Theatre studies Books

Book Synopsis'Lucy Kerbel's work has become increasingly pivotal in helping the entire industry raise its game... this illuminating book answers the cynic, informs the impartial, converts the supporter into an activist and equips them all; not in a rallying cry of anger-fuelled idealism, but in a calm, pragmatic and clear-eyed way.' Rufus Norris, Director of the National Theatre, from his Foreword Theatre needs to change. Everywhere – in its boardrooms, on its stages, throughout its repertoires – it could be so much more successful at reflecting the gender balance of the world it seeks to represent. This is a book about why change matters, its benefits – artistic, commercial, ethical and social – and how, with everyone's help, we can actually achieve it. From small shifts, such as how you run your meetings, or what's on the shelves of your school library, to rethinking concepts as huge as the art we inherit, how we attribute excellence, and the constraints we unwittingly pass on to the next generation, there are things we can all do to bring about change. In this book, you'll find provocations to help you consider your current practices and their effects, challenge unconscious biases and identify opportunities for change, plus strategies and tools to help you decide where best to focus your efforts, to convince others why change matters, and to achieve meaningful, lasting success. Eye-opening, empowering and inspiring, All Change Please is a book for anyone who loves theatre. Whether you make it, teach it, watch it or study it, everyone has their own unique part to play in helping refresh, reshape and re-imagine the industry as truly diverse, equal and inclusive. 'We are the industry. If things will shift it is down to us, all of us, to make that happen. We all need to reflect on how we work, how we think, and how we make choices. That's what will drive the greatest change.' Since 2011, Lucy Kerbel and her organisation Tonic Theatre have been working with companies and individuals across the theatre industry to support them in achieving greater gender equality in their work and workforces. Her first book, 100 Great Plays for Women, is also published by Nick Hern Books.Trade Review'Well-informed and clearly written, accessible and engaging… the chapter on Young People would be an inspiring and provocative starting point for a debate with GSCE or A-level students... this brilliant book will help us get towards realising a vision of equality' * Drama Magazine *'Relevant and useful to people at all levels and in all parts of the creative industry, from youth-group leaders to executive producers... already it has altered the way I think about the issue and its possible solutions' * Teaching Drama *'An accessible and enjoyable read which I finished feeling motivated, inspired and informed... reminds us that we each have a role to play in making change happen regardless of how much power we think we have' * Youth Theatre Ireland *'Eminently practical... Kerbel makes her case in calm yet resolute fashion, busting common myths and giving readers the tools to spot and combat imbalances - both collectively and individually... Kerbel's belief in the industry's ability to change, the benefits it will bring, and the joy we can find in advancing that change is much-needed inspiration. We so often despair at the negative; here is a brisk spur to take action and create the positive' * Broadway World *'[Kerbel's] evidence is watertight, well conveyed and successfully highlights the issues facing gender equality in today’s industry… all of us need to take note, take it seriously and take action' * Ink Pellet *'A great guide for anyone thinking about gender equality… gives people the tools to create their own change' * WhatsOnStage *'An empowering read that leaves you feeling both able and ready to take some form of action... there is still a huge amount of work to do, but Kerbel breaks it down, making equality feel a little closer to our grasp' * LGBTQ Review *'A fantastic starting point for anyone looking to help achieve real lasting change in gender equality in theatre, at any level... definitely one for the bookshelf' * Female Arts *

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Book SynopsisThe debut collection by poet and visual artist James Kearns is a twisting, Chekhovian narrative interrogating mortality, permanence and self-deception. The speaker of these addictive prose poems becomes increasingly lost in dialogue with himself, a deceased superhero, and a supporting dramatis personae who offer humour and hostility in equal parts.

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Book SynopsisShortlisted for the 2020 Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present Book Prize​Winner of the 2019 Art Journal Prize from the College Art Association What is the role of pleasure and pain in the politics of art? In Touched Bodies, Mara Polgovsky Ezcurra approaches this question as she examines the flourishing of live and intermedial performance in Latin America during times of authoritarianism and its significance during transitions to democracy. Based on original documents and innovative readings, her book brings politics and ethics to the discussion of artistic developments during the “long 1980s”. She describes the rise of performance art in the context of feminism, HIV-activism, and human right movements, taking a close look at the work of Diamela Eltit and Raúl Zurita from Chile, León Ferrari and Liliana Maresca from Argentina, and Marcos Kurtycz, the No Grupo art collective, and Proceso Pentágono from Mexico. The comparative study of the work of these artists attests to a performative turn in Latin American art during the 1980s that, like photography and film before, recast the artistic field as a whole, changing the ways in which we perceive art and understand its role in society.Trade Review“An astute and moving book, Touched Bodies gives account of the transition from an aesthetics of representation to an aesthetics of embodiment and bodily vulnerability in Latin American art of the 1980s. A contribution to aesthetic theory as much as to the history of art, Touched Bodies extends our understanding of performance-based art in relationship to practices of vulnerability, dissensus, and cross-temporal performativity.” -- Rebecca Schneider * author of Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment *"Mara Polgovsky makes an outstanding contribution to the re-evaluation of the performative turn in adversarial art from 1970s and 1980s Latin America, expanding the genealogy of conceptualism and recalibrating the spectrum of body-centered practice. The originality of her approach provides unparalleled insights into the complex interaction between corporeality, political activism and the body as site of desire and vulnerability." -- Erica Segre * author of Intersected Identities *"Polgovsky’s book, which has already been shortlisted by the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present for its 2020 Book Prize, brings to an international audience a series of artists who have broken the mould of Latin America’s default posture of political protest and produced works which sometimes condense the cry of despair in its barest expression by breaking down the gulf between their bodies and their work. She has brought to the project a remarkable combination of philosophical erudition and descriptive skill, plus the unstoppable curiosity of the best researchers. The book marks a turning point." * Journal of Latin American Studies *“An astute and moving book, Touched Bodies gives account of the transition from an aesthetics of representation to an aesthetics of embodiment and bodily vulnerability in Latin American art of the 1980s. A contribution to aesthetic theory as much as to the history of art, Touched Bodies extends our understanding of performance-based art in relationship to practices of vulnerability, dissensus, and cross-temporal performativity.” -- Rebecca Schneider * author of Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment *"Mara Polgovsky makes an outstanding contribution to the re-evaluation of the performative turn in adversarial art from 1970s and 1980s Latin America, expanding the genealogy of conceptualism and recalibrating the spectrum of body-centered practice. The originality of her approach provides unparalleled insights into the complex interaction between corporeality, political activism and the body as site of desire and vulnerability." -- Erica Segre * author of Intersected Identities *"Polgovsky’s book, which has already been shortlisted by the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present for its 2020 Book Prize, brings to an international audience a series of artists who have broken the mould of Latin America’s default posture of political protest and produced works which sometimes condense the cry of despair in its barest expression by breaking down the gulf between their bodies and their work. She has brought to the project a remarkable combination of philosophical erudition and descriptive skill, plus the unstoppable curiosity of the best researchers. The book marks a turning point." * Journal of Latin American Studies *Table of ContentsIntroduction Corporeal calligraphies in times of change The long 1980s: redefining the temporality of art From curatorial to historical revisionism Beyond the art of post-dictatorship From memory studies to the aesthetics of dissensus The performative turn The ethics of performance Overview of chapters Chapter 1 – Writing the Body A precarious aesthetic A monstrous scene Territories of excess Sacrificial bodies Neonic Obscenity A mystical occasion Sor Teresa, la Lumpérica A corporeal rhetoric The implicated self Chapter 2 – Lamentations Prayerful acts Sky writing and the poetics of ambiguity The new life Song for his/her disappeared love The politics of lamentation Purgatory Neither sorrow nor fear (Un)godly fragments Chapter 3 – Mē mou haptou: Touch, Ethics, and History Waiting for Ariel A political medium? A tortured era A glimpse into 1960s collage Noli me tangere Brailles The haptic gaze Never Again Scenes from inferno Pacem in terris Chapter 4 – Nudities Le féminin Christs and mannequins Divine phobia Intimacy reawakened A scourge from God? Chapter 5 – Ritual and/of Violence Potlatch The scene of destruction The scene of war Mexico’s parodic guerrilla art The scene of ritual Liminal personae The scene of terror Letter bombing The scene of the self Exploding time Chapter 6 – Cybernetics and Face-off Play The hybrid face The interface Facial traces The (post-)facial matrix Conclusion Touched bodies The trace Acknowledgments List of References List of Figures Index

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Book SynopsisThis book argues that African American theatre in the twentieth century represented a cultural front of the civil rights movement. Highlighting the frequently ignored decades of the 1940s and 1950s, Burrell documents a radical cohort of theatre artists who became critical players in the fight for civil rights both onstage and offstage, between the Popular Front and the Black Arts Movement periods. The Civil Rights Theatre Movement recovers knowledge of little-known groups like the Negro Playwrights Company and reconsiders Broadway hits including Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun, showing how theatre artists staged radically innovative performances that protested Jim Crow and U.S. imperialism amidst a repressive Cold War atmosphere. By conceiving of class and gender as intertwining aspects of racism, this book reveals how civil rights theatre artists challenged audiences to reimagine the fundamental character of American democracy.Trade Review“The Civil Rights Theatre Movement should be on the reading list of any scholar interested in civil rights culture, the history of American theatre in the 20th century, or the history of radicalism in the United States.” (Madeline Steiner, gothamcenter.org, February 23, 2021)Table of ContentsChapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: The Negro People's Theatre and the Emergence of the Civil Rights Theatre Movement.- Chapter 3: "An American Dilemma": Dramas of the Returning Negro Soldier.- Chapter 4: Rescripting the Negro Problem: The Cold War-Civil Rights Play.- Chapter 5: "To Be a Man": Progressive Masculinities in Lorraine Hansberry's Cold War-Civil Rights Plays.- Chapter 6: Alice Childress's Wedding Band and the Black Feminist Nation.- Epilogue.

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Book SynopsisThis collection of essays investigates the way Africa has been portrayed on the London stage from the 1950s to the present. It focuses on whether — and, if so, to what extent — the Africa that emerges from the London scene is subject to stereotype, and/or in which ways the reception of audiences and critics have contributed to an understanding of the continent and its arts. The collection, divided into two parts, brings together well-established academics and emerging scholars, as well as playwrights, directors and performers currently active in London. With a focus on Wole Soyinka, Athol Fugard, Bola Agbaje, Biyi Bandele, and Dipo Agboluaje, amongst others, the volume examines the work of key companies such as Tiata Fahodzi and Talawa, as well as newer companies Two Gents, Iroko Theatre and Spora Stories. Interviews with Rotimi Babatunde, Ade Solanke and Dipo Agboluaje on the contemporary London scene are also included.Table of Contents1 IntroductionPart I Africa on the London Stage, 1955–20132 Freedom, London 1955: A Story of Modern Africa Written and Acted by Africans, or Perhaps Not3 Africa on the British Stage, 1955–19664 ‘On One of Those Sunday Nights’: 50 Years of Africa at the Royal Court Theatre5 Biyi Bandele’s Theatre of the Afropolitan Absurd6 Nigerian Political Satire at the Soho Theatre: Class, Culture, and Theatrical Languages in Oladipo Agboluaje’s The Estate and Iyale (The First Wife)7 Black Masculinity and the Black Voice: Casting and Canonicity in the National Theatre GalaPart II Companies and Theatre Practitioners8 Disrupting Historical Mis-representations and Constructions: Talawa Theatre, Tiata Fahodzi, and Representations of Polyphonic Africa on the Contemporary London Stage9 IROKO Theatre and the African Theatre-in-Education Scene in London10 ‘But [We] Will Delve One Yard Below Their Mines/And Blow Them at the Moon’: Two Gents—‘Africa’, Shakespeare, and the Silent Revolution11 Interview with Ade Solanke12 Interview with Rotimi Babatunde13 Interview with Dipo Agboluaje

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Book SynopsisThis book examines the recent trend for re-performance and how this impacts on the relationship between live performance and death. Focusing specifically on examples of performance art the text analyses the relationship between performance, re-performance and death, comparing the process of re-performance to the process of mourning and arguing that both of these are processes of adaptation and survival. Using a variety of case studies, including performances by Ron Athey, Julie Tolentino, Martin O’Brien, Sheree Rose, Jo Spence and Hannah Wilke, the book explores performances which can be considered acts of re-performance, as well as performances which examine some of the critical concerns of re-performance, including notions of illness, loss and death. By drawing upon both philosophical and performance studies discourses the text takes a novel approach to the relationship between re-performance, mourning and death.Table of Contents

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Book SynopsisThis second volume of A History of East African Theatre focuses on central East Africa; on Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. The first chapter is concerned with francophone theatres, comparatively studying work coming out of Burundi and Rwanda alongside a focus on French language theatre in Djibouti. The chapter is particularly concerned to explore how French and Belgian cultural policies impacted theatre during the colonial period and how the French ideas of Francafrique and promotion of elite, French language art have continued to resonate in the post-colonial present. Chapters Two and Three look comparatively at the rich theatre histories of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and are divided between a study of British East African colonial impact and an analysis of the post-colonial period illustrating how divergent political thought and societal make-up led to exponential differentiation in national theatres. The final chapter, on Theatre for Development and related social action theatre, covers the whole East African region, offering the first ever historicised analysis of this mode of theatre making which, since the 1980s, has come to dominate funding and opportunity in performance arts.Table of Contents1. Chapter 1: Francophone Theatre: Burundi, Djibouti and Rwanda.- 2. Chapter 2: Colonial Theatre in British East Africa: Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika.- 3. Chapter 3: The Post-Independence Theatres of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.- 4. Chapter 4: Theatre for Development in East Africa.- 5. Conclusion.

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Book SynopsisThis book explores how doing dramaturgy is informed by today’s highly diverse field of theatre, dance and performance. It does so in dialogue with fourteen performances and their makers, tracing the thinking-through-practice that underlies these creations. The first part of the book looks at how dramaturgs participate in practices of thinking-making and introduces a dramaturgical mode of looking at performances and the processes in which they are created. The second part of the book discusses the performances and creative processes of Manuela Infante, Julian Hetzel, Ivo van Hove, Anouk van Dijk, Falk Richter, Milo Rau, Kris Verdonck, Death Centre, Hotel Modern, Jr.cE.sA.r , Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten, Dries Verhoeven, the LGB Society of Mind, Sanja Mitrović, and Amanda Piña. Showing how ways of making and ways of doing dramaturgy mutually inform each other, this book is an essential resource for students and others aspiring to develop their own dramaturgical practice.Table of Contents1. Introduction Part I 2. Thinking Through Practice 3. A Dramaturgical Mode of Looking 4. Doing Dramaturgy Part II 5. The Ghent Altarpiece - Milo Rau 6. Chekhov’s First Play – Dead Center 7. Dear Winnie - Jr.cE.sA.r 8. Complexity of Belonging – Anouk van Dijk and Falk Richter 9. Lazarus – Ivo van Hove 10. Le Corps du Ballet – EG|PC 11. Estado Vegetal – Manuela Infante 12. Conversations (at the end of the world) – Kris Verdonck 13. Phobiarama – Dries Verhoeven 14. All Inclusive – Julian Hetzel 15. WAR (Ein Kriegstanz) – Amanda Pina 16. Kamp – Hotel Modern 17. SPEAK! – Sanja Mitrovic 18. I am LGB – The LGB Society of Mind 19. Epilogue

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Book SynopsisThis book explores the “battles” of words, songs, poetry, and performance in Africa and the African Diaspora. These are usually highly competitive, artistic contests in which rival parties duel for supremacy in poetry composition and/or its performance. This volume covers the history of this battle tradition, from its origins in Africa, especially the udje and halo of the Urhobo and Ewe respectively, to its transportation to the Americas and the Caribbean region during the Atlantic slave trade period, and its modern and contemporary manifestations as battle rap or other forms of popular music in Africa. Almost everywhere there are contemporary manifestations of the more traditional, older genres. The book is thus made up of studies of contests in which rivals duel for supremacy in verbal arts, song-poetry, and performance as they display their wit, sense of humor, and poetic expertise. Table of Contents1. Introduction.—Tanure Ojaide.Part I: African Origins.2. Battle by All Means: Udje as Oral Poetry and Performance—Tanure Ojaide.3. Halo: The Ewe Battle Tradition of Music, Songs, and Performance—Honore Missihoun.4. Poetry and Ping-Pong: Auto/Biographical Verbal Duels in Yoruba Polygamous Households—Adetayo Alabi 5. Shairi and Malumbano: The Tradition of Verbal Warfare in Swahili Literature—Mwenda Mbatiah.6. Moral Authority of Shona Women’s Battlesongs: Revising Customary Law in the Context of Performance Within African Indigenous Knowledge System—Beauty Vambe.Part II: Diaspora Manifestation7. Battles, Raps, Cappin’, The Dozens: African-American Oral Traditions of Insult—Michele Randolph and Maliek Lewis.8. Black Greek Step Shows—Debra Smith.9. Battle Rap: An Exploration of Competitive Rhyming in Hip Hop —Matthew Oware 10. Fighting Words: Songs of Conflict, Censure, and Cussout in Trinidad and Tobago Carnival—Funso Aiyejina.11. Oral Tradition and Cultures in Dialogue: Ondjango Angolano and Jongo da Serrinha— Tonia Leigh Wind.12. Stanzas and Sticks: Poetic and Physical Challenges in the Afro-Brazilian Culture of the Paraíba Valley, Rio de Janeiro—Matthias RohrigAssuncao.Part III: New Transformations.13. Yabis, A Nigerian Genre of Insult—Enajite Eseoghene Ojaruega. 14. Epistemic Recuperation and Contemporary Reconfiguration of the Verbal Battle Tradition in the Poetry of Tanure Ojaide and Kofi Anyidoho—Mathias IroroOrhero.15. The Creativity of Abuse: Power, Song and the ‘Authority of Insults’ in Zimbabwean Music, Post 2017—Maurice TaonezviVambe.16. Bongo Fleva: Its Lyrics, “Inappropriate” Content, Source, and Possible Harm—Dunlop Ochieng.

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Book SynopsisThis book analyzes recent physics plays, arguing that their enaction of concepts from the sciences they discuss alters the nature of the decisions made by the characters, changing the ethical judgements that might be cast on them. Recent physics plays regularly alter the shape of space-time itself, drawing together disparate moments, reversing the flow of time, creating apparent contradictions, and iterating scenes for multiple branches of counterfactual history. With these changes both causality and responsibility shift, variously. The roles of iconic scientists, such as Albert Einstein and Werner Heisenberg, are interrogated for their dramatic value, placing history and dramatic license in tension. Cold War strategies and the limits of espionage highlight the emphatically personal involvement of ordinary individuals. This study is vital reading for those interested in physics plays and the relationship between the sciences and the humanities.Table of Contents1. Introduction: Ethics and Physics in Contemporary Plays.- 2. Playing Nuclear War: Learning Postmodern War from Modern Physics.- 3. Relativistic Intertextuality: Einstein as a Figure.- 4. What You Don’t Know Is Going to Hurt Like Hell: Knowledge, Power, and the Faustian Bargain.- 5. Torn Palimpsest and Recycled Time: Copenhagen and Conclusion.

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Book SynopsisThis book traces blackface types from ancient masks of grinning Africans and phallus-bearing Roman fools through to comedic medieval devils, the pan-European black-masked Titivillus and Harlequin, and racial impersonation via stereotypical 'black speech' explored in the Renaissance by Lope de Vega and Shakespeare. Jim Crow and antebellum minstrelsy recycled Old World blackface stereotypes of irrationality, ignorance, pride, and immorality. Drawing upon biblical interpretations and philosophy, comic types from moral allegory originated supposedly modern racial stereotypes. Early blackface traditions thus spread damning race-belief that black people were less rational, hence less moral and less human. Such notions furthered the global Renaissance’s intertwined Atlantic slave and sugar trades and early nationalist movements. The latter featured overlapping definitions of race and nation, as well as of purity of blood, language, and religion in opposition to 'Strangers'. Ultimately, Old World beliefs still animate supposed 'biological racism' and so-called 'white nationalism' in the age of Trump.Table of Contents1.Introduction: Recovering the Contexts of Early Modern Proto-Racism.2. Harlequin as Theatergram: Transmitting the Time-Worn Black Mask, Ancient to Antebellum.3. Beyond Good and Evil Symbolism: Allegories and Metaphysics of Blackfaced Folly.4. From Allegorical Type and Sartorial Satire to Minstrel Dandy Stereotype and Blackface-on-Black Violence.5. Sambo Dialects: Defining National Language Boundaries via Early Representations of Stereotypically Black Speech.6. Blackface in Shakespeare: Challenging Racial Allegories of Folly and Speech.7. Shakespeare in Blackface: Black Shakespeareans vs. Minstrel Burlesques, 1821-1844.8. A New Theory of Pre-Modern or Proto-Racism.9. White Nationalism, Trolling Humor as Propaganda, and the “Renaissance” of Christian Racism in the Age of Trump.

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Book SynopsisStructure and power are two defining and interrelated aspects of the German theater business. It is based on the strictly hierarchical organization of 1900 and has undergone hardly any structural changes since then. This not only impairs the innovative capacity of this important institution, but also leads to inappropriately strong power positions of the directors, to conflicts with the ensembles and employees, and hinders the development and renewal of the artistic potentials of this cultural technique. The publication is based on the results of the study 'Art and Power in the Theater' - with 1966 participants the largest study of its kind. The content Power as a decision-making and management tool in the theater The connection between power and organization Power and abuse in the theater Structural power and forms of power containment Results of the study The target groups Students, teachers and researchers in the fields of cultural management, cultural and theater studies, dramaturgy, psychology, sociology and anthropology, employees of management at the theater and other cultural organization The authorThomas Schmidt has been professor and director of the Theater and Orchestra Management program in Frankfurt since 2010. He was managing director of the National Theater Weimar from 2003 to 2013 and visiting professor at Harvard University in 2014.Table of ContentsPower as a political raw material - and as a decision-making and management tool at the theater.- The specifics of the German theater system.- Power and organization.- Power and abuse at the theater.- Results of the study at a glance.- Structural power and forms of power containment.

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Book SynopsisTHE PARTICLES (of White Naugahyde) is the first publication of a play by William Leavitt (b. 1941). Leavitt is one of the pioneers of conceptual art in Los Angeles, helping significantly to establish the genre in the late 1960s and the 1970s. His works make use of narrative elements drawn from LA architecture and popular culture as well as from the movie and television industries. The artist works in various media, including sculpture, painting, drawing, photography and theatre. Framed as a sitcom setting, the narrative of THE PARTICLES (of White Naugahyde) tells the story of a family auditioning for a NASA program, which sends them to a newly planned space colony. The demanding admission process makes them live in a security-free community in the desert together with other applicants. These two weeks in the desert result in anxiety and anti-social behavior among the participants.

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Book Synopsis The Process of Dramaturgy: A Handbook is a guide to dramaturgy for students. Its practical approach is to "committing acts of dramaturgy," and contains exercises, models, and examples of how the dramaturg works to make his or her thoughtful and creative contributions to a theatrical production, from pre-production work through the rehearsal process The book provides specific exercises, examples, and models to assist the student or emerging dramaturg in developing the ability to: 1) apply critical methodologies (among them literary theory) to production; 2) better communicate with directors, designers and playwrights within the context of rehearsal and production. It includes a case study for analysis, Neil Simon's Biloxi Blues.

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Book SynopsisNarrated by Barry Singerone of contemporary musical theater's most authoritative chroniclersEver After was originally published in 2003 as a history of the previous twenty-five years in musical theater, on and off Broadway. This new, second edition extends the narrative, taking readers from 2004 to the present. The book revisits every new musical that has opened since the last edition, with Barry Singer once again as guide.Before Ever After appeared in 2003, no book had addressed the recent past in musical theater historyan era Singer describes as ever after musical theater's many golden ages. Derived significantly from Singer's writings about musical theater for the New York Times, New York magazine, and the New Yorker, Ever After captured that era in its entirety, from the opening of The Act on Broadway in October 1977 to the opening of Avenue Q Off-Broadway in March 2003. This new edition brings Ever After up to date, from Wicked through The Book of Mormon to Hamilton and beyond. On

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Book SynopsisThis volume provides new, ground-breaking perspectives on the globally renowned work of the Tanztheater Wuppertal and its iconic founder and artistic director, Pina Bausch. The company's performances, how it developed its productions, the global transfer of its choreographic material and the reactions of audiences and critics are explained as complex, interdependent and reciprocal processes of translation. This is the first book to focus on the artistic research conducted for the Tanztheater's international coproductions and features extensive interviews with dancers, collaborators and spectators and provides first-hand ethnographic insights into the work process. By introducing the praxeology of translation as a key methodological concept for dance research, Gabriele Klein argues that Pina Bausch's lasting legacy is defined by an entanglement of temporalities that challenges the notion of contemporaneity.Trade Review"A comprehensive and absolutely worth reading book." Jan Kuhlbrodt, Signaturen, 9 (2020) "[The reading] is only surpassed by one thing: the visit of a dance evening by Pina Bausch." Thomas Rothschild, Kultura-Extra, 31.07.2020, translated from German "Gabriele Klein [...] offers a fantastic wealth of information, she brings out the characteristic aspects of artistic creation and embeds the pieces in their respective historical, social and political time context." Karen Nölle, TraLaLit, 29.07.2020, translated from German "There are no many detailed works about one of the most famous dance companies in the world. The book offers new perspectives on the working process, the members and the reception of Tanztheater Wuppertal and the work of Pina Bausch." Michael Lausberg, www.scharf-links.de, 08.07.2020, translated from German "This book is designed to be a good introduction to Bausch's cosmos for all those interested in culture, while still containing sections that provide informative nourishment for even the most cunning specialists." Helmut Ploebst, Der Standard, 27.03.2020, translated from German "An informative and personal as well socially relevant reading pleasure, not only for a specialist audience, but for a broad readership." Miriam Althammer, www.tanznetz.de, 26.02.2020, translated from German "Klein [embeds] the artistic creation and work of the entire ensemble in complex cultural, sociological, but also intertextual contexts. The result makes a decisive contribution to being able to view the long-term impact of the artist in a new light ten years after her death." Rico Stehfest, tanz, 1 (2020), translated from German "A work [...] which represents the character of a standard work on the legend and the phenomenon of Pina Bausch and which refutes, supports and documents many of the previous second-hand publications [...]." Peter Dahms, Tanzinfo Berlin, 07.10.2019, translated from GermanTable of ContentsIntroduction; Pieces; Company; Work Process; Solo Dance; Reception; Theory and Methodology; Conclusion; Indexes.

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Book SynopsisBeyond biography: a legendary performer’s legacy of symbolismTrade Review"Baker enthusiasts will be grateful for Jules-Rosette's challenges to other studies of Baker's life and legend. . . . It deserves a wide general readership and a significant place in the canon of Franco-American cultural studies and twentieth century French and American history."--Women's Review of Books

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Book SynopsisCHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, 2022 When the world comes to an end, Viennese writer Karl Kraus lamented in 1908, all the big city orchestras will still be playingThe Merry Widow. Viennese operettas like Franz Lehár'sThe Merry Widowwere preeminent cultural texts during the Austro-Hungarian Empire's final years. Alternately hopeful and nihilistic, operetta staged contemporary debates about gender, nationality, and labor. The Operetta Empire delves intothis vibrant theatrical culture, whosecreators simultaneously sought the respectability of high art and the popularity of low entertainment.Case studies examine works by Lehár, Emmerich Kálmán, Oscar Straus, and Leo Fall in light of current musicological conversations about hybridity and middlebrow culture. Demonstrating a thorough mastery of the complex early twentieth-century Viennese cultural scene, and a sympathetic and redemptive critique of a neglected popular genre, Micaela Baranelloestablishes operetta as an important element of

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Book SynopsisFor those who wish to appear on stage as well as those who prefer to work behind the scenes, this book profiles more than 70 jobs in various branches of theater and the performing arts. The career profiles include: Actor/Actress, Booking agent, Casting director, Celebrity personal assistant, Costume designer, Drama coach, Playwright, and more.

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Book SynopsisFeatures essays that illustrate the range of material that falls under the heading 'comedy' as it is played on stage. This volume includes essays that address the improvisational nature of 'Commedia'; and the roots of laughter and the expectations inherent in presenting 'old schtick' to a new generation.

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Book SynopsisIn The Only Way Out, Katherine Brewer Ball explores the American fascination with the escape story. Brewer Ball argues that escape is a key site for exploring American conceptions of freedom and constraint. Stories of escape are never told just once but become mythic in their episodic iterations, revealing the fantasies and desires of society, the storyteller, and the listener. While white escape narratives have typically been laden with Enlightenment fantasies of redemption where freedom is available to any individual willing to seize it, Brewer Ball explores how Black and queer escape offer forms of radical possibility. Drawing on Black studies, queer theory, and performance studies, she examines a range of works, from nineteenth-century American literature to contemporary queer of color art and writing by contemporary American artists including Wilmer Wilson IV, Tourmaline, Tony Kushner, Junot Díaz, Glenn Ligon, Toshi Reagon, and Sharon Hayes. Throughout, escape emerge

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Book SynopsisFor young people, the space of the drama classroom can be a space for deep learning as they struggle across difference to create something together with common purpose. Collaborating across institutions, theatres, and community spaces, the research in Hope in a Collapsing World mobilizes theatre to build its methodology and create new data with young people as they seek the language of performance to communicate their worries, fears, and dreams to a global network of researchers and a wider public. A collaboration between a social scientist and a playwright and using both ethnographic study and playwriting, Hope in a Collapsing World represents a groundbreaking hybrid format of research text and original script titled Towards Youth: A Play on Radical Hope for reading, experimentation, and performance. Table of ContentsDedication Figures and Tables Acknowledgements I Acknowledgements II Prologue Part I: Listening, Pedagogy, Theatre, and Cultural Citizenship Listening as an Artful Practice of Care Listening and Caring as Political Acts Creating Social Value from Theatre The System: Worlds Apart but Structurally Familiar The Settings: Brief Social, Political and Educational Portraits of Athens, Lucknow, Coventry, Tainan, Toronto Athens, Greece: Setting the Context Lucknow, India: Setting the Context Coventry, England: Setting the Context Tainan, Taiwan: Setting the Context Toronto, Canada: Setting the Context Ethnography and its Ecologies An Overview of Data Collection A Word about Ethnography The Qualitative Landscape: Care and Cultural Citizenship Daring to Dream in Greek Austerity Misfit Citizenship and Political Personhood in India: A Methodology of Critical Dialogue and Rehearsed Futurity Hope, Performance Pedagogies, and Democratic Citizenship Canley Youth Theatre’s Missive to the World—Listen A Pedagogy of Hope Tainan Students Making the World they Need The Self, the Collective: Theatre and Social Change Interdependency Against All Odds Voicing Toronto Stories for a more Equal World The Territory of Race, Racism, and Gender in Verbatim Theatre Creation Visible and Invisible Vulnerabilities in Oral History Storytelling Muckles’ Story of Hearing and Being Heard Youth Alienation from Mainstream Politics: Who is the Knowledgeable Citizen? Devising Theatre, Identity and the Search for Structure and Meaning Hope and Care in the Quantitative Landscape Key Quantitative Findings Across Sites ‘Outside the Mainstream’ and the Nature of Personal Hope and Experiences of Care Generating Hope through Self-Creation in the School, the Community, and in the Drama-Making Space Young People as Care-Givers Finding and Giving Care in Context To Conclude: Wrestling Towards Hope through Relationships of Care Epilogue: Acting in Concert Turning Towards Part II: Towards Youth Audience Research Part II: A Step Towards Youth By Andrew Kushnir Towards Youth: A Play on Radical Hope By Andrew Kushnir Appendix References Index

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Book SynopsisDrawing on the groundbreaking Spanish scholarship and editions of earlier generations and relying on research conducted in Spanish archives, this pioneering group of English-speaking scholars offers a new treatment of familiar material. The editors yoke together widely varying critical practices, including incisive New Critical readings and far-reaching explorations that draw on the most current European critical thought. In addition to these more strictly literary studies, there are interdisciplinary essays focusing on seventeenth- and twentieth-century reception and the social makeup of the comedia audience. The whole thus presents a balanced picture of the many ways in which the comedia can be viewed, and the contributors complement each other's work in often surprising ways, illuminating the same corpus from a number of perspectives.

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Book SynopsisThe experiences of a diverse range of progressive theater and performance makers in their own words. Curated stories from over 75 interviews and informal exchanges offer insight into the field and point out limitations due to discrimination and unequal opportunity for performance artists in the United States over the past 55 years. In this work, performers, often unknown beyond their immediate audience, articulate diverse influences. They also reflect on how artists are educated and supported, what content is deemed valuable and how it is brought to bear, as well as which audiences are welcome and whether cross-community exchange is encouraged. The book’s voices bring the reader from 1965 through the first wave of the covid-19 pandemic in 2020. They point to more diverse and inclusive practices and give hope for the future of the art.

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Book SynopsisPerforming Female Blackness examines race, gender, and nation in Black life using critical race, feminist and performance studies methodologies. This book examines what private and public performances of female blackness reveal about race, gender, and nation and considers how Canada shapes these performances. Naila Keleta-Mae proposes that performance is part of the ontology of female blackness in the public and private spaces that constitute everyday life because people who are female and Black are constantly expected to perform fantasies - be it their own or, far more commonly, those insisted on by dominant culture. By exploring Black expressive culture in familial, literary, and performance settings, the author demonstrates how people who are read as female and Black in private and public settings, are figuratively on stage regardless of the cultural, political, or historical contexts in which they find themselves. Written in poetry, prose and journal-form and drawing from the author's own life and artistic works, Performing Female Blackness is ideal for scholars, educators, and students of race, gender, performance, and Black expressive culture.Trade Review“With elegant depth and breadth Naila Keleta-Mae brings together the most influential Black feminist thinkers as she masterfully adds her own distinctive and groundbreaking conceptualizations of performance, political economy, and metaphysics under past and present resonances of colonialism and chattel slavery. The insightful and theoretical depth of this book offers an elegant and absorbing exegesis on female blackness that is new, different, and profoundly relevant across multiple disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and fine arts. The author’s conceptualization of ‘perpetual performance’ is brilliantly illuminated against machinations of modernity, forced labor, and advanced capitalism as well as the generative strategies of language, silence, and performance.”—D. Soyini Madison, Professor Emeritus, Northwestern University, author of Acts of Activism: Human Rights as Radical Performance “What I love most about this book is that even as a non-Canadian I can see myself in it. I would argue that even other minoritized people can relate to the idea of having to ‘perpetually perform’—to shift between being and being read by society. Like the best of DJs, Naila Keleta-Mae mixes and spins a deft, poetic, fluid, and moving collaged narrative of theory, lived experience, literary and performance analysis, and multiple performances to tell her own story. In the process, she also illustrates a diverse, global journey of female blackness borne out of the chattel slave trade.”—Rashida K. Braggs, Williams College, author of Jazz Diasporas: Race, Music, and Migration in Post-World War II Paris <.i>

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Book SynopsisRelying on materials uncovered by in the First Historical Archives in Beijing, the author investigates the development of imperial drama and its influence on Peking Opera, as well as the function and system of the Nanfu (later Shengpingshu)-an organization responsible for drama in the Qing dynasty. Also discussed are the complex roles of the actors on and off stage, and the broader issues of cultural and political control intertwined with the performances themselves. The final section delves into the interaction between the palace and commercial theatres and how this contributed to the transformation of "low class" regional Peking Opera into an art form enjoyed by a wide swath of society.

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Book SynopsisErika Fischer-Lichte''s introduction to the discipline of Theatre and Performance Studies is a strikingly authoritative and wide ranging guide to the study of theatre in all of its forms. Its three-part structure moves from the first steps in starting to think about performance, through to the diverse and interrelated concerns required of higher-level study:Part 1 Central Concepts for Theatre and Performance Research introduces the language and key ideas that are used to discuss and think about theatre: concepts of performance; the emergence of meaning; and the theatrical event as an experience shared by actors and spectators. Part 1 contextualizes these concepts by tracing the history of Theatre and Performance Studies as a discipline.Part 2 Fields, Theories and Methods looks at how to analyse a performance and how to conduct theatre-historiographical research. This section is concerned with the ''doing'' of Theatre and Performance StuTrade Review"Rarely do books with “introduction” in the title exhibit the depth of synthesis that this one does. Fischer-Lichte’s book, as edited and translated by Minou Arjomand and Romona Mosse, is stimulating in its approach, conversational tone, and ease of access to interesting points of view...This well-researched, cogent study will be a fine addition to any theatre and performance studies collection. Summing up: Recommended." - CHOICE, November 2014Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Preface Prologue: Is Everything Theatre? Part 1: Central Concepts for Theatre and Performance Research 1. The Concept of Theatre 2. The History of the Discipline 3. The Concept of Performance Part 2: Fields, Theories, and Methods 4. Performance Analysis 5. Theatre Historiography 6. Theorizing Theatre and Performance Part 3: Pushing Boundaries 7. Interweaving Cultures in Performance 8. Performing the Arts 9. Cultural Performances Epilogue: Is Everything Theatre? Bibliography

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Book SynopsisEssentials of Period Style: A Sourcebook for Stage and Production Designers covers the visual, social, and political dynamics of multiple epochs and cultures and discusses how these trends affect the design of the architecture, costumes, and furnishings of the time. This book relates these characteristics and cultural movements to the design needs students encounter as they design a period production. Each chapter contains examples of period style in both theatre and film from a variety of notable productions and a glossary of specialized terms and words used in the chapter. Technological and aesthetic developments that affect design, lighting, and music are also included. This is a textbook meant for Period Styles courses in Theatre programs.Trade Review"How delightful of Mr. Tiné, to take us on a journey of visual spectacle and discovery so essential for anyone needing to know the high points in life, art and architecture as they weave the net of human creative development. It's as if the author has "time travelled" to each period, waded through its essence and come back to tell us what we must not miss on our own journey of recollection, of the important elements we need to fulfill any and all recreations which might involve historical subjects." - Professor Elizabeth Popiel, Western Connecticut State University, School of Visual and Performing Arts. Scenic Designer USA Local 829 IATSE."Hal Tiné, experienced Broadway and regional designer and educator, has created an excellent resource for beginning the exploration of historical periods as they relate to all aspects of design."-Natalie Robin, Stage DirectionsTable of ContentsPrefaceIntroductionAcknowledgementsForeword, by Peter WexlerChapter 1: Greece: The Hellenic Period 475-375 BCEChapter 2: Roman: 3rd Century BCE-476 CEChapter 3: Early Christian: 313-800 CE; Byzantine: 313-1453 CEChapter 4: Islamic: 622-1100 CEChapter 5: Romanesque: 800-1100 CEChapter 6: Gothic: 1100-1450 CEChapter 7: Renaissance: 1450-1600Chapter 8: Baroque: 1600-1720Chapter 9: Rococo: 1720-1760Chapter 10: Neoclassical: 1750-1820Chapter 11: Romantic: 1750-1840Chapter 12: Early Victorian: 1837-1870Chapter 13: Late Victorian: 1870-1901Chapter 14: Edwardian: 1901-1919Chapter 15: Modern: 1919-1980Chapter 16: Postmodern: 1980-PresentChapter 17: Pre-Columbian Cultures: Maya: 291 BCE-circa.1200, Aztec: 1325-1521, Inca: 13th Century-1527Chapter 18: Egypt: 2920-57 BCEChapter 19: India: 320 CE-1858 Chapter 20: China: 589 CE-1912Chapter 21: Japan: 1338-1868

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Book SynopsisPerformance Art: Education and Practice is an introduction to performance art through activities and practice prompts that are framed by seminal moments in the history of the medium as well as the current theoretical discussions surrounding performance.The book begins by introducing the terminology related to performance art and its early history. The basic elements of performance, including the body, objects, space, the public, and the public sphere are approached through thematic and conceptual correlations such as objects as autobiography, body as an expression of gendered identity, performance and the everyday, the augmented body, the archive of performance, and public space as space for intervention. Case studies analysed in each chapter are accompanied by reflective questions and discussion topics. The book proposes a wide range of exercises and comprehensive practice prompts that aim to enhance performance skills, promote experimentation, and encourage an experiential understanding of the theory, history, and concepts relating to performance art.Performance Art: Education and Practice is addressed to students of Fine Arts and Performance Studies from beginner to intermediate level, performance and visual artists who are interested in expanding their knowledge base and creative range, and artist-teachers who are interested in developing their own curriculum and workshop content.Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Introduction to performance 2. Materials in performance: objects 3. Body, gender, identity 4. Performing the self 5. The augmented body 6. Body and space 7. Performance and the everyday 8. Performing in public space 9. Performing radical interventions 10. Nature, bodies, environment 11. Beyond the live event

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Book SynopsisFocused on the contemporary Anglophone adoption from the 1960s onwards, Beyond Scenography explores the porous state of contemporary theatre-making to argue a critical distinction between scenography (as a crafting of place orientation) and scenographics (that which orientate acts of worlding, of staging). With sections on installation art and gardening as well as marketing and placemaking, this book is an argument for what scenography does: how assemblages of scenographic traits orientate, situate, and shape staged events. Established stage orthodoxies are revisited - including the symbiosis of stage and scene and the aesthetic ideology of ''the scenic'' - to propose how scenographics are formative to all staged events. Consequently, one of the conclusions of this book is that there is no theatre practice without scenography, no stages without scenographics. Beyond Scenography offers a manifesto for a renewed theory of scenographic practice forTrade Review"[Beyond Scenography] remains a thought-provoking and much-needed theoretical contribution to the sprawling domain of scenography studies and related performance disciplines. The book’s hugely relevant and historically underpinned theoretical take on such diverse topics as installation art, interior design, gardening and marketing renders it essential reading for a much broader academic audience. […] I recommend Beyond Scenography as necessary reading for scholars, students and practitioners engaged in cross-disciplinary studies of art and performing arts history and practice, architecture, urban sociology and beyond."Astrid von Rosen, University of Gothenburg, Theatre and Performance Design, 7:3-4, 240-241, DOI: 10.1080/23322551.2021.2003155Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroductionScenography as theatre-makingTheatre after cinemaScenography after performanceChapter outlineChapter 1: Place Orientation, Scenic Politics and ScenographicsScenes and Scenic PoliticsScenographicsOthering TacticsChapter 2: Scenography and the Anglophone theatresThe first adoption of scenographyContinental differences pre-1960The second adoption of scenographySound and costume as scenographyChapter 3: Scenography beyond scenographersMise en scène and scenographyWhose scenography? Beyond dramaturgy and choreographyExpanded scene design? Chapter 4: Scenography HappensThe time of scenographyScenography is not setGecko’s MISSING setChapter 5: Scenographic WorldingStage GeographiesStage IdeologiesScenography beyond stages?Stage-Scenes beyond visionChapter 6: Scenographic CulturesInstallation Art and Scenographic ScaleInterior Design and Scenographic BehavioursMarketing and Scenographic SeductionGardening and Scenographic CurationProtest and Scenographic ActivismChapter 7: Scenographic ArchitectureFast ArchitectureTrompe l'oeil and Scenographic PropagandaPotemkin Villages and Scenographic PlacemakingConclusion

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Book SynopsisThrough an exploration of both practice and theory, this book investigates the relationship between listening and the theatrical encounter in the context of Western theatre and performance. Rather than looking to the stage for a politics or ethics of performance, Rajni Shah asks what work needs to happen in order for the stage itself to appear, exploring some of the factors that might allow or prevent a group of individuals to gather together as an ‘audience’. Shah proposes that the theatrical encounter is a structure that prioritises the attentive over the declarative; each of the five chapters is an exploration of this proposition. The first two chapters propose readings for the terms ‘listening’ and ‘audience’, drawing primarily on Gemma Corradi Fiumara’s writing about the philosophy of listening and Stanley Cavell’s writing about being-in-audience. The third chapter reflects on the work of Lying Fallow, the first of two practice elements which were part of this research, asking whether and how this project aligns with the modes of listening that I have proposed thus far, and introducing Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s writing about the preposition ‘beside’ in relation to being-in-audience. In the fourth chapter, I examine the role of invitation in setting up the parameters for being-in-audience, in relation to Sara Ahmed’s writing about arrival and encounter. And in the final chapter the second practice element, Experiments in Listening, operates to expand our thinking about where and how the work of being-in-audience takes place.Blending the boundaries of theoretical, creative and practice-based artistic work, this book is accompanied by a series of five zines. These describe an embodied experience of knowledge from a personal perspective, both playfully and seriously following a line of enquiry developed in each of the chapters.Trade ReviewExperiments in Listening is a critical, caring, poetic and generous gift to scholars invested in epistemic undoings of Euro-colonial conceptualisations of ‘theatre’ and ‘performance’. In this beautifully written book, Shah offers a philosophical recalibration of our fields by enabling readers to enter a mode of listening – an attentiveness to words, worlds and actions – through a ‘commitment to not-knowing’. By compellingly centring hitherto marginalised voices, perspectives and practices, the book demands a recognition of performance-making as a process through which iterative, non-linear and embodied knowledge-systems live and breathe. -- Royona Mitra, reader in dance and performance cultures, Brunel University LondonTable of ContentsAn Introduction0.1. Influences0.2. Contexts and key terms0.3. How to read this bookChapter One: ListeningPrelude1.1. Root structures1.2. Constructing listening1.3. Accommodating othernessChapter Two: AudiencePrelude2.1. Doing nothing2.2. Performing silence2.3. The choreography of attentionChapter Three: GatheringPrelude3.1. Theatre without a show3.2. Resisting visibility3.3. Failing to declare oneselfChapter Four: InvitationPrelude4.1. How we arrive4.2. The invitational frame4.3. An appropriate responseChapter Five: EncounterPrelude5.1. Experiments in Listening5.2. Listening to form5.3. Being in audience to listening5.4. Passing as friendsConclusionAppendix 1: Lying FallowAppendix 2: Experiments in ListeningBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisFinally an authorized libretto to this modern day classic! ÊRentÊ won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Drama as well as four Tony Awards including Best Musical Best Book and Best Score for Jonathan Larson. The story of Mark Roger Maureen Tom Collins Angel Mimi JoAnne and their friends on the Lower East Side of New York City will live on along with the affirmation that there is no day but today. Includes 16 color photographs of productions of ÊRentÊ from around the world plus an introduction ( Rent Is Real ) by Victoria Leacock Hoffman.

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Book SynopsisProviding a unique combination of well-written, up-to-date background information and intriguing selections from primary documents, The Bedford Companion to Shakespeare introduces students to the topics most important to the study of Shakespeare in their full historical and cultural context. This new edition contains many new documents, particularly by women and other marginalized voices from the early modern period. There is also a new chapter on Shakespeare in performance, which introduces students to the great variety of productions of Shakespeare''s works over the centuries.

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Book SynopsisIn Dancing on Coals, Cynthia Moore describes a multi-decade, harebrained search for love in all the wrong places, starting when her narcissistic mother abandons her to a Swiss finishing school. Devastated by her mother's betrayal, eleven-year-old Cynthia vows to become acceptable - but to whom? Seeking approval first as a madcap performance artist and then an as over-functioning therapist, our narrator is finally forced to abandon her competitive, masculine compulsivity for a genuine quest for inner truth. Ultimately, she finds her voice, develops her gifts, and discovers love, but not where she expected to find it. At times humorous and self-deprecating, at times poignant and heartbreaking, this is the story of one woman's path from abandonment to wholeness and authenticity.

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Book SynopsisNEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • A poignant and hilarious memoir from the cultural icon, gay rights activist, and four-time Tony Award–winning actor and playwright, revealing never-before-told stories of his personal struggles and conflict, of sex and romance, and of his fabled careerHarvey Fierstein’s legendary career has transported him from community theater in Brooklyn, to the lights of Broadway, to the absurd excesses of Hollywood and back. He’s received accolades and awards for acting in and/or writing an incredible string of hit plays, films, and TV shows: Hairspray,  Fiddler on the Roof, Mrs. Doubtfire, Independence Day, Cheers, La Cage Aux Folles, Torch Song Trilogy, Newsies, and Kinky Boots. While he has never shied away from the spotlight, Mr. Fierstein says that even those closest to him have never heard most

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Book SynopsisAnna Ziegler has written the plays Actually (produced at Manhattan Theatre Club, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Geffen Playhouse, Trafalgar Studios and others; L.A. Ovation Award winner for Playwriting for an Original Play), the widely produced Photograph 51 (directed on the West End by Michael Grandage and starring Nicole Kidman; WhatsOnStage Award for Best New Play; named the number one play of 2019 by the Chicago Tribune and in other years selected as a Best of the Year play by The Washington Post and The Telegraph), Boy (Outer Critics Circle John Gassner Award nominee), The Wanderers (The Old Globe; upcoming at The Roundabout Theatre Company; Craig Noel Award winner for Outstanding New Play), The Last Match (Roundabout Theatre Company; The Old Globe; upcoming: Writers' Theatre, Chicago), and A Delicate Ship (New York Times Critic's Pick; The Playwrights Realm; Cincinnati Playhouse). Recent notable: Photograph 51 at Melbourne TTrade Review“[Ziegler’s play is] thoughtful, compassionate, funny…The playwright deftly displays the barbed and tender sides of [the central characters’] relationship…But “The Wanderers” is about more than bittersweet relationships and coping with the past; it’s about the human tendency to be chronically dissatisfied. Confused and yearning, Esther wonders, “Who really understands whether or not they are happy?” * Washington Post on 'The Wanderers' *“The world premiere of “The Great Moment” at Seattle Rep is touching, clever, relatable, and enchanting.” * Seattle Pockets on 'The Great Moment' *Effortlessly gripping….funny and aching in all the right spots….it’s a good one, and splendidly played * Washington Post on Another Way Home *“…[A] taut, devastating play… a smart, profoundly painful exploration of [a] murky, treacherous sexual culture… Actually’s great strength, and its great heartbreak, is that it allows us to see both Amber and Tom so fully…Actually’s wit and its intelligence are part of what makes the complex darkness at its center hit so hard. There is brightness in this play, and in these people, and to see its sparks overwhelmed by such fearful and familiar shadows is shattering. In moments, it’s even revelatory.” * New York Magazine on 'Actually' *Table of ContentsIntroduction by the author The Wanderers The Great Moment Another Way Home Actually

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Book SynopsisIn The Theatre and Its Double, first published in 1938, Antonin Artaud puts forward his radical theories on drama and theatre, which he saw as being stifled by conservatism and a lack of experimentation.Containing the famous manifestos of the Theatre of Cruelty', this collection of essays analyses the underlying impulses of performance, provides suggestions on a physical-training method for actors, and features a long appreciation of the expressive values of Eastern dance drama.This new English translation of Artaud''s canonical text by Mark Taylor-Batty retains the idiosyncratic nature of the author''s writing, communicating its fervour and ambition, while achieving a much-needed clarity.Through doing so, it facilitates a fuller appreciation of Artaud's artistic objectives and the original context in which they grew, aided by a newly translated set of his notes and drafts, and a selection of letters to his publisher, friends and associates concerning

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