Screened Stages

On Theatre in Film

Rachel Joseph

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9780367474119
• eBook ISBN: 9781003855101
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Art General

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.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Screened Stages
• 1 Disappearing in Plain Sight: From Magic Trick to Hollywood Style
• 2 The Presentness of Charlie Chaplin and the Screen Dreams of Buster Keaton
• 3 Longing for Depth in the Hollywood Musical
• 4 Circulations: Performing Women in Three Films from 1950
• 5 The Traumatic Stages of Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick
• 6 David Lynch and the Stages of the Brokenhearted
• 7 The Infinite Stages of Lars von Trier, Charlie Kaufman, and Wes Anderson
• Index