This is the first full-length study to focus on the staging of Samuel Beckett's drama in Ireland and Northern Ireland. Beckett's relationship with his native land was a complex one, but the importance of his drama as a creative force both historically and in contemporary practice in Ireland and Northern Ireland cannot be underestimated. Drawing on previously unpublished archival materials and re-examining familiar narratives, this volume traces the history of Beckett's drama at Dublin's Abbey and Gate Theatres as well as bringing to light unexamined and little-known productions such as those performed in the Irish language, Druid Theatre Company's productions, and those of Dublin's Focus Theatre. Leading scholars in Beckett studies and in Irish drama, including Anna McMullan and Anthony Roche, and renowned interpreters of Beckett's dramatic work such as Barry McGovern, explore Beckett's drama within the context of Irish creative theatrical practice and heritage, and analyse its legacies. As with its companion volume, Staging Beckett in Great Britain, production analyses are underpinned by a consideration of the political, economic and cultural contexts. Readers are invited to experience Beckett's drama as resonating in new ways, through theatre practice, against the complex and connected histories of Ireland, north and south.

The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance Historiography sets the agenda for inclusive and wide-ranging approaches to writing history, embracing the diverse perspectives of the twenty-first century and Critical Media History. Written by an international team of authors whose expertise spans a multitude of historical periods and cultures, this collection of fascinating essays poses the central question: "what is specific to the historiography of the performative?" The study of theatre, in conjunction with the wider sphere of performance, involves an array of multi-faceted methods for collecting evidence, interpreting sources, and creating meaning. Reflecting on issues of recording - from early modern musical scores, through VHS-technology to latest digital procedures - and on what is missing from records or oblique in practices, the contributors convey how theatre and performance history is integral to social and cultural relations. This expertly curated collection repositions theatre and performance history and is essential reading for Theatre and Performance Studies students or those interested in social and cultural history more generally.

Frantic Assembly have had a powerful and continuing influence on the popularisation of devising practices in contemporary theatre-making. Their work blends brave and bold physical theatre with exciting new writing, and they have collaborated with some of the leading theatre-makers in the UK. The company's impact reaches throughout the world, particularly through their extensive workshop and education programmes, as well as their individual and collective impact as movement directors on landmark, internationally successful productions such as Black Watch and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. This volume reveals the background to, and work of, a major influence on twentieth and twenty-first century performance. Frantic Assembly is the first book to combine: an overview of the history of the company since its foundation in 1994 an analysis of the key ideas underpinning the company's work a critical commentary on two key productions - Hymns by Chris O'Connell (1999) and Stockholm by Bryony Lavery (2007) a detailed description of a Frantic Assembly workshop, offering an introduction to how the company works. As a first step towards critical understanding, and as an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners offer unbeatable value for today's student.

While many things about Shakespeare's life are unknown, certainly, like everyone else, he had a family. This book gathers into a single source as much information as possible concerning Shakespeare's immediate family, from his grandfathers on the maternal and paternal sides to his granddaughter, the last member of his direct family line. But readers may ask, to what extent did the relationships in the plays reflect the actual familial structures of Shakespeare's day? To what extent did Shakespeare experience personally the familial dynamics about which he wrote so eloquently? And to what extent were Shakespeare's own family experiences typical or atypical of other Elizabethan or Jacobean families? These questions can be addressed because more is known of Shakespeare's family than of the families of any of his fellow writers and actors. For several generations members of Shakespeare's family were important local figures in and around Stratford-upon-Avon, and, fortunately, from the Middle Ages until the present day, Stratford-upon-Avon has been one of the best-documented towns in England. While many things about Shakespeare's life are unknown, certainly, like everyone else, he had a family. This book gathers into a single source as much information as possible concerning Shakespeare's immediate family, from his grandfathers on the maternal and paternal sides to his granddaughter, the last member of his direct family line. But readers may ask, to what extent did the relationships in the plays reflect the actual familial structures of Shakespeare's day? To what extent did Shakespeare experience personally the familial dynamics about which he wrote so eloquently? And to what extent were Shakespeare's own family experiences typical or atypical of other Elizabethan or Jacobean families? These questions can be addressed because more is known of Shakespeare's family than of the families of any of his fellow writers and actors. For several generations, members of Shakespeare's family were important local figures in and around Stratford-upon-Avon, and, fortunately, from the Middle Ages until the present day Stratford-upon-Avon has been one of the best-documented towns in England. In vivid detail, Pogue provides an overview of the various members of Shakespeare's family and, where possible, draws conclusions concerning Shakespeare's relationships with his various family members. Further, the author notes to what extent Shakespeare's family experiences were typical or atypical of the time, and includes at the end of each chapter a discussion of scenes from Shakespeare's plays presenting the relevant familial relationship, juxtaposing the relational scenes he wrote with what we know of his own experience. Such a comparison impresses us once again not just with his skill at holding the mirror up to the nature of his time, but with the imaginative insight into humanity that lay at the heart of his dramatic genius.

This book explores the way in which doubling takes place in several novels, films, and dramas, primarily focusing on modern drama and exploring how five Greek myths - Oedipus, Narcissus, Dionysus, Orestes, and Demeter - inform the literature. Taking a psychological/mythical approach, this book explores the inner divisions that lead to boundary loss and the search for the self that may lead to boundaries found. The contention of the book is that the oedipal search for self has been replaced in modern literature by individuals caught up in a narcissistic culture. Katherine H. Burkman explores plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Henrik Ibsen, Eugene O'Neill, Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, David Mamet, Sam Shepard, Marsha Norman, and Will Eno.

In 1991, Boyz N the Hood made history as an important film text and the impetus for a critical national conversation about American urban life in African American communities, especially for young urban black males. Boyz N the Hood: Shifting Hollywood Terrain is an interdisciplinary examination of this iconic film and its impact in cinematic history and American culture. This interdisciplinary approach provides an in-depth critical perspective of Boyz N the Hood as the embodiment of the blues: how Boyz intimates a world beyond the symbolic world Singleton posits, how its fictive stance pivots to a constituent truth in the real world. Boyz speaks from the first person perspective on the state of being "invisible." Through a subjective narrative point of view, Singleton interrogates the veracity of this claim regarding invisibility and provides deep insight into this social reality. This book is as much about the filmmaker as it is about the film. It explores John Singleton's cinematic voice and helps explicate his propensity for a type of folk element in his work (the oral tradition and lore). In addition, this text features critical perspectives from the filmmaker himself and other central figures attached to the production, including a first-hand account of production behind the scenes by Steve Nicolaides, Boyz's producer. The text includes Singleton's original screenplay and a range of critical articles and initial movie reviews.

Theatre and Performance in East Africa looks at indigenous performances to unearth the aesthetic principles, sensibilities and critical framework that underpin African performance and theatre. The book develops new paradigms for thinking about African performance in general through the construction of a critical framework that addresses questions concerning performance particularities and coherences, challenging previous understandings. To this end, it establishes a common critical and theoretical framework for indigenous performance using case studies from East Africa that are also reflected elsewhere in the continent. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of theatre and performance, especially those with an interest in the close relationship between theatre and performance with culture.

Shakespeare and Adaptation Theory reconsiders, after 20 years of intense critical and creative activity, the theory and practice of adapting Shakespeare to different genres and media. Organized around clusters of key metaphors, the book explicates the principal theories informing the field of Shakespearean adaptation and surveys the growing field of case studies by Shakespeare scholars. Each chapter also looks anew at a specific Shakespeare play from the perspective of a prevailing set of theories and metaphors. Having identified the key critics responsible for developing these metaphors and for framing the discussion in this way, Iyengar moves on to analyze afresh the implications of these critical frames for adaptation studies as a whole and for particular Shakespeare plays. Focusing each chapter around a different play, the book contrasts comic, tragic, and tragicomic modes in Shakespeare's oeuvre and within the major genres of adaptation (e.g., film, stage-production, novel and digital media). Each chapter seasons its theoretical discussions with a lively sprinkling of allusions to Shakespeare - ranging from TikTok to tissue-boxes, from folios and fine arts to fan work. To conclude each chapter, the author provides a case-study of three or four significant and interesting adaptations from different genres or media. A glossary of terms compiled by Philip Gilreath and the author completes the book.

This book is a feminist reading of the history of gender performance and construction of the female role players, onnagata, of the Kabuki theater. It is not limited to a "theater arts" focus, rather it is a mapping and close analysis of transformative genders through several historical periods in Japan (the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries). In particular, the work focuses on undoing of binary genders, the sensual ambiguity of boy-ness, youth, and female-likeness and the cultural development of the aesthetics of eroticism, nostalgia, and cruelty based in female-like transformative gender acts. The work is also a visual cultures study as it draws not only on literary sources but also prints, photographs, film, and video documentation.

"King Lear" is believed by many feminists to be irretrievably sexist. Through detailed line readings supported by a wealth of critical commentary, "Re-Visioning Lear's Daughters" reconceives Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia as full characters, not stereotypes of good and evil. These new feminist interpretations are tested with specific renderings, placing the reader in precise theatrical moments. Through multiple representations, this unique approach demonstrates the elasticity of Shakespeare's text.

This volume offers a concise guide to the teaching and philosophy of one of the most significant figures in twentieth century actor training. Jacques Lecoq's influence on the theatre of the latter half of the twentieth century cannot be overestimated. Now reissued Jacques Lecoq is the first book to combine: an historical introduction to his life and the context in which he worked an analysis of his teaching methods and principles of body work, movement, creativity, and contemporary theatre detailed studies of the work of Theatre de Complicite and Mummenschanz practical exercises demonstrating Lecoq's distinctive approach to actor training.

Bram Stoker worked in the theatre for most of his adult life, as theatre reviewer in Dublin in the 1870s and as business manager at London's Royal Lyceum Theatre in the final two decades of the 19th century. Despite this, critical attention to the influence of the stage on Stoker's writing has been sparse. Bram Stoker, Dracula and the Victorian Gothic Stage addresses this lacuna, examining how Stoker's fictions respond to and engage with Victorian theatre's melodramatic climate and, in particular, to supernatural plays, Gothic melodramas and Shakespearean productions that Henry Irving and Ellen Terry performed at the Lyceum. Bram Stoker, Dracula and the Victorian Gothic Stage locates the writer between stage and page. It reconsiders his literary relationships with key actors, and challenges the biographical assumption that Henry Irving provided the model for the figure of Count Dracula.

This volume brings together performance texts from nine productions by the experimental theatre company Lightwork and one playtext from Lightwork's precursor company Academy Productions, presented between 1997 and 2011. Lightwork specialized in collaboratively created and multimedia performance. The company also experimented with several performance forms that emerged at the turn of the twenty-first century, including verbatim and site-specific approaches. Because of this, the texts cover a range of forms and formats - scripted plays such as Here's What I Did With My Body One Day by Dan Rebellato and Blavatsky by Clare Bayley; multimedia adaptations of classical myths such as Back At You (based on the story of Echo and Narcissus) and Once I was Dead (based on the story of Daedalus and Icarus); site-specific experiments such as The Good Actor, which took place in various spaces across Hoxton Hall, a Victorian theatre in London's East End; and the use of verbatim witness testimony from the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, War Crimes section in Sarajevo Story. The defining aspect of the Lightwork aesthetic is that multimedia and scenographic experimentation does not come at the expense of the mainstays of dramatic theatre: character, story and emotional resonance. What lies at the heart of the Lightwork shows you will encounter here are human-scale stories: relationships between lovers or family members, confrontations with the past (both as personal and as cultural history) and, in many cases, matters of life or death that entail wrestling with causality, consequence and fate. The twelve-year span covered by this work reflects a period in British performance practice when the interrelation of page and stage, process and production, text and 'non-text', were being radically rethought. In the collaborative and processual theatre making that Lightwork exemplifies, the text may be one element among many and is more likely to be the outcome of the process than its precursor. How do such playtexts (or performance texts) differ from those that are conceived and scripted by a single desk-based playwright in advance of the rehearsal? What gaps are left when the work of many hands is channelled through the pen (or keyboard) of one among them? The texts featured in this volume represent a number of answers to these questions about the nature of writing for the stage. The performance texts are each preceded (and sometime followed) by short essays written by some of the many people who have been involved in productions by Lightwork, including established academics and theatre practitioners: David Annen, Clare Bayley, Gregg Fisher, Sarah Gorman, Andy Lavender, Aneta Mancewicz, Bella Merlin, Alex Mermikides, Jo Parker, Dan Rebellato, and Ayse Tashkiran. Their contributions reflect the collaborative nature of the company and the respect that it accorded the various disciplinary perspectives that make up a theatre company. There are sections on scenography, sound design and technical operation, as well as on those crafts that might more usually draw attention: directing, writing and acting. These contributions offer an insight into the collaborative, multi-layered and sometimes messy business of their creation from an individual maker's or spectator's point of view. This book will be invaluable for those who are making, studying or researching performance in the twenty-first century, and an essential resource for the rehearsal room. Primary readership will include researchers, educators, students and practitioners interested in creative practice, theatre-making, integrated design and performance, and contemporary theatre. It will be an important resource for those on theatre and performance courses at all levels, as well as acting, theatre and performance design, dramaturgy and direction courses, creative writing courses and media arts programmes. It will have appeal for general readers interested in new texts and processes in theatre and performance, and individual texts are likely to be of interest to specialist researchers working in related fields - for example performance and the occult (Blavatsky), performance and conflict (Sarajevo Story).

Since it was founded in 1991, British theatre company Stan's Cafe has garnered an international reputation for artistic innovation, and prolific, eclectic performance projects. Their work has toured nationally and internationally, with 2003's Of All The People In All The World having been performed in over fifty cities around the world. Embracing site-specific, immersive, durational, non-text-based as well as scripted work, Stan's Cafe's portfolio defies simple categorization. Running through all their work however is a collaborative devising process that champions a playful experimentation with form. Devising Theatre with Stan's Cafe reveals and reflects on their theatre-making process, providing an illuminating and accessible account of their work and the approaches, techniques and philosophies which underpin and inspire it. Co-authored by artistic director James Yarker and Dr Mark Crossley, the book is places their work within wider context of contemporary theatre and is the perfect companion to anyone looking to make their own original theatre or performance work. For theatre students, fans and theatre-makers, Devising Theatre with Stan's Cafe is an inspiring account and practical guide to contemporary performance practice.

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 book focuses on the re-evaluation of four Maxwell Anderson plays within the context of the emergence of the New Woman and the perception of a marriage crisis in the United States during the 1920s. The four plays under consideration are White Desert (1923), Sea-Wife (1924), Saturday's Children (1927), and Gypsy (1929). These plays are largely forgotten and, even when the titles appear in Anderson scholarship, coverage has tended to be cursory and dismissive. This work represents a fresh approach and re-assessment of an American playwright who bore a significant impact on the drama of his time, serving not only to place Anderson's work more effectively within the context of American theatre during the 1920s, but also to bridge the gap between his work and the marriage-related plays of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Dance on its Own Terms: Histories and Methodologies anthologizes a wide range of subjects examined from dance-centered methodologies: modes of research that are emergent, based in relevant systems of movement analysis, use primary sources, and rely on critical, informed observation of movement. The anthology fills a gap in current scholarship by emphasizing dance history and core disciplinary knowledge rather than theories imported from disciplines outside dance. Individual chapters serve as case studies that are further organized into three categories of significant dance activity: performance and reconstruction, pedagogy and choreographic process, and notational and other written forms that analyze and document dance. The breadth of the content reflects the richness and vibrancy of the dance field; each deeply informed examination serves as a window opening onto the larger world of dance. Conceptually, each chapter also raises concerns and questions that point to broadly inclusive methodological applications. Engaging and insightful, Dance on its Own Terms represents a major contribution to research on dance.

The Sixth Edition employs a "read-explore-do" concept, fully integrating the additional case studies posted on the companion website with the background information provided in the book, and the exercises listed at the end of the chapter. Each chapter contains a learning module aligned with its content, designed to help the reader better grasp the theories, principles, terms, and practices related to each topic area. Contains chapter summaries, key terms, key concepts, chapter learning maps, and For Further Study sections.

In the first conceptual overview of current practices and debates in theatre education, Helen Nicholson explores the contribution that professional theatre practitioners make to the education of young people. She maps the environments in which theatre and learning meet, and looks at how the educational concerns and artistic inventiveness of people living in different times and places have inflected theatre and changed education. This inspiring book tells the story of ground-breaking developments of twentieth century theatre education, and explores the ways in which current theatre practitioners have upheld these radical traditions. Helen Nicholson investigates the effects on theatre education of a newly globalised economy, and asks pertinent questions such as: how can theatre education continue to encourage debates about social justice in the political landscape of the twenty-first century? How do the practices, policies and principles of theatre speak to different generations? Offering diverse illustrations of practice from around the world, Helen Nicholson draws on much personal experience and expert knowledge to demonstrate how cutting edge performance practices continue to engage young people today.

In the 1890s, when Henry James tried to achieve fame and financial security by turning to the theater, he was unceremoniously booed off the stage. Since the 1940s and '50s his fiction has nevertheless been consistently interpreted by composers and film directors, culminating in the recent film adaptations of his novels by Merchant-Ivory, Jane Campion, and Iain Softley. Henry James on Stage and Screen traces this historical development.

This volume brings a critical lens to dance and culture within North East India. Through case studies, firsthand accounts, and interviews, it explores unique folk dances of Indigenous communities of North East India that reflect diverse journeys, lifestyles, and connections within their ethnic groups, marking almost every ritual and festival.

First, do no harm. How do we defend the "truth" when no one agrees what it is and many have reason to undermine it? Very freely adapting Professor Bernhardi by Arthur Schnitzler, Robert Icke's gripping moral thriller uses the lens of medical ethics to examine urgent questions of faith, belief, and scientific rationality. After a critically acclaimed run at London's Almeida Theatre, The Doctor transferred to the West End in September 2022. This revised and updated edition was published to coincide with the new production.

Visuality in the theater is as yet rarely a subject of theoretical investigation. This book presents an exploration of this under-explored terrain, demonstrating the use of new theoretical insights into vision and visuality for the analysis of theater and performance - and simultaneously shows theater and performance to be an excellent 'theoretical object' for exploring the cultural, historical and embodied character of visuality.