Dramatic Circumstances


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DRAMATIC CIRCUMSTANCES: ON ACTING SINGING AND LIVING INSIDE THE STORIES WE TELL




Dramatic Circumstances


Book Description

(Book). In this groundbreaking book, noted director and educator William Wesbrooks provides an exciting and eminently practical approach for singers and actors who want to think about their work in a way that brings them a greater sense of vitality, freedom, and empowerment. Drawing upon his years of experience and a keen psychological insight, Wesbrooks utilizes our inherent attraction to storytelling. He presents an exciting process that allows you as a performer to extract from the dramatic circumstances of stories everything you need to bring the characters you play and the songs you sing to a place of vibrant realization. His approach will inspire you to trust in yourself and your own ability as you use your mind, body, and spirit, so as to begin "living inside" your stories in a way that brings them to life for yourself as well as your audience. The process is simple in its structure yet profound in its impact. Dramatic Circumstances will prove an invaluable resource for actors, singers, teachers, directors, and anyone else who knows and believes in the power of stories to inform and touch the lives of those who tell and hear them.







The Sewanee Review


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Truth


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Nietzsche and Music


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Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was not only a philosopher who loved and wrote about music; he was also a musician, pianist, and composer. In this ground-breaking volume, philosophers, historians, musicians, and musicologists come together to explore Nietzsche’s thought and music in all its complexity. Starting from the role that music played in the formation and articulation of Nietzsche’s thought, as well as the influence that contemporary composers had on him, the essays provide an in-depth analysis of the structural and stylistic aspects of his compositions. The volume highlights the significance of music in Nietzsche’s life and looks deeply at his musical experiments which led to a new and radically different style of composition in relation with his philosophical thought. It also traces the influence that Nietzsche had on many other musicians and musical genres, from Russian composers to current rock music and heavy metal.




Baroque Self-Invention and Historical Truth


Book Description

In his monumental study, Christopher Braider explores the dialectical contest between history and truth that defines the period of cultural transition called the 'baroque'. For example, Annibale Carracci's portrayal of the Stoic legend of Hercules at the Crossroads departs from earlier, more static representations that depict an emblematic demigod who has already rejected the fallen path of worldly Pleasure for the upward road of heroic Virtue. Braider argues that, in breaking with tradition in order to portray a tragic soliloquist whose dominant trait is agonized indecision, Carracci joins other baroque artists, poets and philosophers in rehearsing the historical dilemma of choice itself. Carracci's picture thus becomes a framing device that illuminates phenomena as diverse as the construction of gender in baroque painting and science, the Pauline ontology of art in Caravaggio and Rembrandt, the metaphysics of baroque soliloquy and the dismantling of Cartesian dualism in Cyrano de Bergerac and Pascal.