"The [Vagrant Trilogy] extends far beyond the timeline of devastating events, and instead shows us something greater: humanity." - Broadway World The Vagrant Trilogy is a set of three plays by award-winning Arab American playwright Mona Mansour which explores the Palestinian condition prior to, during, and after the infamous Six-Day War. It sketches the devastating effect this conflict had on members of the Palestinian diaspora scattered in Europe and in Lebanese refugee camps. With productions in Washington DC, New York, and Abu Dhabi, this trilogy has moved audiences across both America and the Arabic-speaking world. The Hour of Feeling, The Vagrant, and Urge for Going offer a deep exploration of the Palestinian struggle for home and identity, a powerful glimpse into a reality that many face and few understand. The volume includes a foreword by director Mark Wing-Davey; an introduction by Arab American theatre scholars Hala Baki and Michael Malek Najjar; the three plays in their final performance versions; an interview with playwright Mona Mansour; and a critical essay by literary scholar Diya Abdo. This collection of Mansour's outstanding plays is another important contribution to the Arab American theatrical canon and the larger body of American drama.

The first comprehensive publication on the subject, this book investigates interactions between racial thinking and the stage in the modern and contemporary world, with 25 essays on case studies that will shed light on areas previously neglected by criticism while providing fresh perspectives on already-investigated contexts. Examining performances from Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Africa, China, Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacifi c islands, this collection ultimately frames the history of racial narratives on stage in a global context, resetting understandings of race in public discourse.

As the Kremlin's crackdown on freedom of expression continues to tighten, Russian playwrights and directors are using documentary theatre to create space for the public discussion of injustice in the civic sphere and its connections to the country's twentieth-century past. Witness Onstage traces the history of documentary theatre's rapid growth in twenty-first century Russia and situates the form within the socio-political setting of the Putin years. It argues that through the practice of performing documents, Russian theatre artists are creating a new type of cultural and historical archive that challenges the dominance of state-sponsored media and invites individuals to participate in a collective renegotiation of cultural narratives. -- .

What skills did Shakespeare's actors bring to their craft? How do these skills differ from those of contemporary actors? Early Modern Actors and Shakespeare's Theatre: Thinking with the Body examines the 'toolkit' of the early modern player and suggests new readings of the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries through the lens of their many skills. Theatre is an ephemeral medium. Little remains to us of the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries: some printed texts, scattered documents and records, and a few scraps of description, praise, and detraction. Because most of what survives are printed playbooks, students of English theatre find it easy to forget that much of what happened on the early modern stage took place within the gaps of written language: the implicit or explicit calls for fights, dances, military formations, feats of physical skill, song, and clowning. Theatre historians and textual editors have often ignored or denigrated such moments, seeing them merely as extraneous amusements or signs that the text has been 'corrupted' by actors. This book argues that recapturing a positive account of the skills and expertise of the early modern players will result in a more capacious understanding of the nature of theatricality in the period.

Vaudeville, as it is commonly known today, began as a response to scandalous variety performances appealing mostly to adult, male patrons. When former minstrel performer and balladeer Tony Pastor opened the Fourteenth Street Theatre in New York in 1881, he was guided by a mission to provide family-friendly variety shows in hopes of drawing in that portion of the audience - women and children - otherwise inherently excluded from variety bills prior to 1881. There he perfected a framework for family-oriented amusements of the highest obtainable quality and style. Historical Dictionary of Vaudeville contains a chronology, an introduction, an extensive bibliography, and the dictionary section has more than 1,000 cross-referenced entries on performing artists, managers and agents, theatre facilities, and the terminology central to the history of vaudeville. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about vaudeville.

This book sets forth a pedagogy for renewing the liberal arts by combining critical thinking, media activism, and design thinking. Using the StudioLab approach, the author seeks to democratize the social and technical practices of digital culture just as nineteenth century education sought to democratize literacy. This production of transmedia knowledge-from texts and videos to comics and installations-moves students between seminar, studio, lab, and field activities. The book also wrestles with the figure of Plato and the very medium of knowledge to re-envision higher education in contemporary societies, issuing a call for community engagement as a form of collective thought-action.

The documentation of practice is one of the principle concerns of performance studies. Focusing on contemporary performance practice and with emphasis on the transformative impact of video, photography and writing, this book explores the ideological, practical, and representational implications of knowing performance through its documentations.

Acting is widely acknowledged to be the central art of the theatre and has a long and vibrant history. With over one thousand entries, this is the first encyclopedia of stage actors and acting around the world. More than one hundred renowned international contributors provide biographical, historical and technical information about actors both familiar and obscure whose work has been crucial in the development of acting methods and traditions from classical theatre to the present day. Entries on key directors, theorists and teachers, and on the elements and genres of acting provide insights into the history of acting as an art and its current practice. Including a chronological list of actors that spans the past two thousand years and many diverse countries and cultures, this Encyclopedia offers a fascinating and unique overview of acting onstage that will be of interest to anyone who attends or practises theatre.

Comic Business situates Aristophanic comedy in the context of competitive (re)performance culture in 5th- and 4th-century Greece. It seeks to illuminate how the dazzling busyness of Aristophanic comedy is the creation of a carefully manipulating craftsman trying to outdo his rivals in the fierce competition of the dramatic festivals. Theoretically informed by theatre semiotics and frame-based models of conceptualizing the theatrical event, it analyzes in a number of case studies how theatrical resources of all kinds are utilized in order to generate theatrical meaning as well as capture and sustain audience interest. The approach therefore combines philological analysis with methodologies developed in Theatre Studies. Special attention is given to the visual dimension of theatrical communication. Material from comparator traditions is brought to bear, as is the evidence of the pictorial record.

This lavishly illustrated book offers the first full, interdisciplinary investigation of the historical evidence for the presence of ancient Greek tragedy in the post-Restoration British theatre, where it reached a much wider audience - including women - than had access to the original texts. Archival research has excavated substantial amounts of new material, both visual and literary, which is presented in chronological order. But the fundamental aim is to explain why Greek tragedy, which played an elite role in the curricula of largely conservative schools and universities, was magnetically attractive to political radicals, progressive theatre professionals, and to the aesthetic avant-garde. All Greek has been translated, and the book will be essential reading for anyone interested in Greek tragedy, the reception of ancient Greece and Rome, theatre history, British social history, English studies, or comparative literature.

As a serious drama set in an ordinary middle-class home, Ibsen's A Doll's House established a new politics of the interior that was to have a lasting impact upon twentieth-century drama. In this innovative study, Nicholas Grene traces the changing forms of the home on the stage through nine of the greatest of modern plays and playwrights. From Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard through to Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, domestic spaces and personal crises have been employed to express wider social conditions and themes of class, gender and family. In the later twentieth century and beyond, the most radically experimental dramatists created their own challenging theatrical interiors, including Beckett in Endgame, Pinter in The Homecoming and Parks in Topdog/Underdog. Grene analyses the full significance of these versions of domestic spaces to offer fresh insights into the portrayal of the naturalistic environment in modern drama.

The relationship between philosophy and theatre is a central theme in the writings of Plato and Aristotle and of dramatists from Aristophanes to Stoppard. Where Plato argued that playwrights and actors should be banished from the ideal city for their suspect imitations of reality, Aristotle argued that theatre, particularly tragedy, was vital for stimulating our emotions and helping us to understanding ourselves. Despite this rich history the study of philosophy and theatre has been largely overlooked in contemporary philosophy. This is the first book to introduce philosophy and theatre. It covers key topics and debates, presenting the contributions of major figures in the history of philosophy, including: what is theatre? How does theatre compare with other arts? theatre as imitation, including Plato on mimesis truth and illusion in the theatre, including Nietzsche on tragedy theatre as history theatre and morality, including Rousseau's criticisms of theatre audience and emotion, including Aristotle on catharsis theatre and politics, including Brecht's Epic Theatre. Including annotated further reading and summaries at the end of each chapter, Philosophy and Theatre is an ideal starting point for those studying philosophy, theatre studies and related subjects in the arts and humanities.

This book offers a glimpse of new perspectives on how philosophy performs in the gaps between thinking and acting. Bringing together perspectives from world-renowned contemporary philosophers and theorists - including Judith Butler, Alphonso Lingis, Catherine Malabou, Jon McKenzie, Martin Puchner, and Avital Ronell - this book engages with the emerging field of performance philosophy, exploring the fruitful encounters being opened across disciplines by this constantly evolving approach. Intersecting dramatic techniques with theoretical reflections, scholars from diverse geographical and institutional locations come together to trace the transfers between French theory and contemporary Anglo-American philosophical and performance practices in order to challenge conventional approaches to knowledge. Through the crossings of different voices and views, the reader will be led to explore the in-between territories where performance meets traditionally philosophical tools and mediums, such as writing, discipline, plasticity, politics, or care.

This book addresses a deceptively simple question: what accounts for the global success of A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen's most popular play? Using maps, networks, and images to explore the world history of the play's production, this question is considered from two angles: cultural transmission and adaptation. Analysing the play's transmission reveals the social, economic, and political forces that have secured its place in the canon of world drama; a comparative study of the play's 135-year production history across five continents offers new insights into theatrical adaptation. Key areas of research include the global tours of nineteenth-century actress-managers, Norway's soft diplomacy in promoting gender equality, representations of the female performing body, and the sexual vectors of social change in theatre.

This book is the first comprehensive study of the reception of Tennessee Williams in China, from rejection and/or misgivings to cautious curiosity and to full-throated acceptance, in the context of profound changes in China's socioeconomic and cultural life and mores since the end of the Cultural Revolution. It fills a conspicuous gap in scholarship in the reception of one of the greatest American playwrights and joins book-length studies of Chinese reception of Shakespeare, Ibsen, O'Neill, Brecht, and other important Western playwrights whose works have been eagerly embraced and appropriated and have had catalytic impact on modern Chinese cultural life.

Acclaimed playwright Terrence McNally's works are characterized by such diversity that critics have sometimes had difficulty identifying the pattern in his carpet. To redress this problem, In Muse of Fire, Raymond-Jean Frontain has collected McNally's most illuminating meditations on the need of the playwright to first change hearts in order to change minds and thereby foster a more compassionate community. When read together, these various meditations demonstrate the profound ways in which McNally himself functioned as a member of the theater community-as strikingly original dramatic voice, as generous collaborator, and even as the author of eloquent memorials. These pieces were originally written to be delivered on both highly formal occasions (academic commencement exercises, award ceremonies, memorial services) and as off-the-cuff comments at highly informal gatherings, like a playwriting workshop at the New School. They reveal a man who saw theater not as the vehicle for abstract ideas or the platform for political statements, but as the exercise of our shared humanity. "Theatre is collaborative, but life is collaborative," McNally says. "Art is important to remind us that we're not alone, and this is a wonderful world and we can make it more wonderful by fully embracing each other. [. . .] I don't know why it's so hard to remind ourselves sometimes, but thank God we've had great artists who don't let us forget. And thank the audiences who support them because I think that those artists' true mission has been to bring the barriers down, break them down; not build walls, but tear them down."

The concept of the public sphere, as first outlined by German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, refers to the right of all citizens to engage in debate on public issues on equal terms. In this book, Christopher B. Balme explores theatre's role in this crucial political and social function. He traces its origins and argues that the theatrical public sphere invariably focuses attention on theatre as an institution between the shifting borders of the private and public, reasoned debate and agonistic intervention. Chapters explore this concept in a variety of contexts, including the debates that led to the closure of British theatres in 1642, theatre's use of media, controversies surrounding race, religion and blasphemy, and theatre's place in a new age of globalised aesthetics. Balme concludes by addressing the relationship of theatre today with the public sphere and whether theatre's transformation into an art form has made it increasingly irrelevant for contemporary society."

Questioning whether the impulse to adapt Shakespeare has changed over time, Lynne Bradley argues for restoring a sense of historicity to the study of adaptation. Bradley compares Nahum Tate's History of King Lear (1681), adaptations by David Garrick in the mid-eighteenth century, and nineteenth-century Shakespeare burlesques to twentieth-century theatrical rewritings of King Lear, and suggests latter-day adaptations should be viewed as a unique genre that allows playwrights to express modern subject positions with regard to their literary heritage while also participating in broader debates about art and society. In identifying and relocating different adaptive gestures within this historical framework, Bradley explores the link between the critical and the creative in the history of Shakespearean adaptation. Focusing on works such as Gordon Bottomley's King Lear's Wife (1913), Edward Bond's Lear (1971), Howard Barker's Seven Lears (1989), and the Women's Theatre Group's Lear's Daughters (1987), Bradley theorizes that modern rewritings of Shakespeare constitute a new type of textual interaction based on a simultaneous double-gesture of collaboration and rejection. She suggests that this new interaction provides constituent groups, such as the feminist collective who wrote Lear's Daughters, a strategy to acknowledge their debt to Shakespeare while writing against the traditional and negative representations of femininity they see reflected in his plays.

A close examination of the representation of criminals in the understudied theatrical genres of the jacara and comedias de valentones. Early Modern Spanish theatre is viewed by many scholars as entertaining propaganda that channelled the emotions and beliefs of the masses into mechanisms for social control. This book questions such an interpretation by examining the portrayal of criminal heroes on stage and public spectacles of law enforcement outside of the playhouse. The book is structured in a way that moves between analyses of theatre, crime, and law enforcement while covering the intersections between these three phenomena. Through examples that range from dancing pimps to brawling kings, this study reveals that the propaganda power of early modern Spanish spectacle has been vastly overstated.

This book focuses on Shine, a musical performance about how energy, humanity, and climate are interrelated. Weaving together climate science and artistic expression, it results in a funny and powerful story spanning 300 million years. The first half is professionally scripted, composed, and choreographed to convey how our use of fossil fuels is impacting our climate. The second half - our future story - is authored by local youth to generate solutions for their city's resilience. In rehearsing the musical, participants themselves embody aspects of climate science and human development. Ultimately, it demonstrates that performance can be a dynamic tool for youth to contribute to their community's resilience. Educators can use this book to guide youth in creative expression based on (or inspired by) Shine. Included are the script, links to the music and video of the performance, materials for building curricula, interviews with collaborators, and lessons learned along Shine's year-long international tour.

This book explores an important moment in Italian women's theatre and cultural history: plays written for all-women casts between 1946 and the mid-1960s, authored for the most part by women and performed exclusively by women. Because they featured only female roles, they concentrated on aspects of specifically women's experience, be it their spirituality, their future lives as wives and mothers, their present lives as workers or students, or their relationships with friends, sisters and mothers. Most often performed in a Catholic environment, they were meant to both entertain and educate, reflecting the specific issues that both performers and spectators had to confront in the years between the end of the war and the beginning of the economic miracle. Drawing on material never before researched, Educational Theatre for Women in Post-World War II Italy: A Stage of Their Own recovers the life and works of forgotten women playwrights while also discussing the role models that educational theatre offered to the young Italian women coming of age in the post-war years.

This book marks a significant methodological shift in studies of black British women's theatre: it looks beyond published plays to the wealth of material held in archives of various kinds, from national repositories and themed collections to individuals' personal papers. It finds there a cache of unpublished manuscripts and production recordings distinctive for their non-naturalistic aesthetics. Close analysis of selected works identifies this as an intersectional feminist creative practice. Chapters focus on five theatre companies and artists, spanning several decades: Theatre of Black Women (1982-1988), co-founded by Booker Prize-winning writer Bernardine Evaristo; Munirah Theatre Company (1983-1991); Black Mime Theatre Women's Troop (1990-1992); Zindika; and SuAndi. The book concludes by reflecting on the politics of representation, with reference to popular postmillennial playwright debbie tucker green. Drawing on new interviews with the playwrights/practitioners and their peers, this book assembles a rich, interconnected, and occasionally corrective history of black British women's creativity. By reproducing 22 facsimile images of flyers, production programmes, photographs and other ephemera, Black British Women's Theatre: Intersectionality, Archives, Aesthetics not only articulates a hidden history but allows its readers their own encounter with the fragile record of this vibrant past.

Charlotte Cushman, one of the great actors of 19th century American theatre, was a lesbian who kept her identity hidden by focusing her career on male characters (Romeo, Claude Melnotte, Wolsey), but also on strong and passionate women (Lady Macbeth, Bianca in Fazio, and Queen Katherine in Henry VIII). This is the first book-length biography of Cushman, covering both her personal and professional lives. Part One is a biography; Part Two is a performance history listing all of Cushman's known performances, often with a description of her role and critical commentary by the author.

The 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.