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Days And Nights At The Second City
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Book Synopsis Days and Nights at the Second City by : Bernard Sahlins
Download or read book Days and Nights at the Second City written by Bernard Sahlins and published by Ivan R. Dee Publisher. This book was released on 2001 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a fascinating history of how this remarkable institution came to be, plus a detailed text on every aspect of staging a comic review, and absorbing conversation on the art of the hilarious.
Book Synopsis Chicago by the Book by : Caxton Club
Download or read book Chicago by the Book written by Caxton Club and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-11-20 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite its rough-and-tumble image, Chicago has long been identified as a city where books take center stage. In fact, a volume by A. J. Liebling gave the Second City its nickname. Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle arose from the midwestern capital’s most infamous industry. The great Chicago Fire led to the founding of the Chicago Public Library. The city has fostered writers such as Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Chicago’s literary magazines The Little Review and Poetry introduced the world to Eliot, Hemingway, Joyce, and Pound. The city’s robust commercial printing industry supported a flourishing culture of the book. With this beautifully produced collection, Chicago’s rich literary tradition finally gets its due. Chicago by the Book profiles 101 landmark publications about Chicago from the past 170 years that have helped define the city and its image. Each title—carefully selected by the Caxton Club, a venerable Chicago bibliophilic organization—is the focus of an illustrated essay by a leading scholar, writer, or bibliophile. Arranged chronologically to show the history of both the city and its books, the essays can be read in order from Mrs. John H. Kinzie’s 1844 Narrative of the Massacre of Chicago to Sara Paretsky’s 2015 crime novel Brush Back. Or one can dip in and out, savoring reflections on the arts, sports, crime, race relations, urban planning, politics, and even Mrs. O’Leary’s legendary cow. The selections do not shy from the underside of the city, recognizing that its grit and graft have as much a place in the written imagination as soaring odes and boosterism. As Neil Harris observes in his introduction, “Even when Chicagoans celebrate their hearth and home, they do so while acknowledging deep-seated flaws.” At the same time, this collection heartily reminds us all of what makes Chicago, as Norman Mailer called it, the “great American city.” With essays from, among others, Ira Berkow, Thomas Dyja, Ann Durkin Keating, Alex Kotlowitz, Toni Preckwinkle, Frank Rich, Don Share, Carl Smith, Regina Taylor, Garry Wills, and William Julius Wilson; and featuring works by Saul Bellow, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sandra Cisneros, Clarence Darrow, Erik Larson, David Mamet, Studs Terkel, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Frank Lloyd Wright, and many more.
Book Synopsis The Second City Unscripted by : Mike Thomas
Download or read book The Second City Unscripted written by Mike Thomas and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-30 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Descriptions of Chicago's Second City comedy theater group as told to the author by troup members and historical information collected by the author.
Book Synopsis The Comedy Improv Handbook by : Matt Fotis
Download or read book The Comedy Improv Handbook written by Matt Fotis and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2015-10-14 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Comedy Improv Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide to University Improvisational Comedy in Theatre and Performance is a one-stop resource for both improv teachers and students, covering improv history, theory, maxims, exercises, games, and structures. You will learn the necessary skills and techniques needed to become a successful improviser, developing a basic understanding of the history of improvisation and its major influences, structures, and theories. This book also addresses issues associated with being a college improviser – like auditions, rehearsals, performances, and the dynamics of improv groups.
Download or read book Improv Nation written by Sam Wasson and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2017-12-05 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Like the best of his subjects, which include Stephen Colbert, Bill Murray and Tina Fey, Wasson has perfect timing.”—Minneapolis Star-Tribune Finalist for the 2017 George Freedley Memorial Award In this richly reported, scene-driven narrative, Sam Wasson charts the meteoric rise of improv from its unlikely beginnings in McCarthy-era Chicago. We witness the chance meeting between Mike Nichols and Elaine May, hang out at the after-hours bar where Dan Aykroyd hosted friends like John Belushi, Bill Murray, and Gilda Radner, and go behind the scenes of cultural landmarks from The Graduate to The Colbert Report. Along the way, we befriend pioneers such as Harold Ramis, Chevy Chase, Steve Carell, Amy Poehler, Alan Arkin, Tina Fey, Judd Apatow, and many others. “Compelling, absolutely unputdownable…And, in case you’re wondering, yes, the book is funny. In places, very funny. A remarkable story, magnificently told.”—Booklist “One of the most important stories in American popular culture…Wasson may be the first author to explain [improv’s] entire history…a valuable book.”—The New York Times Book Review “Improv Nation masterfully tells a new history of American comedy…It holds the element of surprise—true to the spirit of its subject.”—Entertainment Weekly
Book Synopsis Chicago Portraits by : June Skinner Sawyers
Download or read book Chicago Portraits written by June Skinner Sawyers and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-31 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The famous, the infamous, and the unjustly forgotten—all receive their due in this biographical dictionary of the people who have made Chicago one of the world’s great cities. Here are the life stories—provided in short, entertaining capsules—of Chicago’s cultural giants as well as the industrialists, architects, and politicians who literally gave shape to the city. Jane Addams, Al Capone, Willie Dixon, Harriet Monroe, Louis Sullivan, Bill Veeck, Harold Washington, and new additions Saul Bellow, Harry Caray, Del Close, Ann Landers, Walter Payton, Koko Taylor, and Studs Terkel—Chicago Portraits tells you why their names are inseparable from the city they called home.
Book Synopsis Theatrical Improvisation by : J. Leep
Download or read book Theatrical Improvisation written by J. Leep and published by Springer. This book was released on 2008-07-01 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theatrical Improvisation provides an in-depth analysis of short form, long form, and sketch-based improv - tracing the development of each form and the principles that define and connect the styles of performance. Brimming with original interviews from leaders in the field such as Ron West, Charna Halpern, John Sweeny and Margaret Edwartowski, Theatrical Improvisation presents straightforward improvisational theory, history, and trends. Includes easy-to-follow resources on teaching improvisation, with assessment tools, exercises, games, and classroom assignments to enable instructors to incorporate and assess improv in the classroom. Leep offers a practical, essential, and engaging guide for anyone who wants to better understand the art, teach, or perform improvisation.
Download or read book Ensemble written by Mark Larson and published by Agate Publishing. This book was released on 2019-08-13 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This definitive history brings Chicago’s celebrated theater and comedy scenes to life with stories from some of its biggest stars spanning sixty-five years. Chicago is a bona fide theater town, bursting with vitality that thrills local fans and produces generation after generation of world-renowned actors, directors, playwrights, and designers. Now Mark Larson shares the rich theatrical history of Chicago through first-person accounts from the people who made it. Drawing from more than three hundred interviews, Larson weaves a narrative that expresses the spirit of Chicago’s ensemble ethos: the voices of celebrities such as Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ed Asner, George Wendt, Michael Shannon, and Tracy Letts comingle with stories from designers, composers, and others who have played a crucial role in making Chicago theater so powerful, influential, and unique. Among many other topics, this book explores the early days of the fabled Compass Players and the legendary Second City in the ‘50s and ‘60s; the rise of acclaimed ensembles like Steppenwolf in the ‘70s; the explosion of storefront and neighborhood companies in the ‘80s; and the enduring global influence of the city as the center of improv training and performance.
Book Synopsis A Theater of Our Own by : Richard Christiansen
Download or read book A Theater of Our Own written by Richard Christiansen and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who produced the first stage adaptation of "The Wizard of Oz" in 1902-nearly forty years before the movie classic?
Download or read book Guru written by Jeff Griggs and published by Ivan R. Dee. This book was released on 2005-04-25 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A legend of improvisational theater, Del Close is best known for discovering and cultivating the talents of John Belushi, Chris Farley, Bill Murray, Mike Meyers, and countless other comedy giants. He was resident director of Chicago's famed Second City and "house metaphysician" for "Saturday Night Live," a talent in his own right, and one of the brightest and wackiest theater gurus ever. Jeff Griggs was a student of Close's at the ImprovOlympic in Chicago when he was asked to help the aging mentor (often in ill health) by driving him around the city on his weekly errands. The two developed a volatile friendship that shocked, angered, and amused both of them—and produced this hilarious and ultimately endearing chronicle of Close's last years. With all the elements of a picaresque novel, Guru captures Close at his zaniest but also shows him in theatrical situations that confirm his genius in conceptualizing and directing improvisational theater. Between comic episodes, Jeff Griggs gives the reader the essentials of Close's biography: his childhood in Kansas, early years as an actor, countercultural exploits in the 1960s (he toured with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters and designed light shows for the Grateful Dead), years with the Compass Players and then with Second City, and continuing experimentation with every drug imaginable, which pretty much cost him his health and ultimately his life. He was comedian, director, teacher, writer, actor, poet, fire-eater, junkie, and philosopher. "Being a really good actor does not necessarily guarantee that you will be a very good improviser," Close liked to say. "Being an actual, complete, hopeless, wretched geek in real life doesn't disqualify you from being a solid improviser, either." He approached improv the same way he conducted his life—in bizarre, dark, and dangerous fashion. Guru captures it.
Book Synopsis Long Form Improvisation and American Comedy by : M. Fotis
Download or read book Long Form Improvisation and American Comedy written by M. Fotis and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-02-11 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long form scenic improv began with the Harold. The comic philosophy of this form started an era of comedy marked by support, trust, and collaboration. This book tells of the Harold, beginning with the development of improv theatre, through the tensions and evolutions that led to its creation at iO, and to its use in contemporary filmmaking.
Download or read book Satire & The State written by Matt Fotis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Satire & The State focuses on performance-based satire, most often seen in sketch comedy, from 1960 to the present, and explores how sketch comedy has shaped the way Americans view the president and themselves. Numerous sketch comedy portrayals of presidents that have seeped into the American consciousness – Chevy Chase’s Gerald Ford, Dana Carvey’s George H.W. Bush, and Will Ferrell’s George W. Bush all worked to shape the actual politician’s public persona. The book analyzes these sketches and many others, illustrating how comedy is at the heart of the health and function of American democracy. At its best, satire aimed at the presidency can work as a populist check on executive power, becoming one of the most important weapons for everyday Americans against tyranny and political corruption. At its worst, satire can reflect and promote racism, misogyny, and homophobia in America. Written for students of Theatre, Performance, Political Science, and Media Studies courses, as well as readers with an interest in political comedy, Satire & The State offers a deeper understanding of the relationship between comedy and the presidency, and the ways in which satire becomes a window into the culture, principles, and beliefs of a country.
Book Synopsis Fifty Key Improv Performers by : Matt Fotis
Download or read book Fifty Key Improv Performers written by Matt Fotis and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-09-12 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifty Key Improv Performers highlights the history, development, and impact of improvisational theatre by highlighting not just key performers, but institutions, training centers, and movements to demonstrate the ways improv has shaped contemporary performance both onstage and onscreen. The book features the luminaries of improv, like Viola Spolin, Keith Johnstone, and Mick Napier, while also featuring many of the less well‐known figures in improvisation who have fundamentally changed the way we make and view comedy – people like Susan Messing, Jonathan Pitts, Robert Gravel, and Yvon Leduc. Due to improv’s highly collaborative nature, the book features many of the art form’s most important theatres and groups, such as The Second City, TJ & Dave, and Oui Be Negroes. While the book focuses on the development of improvisation in the United States, it features several entries about the development of improv around the globe. Students of Improvisational Theatre, History of Comedy, and Performance Studies, as well as practitioners of comedy, will benefit from the wide expanse of performers, groups, and institutions throughout the book.
Download or read book Mike Nichols written by Kyle Stevens and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the study of performer and director Mike Nichols, Kyle Stevens questions the aesthetic-ideological stance against psychological realism. He argues that characters' actions are not just filmed concepts but can be film concepts whose forms resonate politically.
Book Synopsis Stephen Colbert by : Catherine M. Andronik
Download or read book Stephen Colbert written by Catherine M. Andronik and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-06-21 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how comedian Stephen Colbert's satiric views of American life have captured the imagination of viewers around the world—and sharpened these individuals' own critical interpretations and opinions on current events. Stephen Colbert may be "just a comedian"—one not all audiences find funny, especially among those who have been mercilessly lampooned by him—but there is no arguing that the condescending, bombastic, and largely ignorant pundit he plays on Comedy Central has brought awareness of current events and political happenings to a substantially larger portion of the American population. The only available biography on Stephen Colbert, this book examines his life story and details how he became one of the most influential people on current American culture. Beginning with coverage of Colbert's childhood, the chapters discuss his education, highlighting his interest in drama; describe his introduction to the world of comedy; review his contributions as a "correspondent" on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart; and focus on Colbert's accomplishments and antics as the star of his faux news program that debuted in the fall of 2005, The Colbert Report.
Book Synopsis The City in the Middle of the Night by : Charlie Jane Anders
Download or read book The City in the Middle of the Night written by Charlie Jane Anders and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2019-02-12 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LOCUS AWARD FINALIST! “This generation’s Le Guin.” —Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less Charlie Jane Anders, the nationally bestselling author of All the Birds in the Sky delivers a brilliant new novel set in a hauntingly strange future with #10 LA Times bestseller The City in the Middle of the Night. "If you control our sleep, then you can own our dreams... And from there, it's easy to control our entire lives." January is a dying planet—divided between a permanently frozen darkness on one side, and blazing endless sunshine on the other. Humanity clings to life, spread across two archaic cities built in the sliver of habitable dusk. But life inside the cities is just as dangerous as the uninhabitable wastelands outside. Sophie, a student and reluctant revolutionary, is supposed to be dead after being exiled into the night. Saved only by forming an unusual bond with the enigmatic beasts who roam the ice, Sophie vows to stay hidden from the world, hoping she can heal. But fate has other plans—and Sophie's ensuing odyssey and the ragtag family she finds will change the entire world. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Book Synopsis Glorious Days and Nights by : Herb Snitzer
Download or read book Glorious Days and Nights written by Herb Snitzer and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2011-01-04 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Glorious Days and Nights is a personal account of the fifty-year career of jazz photographer Herb Snitzer, with a special focus on his years in New York City from 1957 to 1964. A photojournalist for Life, Look, and Fortune, Snitzer was the photo editor and later associate editor of the influential jazz magazine Metronome. During the 1960s, politics, race, and social strife and unrest swirled in Snitzer's life as a working artist. But throughout the bus boycotts, demonstrations, civil and racial unrest, what remained constant for him was jazz. Snitzer recalls what it was like to go on the road with these musicians. His reflections run the gamut from serious meditations on his development as a young photographer working with musicians already of great stature to more conversational recollections of casual moments spent having fun with the jazz artists many of whom became close friends. This book includes Snitzer's very best jazz photographs. He reveals the essences of the artists, their struggles, joys, and pains. A number of Snitzer's jazz images have become iconic, including Louis Armstrong with the Star of David, Lester Young at The Five Spot Café in New York City, John Coltrane reflected in a mirror, Thelonious Monk with piano keys reflected in his sunglasses, and Miles Davis at Newport. With eighty-five black-and-white images of jazz giants, Glorious Days and Nights provides a long-awaited testimony to the friendships and artistry that Snitzer developed over his remarkable career.
