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. What does it mean to have a home? What makes a home home? In this verbatim play, Nadia Fall combines real testimonials with song and music to bring to life the often unheard voices of those people who have nowhere to call home. Focusing on a hostel in inner-city London, Fall introduces the people who are living there and through them explores one of the most pressing contemporary social issues, homelessness amongst young people.

Dancing Motherhood explores how unique factors about the dance profession impact mothers working in it. Ali Duffy introduces the book by laying a foundation of social and cultural histories and trends leading to the issues mothers in dance negotiate today. This study then reveals perspectives from mothers in dance working in areas such as performance choreography, dance education, writing, and advocacy though survey and interview data. Based on participant responses, recommendations for changes in policy, hiring, evaluation, and other work practices to better support working mothers in dance are outlined and discussed. Finally, essays from five working mothers in dance offers more intimate, personal stories and guidance geared to mothers, future mothers, and colleagues and supervisors of mothers in the dance field. By describing lived experiences and offering suggestions for improved working conditions and self-advocacy, this book initiates expanded discussion about women in dance and promotes change to positively impact dancing mothers, their employers, and the dance field.

The Art of Experience provides an interdisciplinary analysis of selected plays from Ireland's premier female playwright, Marina Carr. Dagmara Gizlo explores the transformative impact of a theatrical experience in which interdisciplinary boundaries must be crossed. This book demonstrates that theatre is therapeutic and therapy is theatrical. The role of emotions, cognitions, and empathy in the theatrical experience is investigated throughout. Dagmara Gizlo utilises the methodological tools stemming from modern empirically grounded psychology (such as cognitive-behavioural therapy or CBT) to the study of theatre's transformative potential. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of theatre, performance, and literature, and will be a fascinating read for those at the intersection of cognitive studies and the humanities.

The Applied Theatre Reader is the first book to bring together new case studies of practice by leading practitioners and academics in the field and beyond, with classic source texts from writers such as Noam Chomsky, bell hooks, Mikhail Bakhtin, Augusto Boal and Chantal Mouffe. This new edition brings the field fully up to date with the breadth of applied theatre practice in the twenty-first century, adding essays on playback theatre, digital technology, work with indigenous practitioners, inter-generational practice, school projects and contributors from South America, Australia and New Zealand. The Reader divides the field into key themes, inviting critical interrogation of issues in applied theatre whilst also acknowledging the multi-disciplinary nature of its subject, crossing fields like theatre in educational settings, prison theatre, community performance, theatre in conflict resolution, interventionist theatre and theatre for development. A new lexicon of Applied Theatre and further reading for every part will equip readers with the ideal tools for studying this broad and varied field. This collection of critical thought and practice is essential to those studying or participating in the performing arts as a means for positive change.

What are Monsters? Monsters are everywhere, from cyberbullies online to vampires onscreen: the twenty-first century is a monstrous age. The root of the word "monster" means "omen" or "warning", and if monsters frighten us, it's because they are here to warn us about something amiss in ourselves and in our society. Humanity has given birth to these monsters, and they grow and change with us, carrying the scars of their birth with them. This collection of original and accessible essays looks at a variety of contemporary monsters from literature, film, television, music and the internet within their respective historical and cultural contexts. Beginning with a critical introduction that explores the concept of the monster in the work of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Jack Halberstam, Elaine Showalter and more, the book takes a broad approach to the monster, including not only classic slasher films, serial killers (Bates Motel), the living dead (Game of Thrones) and aliens (District 9), but also hyper-contemporary examples like clones (Orphan Black), cyberbullies (Cyberbully), viral outbreaks (The Strain) and celebrities (Lady Gaga). Gender and culture are especially emphasized in the volume, with essays on the role of gender and sexuality in defining the monster (AHS Apocalypse) and global monsters (Cleverman, La Llorona). This compact guide to the monster in contemporary culture will be useful to teachers, students and fans looking to expand their understanding of this important cultural figure.

This book explores the role of alchemy, Paracelsianism, and Hermetic philosophy in one of Shakespeare's last plays, The Winter's Tale. A perusal of the vast literary and iconographic repertory of Renaissance alchemy reveals that this late play is imbued with several topoi, myths, and emblematic symbols coming from coeval alchemical, Paracelsian, and Hermetic sources. It also discusses the alchemical significance of water and time in the play's circular and regenerative pattern and the healing role of women. All the major symbols of alchemy are present in Shakespeare's play: the intertwined serpents of the caduceus, the chemical wedding, the filius philosophorum, and the so-called rex chymicus. This book also provides an in-depth survey of late Renaissance alchemy, Paracelsian medicine, and Hermetic culture in the Elizabethan and Jacobean ages. Importantly, it contends that The Winter's Tale, in symbolically retracing the healing pattern of the rota alchemica and in emphasising the Hermetic principles of unity and concord, glorifies King James's conciliatory attitude.

Contemporary British Theatre: Breaking New Ground brings together a team of internationally prominent academics and delivers cutting-edge discourse on the strongly emerging tradition of experimentation in contemporary British theatre to redefine what the dramatic stands for today. The chapters focus on influential plays, playwrights and theatre practitioners to produce original and rigorous critical perspectives on the key debates informing theatre practice and scholarship today. This book places the spectator at the heart of the enquiry and examines the radical redefinition of form and content in the context of society, politics, authorship and intentionality, the metaphysical turn in drama, social interventions and resonance, expressive unpredictability, race and identity, ethics/responsibility and the boundaries of representation. Featuring contributors such as Dan Rebellato and Chris Megson, the volume discusses contemporary theatre by a range of playwrights including Martin Crimp, Caryl Churchill and Debbie Tucker Green.

Renowned theatre and film director Nancy Meckler delves into her hugely varied experiences in the rehearsal room and shares examples of tried-and-tested "tools" to bring a play to life. Meckler encourages you to interrogate, play, experiment and to use her methods as a starting point to begin creating your own unique directing toolkit and finding your own style. The examples are drawn from her experience directing a range of work from classic plays, including work by Chekhov, Brecht and Shakespeare, to new writing, including work by Pam Gems and Sam Shepard, and in a wide range of renowned theatres, including the RSC, National Theatre, Royal Court and a number of the UK's regional theatres. The author's approachable and relatable writing style enables an in-depth look into how she works with actors and the many ways in which she may approach a new project while also providing with a unique insight into her own wealth of experience over a remarkable career as an award-winning and internationally celebrated director.

In Staging Creolization, Emily Sahakian examines seven plays by Ina Cesaire, Maryse Conde, Gerty Dambury, and Simone Schwarz-Bart that premiered in the French Caribbean or in France in the 1980s and 1990s and soon thereafter traveled to the United States. Sahakian argues that these late-twentieth-century plays by French Caribbean women writers dramatize and enact creolization-the process of cultural transformation through mixing and conflict that occurred in the context of the legacies of slavery and colonialism. Sahakian here theorizes creolization as a performance-based process, dramatized by French Caribbean women's plays and enacted through their international production and reception histories. The author contends that the syncretism of the plays is not a static, fixed creole aesthetics but rather a dynamic process of creolization in motion, informed by history and based in the African-derived principle that performance is a space of creativity and transformation that connects past, present, and future.

Applying research into assessments of community theatre, epidemiology, and young people's shared and private stories using a wide range of methodologies, this book explores the potential efficacy of community theatre to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS in Tanzania with reference to several other comparable sites in Africa.

This volume offers an examination of Brecht's largely forgotten theatrical fragments of a life of David, written just after the Great War but prior to Brecht winning the Kleist Prize in 1922 and the acclaim that would launch his extraordinary career. David J. Shepherd and Nicholas E. Johnson take as their starting point Brecht's own diaries from the time, which offer a vivid picture of the young Brecht shuttling between Munich and the family home in Augsburg, surrounded by friends, torn between women, desperate for success, and all the while with 'David on the brain'. The analysis of Brecht's David, along with his notebooks and diaries, reveals significant connections between the reception of the Biblical David and one of Germany's most tumultuous cultural periods. Drawing on theatrical experiments conducted with an ensemble from Trinity College Dublin, this volume includes the first ever translation of the David fragments in English, an extensive discussion of the theatrical afterlife of David in the early twentieth century as well as new interdisciplinary insights into the early Brecht: a writer entranced by the biblical David and utterly committed to translating the biblical tradition into his own evolving theatrical idiom.

Political theatre, like any kind of political action, can only be judged in relation to the political moment in which it tries to intervene. Theatre of the Oppressed was created to fight against dictatorship and an extremely centralized conception of politics. How does it function now, in a time of social media and so-called participatory democracies? Providing an in-depth account of the political and cultural context in which Theatre of the Oppressed emerged, this book asks: how do contemporary understandings of concepts like oppression, representation, participation, and emancipation shape Theatre of the Oppressed today? Highlighting the pitfalls of reducing oppression to one-to-one relationships, the book proposes a version of Forum Theatre dramaturgy that portrays oppression as a defining structure of societies. The author also shares specific examples of movements and other organizations that use Theatre of the Oppressed to construct themselves. Theatre of the Oppressed and its Times is an essential text for practitioners and scholars of Theatre of the Oppressed, applied theatre practitioners, students, and anyone interested in how theatre can concretely assist in the transformation of the world.

This is a handbook of detailed step-by-step information, examples, and suggestions for directing a school theatre program.

This book examines the performance of 'Britishness' on the musical stage. Covering a tumultuous period in British history, it offers a fresh look at the vitality and centrality of the musical stage, as a global phenomenon in late-Victorian popular culture and beyond. Through a re-examination of over fifty archival play-scripts, the book comprises seven interconnected stories told in two parts. Part One focuses on domestic and personal identities of 'Britishness', and how implicit anxieties and contradictions of nationhood, class and gender were staged as part of the popular cultural condition. Broadening in scope, Part Two offers a revisionary reading of Empire and Otherness on the musical stage, and concludes with a consideration of the Great War and the interwar period, as musical theatre performed a nostalgia for a particular kind of 'Britishness', reflecting the anxieties of a nation in decline.

WHY PUBLISH: - Academic interest in metatheatre has shown significant recent growth, and there has been two international conferences on the subject during the last five years. - While it will be of particular interest to an Australian audience, the book contributes to relevant debates within a global context, making it appealing to a broader/international audience. - The author has extensive experience as a theatre professional.

Theatre's Heterotopias analyses performance space, using the concept of heterotopia: a location that, when apparent in performance, refers to the actual world, thus activating performance in its culture. Case studies cover site-specific and multimedia performance, and selected productions from the National Theatre of Scotland and the Globe Theatre.

Shakespeare and Digital Performance in Practice explores the impact of digital technologies on the theatrical performance of Shakespeare in the twenty-first century, both in terms of widening cultural access and developing new forms of artistry. Through close analysis of dozens of productions, both high-profile and lesser known, it examines the rise of live broadcasting and recording in the theatre, the growing use of live video feeds and dynamic projections on the mainstream stage, and experiments in born-digital theatre-making, including social media, virtual reality, and video-conferencing adaptations. In doing so, it argues that technologically adventurous performances of Shakespeare allow performers and audiences to test what they believe theatre to be, as well as to reflect on what it means to be present-with a work of art, with others, with oneself-in an increasingly online world.

First published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book offers an exploration of the postcolonial hybrid experience in anglophone Caribbean plays and performance from a feminist perspective. In a hitherto unattempted consideration of Caribbean theatre and performance, this study of gendered identities chronicles the postcolonial hybrid experience - and how it varies in the context of questions of sex, performance and social designation. In the process, it examines the diverse performances of the anglophone Caribbean. The work includes works by Caribbean anglophone playwrights like Derek Walcott, Mustapha Matura, Michael Gikes, Dennis Scott, Trevor Rhone, Earl Lovelace and Errol John with more recent works of Pat Cumper, Rawle Gibbons and Tony Hall. The study would also engage with Carnival, calypso and chutney music, while commenting on its evolving influences over the hybrid imagination. Each section covers the dominant socio-political thematics associated with the tradition and its effect on it, followed by an analysis of contemporaneously significant literary and cultural works - plays, carnival narrative and calypso and chutney lyrics as well as the experiences of performers. From Lovelace's fictional Jestina to the real-life Drupatee, the book critically explores the marginalization of female performances while forming a hybrid identity.

Why should the digital bring about ideas of progress in the theatre arts? This question opens up a rich seam of provocative and original thinking about the uses of new media in theatre, about new forms of cultural practice and artistic innovation, and about the widening purposes of the theatre's cultural project in a changing digital world. Through detailed case-studies on the work of key international theatre companies such as the Elevator Repair Service and The Mission Business, Bill Blake explores how the digital is providing new scope for how we think about the theatre, as well as how the theatre in turn is challenging how we might relate to the digital.

From hip performance spaces in New York and Los Angeles to the heart of Middle America, the last twenty years have seen a rich proliferation of gay and lesbian performance art In O Solo Homo, Holly Hughes, the First Lady of queer performance, and theater critic and professor David Roman have brought together the best solo work from some of the most acclaimed and influential artists in the field.

The pieces in O Solo Homo touch nerves that run deep -- racism and misogyny, AIDS and breast cancer, the struggles and joys of family and the complicated transcendence of desire. Peggy Shaw, of the Obie Award-winning trio Split Britches, looks at butch/femme identity and describes how she learned to be a man. The acclaimed author, performer, and "gender outlaw" Kate Bornstein takes apart gender, from the street to the bedroom to Geraldo. The late Ron Vawter, of the Wooster Group, conjures two very different men who died of AIDS: diva filmmaker Jack Smith and Nixon crony Roy Cohn. And Carmelita Tropicana, the "national songbird of Cuba", makes an unforgettable, hilarious return to Havana. O Solo Homo will move and provoke you, make you laugh, and make you think.

This book investigates how the British theatrical community offered an alternative and oppositional historical narrative to the heritage culture promulgated by the Thatcher and Major Governments in the 1980s and early 1990s. It details the challenges the theatre faced, especially reductions in government funding, and examines seminal playwrights of the period - including but not limited to Caryl Churchill, Howard Brenton, Sarah Daniels, David Edgar, and Brian Friel - who dramatized a more inclusive vision of history that gave voice to traditionally marginalized communities. It employs James Baldwin's concept of witnessing as the means by which history could be deployed to articulate an alternative and emergent political narrative: "the history we haven't had". This book will appeal to students and scholars of theatre and cultural studies as well as theatre practitioners and enthusiasts.

Lively and innovative, these well-illustrated essays on the making of the Victorian entertainment industry get inside the popular experience of the pub, music-hall, theater and comic press. In this new leisure world, audiences learned how to be performers themselves, adopting roles and styles appropriate to the unsettling dynamics of the modern city. A major advance in understanding how popular culture actually works, this is a model of the successful integration of the theory and practice of social history and cultural studies.