While remapping the region by examining enduring historical and cultural connections, this study discusses multiple traditions and practices of theatre and performance in five South Asian countries within their specific political and socio-cultural contexts.

With this special issue of Performing Arts International, the papers and presentations from the Black Theatre in Higher Education Conference, held in London in April 1994 and organized by Hazel Carey and Ruth Tompsett, are made more widely available. It offers readers a chance to engage in debates on topical issues, to widen their knowledge and understanding of black performance, and to catch something of its spirit from the combination here of critical comment, practitioner insight, and personal testimony. For academics, critics, and practitioners alike, to study, attend, or participate in black theatre is to be engaged in a rich and diverse contemporary arts reality.

The newest addition to the USITT/Routledge Backstage series, covering behind the scenes information for the technical theatre industry. The book covers the challenges stage managers face on the job and in real life, outlining best practices for achieving a work/life balance. Includes a focus on the work/life balance of a stage manager.

Auditioners often complain of seeing the same speeches over and over again. Director, Simon Dunmore, has seen well over ten thousand audition speeches performed, and has drawn on his experience to select and edit a new collection of fascinating, fresh and unusual audition speeches from Shakespeare's plays. This book brings together fifty speeches for women from plays frequently ignored such as Coriolanus, Pericles and Love's Labours Lost. It also includes good, but over-looked speeches from the more popular plays such as Diana from All's Well That Ends Well, Perdita from The Winter's Tale and Hero from Much Ado About Nothing. Each speech is accompanied by a character description, brief explanation of the context, and notes on obscure words, phrases and references - all written from the viewpoint of the auditioning actor.

Alternative Theatre in Poland 1954-1989 describes a theatre movement about which little has been written in English. The complex nature of the relationship between theatre and politics is explored in this unique study of the exceptionally vibrant Polish theatre scene.
Tracing its evolution from the beginnings of the movement in the 1950s when two amateur student theatre groups performed programs of short, satiric skits which expanded the limits of the artistically permissable within a Communist society, the development of this movement is followed through the 1960s, when these satiric theatres, and others which sprang up in their wake, were forced by government censorship to become less politically active. During this period, other student groups concentrated on artistic experimentation, creating such forms as visual theatre, one-person shows, fact-montages, and poetry theatre. Furthermore, the period after 1956 saw the founding of two non-student theatres, Tadeusz Kantor's Cricot 2 and Jerzy Grotowski's Laboratory Theatre, both dedicated to artistic experimentation and having significant influence on alternative theatres worldwide.
In th 1970s, during the next period of political liberalization, the alternative theatre movement linked the avant-garde format it had acquired in the 1960s with the political engagement of the 1950s and reached its zenith with the works of groups such as the Theatre of the 8th Day. After the Solidarity period (1980-81), the movement declined in societal importance but groups such as Akademia Ruchu, Provisorium and Gardzienice continue to exist and produce experimental work.

Please note this is a 'Palgrave to Order' title (PTO). Stock of this book requires shipment from an overseas supplier. It will be delivered to you within 12 weeks. This study rediscovers the lives and notable accomplishments of five prominent, yet historically neglected women dramatists of the Progressive Era: Martha Morton, Madeleine Lucette Ryley, Evelyn Greenleaf Sutherland, Beulah Marie Dix, and Rida Johnson Young.

Theater critic Jerry Tallmer, remarking on Joseph Papp's death on October 31, 1991, said, He was a guy from Brooklyn who had a passion for Shakespeare and a passion for people. He was able to combine the two like no one else ever did. Barbara Horn, documenting Papp's career, declares it to have been inextricably tied to that of the New York Shakespeare Festival, which Papp founded in 1954, serving as its artistic leader for 37 years, and which survives him. His dream of producing free Shakespeare in the Park was expanded into the largest arts institution in the United States, combining Shakespeare with innovative contemporary theater performed at his nonprofit Public Theater as well as in New York City parks and schools. Papp produced some 450 plays, directing over 40. He nurtured some of the greatest playwriting talents, including Vaclav Havel, David Mamet, David Rabe, David Henry Hwang, John Guare, and Tina Howe, and provided opportunities for fledgling actors, among them George C. Scott, Colleen Dewhurst, James Earl Jones, Al Pacino, Kevin Kline, Raul Julia, Meryl Streep, and William Hurt. Public Theater plays such as Hair, A Chorus Line, and That Championship Season became huge hits on Broadway. Papp's productions, most with the New York Shakespeare Festival, are thoroughly documented, with credits, runs, synopses, and review commentary in this reference guide, which also includes a chronology of Papp's life and career, a biographical sketch, an annotated bibliography of works by and about Papp, and appendixes on film and television credits, related activities, and awards. Indexes of authors of bibliographic works, of playwrights and playtitles, and of production crew and cast complete the work.

Slapstick comedy has a long and lively history from Greek Theatre to the present day. This book explores the ways in which comic pain and comic violence are performed within slapstick to make the audience laugh. It draws examples from theatre, television and film on both sides of the Atlantic.

Comprehensive look at the practice of stage management that assumes no prior knowledge for the beginning or introductory student. The companion website contains blank form templates, chapter comprehension tests, a suggested reading list, glossary flashcards, and more. The perfect resource for Stage Management courses.

Although films about the presidency have been a popular subject for analysis, there is no equivalent literature about plays that portray chief executives. This book fills that gap by examining in detail about 50 plays depicting historical, fictional and even musical presidents. It explains how, as the public's trust in government has declined, the heroic presidents of the first half of the twentieth century have been replaced on stage by such antiheroes as Nixon and Harding.

Focusing on contemporary English theatre, this book asks a series of questions: How has theatre contributed to understandings of the North-South divide? What have theatrical treatments of riots offered to wider debates about their causes and consequences? Has theatre been able to intervene in the social unease around Gypsy and Traveller communities? How has theatre challenged white privilege and the persistent denigration of black citizens? In approaching these questions, this book argues that the nation is blighted by a number of internal rifts that pit people against each other in ways that cast particular groups as threats to the nation, as unruly or demeaned citizens - as 'social abjects'. It interrogates how those divisions are generated and circulated in public discourse and how theatre offers up counter-hegemonic and resistant practices that question and challenge negative stigmatization, but also how theatre can contribute to the recirculation of problematic cultural imaginaries.

The Uncapturable is a wide-ranging reflection on the art of the mise en scene from the perspective of leading Argentinian theatre director Ruben Szuchmacher. It offers a timely and concise, though comprehensive, survey of the role and responsibility of the theatre director from the earliest times to the twenty-first century. Szuchmacher defines theatre as the confluence of four art forms - architecture, visual art, sound and literature - whose works only truly exist in the moment of encounter with an audience. He argues that, by taking full account of these four art forms, analysing them in detail and engaging thoughtfully with the many specialists who come together to bring a mise en scene into being, the director of today can still create work that innovates and inspires. The Uncapturable is as valuable to the apprentice director emerging from their training as it is to the veteran in need of fresh reflection. Szuchmacher draws on the unique learnings gleaned from working in Argentina, be it the impact on theatre of politics, the need for inventiveness in times of hardship, the phenomenon of Argentine 'circus theatre' or the adaptation of literary giants such as Borges, affording the Anglophone reader an alternative perspective on the ideas of theatre we often take for granted. Szuchmacher offers a unique blend of global knowledge, historical awareness and a pragmatic, resourceful and creative approach from a theatre artist working in Latin American through decades of change. The book is translated from the Spanish by William Gregory.

Unprecedented in its comprehensiveness, The Moscow Art Theatre fills a large gap in our knowledge of Stanislavsky and his theatre. Worrall focuses in particular detail on four of The Moscow Art Theatre's best-known productions:
* Tolstoy's Tsar Fedor Ioannovich
* Gorky's The Lower Depths
* Chekov's The Cherry Orchard
* Turgenev's A Month in the Country

eBook available with sample pages: 0203114434

A quirky collection of true stories from the weird and wonderful world of Shakespearean theatre, featuring distinguished actors falling off stages, fluffed lines, performances in the dark, and why you must never, ever say the name of that Scottish play, especially if you are Peter O'Toole. A fascinating playbill of stories from the weird and wonderful world of Shakespearean theatre through the centuries, including distinguished actors falling off stages, fluffed lines, performances in the dark, and why you must never, ever say the name of that Scottish play, especially if you are Peter O'Toole. Discover a wealth of Shakespearean shenanigans over the years, including the terrible behaviour of the groundlings at Shakespeare's Globe, how the 'rude mechanicals' in A Midsummer Night's Dream got recast as a bunch of ladies from the WI, and how Dame Maggie Smith got even with Sir Laurence Olivier. Published to coincide with the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, this treasury of curious tales is a must-read for all Shakespeare lovers and theatre fans. Word count: 45,000

Post-Colonial Drama is the first full-length study to address the ways in which performance has been instrumental in resisting the continuing effects of imperialism. It brings to bear the latest theoretical approaches from post-colonial and performance studies to a range of plays from Australia, Africa, Canada, New Zealand, the Caribbean and other former colonial regions. Some of the major topics discussed include:
* the interactions of post-colonial and performance theories
* the post-colonial re-stagings of language and history
* the specific enactments of ritual and carnival
* the theatrical citations of the post-colonial body
Post-Colonial Drama combines a rich intersection of theoretical approaches with close attention to a wide range of performance texts.

eBook available with sample pages: 020342106X

Post-Colonial Drama is the first full-length study to address the ways in which performance has been instrumental in resisting the continuing effects of imperialism. It brings to bear the latest theoretical approaches from post-colonial and performance studies to a range of plays from Australia, Africa, Canada, New Zealand, the Caribbean and other former colonial regions. Some of the major topics discussed in Post-Colonial Drama include:
* the interactions of post-colonial and performance theories
* the post-colonial re-stagings of language and history
* the specific enactments of ritual and carnival
* the theatrical citations of the post-colonial body
Post-Colonial Drama combines a rich intersection of theoretical approaches with close attention to a wide range of performance texts.

The political events of "annus mirabilis" 1989 marked a rare turning point in world history, but the significance of the year for German literary history is unique. As the 40-year-old German Democratic Republic ceased to exist, so too did the special circumstances which had fostered a literature separate from and in competition with that of the Federal Republic of Germany. A new period of literary history was delimited almost overnight: Germany Democratic Republic literature now was something to be examined as a whole, cultural movement. At the same time, the literary traditions of the German Democratic Republic have continued to influence the contemporary cultural scene, often in ways that are only gradually becoming clear.
The essays, memoirs, and plays collected in this special issue of Contemporary Theatre Review represent an early attempt to assess and reassess one of the German Democratic Republic's richest cultural domains: its theatre. Contributors include David W. Robinson, C

"Shakespeare, Theory and Performance" is an exciting collection of essays, bringing a full range of contemporary critical perspectives to bear upon the practical questions of performing Shakespeare. During recent years, a new revolution in critical theory has called into question a number of assumptions about the performance of Shakespeare which had long gone unchecked.
In this volume, contributors from theater, literary and Shakespearean studies collaborate to offer a productive rnterplay, employing a variety of discourses--including feminism, post-colonialism, and semiotics--to challenge and interrogate the practice of Shakespearean performance. Issues include implications of gender, race and class for audience response; the impact of technology on the study of performance as text; and the appropriation of Shakespeare by foreign cultures.

"Imperialism" is a trans-national and trans-historical phenomenon; it occurs neither in limited areas nor at one specific moment. In cultures from across the world theatrical performance has long been a site both for the representation and support of imperialism and resistance and rebellion against it. "Imperialism and Theatre" is a groundbreaking collection which explores the questions of why and how theater was selected within imperial cultures for the representation of the concerns of both the colonizers and the colonized.
Gathering together fifteen noted scholars and theatre practitioners, this collection spans global and historical boundaries and presents a uniquely comprehensive study of post-colonial drama. The essays engage in current theoretical issues while shifting the focus from the printed text to theatre as a cultural formation and locus of political force. A compelling and extremely timely work, "Imperialism and Theatre" reveals fascinating new dimensions to the post-colonial debate.
Contributors: Nora Alter; Sudipto Chatterjee; Mary Karen Dahl; Alan Filewood; Donald H. Frischmann; Rhonda Garelick; Helen Gilbert; Michael Hays; Loren Kruger; Josephine Lee; Robert Eric Livingston; J.S. Peters; Michael Quinn; Edward Said; Elaine Savory

The Merchant of Venice and Othello are the two Shakespeare plays which serve as touchstones for contemporary understandings and responses to notions of 'the stranger' and 'the other'. This groundbreaking collection explores the dissemination of the two plays through Europe in the first two decades of the 21st-century, tracing how productions and interpretations have reflected the changing conditions and attitudes locally and nationally. Packed with case studies of productions of each play in different countries, the volume opens vistas on the continent's turbulent history marked by the instability of allegiances and boundaries, and shifting senses of identity in a context of war, decolonization and migration. Chapters examine productions in Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Italy, France, Portugal and Germany to shed light on wide-scale European developments for the first time in English. In a final section, performance insights are offered by interviews with three directors: Karin Coonrod on directing The Merchant in Venice at the Venetian Ghetto in 2016, Plamen Markov on his 2020 Othello for the Varna Theatre (Bulgaria) and Arnaud Churin, whose Othello toured France in 2019. In drawing attention to the ways in which historical circumstances and collective memory shape and refashion performance, Shakespeare's Others in 21st-century European Performance offers a rich review of European theatrical engagements with Otherness in the productions of these two plays.

Working in partnership with the National Theatre, these new playscripts bring the theatre alive in the classroom. Each play has been carefully selected to ensure maximum impact and relevance to students, while the activities and teaching support are underpinned by National Theatre strategies so that teachers can feel confident using these approaches. Vibrant production images and the 'Making the play' section show how the play is brought to life on stage while the activities combine a focus on English skills with the play as a perfomance. Adapted by Bryony Lavery, this is an exciting new adaptation of Stevenson's classic tale of money, murder and mutiny. Young Jim Hawkins leads a quiet life at the Admiral Benbow Inn run by her Grandma. One night, fate brings Billy Bones, a large sea chest and a treasure map to their door. As Jim sets off on a voyage to find the treasure, she encounters a crew of the bloodthirstiest pirates, including the infamous Long John Silver, and she begins to wonder whether any of them will make it back alive...

Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London brings together a group of essays from across multiple fields of study that examine the socio-cultural, political, economic, and aesthetic dimensions of pageantry in sixteenth and seventeenth-century London. This collection engages with modern interest in the spectacle and historical performances of pageantry and entertainments, including royal entries, progresses, coronation ceremonies, Lord Mayor's Shows, and processions. Through a discussion of the extant texts, visual records, archival material, and emerging projects in the digital humanities, the chapters elucidate the forms in which the period itself recorded its public rituals, pageantry, and ephemeral entertainments. The diversity of approaches contained in these chapters reflects the collaborative nature of pageantry and civic entertainments, as well as the broad socio-cultural resonances of this form of drama, and in doing so offers a study that is multi-faceted and wide-ranging, much like civic performance itself. Ideal for scholars of Early Modern global politics, economics, and culture; literary and performance studies; print culture; and the digital humanities, Civic Performance casts a new lens on street pageantry and entertainments in the historically and culturally significant locus of Early Modern London.

Shakespeare's plays were immensely popular in their own day - so why do we refuse to think of them as mass entertainment? In Pleasing Everyone, author Jeffrey Knapp opens our eyes to the uncanny resemblance between Renaissance drama and the incontrovertibly mass medium of Golden-Age Hollywood cinema. Through fascinating explorations of such famous plays as Hamlet, The Roaring Girl, and The Alchemist, and such celebrated films as Citizen Kane, The Jazz Singer, and City Lights, Knapp challenges some of our most basic assumptions about the relationship between art and mass audiences. Above all, Knapp encourages us to resist the prejudice that mass entertainment necessarily simplifies and cheapens whatever it touches. As Knapp shows, it was instead the ceaseless pressure to please everyone that helped generate the astonishing richness and complexity of Renaissance drama as well as of Hollywood film.