and healthcare systems, the contributing authors in this volume mobilise anthropological theories and concepts to locate the pandemic in a highly connected and exceedingly unequal world. The book is ambitious in its scope – spanning the entire globe – and daring in its insistence that medical anthropology must be a part of the growing calls to build a new world.