Check Out The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre & Performance For Some Frightful Inspiration

Looking to put a macabre spin on your October research papers or wanting to create your own display of terror for your Halloween entertainment?  Take a peek inside The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance to get some spooktacular ideas on performances in playhouses, dance, opera, radio, film, and television.  Plus, you’ll find award-winning information on popular performances, including carnivals, circus, and public executions (a gruesome performance, incorporating all the elements of staging, costume, text, actors, and audience).

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, edited by Dennis Kennedy, was the winner of the 2004 Reference Reviews Top Ten Print Reference Source and the 2004 Choice Outstanding Academic Title.  Where can you find authoritative and up-to-date information about theatre and performance from ancient Greek theatre to the latest developments in London, Paris, New York, and around the globe?  Inside the pages of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance, of course!

This electronic database offers online, search capabilities with entries ranging from brief, term definitions to in-depth genres and movements descriptions.  Did you know the famous stage illusion, known as Pepper’s Ghost, was invented by Professor John Henry Pepper and first demonstrated in London in 1862?  Interested in learning how French playwrights used special effects to create melodrama back in the late 1700s – early 1800s?  Read this spine-tingling discourse on Pixérécourt, René-Charles Guilbert de (1773-1844).

Search The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance entries by city, regions, and place performances in its social and political context.  It combines an international cast of over 300 specialist contributors.  Needing a fresh idea for that special Halloween costume?  Did you know that the mask occurs in virtually every culture?  Search The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance using the search terms, mask and masking, to learn more about this potent force in theatrical performance.  

Speaking of Halloween, read about the ingenious use of the radio by Orson Welles to broadcast the War of the Worlds as a Hallowe'en programme ( 30 October 1938 ).  Read cautiously or you may find yourself bewitched, like the characters in Peter Barnes’, most notable, 1974 theatrical performance, The Bewitched, featuring Gothic horror, dance, and popular song, performed in RSC, Aldwych Theatre, London.