Overview
- Looks at the challenges involved in coping with and adapting to migration in early modern comedy
- Provides an interdisciplinary approach, using contemporary theories and examples
- Examines ideas surrounding national identity, translation, adaptation, improvisation and comedy
Part of the book series: Transnational Theatre Histories (TTH)
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Table of contents (8 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
How do nationalized stereotypes inform the reception and content of the migrant comedian’s work? How do performers adapt? What gets lost (and found) in translation? Border-Crossing and Comedy at the Théâtre Italien, 1716-1723 explores these questions in an early modern context. When a troupe of commedia dell’arte actors were invited by the French crown to establish a theatre in Paris, they found their transition was anything but easy. They had to learn a new language and adjust to French expectations and demands. This study presents their story as a dynamic model of coping with the challenges of migration, whereby the actors made their transnational identity a central focus of their comedy. Relating their work to popular twenty-first century comedians, this book also discusses the tools and ideas that contextualize the border-crossing comedian’s work—including diplomacy, translation, improvisation, and parody—across time.
Reviews
“In bringing to the attention of an Anglophone audience a neglected theatrical figure, McMahan performs his own act of translational border crossing, which is revealing not just about its subject, but also about the value of critical work that itself moves fruitfully across all sorts of national, disciplinary, and temporal borders.” (—Jessica Goodman, St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, UK)
“McMahan not only offers a vibrant, lucid history of a fascinating eighteenth-century institution, he also draws new insights from the Théâtre Italien’s re-entry into France that illuminate the phenomenon of cross-cultural theatre, a defining feature of performance in the modern era." (—Pannill Camp, Washington University in St. Louis, USA)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Border-Crossing and Comedy at the Théâtre Italien, 1716–1723
Authors: Matthew J. McMahan
Series Title: Transnational Theatre Histories
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70071-3
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-70070-6Published: 31 March 2021
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-70073-7Published: 01 April 2022
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-70071-3Published: 30 March 2021
Series ISSN: 2946-5893
Series E-ISSN: 2946-5907
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XV, 264
Number of Illustrations: 6 b/w illustrations, 2 illustrations in colour
Topics: Theatre History, Global/International Theatre and Performance, Performing Arts