| Description |
xi, 245 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Contents |
The one-person show in late nineteenth-century America : the golden age of platform performances. Charles Dickens ; The Lyceum ; Adgar Allen Poe ; James E. Murdoch ; Women on the platform : Anna Cora Mowatt, Fanny Kemble and Charlotte Cushman ; The founding of the Chaurauqua Assembly ; Performers of the Chautauqua Assemblies : Robert McLean Cumnock, Helen Potter, Leland Powers ; Chautauqua versus vaudeville ; Mark Twain ; Conclusion -- The one-person show in early twentieth-century America : transition from "platform performance" to "solo theatre." The tent Chautauqua circuits ; The reaction against victorianism ; Entertainments on the tent Chautauqua circuits ; The end of the victorian intolerance for the theatre : drama at Chautauqua ; The collapse of the tent Chautauqua and Lyceum circuits ; The transition for "platform performance" to "solo theatre" ; Solo performers, 1920-50 : Cissie Loftus, Dorothy Sands, Charles Laughton, Ruth Draper, Cornelia Otis Skinner ; Conclusion -- The Renaissance of the one-person show in America : 1950 to the present. Emlyn Williams as Charles Dickens ; Hal Holbrook's Mark Twain Tonight! ; The biographical one-person show genre ; Performance genres related to the biographical one-person show ; Problems of the genre : the use of biography in solo performance ; From biography to autobiography : Spalding Gray, An Evening with Quentin Crisp ; Contemporary Shakespeare and Bible recitals : John Bielgud's Ages of Man, Ian McKellen Acting Shakespeare, Alec McCowen's St. Mark's Gospel ; Centemporary monologuists : Lily Tomlin, Whoopi Goldberg, Eric Bogosian ; Contemporary writer-performers in "The Age of the Reading" : Dylan Thomas ; The beat poets and beyond ; The great debate: The page versus the stage ; Conclusion ; Conclusion : The performer's perspective |
| Notes |
Includes index |
|
Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral--Northwestern University, 1984) under title: The one-person show in America |
| Bibliography |
Bibliography: pages 207-234 |
| Subject |
Monodramas.
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Multiple role acting.
|
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Oral interpretation.
|
| Genre/Form |
Monodramas (Literature)
|
| LC no. |
88029553 |
| ISBN |
0252015843 (alk. paper) |
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