[PDF] The Greatest Shows On Earth eBook

Author : Professor of Psychology John Freeman
Publisher : Libri Publishing Limited
Page : 345 pages
File Size : 31,70 MB
Release : 2011-11-01
Category : Drama
ISBN : 1907471871

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What makes a particular performance 'great'? The Greatest Shows on Earth offers an address that focuses sharply on theatre as performance: as an event that can stir the blood, the spirit and the brain like nothing else. The result is a book about fourteen outstanding theatre events from a dozen countries. In discrete, production-focused chapters, work from Peter Brook's King Lear through to the Sydney Olympics Opening Event is approached by a team of international scholars and practitioners, each describing in print that which existed in time and space and, most significantly, within specific contexts. What binds these chapters together is the conviction that whilst liveness disappears in a moment, spectatorship can translate into documentation that adds something to a work's value ... even as so much else can never be captured in words. In wrestling with ephemerality and memory, The Greatest Shows on Earth does more than make a case for what makes certain theatre great, it foregrounds analysis with emotion and writing with the type of first-person engagement that is usually edited out rather than invited in. John Freeman lectures in Performance Studies at Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia. He has written extensively on theatre, art, pedagogy and research for numerous international journals, newspapers, magazines, books, government and funding agencies, galleries, festivals and consultancy panels. The Greatest Shows on Earth is his fifth book.

Author : Linda Simon
Publisher : Reaktion Books
Page : 298 pages
File Size : 14,93 MB
Release : 2014-11-12
Category : History
ISBN : 1780233981

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Beautifully illustrated and filled with rich historical detail and colorful anecdotes, this is a vibrant history for all those who have ever dreamed of running away to the circus, now in paperback. “Step right up!” and buy a ticket to the Greatest Show on Earth—the Big Top, containing death-defying stunts, dancing bears, roaring tigers, and trumpeting elephants. The circus has always been home to the dazzling and the exotic, the improbable and the impossible—a place of myth and romance, of reinvention, rebirth, second acts, and new identities. Asking why we long to soar on flying trapezes, ride bareback on spangled horses, and parade through the streets in costumes of glitter and gold, this captivating book illuminates the history of the circus and the claim it has on the imaginations of artists, writers, and people around the world. Traveling back to the circus’s early days, Linda Simon takes us to eighteenth-century hippodromes in Great Britain and intimate one-ring circuses in nineteenth-century Paris, where Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso became enchanted with aerialists and clowns. She introduces us to P. T. Barnum, James Bailey, and the enterprising Ringling Brothers and reveals how they created the golden age of American circuses. Moving forward to the whimsical Circus Oz in Australia and to New York City’s Big Apple Circus and the grand spectacle of Cirque du Soleil, she shows how the circus has transformed in recent years. At the center of the story are the people—trick riders and tightrope walkers, sword swallowers and animal trainers, contortionists and clowns—that created the sensational, raucous, and sometimes titillating world of the circus.

Author : Daniel Buck
Publisher : iUniverse
Page : 146 pages
File Size : 38,32 MB
Release : 2005-03
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 059533427X

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In this black comedy, the spotlight shines upon those who love it most: the self-obsessed, self-help culture and the media that generates hysteria for the sake of entertainment, bringing the cults of victimhood and celebrity together. Nothing is sacred in the network competitions for the next big hit, and in their treatment of newsworthy events, the line between truth and fiction doesn't matter as much as the almighty dollar. Satire, it has been said, is not possible in America because everything eventually comes true. Tragedy, you might say, is both cheapened and still to come when the media gets involved. The Greatest Show on Earth is a timely commentary about the media frenzy surrounding allegations of sex abuse and the popular mania for Reality TV.

Author : Heather Cox Richardson
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Page : 364 pages
File Size : 43,11 MB
Release : 2009-07-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780674059658

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While fighting a war for the Union, the Republican party attempted to construct the world's most powerful and most socially advanced nation. Rejecting the common assumption that wartime domestic legislation was a series of piecemeal reactions to wartime necessities, Heather Cox Richardson argues that party members systematically engineered pathbreaking laws to promote their distinctive theory of political economy. Republicans were a dynamic, progressive party, the author shows, that championed a specific type of economic growth. They floated billions of dollars in bonds, developed a national currency and banking system, imposed income taxes and high tariffs, passed homestead legislation, launched the Union Pacific railroad, and eventually called for the end of slavery. Their aim was to encourage the economic success of individual Americans and to create a millennium for American farmers, laborers, and small capitalists. However, Richardson demonstrates, while Republicans were trying to construct a nation of prosperous individuals, they were laying the foundation for rapid industrial expansion, corporate corruption, and popular protest. They created a newly active national government that they determined to use only to promote unregulated economic development. Unwittingly, they ushered in the Gilded Age.

Author : Jonathan D. Sarfati
Publisher : Creation Book Publishers
Page : 333 pages
File Size : 16,56 MB
Release : 2010-01-01
Category : Bible and evolution
ISBN : 9781921643064

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Richard Dawkins, the undisputed high priest of evolution/atheism, says his book The Greatest Show on Earth: the evidence for evolution is the first time he has presented all the evidence for evolution/long ages. It is promoted as an unanswerable demolition of creation. Scientist, logician, chessmaster and author of the world's biggest-selling creationist book, CMI's Dr Jonathan Sarfati, relentlessly demolishes Dawkin's claims point-by-point, showing biblical creation makes more sense of the evidence. - Publisher.

Author : Museum of the Bible Books
Publisher : Museum of the Bible Books
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 36,63 MB
Release : 2017-09-19
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1945470569

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Welcome to the Fascinating Story of How We Got The World’s Greatest Book—The Bible. It is a captivating story that includes a little bit of everything: adventure and violence, mystery and bravery, and dumb luck or divine intervention—depending on your point of view. How in the world did we get this book that some people swear by—and other people swear at? You don’t have to be a skeptic to have a grocery list of questions about the formation of the Bible, such as: —Who wrote these documents and when? —How were these ancient writings transmitted through the ages? —As scribes made copies of copies, didn’t they make mistakes that caused the ancient writings to be changed and corrupted? —How was it decided which writings would be included in the Bible? —What are the Dead Sea Scrolls, and why are archaeological finds like these such a big deal? Devoted people dedicated their lives throughout time to put this unique book into the hands of people worldwide. Retrace the passion and intrigue behind the Bible’s creation.

Author :
Publisher : Time Life Medical
Page : 148 pages
File Size : 24,46 MB
Release : 1999-05
Category : History
ISBN : 9781883013424

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A celebration of the series we can't forget, from the editors of Entertainment Weekly.