Playing Gods

Download or read book Playing Gods written by Andrew M Feldherr and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-16 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a novel interpretation of politics and identity in Ovid's epic poem of transformations, the Metamorphoses. Reexamining the emphatically fictional character of the poem, Playing Gods argues that Ovid uses the problem of fiction in the text to redefine the power of poetry in Augustan Rome. The book also provides the fullest account yet of how the poem relates to the range of cultural phenomena that defined and projected Augustan authority, including spectacle, theater, and the visual arts. Andrew Feldherr argues that a key to the political as well as literary power of the Metamorphoses is the way it manipulates its readers' awareness that its stories cannot possibly be true. By continually juxtaposing the imaginary and the real, Ovid shows how a poem made up of fictions can and cannot acquire the authority and presence of other discursive forms. One important way that the poem does this is through narratives that create a "double vision" by casting characters as both mythical figures and enduring presences in the physical landscapes of its readers. This narrative device creates the kind of tensions between identification and distance that Augustan Romans would have felt when experiencing imperial spectacle and other contemporary cultural forms. Full of original interpretations, Playing Gods constructs a model for political readings of fiction that will be useful not only to classicists but to literary theorists and cultural historians in other fields.

Download or read book Playing God written by Andy Crouch and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2013-09-06 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With Playing God, Andy Crouch opens the subject of power, elucidating its subtle activity in our relationships and institutions. He gives us much more than a warning against abuse, though. Turning the notion of "playing God" on its head, Crouch celebrates power as the gift by which we join in God's creative, redeeming work in the world.

Download or read book Playing to the Gods written by Peter Rader and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-08-21 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The riveting story of the rivalry between the two most renowned actresses of the nineteenth century: legendary Sarah Bernhardt, whose eccentricity on and off the stage made her the original diva, and mystical Eleonora Duse, who broke all the rules to popularize the natural style of acting we celebrate today. Audiences across Europe and the Americas clamored to see the divine Sarah Bernhardt swoon—and she gave them their money’s worth. The world’s first superstar, she traveled with a chimpanzee named Darwin and a pet alligator that drank champagne, shamelessly supplementing her income by endorsing everything from aperitifs to beef bouillon, and spreading rumors that she slept in a coffin to better understand the macabre heroines she played. Eleonora Duse shied away from the spotlight. Born to a penniless family of itinerant troubadours, she disappeared into the characters she portrayed—channeling their spirits, she claimed. Her new, empathetic style of acting revolutionized the theater—and earned her the ire of Sarah Bernhardt in what would become the most tumultuous theatrical showdown of the nineteenth century. Bernhardt and Duse seduced each other’s lovers, stole one another’s favorite playwrights, and took to the world’s stages to outperform their rival in her most iconic roles. A scandalous, enormously entertaining history full of high drama and low blows, Playing to the Gods is the perfect “book for all of us who binge-watched Feud” (Daniel de Visé, author of Andy & Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show).

Download or read book Playing God written by John R. Elliott Jr. and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 1989-12-15 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religious drama was one of the most vital art forms of the medieval era. In medieval mystery plays, God appeared as one of the characters, along with angels, saints, the devil, and others. Until very recently however, the revival of interest in medieval culture has not included drama, beacuse of a lingering fear of blasphemy associated with the representation of God on the stage. In Britain this fear was the legacy of a theatrical censorship which has been exercised by the Lord Chamberlain's office for hundreds of years. Since that power was abolished in 1968, medieval religious, or mystery, plays are once again appearing on the stages of many countries. John R. Elliott Jr. studies the modern context of this important medieval genre. He begins by describing general attitudes towards religious drama from the time of the reformation, the popularity of the Oberammergaru Passion Play in Victorian times, and specific attempts by producers to overcome official hostility to religious plays. He traces the history of the major modern productions of the mystery cycles, such as the York Festival and the Bristol University performance of the Cornish Ordinalia, and provides information about the careers of the two leading pioneers of modern mystery-play production. The concluding chapter discusses the chief practical and aethetic problems involved in staging mystery plays for modern audiences, and assesses the overall importance of their revival in the larger context of British there today.

Download or read book Playing God written by Henry Carl Bial and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2015-08-20 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Biblical texts have inspired more than 100 Broadway plays and musicals, ranging from early spectacles like Ben-Hur (1899) to more familiar works such as Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar. What happens when a culture’s most sacred text enters its most commercial performance venue? Playing God focuses on eleven successful productions, as well as a few notable flops that highlight the difficulties in adapting the Old and New Testaments for the stage. The book is informed by both performance studies and theater history, combining analysis of play scripts with archival research into the actual circumstances of production and reception. Biblical plays, Henry Bial argues, balance religious and commercial considerations through a complex blend of spectacle, authenticity, sincerity, and irony. Though there is no magic formula for a successful adaptation, these four analytical lenses help explain why some biblical plays thrive while others have not.

Download or read book Look Who's Playing God written by Albert Johnson and published by Baker's Plays. This book was released on 1976 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cleric's sermon on sin is interrupted by members of the congregation who reenact the story of original sin.

Download or read book Making Faces, Playing God written by Thomas Morawetz and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2013-04-01 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wearing a mask—putting on another face—embodies a fundamental human fantasy of inhabiting other bodies and experiencing other lives. In this extensively illustrated book, Thomas Morawetz explores how the creation of transformational makeup for theatre, movies, and television fulfills this fantasy of self-transformation and satisfies the human desire to become "the other." Morawetz begins by discussing the cultural role of fantasies of transformation and what these fantasies reveal about questions of personal identity. He next turns to professional makeup artists and describes their background, training, careers, and especially the techniques they use to create their art. Then, with numerous before-during-and-after photos of transformational makeups from popular and little-known shows and movies, ads, and artist's demos and portfolios, he reveals the art and imagination that go into six kinds of mask-making—representing demons, depicting aliens, inventing disguises, transforming actors into different (older, heavier, disfigured) versions of themselves, and creating historical or mythological characters.