Pages
1395
Files
Download Full Text (131.2 MB)
SJSU Faculty Member
Karl Toepfer, Emeritus Professor
Description
This book offers perhaps the most comprehensive history of pantomime ever written. No other book so thoroughly examines the varieties of pantomimic performance from the early Roman Empire, when the term “pantomime” came into use, until the present. After thoroughly examining the complexities and startlingly imaginative performance strategies of Roman pantomime, the author identifies the peculiar political circumstances that revived and shaped pantomime in France and Austria in the eighteenth century, leading to the Pierrot obsession in the nineteenth century. Modernist aesthetics awakened a huge, highly diverse fascination with pantomime. The book explores an extraordinary variety of modernist and postmodern approaches to pantomime in Germany, Austria, France, numerous countries of Eastern Europe, Russia, Scandinavia, Spain, Belgium, The Netherlands, Chile, England, and The United States. Making use of many performance and historical documents never before included in pantomime histories, the book also discusses pantomime’s messy relation to dance, its peculiar uses of music, its “modernization” through silent film aesthetics, and the extent to which writers, performers, or directors are “authors” of pantomimes. Just as importantly, the book explains why, more than any other performance medium, pantomime allows the spectator to see the body as the agent of narrative action.
Edition
2023
ISBN
978-1-7332497-3-7
Publication Date
8-2019
Document Type
Book
Publisher
Vosuri Media
City
San Francisco
Keywords
Pantomime, dance, theater history, silent film history, mime, ancient Roman pantomime, music and movement, modernist theater, postmodern bodily performance
Disciplines
Acting | Dance | Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory | European History | Film and Media Studies | Fine Arts | German Literature | Health and Physical Education | Interactive Arts | Music Theory | Other Film and Media Studies | Other Theatre and Performance Studies | Performance Studies | Playwriting | Theatre History
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Recommended Citation
Toepfer, Karl E., "Pantomime: The History and Metamorphosis of a Theatrical Ideology" (2019). Open Educational Resources. 20.
https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/oer/20
Included in
Acting Commons, Dance Commons, Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons, European History Commons, Fine Arts Commons, German Literature Commons, Health and Physical Education Commons, Interactive Arts Commons, Music Theory Commons, Other Film and Media Studies Commons, Other Theatre and Performance Studies Commons, Performance Studies Commons, Playwriting Commons, Theatre History Commons
Comments
* This PDF is the version that was revised in 2023 to include many illustrations and to correct typographical errors.