The Birth of Theatre (Stage By Stage); Philip Freund
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Professor Philip Freund has spent over thirty years writing a monumental history of the theatre. Stage by Stage is a chronicle of world theatre from primitive rites and enactments of myths to contemporary drama. It differs from anything else in the field in that it comprises not only playwrights, but opera and composers, musical comedy, ballet, modern dance, choreographers, circuses, theatre architects, scene designs, puppetry, famous actors and directors - all the aspects of its subject. Stage by Stage is encyclopaediac, but it is not an encyclopaedia. It has a colourful and anecdotal approach to narrative. It tells how the classic dramas were produced then and how they are staged now. The social, economic and political settings of the plays are fully described, and the major dramatists profiled and analysed in considerable detail. The history is consistently objective, expressing not the opinions of the author but the views of hosts of critics and scholars, past and present. An unusual feature of the work is that it surveys many countries and regions not in other general histories.
The author has travelled to more than 90 countries, some repeatedly, and has a personal acquaintance with stagings and dances in exciting places. He can, for example, describe Antigone as performed in Alaska by Inuits and in Rhodes by modern Greeks. Stage by Stage is to published in a three volume series. This first volume is an entity: it deals with the classical theatre up to the fall of the Roman Empire. The product of vast learnng, enormous research and above all a passion for theatre, these volumes represent a unique and extraordinary achievement in the literature of the stage.
The author has travelled to more than 90 countries, some repeatedly, and has a personal acquaintance with stagings and dances in exciting places. He can, for example, describe Antigone as performed in Alaska by Inuits and in Rhodes by modern Greeks. Stage by Stage is to published in a three volume series. This first volume is an entity: it deals with the classical theatre up to the fall of the Roman Empire. The product of vast learnng, enormous research and above all a passion for theatre, these volumes represent a unique and extraordinary achievement in the literature of the stage.
