William Grange - Böcker

Theatre was one of many German institutions experiencing profound change in the aftermath of World War I. Grange contends that had comedy not prevailed throughout the turbulent years of the ill-fated Weimar experiment in democracy, much of theatre would have died along with the republic itself. Audiences attended performances of comedies in numbers far surpassing those of any other form of theatre.Theatre was one of many German institutions experiencing profound change in the aftermath of World War I. Grange contends that had comedy not prevailed throughout the turbulent years of the ill-fated Weimar experiment in democracy, much of theatre would have died along with the republic itself. Audiences attended performances of comedies in numbers far surpassing those of any other form of theatre. Industrial comedy describes the most important and most predominant form of comedy on German stages from 1919 to 1933. Discoveries, reversals, mistaken identities, and abrupt plot twists were its stock-in-trade. Scholars and students of theatre as well as modern German history will find this a fascinating look at why Germans were laughing, and what they were laughing at, as their society crumbled around them.

The Business of American Theatre is a research guide to the history of producing theatre in the United States. Covering a wide range of subjects, the book explores how traditions of investment, marketing, labor union contracts, advertising, leasing arrangements, ticket scalping, zoning ordinances, royalties, and numerous other financial transactions have influenced the art of theatre for the past three centuries. Yet the book is not a dry reiteration of hits and flops, bankruptcies and bamboozles. Nor does it cover "everything about it that's appealing, everything the traffic will allow" (as Irving Berlin did in the song "There's No Business Like Show Business"). It is instead a highly readable resource for anyone interested in how money, and how much money, is critical to the art and artists of theatre. Many of those artists make appearances in the book: Richard Rodgers and his keen eye for investment, Jacob Shubert and his construction of "the bridge of thighs" for his showgirls at the Winter Garden, the significance of the Disney Souvenir Shop near the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway, and the difference between a Broadway show losing millions of dollars or making billions in one night. Consider this book a go-to resource for readers, students, and scholars of the theatre business.

The Business of American Theatre is a research guide to the history of producing theatre in the United States. Covering a wide range of subjects, the book explores how traditions of investment, marketing, labor union contracts, advertising, leasing arrangements, ticket scalping, zoning ordinances, royalties, and numerous other financial transactions have influenced the art of theatre for the past three centuries. Yet the book is not a dry reiteration of hits and flops, bankruptcies and bamboozles. Nor does it cover "everything about it that's appealing, everything the traffic will allow" (as Irving Berlin did in the song "There's No Business Like Show Business"). It is instead a highly readable resource for anyone interested in how money, and how much money, is critical to the art and artists of theatre. Many of those artists make appearances in the book: Richard Rodgers and his keen eye for investment, Jacob Shubert and his construction of "the bridge of thighs" for his showgirls at the Winter Garden, the significance of the Disney Souvenir Shop near the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway, and the difference between a Broadway show losing millions of dollars or making billions in one night. Consider this book a go-to resource for readers, students, and scholars of the theatre business.

When the National Socialist German Workers' party (Nazis) assumed power they vowed to cleanse the German theater of all things "un-German," which ostensibly included comedy. During the Third Reich nearly all German theaters, supported by enormous state funding, presented thousands of comedy productions. Perhaps it was a propaganda tool, however only a tiny fraction of these productions were outright propagandist efforts. French playwright and filmmaker, Marcel Pagnol described laughter as a "song of triumph...[that] expresses the laugher's sudden discovery of his own momentary superiority over the person at whom he is laughing. That explains burst of laughter in all times in all countries." Hitler and his followers gladly embraced this triumphal expression. Yet, what did this laughter mean to the Nazi agenda and in what ways did it undermine its goals? Hitler Laughing offers insight into the world of comedy during the Third Reich and its role in the Nazi cultural agenda.

A Primer in Theatre History covers productions, personalities, theories, innovations, and plays from ancient Greece to the Spanish Golden Age. Grange discusses theatre from 534 BC in Athens to 1681 AD in Madrid. The book contains highly informative chapters on theatre culture in the ancient classical world, the medieval period, the Italian Renaissance, classical Asia, German-speaking Europe, France to 1658, and England to 1642. Following a wide-ranging introduction, chapters allow the uninitiated reader straightforward access to well-researched material, often presented in a humorous and approachable fashion. Descriptions of films augment discussions of theatre, while an extended bibliography and comprehensive index assist the reader in making further inquiries. Each chapter features illustrations by Mallory Prucha, a designer and graphic illustrator who has received several awards at theatre conferences around the US. A Primer in Theatre History does not read like a scholarly tome. Its whimsical wrinkles offer readers a more contemporaneous view of theatre than is customary. It employs, for example, frequent references to movies germane to topics and time periods under discussion. Such use of film promotes familiarity among younger readers, who can then appropriate analogies to theatre performance.

Some authors strongly criticized attempts to rebuild a German literary culture in the aftermath of World War II, while others actively committed themselves to "dealing with the German past." There are writers in Austria and Switzerland that find other contradictions of contemporary life troubling, while some find them funny or even worth celebrating. German postwar literature has, in the minds of some observers, developed a kind of split personality. In view of the traumatic monstrosities of the previous century that development may seem logical to some.The Historical Dictionary of Postwar German Literature is devoted to modern literature produced in the German language, whether from Germany, Austria, Switzerland or writers using German in other countries. This volume covers an extensive period of time, beginning in 1945 at what was called "zero hour" for German literature and proceeds into the 21st century, concluding in 2008. This is done through a list of acronyms and abbreviations, a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on writers, such as Nobel Prize-winners Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, Elias Canetti, Elfriede Jelinek, and W. G. Sebald. There are also entries on individual works, genres, movements, literary styles, and forms.

The Weimar Republic began at 2:00 PM on November 9, 1918 when Philip Scheidemann declared from a second-story window in the Reich Chancellery to his hearers below that the German Reich was now a republic. It ended at 11:00 AM on January 30, 1933 when President Paul von Hindenburg named Adolf Hitler Chancellor.The Cultural Chronicle of the Weimar Republic is an account of significant cultural events in Germany during the time of the Weimar Republic. Weimar, already a German cultural mecca because Goethe and Schiller had lived and worked there 120 years earlier, emerged as a unique and experimental culture. Weimar culture was responsible for producing such icons as actress Marlene Dietrich, novels like All Quiet on the Western Front, musicals like The Threepenny Opera, the political cabaret, the Bauhaus School, and films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Metropolis. There were hundreds of premieres, performance debuts, exhibitions, works of fiction, and other cultural events that marked the Republic as Western Civilization's first modernist society. Modernism took many forms: the Einstein Tower in Berlin, the symphonies of Paul Hindemith, the paintings of Max Beckmann, the drawings of Käthe Kollwitz, the novels of Alfred Döblin, the industrial designs of Ferdinand Porsche, the choreography of Mary Wigman, the acting of Ernst Deutsch, the plays of Expressionism. The Cultural Chronicle of the Weimar Republic presents these and scores of other modernist inscriptions worthy of note, while providing notations that inform readers of connections among individuals, art works, related cultural activities, and significant political and economic developments.

Historical Dictionary of German Literature to 1945 covers a wide swath of literary analysis and achievement, from Old High German lays and ecclesiastical encomia to Middle High German epics, sagas, and love lyrics. While extensive in its chronological dimension, the Historical Dictionary of German Literature to 1945 is equally comprehensive in the geographical and genre areas it covers.The history of this period in German literature is told through a detailed chronology, an introductory essay, a comprehensive bibliography, and over 200 cross-referenced dictionary entries on poetry, novels, historical narrative, philosophical musings, and drama. The exceptional writers who emerged and shaped German literature over the centuries—including Walther von der Vogelweide, Johann Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Heinrich Heine, Friedrich Nietzsche, Thomas Mann, and many others who are well known and admired worldwide—are also covered.

More than mere entertainment, German theater was a crucial component of culture-often influencing society and politics in German-speaking countries-whose influence gradually reached much further with the emergence of outstanding playwrights like Goethe, Schiller, Hauptmann, and Brecht, as well as exceptional dramas such as Faust and The Threepenny Opera. The A to Z of German Theater covers the field of theater performance in the German language, concentrating on German-speaking Europe, through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and several hundred cross-referenced dictionary entries on significant playwrights, directors, producers, designers, actors, plays, theaters, cities, dramatic genres, and movements such as the Sturm und Drang, Naturalism, and Expressionism.

Some authors strongly criticized attempts to rebuild a German literary culture in the aftermath of World War II, while others actively committed themselves to "dealing with the German past." There are writers in Austria and Switzerland that find other contradictions of contemporary life troubling, while some find them funny or even worth celebrating. German postwar literature has, in the minds of some observers, developed a kind of split personality. In view of the traumatic monstrosities of the previous century that development may seem logical to some.The A to Z of Postwar German Literature is devoted to modern literature produced in the German language, whether from Germany, Austria, Switzerland or writers using German in other countries. This volume covers an extensive period of time, beginning in 1945 at what was called "zero hour" for German literature and proceeds into the 21st century, concluding in 2008. This is done through a list of acronyms and abbreviations, a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on writers, such as Nobel Prize-winners Heinrich Böll, Günter Grass, Elias Canetti, Elfriede Jelinek, and W. G. Sebald. There are also entries on individual works, genres, movements, literary styles, and forms.

Where did cabaret come from? What has it got to do with pre-war Berlin, decadent society and Nazis? How does it turn into media cabaret and the sisterhood of sleaze? Is cabaret a primary vehicle for exploring the range of sexual practices and alternative sexual identities?In this new book William Grange brings into one place for the first time the range of practices now associated with the form of cabaret. Beginning with its origins in speciality German theatres and the development both of the sheet music industry and disc recordings, Grange tracks the form through into its golden age in the 1920s and beyond.The book’s three sections deal first with the emergence of Berlin as the ‘German Chicago’, where cabaret flourished in the midst of post-war political turmoil. The abolition of censorship allowed nude dancing and sexually explicit songs and routines. It also saw the introduction of kick-line dancing and black performers. In the book’s second and third sections Grange takes the story forward into the post second-world-war world, describing how the form moved outwards from central Europe to move across the whole world, reaching Singapore and Australia, and as it did so settling into the range of forms in which we know it today. Some of these forms became ‘media cabaret’ looking towards the new media age, the postmodernism that followed on from modernism. To this age, even in its new forms, cabaret brought its old habits of making challenges to assumptions around gender identities and sexual practices. As throughout its whole history, cabaret was a form that provided particular vehicles for female performers. And whereas it once served up whore songs and nude dancing it now offers a sisterhood of sleaze.

Where did cabaret come from? What has it got to do with pre-war Berlin, decadent society and Nazis? How does it turn into media cabaret and the sisterhood of sleaze? Is cabaret a primary vehicle for exploring the range of sexual practices and alternative sexual identities?In this new book William Grange brings into one place for the first time the range of practices now associated with the form of cabaret. Beginning with its origins in speciality German theatres and the development both of the sheet music industry and disc recordings, Grange tracks the form through into its golden age in the 1920s and beyond.The book’s three sections deal first with the emergence of Berlin as the ‘German Chicago’, where cabaret flourished in the midst of post-war political turmoil. The abolition of censorship allowed nude dancing and sexually explicit songs and routines. It also saw the introduction of kick-line dancing and black performers. In the book’s second and third sections Grange takes the story forward into the post second-world-war world, describing how the form moved outwards from central Europe to move across the whole world, reaching Singapore and Australia, and as it did so settling into the range of forms in which we know it today. Some of these forms became ‘media cabaret’ looking towards the new media age, the postmodernism that followed on from modernism. To this age, even in its new forms, cabaret brought its old habits of making challenges to assumptions around gender identities and sexual practices. As throughout its whole history, cabaret was a form that provided particular vehicles for female performers. And whereas it once served up whore songs and nude dancing it now offers a sisterhood of sleaze.