Theatre studies Books

Book SynopsisThis book is situated at the intersection of queer/gender studies and theories of acting pedagogy and performance. It explores the social and cultural matrix in which matters of gender are negotiated, including that of post-secondary theatre and drama education. It identifies the predicament of gender dissident actors who must contend with the widespread enforcement of realist paradigms within the academy, and proposes a re-imagining of the way drama/theatre/performance are practised in order to serve more fairly and effectively the needs of queer actors in training. This is located within a larger project of critique in reference to the art form as a whole. The book stimulates discussion among practitioners and scholars on matters concerning various kinds of diversity: of gender expression, of approaches to the teaching of acting, and to the way the art form may be imagined and executed in the early years of the 21st Century, in particular in the face of the climate crisis. But it is also an aid to practitioners who are seeking new theoretical and practical approaches to dealing with gender diversity in acting pedagogy. Trade Review“Acting Queer was written for post-secondary theatre educators, especially practitioners, but I would suggest sharing it with department and college administrators also. … he also intends the book for ‘students themselves who may be asking troubling though perhaps productive questions … who is teaching them? What are they being taught and why?’ … . I look forward to asking these questions alongside students and discovering what may be possible when heteronormative gender roles are actively subverted in our pedagogy.” (Emily Finck, Theatre Topics, Vol. 32 (1), March, 2022)Table of Contents1. Introduction: ‘Straight-looking, Straight-acting’2. ‘You’re Soaking in It’: the Influence of Hollywood3. Gender Dissidence and Its Prohibitions4. Gendered Movement and “Physical’ Acting5. The Subversion of Realism6. Queer-looking, Queer-acting7. Extensions and Excursions: Acting Queer Ecology

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Book SynopsisThis book engages with the relationship between ruins, dilapidation, and abandonment and cultural events performed within such spaces. Following the author’s fieldwork in the UK, Bosnia Herzegovina, Poland, Germany, Greece, and Sicily, chapters describe, investigate, and reflect upon live performance events which have taken place in sites of decay and abandonment. The book’s main focus is upon modern economic ruins and ruins of warfare. Each chapter provides several case studies based upon the author’s own site visits and interviews with actors, directors, producers, curators, writers, and other artists. The book contextualises these events within the wider framework of Ruin Studies and provides brief summaries of how we might understand the ruin in terms of time, politics, culture, and atmospheres. The book is particularly preoccupied with artists’ reasons and motivations for placing performance events in ruined spaces and how these work dramaturgically.Table of Contents1. Introduction: Ruining the Project, Subjectivities, Fields and Methods.- 2. Ruins in Context - Context in Ruins.- 3. Performing the Antiquary: Classical Ruins in the Greek Imaginary.- 4. Nature’s Ruins.- 5. Dissonance and Contestation: Ruining Heritage and its Alternatives.- 6. Legacies of War: Performing Balkan Ruins.- 7. Ruins of Capital.- 8. After Communism and the Cold War: a Ruined Inheritance.- 9. Conclusion: Ruining the Ruin or Pausing at a Partial View.-

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Book SynopsisWhat is the role of costume in Shakespeare production? Shakespeare and Costume in Practice argues that costume design choices are central not only to the creation of period setting and the actor’s work on character, but to the cultural, political, and psychological meanings that the theatre makes of Shakespeare. The book explores questions about what the first Hamlet looked like in his mourning cloak; how costumes for a Shakespeare comedy can reflect or critique the collective nostalgias a culture has for its past; how costume and casting work together to ask new questions about Shakespeare and race. Using production case studies of Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Tempest, the book demonstrates that costume design can be a site of experimentation, playfulness, and transgression in the theatre – and that it can provoke audiences to think again about what power, race, and gender look like on the Shakespearean stage. Table of Contents1. Chapter One: Introduction.- 2. Chapter Two: Hamlet, Mourning and the Disappearing Costume: Inky Cloaks and Solemn Black.- 3. Chapter Three: Much Ado About Nothing, Restorative Nostalgia and the Costume Drama: Tires and Rebatoes, Corsets and Lace.- 4. Chapter Four: The Post-Colonial Tempest: Costume and Race.- 5. Chapter Five: Conclusion: Practitioner Interviews.

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Book SynopsisThis collection of essays, covering a broad historical range, shows that women working in theatre and drama since the time of Aphra Behn have been engaged in pushing the boundaries of conventional representation and dramaturgical convention.

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Book SynopsisChapter 1 - Introduction.- Chapter 2 - The Rareness of the Figures: Air and Accessibility in Aphra Behn's Emperor of the Moon and Elkanah Settle's The World in the Moon.- Chapter 3 - Storming at Heav'n and Thee!: Ecological Wastelands in Addison's Cato.- Chapter 4 - I'll have none of these airs: The West Indies and British Inertia in Mary Pix and John Gay.- Chapter 5 - Art against art: Sentimentality, Mid-Century Drama, and the North American Crises.- Chapter 6 - A Winter Drama: Decolonizing South America and Environmental Restoration in Sheridan's Pizzaro.-  Chapter 7 - Epilogue : Lucretius Englisht': Nahum Tate's Ecophobic Adaptation of Shakespeare's Coriolanus.

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Book SynopsisChapter 1- Introduction:Motivations and Beginnings.- Chapter 2 -Ten Landmark Regional Theatres.- Chapter 3 -Ten Figures Everyone Should Know.- Chapter 4 -The Ten/Twenty Important Regional Theatres.- Chapter 5 -Ten Influential Figures.- Chapter 6 -Ten Contemporary Figures to Know.- Chapter 7 -Ten Important Regional Productions.- Chapter 8 -Ten External Developments That Shaped Regional Theatre.- Chapter 9 -Ten Important Buildings/Architectural Design.- Chapter 10 -Conclusion: Ten Lingering Concerns about the Future.

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Book SynopsisHow and why does improvisational theater (improv) serve the learning and development of adults in higher education?

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Book SynopsisChapter 1-Introduction.- Chapter 2-Documenting Research Trends.- Chapter 3-Indian Caste System, and the Origin and Plight of the Dalits.- Chapter 4-History and Aesthetics of Dalit Literature.- Chapter 5-Caste-Class Antagonisms.- Chapter 6-Intersection of Gender.- Chapter 7-Origin and History of Dalit Theatre.- Chapter 8-Aesthetics of Dalit Theatre.- Chapter 9-Dalit Theatre: Production and Performance.- Chapter 10- Representation of Caste.- Chapter 11-Representation of Class.-Chapter 12-Representation of Gender.- Chapter 13- Conclusion.

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Book SynopsisChapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: Guy Régis Jr’s Post-Earthquake Vigil: Keeping Watch on Catastrophe in De toute la terre le grand effarement.- Chapter 3: "We Must Face Haiti”: Rawle Gibbons’s 1993 Production of The Black Jacobins.- Chapter 4: Staging the Païdeuma: Nature and Insurrection in Aimé Césaire’s Une tempête.- Chapter 5: The Coloniality of Naufragio and Utopia in Teatro Buendía’s Otra tempestad.- Chapter 6: Making Theater in the Face of the Storm: Shakespeare in Paradise, Healing, and Theater.- Chapter 7: Drowning in the Wake.- Chapter 8: “No more drumming. Nor sticks”: The Colonial Catastrophe that Conditioned Caribbean Performance.- Chapter 9: Interrogating Disaster through Apocalyptic Narratives in Dominican Theater.- Chapter 10: Sensing Catastrophic Realities in Diasporic Puerto Rican Theater.- Chapter 11: PROMESA, Anti-Colonial Drag, and Diasporic Puerto Rican Trans Revolution.- Chapter 12: Beyond Catastrophe: Teresa Hernández and the Puerto Rican Performative Body in the New Millennium.- Chapter 13: Catastrophe, Theater, Performance: Praxes of Re/Making the Caribbean With/Out Coloniality, A Conversation with Eliézer Guérismé, Judith G. Miller, Gaël Octavia, and Gina Athena Ulysse.

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Book SynopsisIntroduction.-Chapter one: On (un)intentional insults to the feelings of religious believers.-Chapter two: On gender politics and expressing sex/uality on stage.-Chapter three: (Mis)interpretation and (mis)representation of history on stage.-Chapter four: Theatre censorship and (mis)management of state funding.-Chapter five: Russia’s invasion of ukraine and theatre censorship.-Conclusion 

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Book SynopsisPart One: Introduction.- Chapter 1: “You’re In The Parade!” Disney As Immersive Theatre And The Tourist As Actor, Jennifer A. Kokai And Tom Robson.- Part Two: Chronologies– Historic And Fantastic.- Chapter 2: “The Future Is Truly In The Past”: The Regressive Nostalgia Of Tomorrowland, Tom Robson.- Chapter 3: “Some Of Our Closest, Unnamed Friends: First Nation Culture And Indexical Absence At Walt Disney World”, Victoria Pettersen Lantz.- Chapter 4: Taming The Fairy Tale: Performing Affective Medievalism In Fantasyland, Christina Gutierrez-Dennehy.- Chapter 5: Still Searching For A Great, Big, Beautiful Tomorrow: Performing Utopia With Non-Human Bodies In The Hall Of Presidents, Joseph D’ambrosi.- Chapter 6: The Royal Theatre Presents: Echoes Of Melodrama In The Magic Kingdom, Patrice Amon.- Part Three: Environments As Ideologies.- Chapter 7: The Nemofication Of Nature: Animals, Artificiality, And Affect At Disney World, Jennifer A. Kokai.- Chapter 8: Disney-Fying Dixie: Queering The “Laughing Place” At Splash Mountain, Chase Bringardner.- Chapter 9: Rising In The East: Disney Rehearses Chinese Consumers At A Glocalized Shanghai Disneyland, Laura Macdonald.- Chapter 10: Don’t Feel The Magic, Be The Magic: The Challenges Of Language Hybridity In Disneyland Paris, Alia Tyner-Mullings.- Part Four: Counter Identities.- Chapter 11: It’s Good To Be Bad: Resistance, Rebellion, And Disney Villain Merchandise, Christen Mandracchia.- Chapter 12: The Park As Stage: Radical Re-Casting In Disneyland’s Social Clubs, Elizabeth Mcqueen .- Chapter 13: Bulldozing The Fourth Wall: Distok And The Construction Of Community, Dori Koehler.- Chapter 14: “Ruff” Rides And Loose Leashes: Reimagining Non-Human Agency At Disney Theme Parks, Karli Brittz.- Part Five: Conclusion.- Chapter 15: Exemplary Disney: An Afterword, Susan Bennett.

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Book SynopsisChapter 1: Plant a seed.- Chapter 2: Ecology.- Chapter 3: Community.- Chapter 4: Performance.- Chapter 5: Succession.- Chapter 6: Charismatic Species.- Chapter 7: Seedbank.- Chapter 8: Mycorrhizae.- Chapter 9: Disturbance.- Chapter 10: Rewilding.

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Book SynopsisAge-old scholarly dogma holds that the death of serious theatre went hand-in-hand with the 'death' of the city-state and that the fourth century BC ushered in an era of theatrical mediocrity offering shallow entertainment to a depoliticised citizenry. The traditional view of fourth-century culture is encouraged and sustained by the absence of dramatic texts in anything more than fragments. Until recently, little attention was paid to an enormous array of non-literary evidence attesting, not only the sustained vibrancy of theatrical culture, but a huge expansion of theatre throughout (and even beyond) the Greek world. Epigraphic, historiographic, iconographic and archaeological evidence indicates that the fourth century BC was an age of exponential growth in theatre. It saw: the construction of permanent stone theatres across and beyond the Mediterranean world; the addition of theatrical events to existing festivals; the creation of entirely new contexts for drama; and vast investment, both public and private, in all areas of what was rapidly becoming a major 'industry'. This is the first book to explore all the evidence for fourth century ancient theatre: its architecture, drama, dissemination, staging, reception, politics, social impact, finance and memorialisation.

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Book SynopsisI. Prolog.- Hinführung zum Thema, Quellenkorpus, Methodik, Theoretische Verortungen.- II. Kontextuelle Verortungen .- Geschichtskultur im 19. Jahrhundert, Theatrales Fest-Repertoire.- III. Staging History: Inszenierung historischer Wurzeln.- Fallstudien: Altfrankfurter Tage 1896, Altstädtisches Fest 1905, Alt-Frankfurt 1912.- IV. Staging the Nation: Nationale Gemeinschaften & Kollektiv(e) Körper.- Fallstudien: Bundes-Schützenfeste 1862, 1887 und 1912.- V. Staging Technology: Technologie als Spektakel .- Fallstudien: Die internationale elektrotechnische Ausstellung 1891, die Internationale Luftschifffahrts-Ausstellung 1909.- VI. Epilog: Theatrale Zeitreisen.

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