Peter Mudford – författare

Setting out to make his fortune in a far-off country, a young traveller discovers the remote and beautiful land of Erewhon and is given a home among its extraordinarily handsome citizens. But their visitor soon discovers that this seemingly ideal community has its faults - here crime is treated indulgently as a malady to be cured, while illness, poverty and misfortune are cruelly punished, and all machines have been superstitiously destroyed after a bizarre prophecy. Can he survive in a world where morality is turned upside down? Inspired by Samuel Butler's years in colonial New Zealand and by his reading of Darwin's Origin of Species, Erewhon (1872) is a highly original, irreverent and humorous satire on conventional virtues, religious hypocrisy and the unthinking acceptance of beliefs.

This reality of a play is in its performance. Making Theatre focusses on the process by which performance is realised, analysing three major areas: 'Words' and the interpretation of the text; 'Vision', including scenery, costume and lightning, and 'Music' which illustrates the importance of music in all stage action. The forms of theatre covered include straight drama, the musical and opera. Taking productions well-known on both sides of the Atlantic, Peter Mudford examines plays by Shakespeare, Chekhov, Pirandello, Beckett, Pinter, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and David Mamet; musicals by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Cole Porter and Stephen Sondheim; and operas by Verdi, Wagner and Berg. This account of what makes theatre important and how it works will be invaluable to teachers and students of drama and performance, as well as those interested in theatre as art. Peter Mudford is Professor of English and European Literature at London University.