House Arrest and Piano - Two Plays

Zusatztext “As Anna Deavere Smith’s unique theatrical experiences have illustrated! history can be most revealing! not to mention most entertaining! when it’s liberated from the books and caught on the wing.” — Variety “The most exciting individual in American theater.” — Newsweek Informationen zum Autor Anna Deavere Smith Klappentext From the award-winning actor and playwright Anna Deavere Smith, two teeming, pungent cross-sections of the American experience. In the provocative and at times bitterly funny play House Arrest, Smith examines the relationships between a succession of American presidents and their observers in and out of the press. Arcing from Clinton and Monica Lewinsky to Jefferson and Sally Hemings and alive with the voices of such real-life figures as Ed Bradley, George Stephanopoulos, Anita Hill, and Abraham Lincoln, the result is a priceless examination of the intersection of public power and private life. In Piano, Smith casts her gaze back a century as she follows the tangled lines of race, sex, and exploitation in a prosperous Cuban household on the eve of the Spanish-American War. Deftly and suspensefully, Smith tells a story of ruptured allegiances and ramifying deceptions in which no one—master or servant, friend or enemy—is what he or she pretends to be. Together these two plays are further proof that Anna Deavere Smith is one of the most searing and revelatory voices in the American theater. House Arrest A Search for American Character In and Around the White House, Past and Present House Arrest was originally commissioned and produced by the Arena Stage, Washington, D.C., on November 7, 1997. Doug Wager, Artistic Director. It was subsequently produced by the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, Gordon Davidson, Artistic Director. It premiered on April 9, 1999. Its original New York production was provided by the Public Theater, George C. Wolfe, Producer. It opened at the Public Theater on March 26, 2000. Special thanks to the Goodman Theatre. Special thanks to the Intiman Theatre. General Production Notes House Arrest is a form of documentary theater. It requires a different kind of acting than psychological realism and depends on an "informed actor." This play is about real events, using the words of real people. The audience should be made aware of that. Slides should be used, if possible, to announce each character and to inform the audience that the words in the play are verbatim from interviews. A slide with the following language should begin the show, just after lights down, and before any other visual image: "All words spoken by speakers in the twentieth century are verbatim from interviews conducted by Anna Deavere Smith, unless otherwise noted. All other materials are verbatim from historic texts." The audience also needs to be given a background on the events. This can be achieved by the use of dramaturgical notes, but it can also be included in the body of the play-with visual aids such as slides and videos, if possible. The overall context of the play is the Clinton administration and the relationship of President Clinton to the press. The actor's accuracy of language is important. All of the utterances, every "uh" and other nonverbal sounds, where noted, are rhythmic beats that inform the development of character. Many times a character speaks in a counterintuitive way, in which words in and of themselves do not make sense. The play has been written as an extension of research done by the author on the relationship of language to identity. It is recommended that a specific person be included on the production team who gives line notes and makes corrections. The process of playing the play and speaking the words in their exact presentation is the core of the technique of performing the...

Product details

• Authors: Anna Deavere Smith
• Publisher: Anchor Books USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 13.04.2004
• EAN: 9781400033577
• ISBN: 978-1-4000-3357-7
• No. of pages: 304
• Dimensions: 132 mm x 203 mm x 15 mm
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Humanities, art, music > Art > Theatre, ballet