The Stage Life of Props (Theater: Theory/Text/Performance) - Softcover

Sofer, Andrew

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0472068393 ISBN 13: 9780472068395

Publisher: University of Michigan Press, 2003

Synopsis

In The Stage Life of Props, Andrew Sofer aims to restore to certain props the performance dimensions that literary critics are trained not to see, then to show that these props are not just accessories, but time machines of the theater. Using case studies that explore the Eucharistic wafer on the medieval stage, the bloody handkerchief on the Elizabethan stage, the skull on the Jacobean stage, the fan on the Restoration and early eighteenth-century stage, and the gun on the modern stage, Andrew Sofer reveals how stage props repeatedly thwart dramatic convention and reinvigorate theatrical practice. While the focus is on specific objects, Sofer also gives us a sweeping history of half a millennium of stage history as seen through the device of the prop, revealing that as material ghosts, stage props are a way for playwrights to animate stage action, question theatrical practice, and revitalize dramatic form.

About this title

Review

"Andrew Sofer's The Stage Life of Props is an important and fruitful book that reflects its author's intellectual acumen, scholarly knowledge, and deep, exuberant knowledge of and feeling for theatrical production."
--John Hollander, Sterling Professor Emeritus of English, Yale University
--John Hollander, Sterling Professor Emeritus of English, Yale University (03/31/2003)

"Profound, illuminating and original, The Stage Life of Props is not only an excellent introduction into a wide range of modern work in cultural analysis, but also an extremely thought-provoking and impressive piece of work. Nothing has yet been written as comprehensive and evocative as this on the stage property, but beyond that specific concern, Sofer sees how a consideration of certain key stage properties can serve to open up some of the most basic intellectual and spiritual concerns of an era. The result is . . . an important contribution to the field not only of theatre studies in particular but of cultural studies in general."
--Marvin Carlson, Sidney E. Cohn Distinguished Professor of Theater and Comparative Literature, City University of New York

-- (03/31/2003)

"The book is an excellent study, and anyone who claims an interest in performance needs to own it."
--Comparative Drama, Frances Teague, University of Georgia
--Frances Teague"Comparative Drama" (07/12/2005)

"Andrew Sofer has produced a splendid book which deserves to be thought of alongside the very best of American theatre history and criticism. The book is written with a wit and a lightness of touch all too often absent in dealings with vexed questions of presence and representation, and in returning the object to the stage Sofer makes a compelling case for the material reality of the theatrical event."
--Martin Welton, Contemporary Theatre Review 15
-- (02/23/2006)

"By focusing on props as the temporal signs of social meaning, The Stage Life of Props makes a remarkable contribution to theatre history, and whets our appetite for even more inclusive studies on the nature of objects in performance."
--TDR, The Drama Review
--John Bell, Emerson College"TDR: The Drama Review" (07/25/2005)

"This book takes an important first stop in highlighting the role props play in establishing and challenging theatrical conventions."
--Theatre Research International
--Heather May, Indiana University"Theatre Research International" (02/08/2005)

"Sofer tends to concentrate on the prop's theoretical and practical possibilities in performance. One particularly illuminating aspect of his study is the way in which props gather associations as they progress from play to play. . . . A stale convention can take on new life; we gain pleasure 'seeing the relic revived, the dead metaphoro made to speak again."
--Times Literary Supplement
-- (11/21/2003)

"This ambitious book on stage properties in the western European theater provides a framework for a scholarly project already well under way."
--Douglas Bruster, Modern Philology

--Douglas Bruster, University of Texas at Austin"Modern Philology" (02/01/2006)

"This book takes an important first step in highlighting the role props play in establishing and challenging theatrical conventions."--Theatre Research International--Theatre Research International (04/02/2009)

". . . a timely and fascinating discourse for theatre devotees and a welcome addition to Theatre Department reference collections and supplemental reading lists for aspiring playwrights."
--Bookwatch, December 2003
-- (12/19/2003)

About the Author

Andrew Sofer is Assistant Professor of English at Boston College. He has directed many new and classic plays.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0472068393
• ISBN 13: 9780472068395
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 272