The Stage Life of PropsIn The Stage Life of Props, Andrew Sofer aims to restore to certain props the performance dimensions that literary critics are trained not to see, then to show that these props are not just accessories, but time machines of the theater. Using case studies that explore the Eucharistic wafer on the medieval stage, the bloody handkerchief on the Elizabethan stage, the skull on the Jacobean stage, the fan on the Restoration and early eighteenth-century stage, and the gun on the modern stage, Andrew Sofer reveals how stage props repeatedly thwart dramatic convention and reinvigorate theatrical practice. While the focus is on specific objects, Sofer also gives us a sweeping history of half a millennium of stage history as seen through the device of the prop, revealing that as material ghosts, stage props are a way for playwrights to animate stage action, question theatrical practice, and revitalize dramatic form. Andrew Sofer is Assistant Professor of English, Boston College. He was previously a stage director. |
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Contents
The Prop as Temporal Contract on the Medieval Stage | 31 |
The Bloody Handkerchief on the Elizabethan Stage | 61 |
The Skull on the Jacobean Stage | 89 |
Sexual Semaphore on the Restoration and EarlyEighteenthCentury Stage | 117 |
Guns and the Play of Predictability on the Modern Stage | 167 |
Notes | 203 |
251 | |
269 | |
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Common terms and phrases
According action actor actress actual analysis appears argues audience becomes begins blood body bread called Cambridge century chapter characters Christ's church cited cloth Corpus Christi critics cultural dead death drama early effect Elizabethan English example face fact fan's Fefu female fetishized Fornes function gesture given Hamlet hand handkerchief Hedda Hieronimo History Host Ibsen imagination insistence John kill Lady language live London look male Mass material meaning Medieval memento mori Michigan Mode move notes object offers once performance pistols play play's playwrights possible presence production prop refer Reformation refuses remains Renaissance represented Restoration role sacrament sacred scene seems semiotic sexual Shakespeare's signified skull space Spanish spectator stage suggests symbol theater theatrical thing tion Tragedy turn University Press visual wafer woman women York
References to this book
Materializing Gender in Early Modern English Literature and Culture Will Fisher Limited preview - 2006 |
The Lure of Perfection: Fashion and Ballet, 1780-1830 Judith Chazin-Bennahum No preview available - 2005 |