Product Description: Now available in paperback, this volume presents a theory of the circus as a secular ritual and introduces a method to analyze its performances as multimodal discourse. The book's chapters cover the range of circus specialties (magic, domestic and wild animal training, acrobatics, and clowning) and provide examples to show how cultural meaning is produced, extended and amplified by circus performances...read more

Product Description: What do circus performances communicate? They are rich in extreme skills and clever staging, They trigger strong emotions, They make beautiful sense, This book_ which is grounded in the personal circus experience of the author_ uses semiotics_ pragmatics_ and cultural studies to explain why we are irresistibly drawn to the circus, It shows how semiotics can be applied to understand and enhance our enjoyment...read more

Analyzing Performance provides conceptual tools for understanding a range of performance, including theater, dance, cinema, other audiovisual media, and mime. This richly illustrated book develops protocols for the analysis of performance at every level -- from the minute gestures and facial expressions of an actor to the social network in which theater is embedded -- and respects the importance of every aspect of performance, including actor, costume, space, time, music, and lighting. With a keen awareness of the roles of social context in the interpretation of performance, Patrice Pavis leads the reader from a purely formal analysis to a semiology and anthropology of performance, where spectator and actor are equally objects of study. Drawn from performance traditions and innovations all over the world, the book's many examples make critical techniques vivid and concrete. Analyzing Performance will be essential reading for critics, scholars, students, and practitioners of theater, who will find that David Williams's elegant translation brings Pavis's insights within reach of English-language readers.Patrice Pavis, Professor of Theater at Paris-VIII University, has written extensively and influentially on performance.David Williams is Professor of Theater, Dartington College of Arts, Devon, England. (view table of contents)

This revolutionary introductory performance studies coursebook brings together classic texts in critical theory and shows how these texts can be used in the analysis of performance. The editors put their texts to work in examining such key topics as: * decoding the sign * the politics of performance * the politics of gender and sexual identity * performing ethnicity * the performing body * the space of performance * audience and spectatorship * the borders of performance. Each reading is clearly introduced, making often complex critical texts accessible at an introductory level and immediately applicavble to the field of performance. The ideas explored within these readings are further clarified through innovative, carefully tested exercises and activities. (view table of contents)

Product Description: "Analysing Performance" is a wide-ranging collection of essays by contributors of international standing about key aspects of the performing arts. Each essay tackles the theory and practice of contemporary performance work, and enables students and teachers to see what is at stake in analyzing dance, drama, music and videos...read more

Product Description: n recent years, the post structuralist theories seem to have created a split in theatrological research. But, as André Helbo analyses in this book , a dialectic theory of the semiotic and the symbolic exchange bring to light a specific paradigm...read more