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An award-winning new play that has been called "a brilliant latter-day variant on Elsinore in an English country garden blitzed by bees" (Sheridan Morley, The Spectator) All is not well in the Humble hive. Thirty-five-year-old Felix Humble is a Cambridge astrophysicist in search of a unified field theory, but after the sudden death of his father, James, a teacher and amateur beekeeper, he is forced to return to the family home in the English countryside. Once there he and his demanding mother, Flora, a glamorous former showgirl who resents having spent the last thirty years in suburban exile, attempt to reconcile themselves to James's death and to each other, plumbing the depths of their anger as well as their love. The emotional turmoil increases exponentially with the arrival of George, Flora's longtime lover, and his daughter Rosie, Felix's former girlfriend, as Felix is forced to acknowledge that his search for unity must include his own chaotic home life. A play concerned with beekeeping and astrophysics, imbued with heartbreak and wit, larger questions of the universe and smaller questions of family dynamics, Humble Boy has been called "a feast: a serious, moving, cerebral feast" (The Sunday Times).
Tracing the history of tragedy and comedy from their earliest beginnings to the present, this book offers readers an exceptional study of the development of both genres, grounded in analysis of landmark plays and their context. It argues that sacrifice is central to both genres, and demonstrates how it provides a key to understanding the grand sweep of Western drama. For students of literature and drama the volume serves as an accessible companion to over two millennia of drama organised by period, and reveals how sacrifice represents a through-line running from classical drama to today's reality TV and blockbuster movies. Across the chapters devoted to each period, Day explores how the meanings of sacrifice change over time, but never quite disappear. He charts the influences of religion, social change and politics on the status and purposes of theatre in each period, and on the drama itself. But it is through a close study of key plays that he reveals the continuities centred around sacrifice that persist and which illuminate aspects of human psychology and social organisation. Among the many plays and events considered are Aeschylus' trilogy The Oresteia, Aristophanes' Women at the Thesmorphia, Menander's The Bad-Tempered Man, the spectacles of the Roman Games, Seneca's The Trojan Women, Plautus's The Rope, the Cycle plays and Everyman from the Middle Ages, Shakespeare's King Lear and A Midsummer Night's Dream, Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy, Jonson's Every Man in His Humour, Thomas Otway's The Orphan, William Wycherley's The Country Wife, Wilde's A Woman of No Importance, Beckett' Waiting for Godot, Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, Suzan-Lori Parks's Topdog/Underdog, Sarah Kane's Blasted and Charlotte Jones' Humble Boy. A conclusion examines the persistence of ideas of sacrifice in today's reality TV and blockbuster movies.
Before Harry leaves home for his first day of school, his parents remind him to be nice to the new students in his class. When Harry sees a boy sitting alone in the auditorium, he introduces himself while the other kids stand at a distance making fun of the boy's stutter. Harry and Luke become great friends, despite the other kids' teasing. Harry Humble helps children understand how a simple act of kindness can change lives for the better. Through Harry's actions, children see how the compassion given to others comes back to them....
Only Theo's grandmother sees the truth about the boy: He's as spoiled as a rotten old apple! That is why, on one of Theo's naughtiest, grabbiest, mouthiest days, Grandmother decides to bake him a pie. Young Theo has never seen the like. Its crust is as big as a bedsheet; its filling of plums, cherries, peaches, pears, apples, and quince is as tempting as any sweet feast ever set before a boy. But when he greedily reaches out for a taste, little Theo bites off a lot more than he can chew! Jennifer Donnelly's wise and funny tale has inspired pictures of modern-day wit and medieval charm from a master of artistic antics, Stephen Gammell.
Contemporary works of art that remodel the canon not only create complex, hybrid and plural products but also alter our perceptions and understanding of their source texts. This is the dual process, referred to in this volume as “refraction”, that the essays collected here set out to discuss and analyse by focusing on the dialectic rapport between postmodernism and the canon. What is sought in many of the essays is a redefinition of postmodernist art and a re-examination of the canon in the light of contemporary epistemology. Given this dual process, this volume will be of value both to everyone interested in contemporary art—particularly fiction, drama and film—and also to readers whose aim it is to promote a better appreciation of canonical British literature.
To make a life, as well as to make a living, is one of the supreme objects for which we must all struggle. The sooner we realize what this means, the greater and more worthy will be the life which we shall make. In putting together the brief life stories and incidents from great lives which make up the pages of this little volume, the writer's object has been to show young people that, no matter how humble their birth or circumstances, they may make lives that will be held up as examples to future generations, even as these stories show how boys, handicapped by poverty and the most discouraging surroundings, yet succeeded so that they are held up as models to the boys of to-day.
A white South African teenager's relationships with his parents and, more particularly, with two of their Black servants--Willie and Sam--have a painful, tragic outcome
While doing a good job of caring for his grandfather's sheep and goat on the grasslands of South Africa, young Malusi dreams of everything from owning his own dog to becoming president one day. Illustrations.
What does it mean for a play to be political in the 21st century? Does it require explicit engagement with events and situations with the aim of bringing about change or highlighting social wrongs? Is it purely a matter of content or is it also a matter of structure? The Contemporary Political Play: Rethinking Dramaturgical Structure examines the politics of contemporary 'political' drama. It traces the origins of the contemporary British political play to the emergence of the idea of 'serious drama' in the late 19th century through the work of Bernard Shaw, and argues that a Shavian version of serious drama was inextricably linked to the social and political structures of British society at the time. While political drama is still often thought of as adhering to a Shavian model in which social issues are presented through a dialectical structure, Grochala argues that the different political structures of contemporary Britain give rise to formally inventive dramaturgies that are no less 'serious' or political than their Shavian forebears. Through analysing the experimental dramaturgies of contemporary plays by playwrights including Caryl Churchill, Simon Stephens, Anthony Neilson, debbie tucker green and Mark Ravenhill, among others, it offers a set of new principles for understanding how a play functions politically and reveals how today the dramaturgical structure of a play is as political as its content.