This book is devoted to tracing the variety of ways that theatre, theatricality, and performance are embedded in Hollywood cinema as screened stages.
A screened stage is the literal or metaphorical appearance of a stage on screen. When the Hollywood style emerged in cinema history it traumatically severed the entwined relationship between film and theatre. The book makes the argument that cinema longs for theatre after that separation. The histories of stage and screen persistently crisscross one another making their separation problematic. The screened stage from the end of the nineteenth century until now offers a miniaturized version of cinema and theatre history. Moments of the stage within the screen compress historical styles and movements into saturated representations on film. Such examples overflow the cinematic screen into singular manifestations of presentness. Screened stages uncover what it means to be simultaneously present and absent.
This book would be of great interest to students and scholars of theatre, film, dance, and performance.
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Screened Stages
Chapter 1: Disappearing in Plain Sight: from Magic Trick to Hollywood Style
Chapter 2: The Presentness of Charlie Chaplin and the Screen Dreams of Buster Keaton
Chapter 3: Longing for Depth in the Hollywood Musical
Chapter 4: Circulations: Performing Women from Three Films from 1950
Chapter 5: The Traumatic Stages of Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick
Chapter 6: David Lynch and the Stages of the Brokenhearted
Chapter 7: The Infinite Stages of Lars von Trier, Charlie Kaufman, and Wes Anderson
Index
Biography
Rachel Joseph is an Associate Professor of Human Communication and Theatre at Trinity University.
