Off Stage: Sketches from the English Teaching Theatre
OFF-STAGE A language practice book for intermediate level students based on sketches from the English Teaching Theatre. The ETT is a unique kind of theatre. Its sketches and songs are designed specifically for learners of English. Each of the fifteen sketches gives practice with specific language-points, both structural and functional. Audio only
What can you do in New York? Everything! You can go to some of the world's most famous shops, watch a baseball game, go to the top of a skyscraper, see a concert in Central Park, eat a sandwich in a New York deli, see a show in a Broadway theatre. New York is big, noisy, and exciting, and it's waiting for you. Open the book and come with us to this wonderful city.
Here is a diverse and fascinating story of the Theatre, from the first tragedies and comedies of Ancient Greece to the high-tech mega-musicals of the late 20th century. It is an absorbing listen, encompassing ancient tales, medieval theatre, Commedia dell'Arte, the great dramas of the Elizabethan age, the foppish 18th century, and the European developments in France, Germany, and Spain with Russia making its main impact in the 19th century. As the 20th century progressed, the theatre moved in different experimental directions, particularly in America and Europe.
Shakespeare’s Theatre: A History examines the theatre spaces used by William Shakespeare, and explores these spaces in relation to the social and political framework of the Elizabethan era. The text journeys from the performing spaces of the provincial inns, guild halls and houses of the gentry of the Bard’s early career, to the purpose-built outdoor playhouses of London, including the Globe, the Theatre, and the Curtain, and the royal courts of Elizabeth and James I. The author also discusses the players for whom Shakespeare wrote, and the positioning—or dispositioning—of audience members in relation to the stage.
This book is a fully revised and largely expanded successor to Mr Williams's widely read Drama from Ibsen to Eliot (1952). In it he argues that although plays are meant to be acted, any play in which the text is no more than an outline, to be filled in by acting, production and decor, must fall short of the purpose and full scope of drama. The naturalistic theatre is criticised because in spite of some great achievements, the devices it makes use of to express the depths of human experience are never really adequate substitutes for the traditional language of the theatre: poetry.
