The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Politics is a volume of critical essays, provocations, and interventions on the most important questions faced by today's writers, critics, audiences, and theatre and performance makers. Featuring texts written by scholars and artists who are diversely situated (geographically, culturally, politically, and institutionally), its multiple perspectives broadly address the question "How can we be political now?" To respond to this question, Peter Eckersall and Helena Grehan have created eight galvanising themes as frameworks or rubrics to rethink the critical, creative, and activist perspectives on questions of politics and theatre. Each theme is linked to a set of guiding keywords: Post (post consensus, post-Brexit, post-Fukushima, post-neoliberalism, post-humanism, post-global financial crisis, post-acting, the real) Assembly (assemblage, disappearance, permission, community, citizen, protest, refugee) Gap (who is in and out, what can be seen/heard/funded/allowed) Institution (visibility/darkness, inclusion, rules) Machine (biodata, surveillance economy, mediatisation) Message (performance and conviction, didacticism, propaganda) End (suffering, stasis, collapse, entropy) Re. (reset, rescale, reanimate, reimagine, replay: how to bring complexity back into the public arena, how art can help to do this). These themes were developed in conversation with key thinkers and artists in the field, and the resulting texts engage with artistic works across a range of modes including traditional theatre, contemporary performance, public protest events, activism, and community and participatory theatre. Suitable for academics, performance makers, and students, The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Politics explores questions of how to be political in the early 21st century, by exploring how theatre and performance might provoke, unsettle, reinforce, or productively destabilise the status quo.

A new survey of the best works by the elusive and spectacular Spanish Impressionist Joaquin Sorolla. Often compared to his contemporary, the American artist John Singer Sargent, Joaquin Sorolla (1863-1923) was a master draftsman and painter of landscapes, formal portraits, and monumental, historically themed canvases. Highly influenced by French Impressionism, the Valencian artist was a master plein-air painter known for his luminous seaside scenes of frolicking youths and for vivid depictions of Spanish rural life and its pleasures and customs. This beautifully designed and produced volume brings together one hundred of Sorolla's major paintings, selected by his great-granddaughter Blanca Pons-Sorolla, the foremost authority on the artist. Benefiting from close proximity to the artist and his personal archives, she presents an in-depth essay that explores Sorolla's life, work, and remarkable international legacy. With virtually all of the artist's previous publications now out of print, this much-anticipated volume is an important addition to the literature on this great Spanish master.

Embodied Playwriting: Improv and Acting Exercises for Writing and Devising is the first book to compile new and adapted exercises for teaching playwriting in the classroom, workshop, or studio through the lens of acting and improvisation. The book provides access to the innovative practices developed by seasoned playwriting teachers from around the world who are also actors, improv performers, and theatre directors. Borrowing from the embodied art of acting and the inventive practice of improvisation, the exercises in this book will engage readers in performance-based methods that lead to the creation of fully imagined characters, dynamic relationships, and vivid drama. Step-by-step guidelines for exercises, as well as application and coaching advice, will support successful lesson planning and classroom implementation for playwriting students at all levels, as well as individual study. Readers will also benefit from curation by editors who have experience with high-impact educational practices and are advocates for the use of varied teaching strategies to increase accessibility, inclusion, skill-building, and student success. Embodied Playwriting offers a wealth of material for teachers and students of playwriting courses, as well as playwrights who look forward to experimenting with dynamic, embodied writing practices.

a short and accessible introduction on AI and Art written by leading experts

Creating Improvised Theatre: Tools, Techniques, and Theories for Short Form and Narrative Improvisation is a complete guide to improvised theatre for performers and instructors. This book provides a modern view of improvised theatre based on the rapid evolution of this art form, shedding new light on classic theories as well as developing lesser known and emerging techniques, such as the Trance Mask. Instead of simply referencing classic theories, the book revisits them and places them in the context of contemporary improvisation techniques. Designed as a practical support, this guide contains over 130 exercises that allow its theories to come alive in workshops, rehearsals, and performance. The book is divided into four sections: Nuts and bolts: The fundamental tools of improvisation to explore how to be spontaneously creative, build with your partner, and learn from masks to discover your scene instant by instant. Short form: Techniques for scene work and short form performance, including how to get the most out of a scene, remain connected to the relational stakes, provoke change (physical, status, and emotional), and maintain a playful attitude. Narrative improvisation: Theories to help navigate long form narrative-based shows with "narrative waypoints," generate variety, develop protagonists, work on genres, and manipulate creative transitions. The bits box: Advice for warming-up before a rehearsal or a show with a collection of useful games. Written to inspire creativity and provide the tools to develop innovative improvised shows and experiences, Creating Improvised Theatre is an invaluable source book for anyone interested in the art of improvised theatre, whether a beginning student or experienced performer.

From Plato's dismissal of food as a distraction from thought to Kant's relegation of the palate to the bottom of the hierarchy of the senses, the sense of taste has consistently been devalued by Western aesthetics. Kant is often invoked as evidence that philosophers consider taste as an inferior sense because it belongs to the realm of the private and the subjective and does not seem to be required in the development of higher types of knowledge. From a gastrosophical perspective, however, what Kant perceives as a limitation becomes a new field of enquiry that investigates the dialectics of diet and discourse, self and matter, inside and outside. The essays in this book examine the importance of food as a pivotal element - both materially and conceptually - in the history of the Western avant-garde. From Gertrude Stein to Alain Robbe-Grillet and Samuel Beckett, from F.T. Marinetti to Andy Warhol, from Marcel Duchamp to Eleanor Antin, the examples chosen explore the conjunction of art and foodstuff in ways that interrogate contemporary notions of the body, language and subjectivity.

This book studies the intersection of performance and nationalism in South Asia.It traces the emergence of the culture of nationalism from the late nineteenth century through to contemporary times. Drawing on various theatrical performance texts, it looks at the ways in which performative narratives have reflected the national narrative and analyses the role performance has played in engendering nationhood. The volume discusses themes such as political martyrdom as performative nationalism, the revitalisation of nationalism through new media, the sanitisation of physical gestures in dance, the performance of nationhood through violence in Tajiki films, as well as K-Pop and the new northeastern identity in India. A unique contribution to the study of nationalism, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of history, theatre and performance studies, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, modern India, Asian studies, political studies, social anthropology and sociology.

This volume calls attention to the unexpected prevalence of ventriloqual motifs and strategies within contemporary art. Engaging with issues of voice, embodiment, power, and projection, the case studies assembled in this volume span a range of media from painting, sculpture, and photography to installation, performance, architecture, and video. Importantly, they both examine and enact ventriloqual practices, and do so as a means of interrogating and performatively bearing out contemporary conceptions of authorship, subjectivity, and performance. Put otherwise, the chapters in this book oscillate elegantly between art history, theory, and criticism through both analytical and performative means. In speaking about ventriloquism in contemporary art, the authors, who are curators, historians, and artists, shine light on this outdated practice, repositioning it as a conspicuous and meaningful trend within a range of artistic practices today. This book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, contemporary art, media studies, performance, museum/curatorial studies, and theater.

Curating Dramaturgies investigates the transformation of art and performance and its impact on dramaturgy and curatorship. Addressing contexts and processes of the performing arts as interconnecting with visual arts, this book features interviews with leading curators, dramaturgs and programmers who are at the forefront of working in, with, and negotiating the daily practice of interdisciplinary live arts. The book offers a view of praxis that combines perspectives on theory and practice and looks at the way that various arts institutions, practitioners and cultural agents have been working to change the way that art and performance have developed and experienced by spectators in the last decade. Curating Dramaturgies argues that cultural producers and scholars are becoming more cognizant of this overlapping and transforming field. The introductory essay by the editors explores the rise of interdisciplinary live arts and its ramifications in cultural and political terms. This is further elaborated in the interviews with 15 diversely placed arts professionals who are at the forefront of rethinking and consolidatingthe ever-evolving field of the visual arts and performance.

Theatre-Rites are regarded as pioneers in the field of object-led and site-specific performance, creating ground-breaking work for family audiences since 1995. This book marks the company's 25th anniversary, offering the first in-depth exploration of artistic director Sue Buckmaster's visionary practice, in which anything can be animated. This book draws on original research, including five years of in-depth interviews between its authors, images from Theatre-Rites' archive and Buckmaster's private collection, detailed observations from the company's professional training workshops and personal reflections on past productions. A timely and compelling advocacy for the importance of high-quality experimental arts provision for young audiences is made, distilling learning from decades of the company's professional activities to motivate and empower the next generation of object-led theatre-makers. Theatre-Rites: Animating Puppets, Objects and Sites is an invaluable resource for any puppeteer, actor, dancer, visual artist, poet or student interested in expanding their understanding of how to incorporate puppetry and/or symbolic objects as metaphors in their work.

Sunday Times Art Book of the Year 2018 'If you are interested in modern British art, the book is unputdownable. If you are not, read it.' - Grey Gowrie, Financial Times 'All the good stories, and more, are here ... this is a genuinely encyclopaedic work, unlike anything else I have come across on the topic, informed by a deep love and understanding of modern painting. Everybody interested in the subject should read it.' - Andrew Marr, Sunday Times A masterfully narrated account of painting in London from the Second World War to the 1970s, illustrated throughout with documentary photographs and works of art The development of painting in London from the Second World War to the 1970s is the story of interlinking friendships, shared experiences and artistic concerns among a number of acclaimed artists, including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, David Hockney, Bridget Riley, Gillian Ayres, Frank Bowling and Howard Hodgkin. Drawing on extensive first-hand interviews, many previously unpublished, with important witnesses and participants, the art critic Martin Gayford teases out the thread connecting these individual lives, and demonstrates how painting thrived in London against the backdrop of Soho bohemia in the 1940s and 1950s and 'Swinging London' in the 1960s. He shows how, influenced by such different teachers as David Bomberg and William Coldstream, and aware of the work of contemporaries such as Jackson Pollock as well as the traditions of Western art from Piero della Francesca to Picasso and Matisse, the postwar painters were allied in their confidence that this ancient medium, in opposition to photography and other media, could do fresh and marvellous things. They asked the question 'what can painting do?' and explored in their diverse ways, but with equal passion, the possibilities of paint.

Boxing and Performance is the first substantial piece of work to place the lived experience of female and male boxers in dialogue with one another. Crews and Lennox critically reflect on their ethnographic experiences of boxing and their reading of the cultural representations of the sport. They conceive of the project as an extended sparring session. This book offers a unique perspective on boxing in/as performance and boxing in/as culture. It explores how the connections between boxing and performance address ideas about bodies, relationships, intimacy, and combat. It challenges and renegotiates oft-repeated narratives used to make meaning about boxing. This volume examines questions of visibility, voice, and agency and will appeal to scholars and students in the fields of performance and media, and sport and social studies.

Urban Modernity in the Contemporary Gulf offers a timely and engaging discussion on architectural production in the modernization era in the Arabian Peninsula. Focusing on the 20th century as a starting point, the book explores the display of transnational architectural practices resulting in different notions of locality, cosmopolitanism, and modernity. Contextually, with an eye on the present, the book reflects on the initiatives that recently re-engaged with the once ville moderne which, meanwhile, lost its pivotal function and meaning. A city within a bigger city, the urban fabric produced during the modernization era has the potential to narrate the social growth, East-West dynamics, and citizens' memories of the recent past. Reading obsolescence as an opportunity, the book looks into this topic from a cross-country perspective. It maps, reads and analyses the notion of modern heritage in relation to the contemporary city and looks beyond physical transformations to embrace cultural practices and strategies of urban re-appropriation. It interrogates the value of modern architecture in the non-West, examining how academic research is expanding the debate on Gulf urbanism, and describes how practices of reuse could foster rethinking neglected areas, also addressing land consumption in the GCC. Presenting a diverse and geographically inclusive authorship, which combines established and up-and-coming researchers in the field, this is an important reference for academics and upper-level students interested in heritage studies, post-colonial urbanism, and architecture in the non-West. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

Spanning the worlds of Portraiture, Landscape, The Nude, Abstraction and Still Life, Alexander Newley's project fuses the Fine Art traditions of patient observation and draughtsmanship with the transcendental intuitions of the mystic. 'For me, art is a moral activity,' he says, 'a straining after the highest virtue of beauty and enlarged consciousness. As such, all art is essentially religious, even when it shows us the ugliness of a fallen world.' Complementing the images is Newley's personal reminiscence, placing each work in a fascinating narrative of self-becoming -and an often-dogged determination to stay true to his calling. The result is a unique account of an artist's journey in his own words, firmly setting before us a body of work that continues to evolve and explore, always affirming a uniquely 'human' future.

From the critically acclaimed artist, designer, and author of the bestsellers The Principles of Uncertainty and My Favorite Things comes a wondrous collection of words and paintings that is a moving meditation on the beauty and complexity of women's lives and roles, revealed in the things they hold. "What do women hold? The home and the family. And the children and the food. The friendships. The work. The work of the world. And the work of being human. The memories. And the troubles. And the sorrows and the triumphs. And the love." In the spring of 2021, Maira and Alex Kalman created a small, limited-edition booklet "Women Holding Things," which featured select recent paintings by Maira, accompanied by her insightful and deeply personal commentary. The booklet quickly sold out. Now, the Kalmans have expanded that original publication into this extraordinary visual compendium. Women Holding Things includes the bright, bold images featured in the booklet as well as an additional sixty-seven new paintings highlighted by thoughtful and intimate anecdotes, recollections, and ruminations. Most are portraits of women, both ordinary and famous, including Virginia Woolf, Sally Hemings, Hortense Cezanne, Gertrude Stein, as well as Kalman's family members and other real-life people. These women hold a range of objects, from the mundane-balloons, a cup, a whisk, a chicken, a hat-to the abstract-dreams and disappointments, sorrow and regret, joy and love. Kalman considers the many things that fit physically and metaphorically between women's hands: We see a woman hold a book, hold shears, hold children, hold a grudge, hold up, hold her own. In visually telling their stories, Kalman lays bare the essence of women's lives-their tenacity, courage, vulnerability, hope, and pain. Ultimately, she reveals that many of the things we hold dear-as well as those that burden or haunt us-remain constant and connect us from generation to generation. Here, too, are pictures of a few men holding things, such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Anton Chekhov, as well as objects holding other objects that invite us to ponder their intimate relationships to one another. Women Holding Things explores the significance of the objects we carry-in our hands, hearts, and minds-and speaks to, and for, all of us. Maira Kalman's unique work is a celebration of life, of the act and the art of living, offering an original way of examining and understanding all that is important in our world-and ultimately within ourselves.

Over the past two decades contemporary African art has taken its rightful place on the world stage. Today, African artists work outside the confines of limiting categories and outdated perceptions; they produce art that is as much a reflection of Africa's tumultuous past as it is a vision of its boundless future. African Art Now is an expansive overview featuring some of the most interesting and innovative artists working today. Far-reaching in its scope, this book celebrates the diversity and dynamism of the contemporary African art scene across the continent today. Featuring the work of Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Michael Armitage, Amoako Boafo, Cassi Namoda, Cinga Samson, Zina Saro-Wiwa and many more.

Containing 114 reproductions of works ranging from Jackson Pollock's dynamic 1948 drip painting to Kehinde Wiley's 2006 hip-hop-meets-Old-Master portrait, Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is a handsome collection that offers art enthusiasts a chance to recall old favorites and discover hidden treasures and new acquisitions. Taken from the nationally recognized collection of the same name at the VMFA, the works presented here appear chronologically within the book's three sections -- paintings; sculpture and video art; and prints, drawings, photographs, and collage. The result is an intriguing compilation of postwar art not to be missed.

Examining and illustrating the art scene surrounding the birth of modernism and its simultaneous rise among the burgeoning working class Mod scene of the Sixties, Paul Anderson's Mod Art is the definitive work on the visual culture of Mod. With interviews from key artists, scene members and a rich understanding of the how the collision of high art and mass culture formed, Mod Art will appeal to fans of history, music, fashion and art. Gorgeously illustrated with a treasure trove of hundreds of colour photographs of famous, rediscovered and rare images from the era Mod, Art will be read and re-read for years to come. Paul Anderson's previous book, Mods: The New Religion, has sold over nine thousand copies since publication.

Milestones in Musical Theatre tracks ten of the most significant moments in musical theatre history, from some of its earliest incarnations, especially those crafted by Black creators, to its rise as a global phenomenon. Designed for weekly use in musical theatre courses, these ten chosen snapshots chart the development of this unique art form and move through its history chronologically, tracking the earliest operettas through the mid-century Golden Age classics, as well as the creative explosion in directing talent which reshaped the form, and moves toward inclusivity which have recast its creators. Each chapter explores how the musical and its history have been deeply influenced by a variety of factors, including race, gender and nationality, and examines how each milestone represents a significant turning point for this beloved art form. Milestones are a range of accessible textbooks, breaking down the need-to-know moments in the social, cultural, political and artistic development of foundational subject areas. This book is ideal for diverse and inclusive undergraduate musical theatre history courses.

Celebrated pop artist Scott C. continues to captivate audiences around the world with his deceptively simple watercolor paintings and illustrations. Now fans can once again submerge themselves in his fanciful world of dancing skeletons, smiling dinosaurs, playful superheroes, and adorable pop culture icons with an enchanting new collection of the best of his recent work. Handpicked by the artist himself, the images include over one hundred new paintings and illustrations, all created in Scott's trademark cartoon style with his reflections and anecdotes sprinkled throughout. Filled with warmth, sly humor, and surprising insight, this book is a delightful tribute to an artist guaranteed to put a smile on the faces of both the young and the young at heart.

Shows how performative and creative research can have a real impact on community engagement with academic research Shows the aesthetics and use of arts-based research approaches in practice Expands the rapidly-emerging field of collaborative research