absent presence
1. In poststructuralist theory, a concept most closely associated with Derrida, for whom it refers to the mythical status of the supposed hub of any system of ideas (see also deconstruction; ...
advertisement
An attention-grabbing presentation in any medium which typically serves the marketing function of persuading consumers to purchase a product or service but which may also function to raise or ...
advertising discourse
1. In linguistics and discourse analysis, the ways in which different forms of language and various linguistic (and sometimes also visual and aural) techniques—are deployed within the advertising ...
Africa
This entry summarizes some of the main features of indigenous sub-Saharan African theatre and performance, concentrating on pre-colonial forms. For the syncretic forms which emerged after colonial ...
Ahmed Taieb al- Eulj
(1928– )Moroccan songwriter, actor, playwright, and director, a highly visible figure in theatre since the 1950s. He was a member of the Moroccan Theatre Company from 1956 and its co-manager ...
Alexander Pushkin
(1799–1837),Russia's greatest poet, whose works include lyric poems, Byronic verse narratives, prose stories, historical dramas, and the great political poem The Bronze Horseman (1833). His novel in ...
Alexandre Hardy
(c.1575–c.1631),the first professional French playwright, attached to the company under Valleran-Lecomte which settled at the Hôtel de Bourgogne, where his plays, of which about 40 survive from a ...
anatomy
A written analysis of some subject, which purports to be thorough and comprehensive. The famous model for this literary form is Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). The Canadian critic ...
ancients and moderns
Medieval readers and writers were strongly aware of their relationship to the past. They viewed classical learning as their inheritance and assumed the responsibility of safeguarding and transmitting ...
Andreini family
Italian professional practitioners of commedia dell'arte and related genres. The Tuscan Francesco (1548–1624) embarked on a theatrical career in the late 1570s, and married the young Paduan Isabella ...
Àngel Guimerà
(1845–1924)Catalan poet and playwright. Already a prizewinning poet, Guimerà turned in the late 1870s to the theatre. Gala Placídia (1879) and Judith de Welp (1883) were his first incursions ...
Anne-Thérèse de Lambert
(1647–1733), French essayist and salon hostess. Born Anne-Thérèse Marguenat de Courcelles in Paris, into a middle-class family that had been elevated to the gentry, she lost her father in 1650 ...
anthropology, theatre
A term coined by Eugenio Barba in the late 1970s which he most recently defines as ‘the study of the pre-expressive scenic behaviour upon which different genres, styles, roles and ...
Antoine-François Prévost, abbé
(1697–1763)French novelist and translator. Successively Jesuit novice, professional soldier, Benedictine priest, Protestant convert, and literary hack, he is best remembered today for Manon Lescaut ...
Armando Discépolo
(1887–1971)Argentinian playwright, director, and producer. The author (and co-author) of more than 30 plays in various genres, Discépolo was most closely associated with the influential grotesco ...
Arthur Kopit
(b. 1937), playwright.A native New Yorker, his first plays were produced while he was a student at Harvard, including his dark farce Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You ...
audience studies
Usually academic (rather than media industry) research into culturally significant aspects of the use of particular mass media (e.g. the domestic politics of television use) or into relationships ...
August von Kotzebue
(1761–1819)German dramatist and diplomat in Russian service, author of a large number of sentimental plays which enjoyed a considerable vogue in England during the 1790s. His Menschenhass und Reue ...
Augusto Boal
(1931–2009)Brazilian theoretician, director, and playwright. After studying with John Gassner in New York in the early 1950s, Boal became a core member of São Paulo's Arena Theatre in 1956 ...
ballad opera
Opera with spoken dialogue and using popular tunes of the day provided with new words. Form originated in England with Allan Ramsay's The Gentle Shepherd (1725), but the success in 1728 of Gay's The ...
