Through a contemporary Gothic lens, the book explores theatre theories, processes and practices that explore; the impacts of continuing drought and natural disaster, the conflicts concerning resource extraction and mining and current political debates focussed on climate change denial. While these issues can be argued from various political and economic platforms, theatrical investigations as discussed here suggest that scholars and theatre makers are becoming empowered to dramaturgically explore the ecological challenges we face now and may face in the future. In doing so the book proposes that theatre can engage in not only climate change analysis and discussion but can develop climate literacies in a broader socio-cultural context.

Bertolt Brecht's reputation as a flawed, irrelevant or difficult thinker for the theatre can often go before him to such an extent that we run the risk of forgetting the achievements that made him and his company, the Berliner Ensemble, famous around the world. David Barnett examines both Brecht the theorist and Brecht the practitioner to reveal the complementary relationship between the two.This book aims to sensitize the reader to the approaches Brecht took to the world and the stage with a view to revealing just how carefully he thought about and realized his vision of a politicized, interventionist theatre. What emerges is a nuanced understanding of his concepts, his work with actors and his approaches to directing. The reader is encouraged to engage with Brecht's method that sought to 'make theatre politically' in order to locate the innovations he introduced into his stagecraft. There are many examples given of how Brecht's ideas can be staged, and the final chapter takes two very different plays and asks how a Brechtian approach can enliven and illuminate their production. Ultimately, the book invites readers, students and theatre-makers to discover new ways of apprehending and making use of Brecht.

Spanning across playwrights, performers, critics, and theatrical commemorations, this book raises controversy about familiar figures and brings attention to neglected ones. Thomas F. Connolly opens his book with a provocative essay subtitled "Notional Culture." The first sentence: "Postmodernism makes others of us all," introduces Connolly's confrontational approach to the study of culture. The introduction takes readers from Montaigne's "Cannibals" to Madison Avenue "gangsta" wannabes, while explicating the impulses behind formal classification that have driven intellectual pursuits from the Early Modern Period through postmodernism. The chapter on Eugene O'Neill argues that his colossal status as the "greatest American playwright" has been imposed upon him and reduces his stature as a world playwright. Connolly is the major scholar of American drama critics and the essay on John Mason Brown has been called "a fascinating and important piece" by leading theatre historian David Savran. Other chapters on major European performers: Noel Coward, Micheal Mac Liammoir, Alexander Moissi and Viennese theatrical culture, offer analysis of self-creation, the superficiality of national identity, and the ways governments use performers. Genus Envy is an important book for all theatre, cultural studies, and literature collections.

In the context of the postdigital age, where technology is increasingly part of our social and political world, Avatars, Activism and Postdigital Performance traces how identity can be created, developed, hijacked, manipulated, sabotaged and explored through performance in postdigital cultures. Considering how technology is reshaping performance, this timely collection reveals how we engage in performance practices through expanded notions of intermediality, knotted networks and layering. This book examines the artist as activist and producer of avatars, and how digital doubles, artificial intelligence and semi-automated politics are problematizing and expanding our discussions of identity. Using a range of examples in theatre, film and internet-based performance practices, chapters examine the uncertain boundaries of networked 'informational selves' in mediatized cultures, the impacts of machine algorithms, apps and the consequences of digital legacies. Case studies include James Cameron's Avatar, Blast Theory's Karen, Ontroerend Goed's A Game of You, Randy Rainbow's online videos, Sisters Grimm's Calpurnia Descending, Dead Centre's Lippy and Chekhov's First Play and Jo Scott's practice-as-research in 'place-mixing'. This is an incisive study for scholars, students and practitioners interested in the wider conversations around identity-formation in postdigital cultures.

How does the entrance of a character on the tragic stage affect their visibility and presence? Beginning with the court culture of the seventeenth century and ending with Nietzsche's Dionysian theater, this monograph explores specific modes of entering the stage and the conditions that make them successful-or cause them to fail. The study argues that tragic entrances ultimately always remain incomplete; that the step figures take into visibility invariably remains precarious. Through close readings of texts by Racine, Goethe, and Kleist, among others, it shows that entrances promise both triumph and tragic exposure; though they appear to be expressions of sovereignty, they are always simultaneously threatened by failure or annihilation. With this analysis, the book thus opens up possibilities for a new theory of dramatic form, one that begins not with the plot itself but with the stage entrance that structures how characters appear and thus determines how the plot advances. By reflecting on acts of entering, this book addresses not only scholars of literature, theater, media, and art but anyone concerned with what it means to appear and be present.

This book draws on the author's experience as a storyteller, drama practitioner and researcher, to articulate an emerging dialogic approach to storytelling in participatory arts, educational, mental health, youth theatre, and youth work contexts. It argues that oral storytelling offers a rich and much-needed channel for intergenerational dialogue with young people. The book keeps theory firmly tethered to practice. Section 1, 'Storyknowing', traces the history of oral storytelling practice with adolescents across diverse contexts, and brings into clear focus the particular nature of the storytelling exchange and narrative knowledge. Section 2, 'Telling Stories', introduces readers to some of the key challenges and possibilities of dialogic storytelling by reflecting on stories from the author's own arts-based practice research with adolescents, illustrating these with young people's artistic responses to stories. Finally, section 3, 'Story Gaps', conceptualises dialogic storytelling by exploring three different 'gaps': the gap between storyteller and listener, the gaps in the story, and the gaps which storytellers can open up within institutions. The book includes chapters taking a special focus on storytelling in schools and in mental health settings, as well as guided reflections for readers to relate the issues raised to their own practice.

This book analyses the partnership between applied theatre and sexual health communication in a theatre-making project in Nyanga, a township in South Africa. By examining the bridges and schisms between the two fields as they come together in the project, an alternative way of approaching sexual health communication is advocated. This alternative considers what it is that applied theatre does, and could become, in this context. Moments of value which lie around the margins of the practice emerge as opportunities that can be overlooked. These somewhat ephemeral, intangible moments, which appear on the edges, are described as 'apertures of possibility' and occur when one takes a step back and realises something unnoticed in the moment. This book offers an invitation to pause and notice the seemingly insignificant moments that often occurs tangentially to the practice. The book also calls for more outcry about sexual health and sexual violence, arguing for theatre-making as a route to multitudes of voices, nuanced understandings, and diverse spaces in which discussions of sexuality and sexual health are shared, felt, and experienced.

How does theatre shape the body and perceptions of it? How do bodies on stage challenge audience assumptions about material evidence and the truth? Theory for Theatre Studies: Bodies responds to these questions by examining how theatre participates in and informs theories of the body in performance, race, queer, disability, trans, gender, and new media studies. Throughout the 20th century, theories of the body have shifted from understanding the body as irrefutable material evidence of race, sex, and gender, to a social construction constituted in language. In the same period, theatre has struggled with representing ideas through live bodies while calling into question assumptions about the body. This volume demonstrates how theatre contributes to understanding the historical, contemporary and burgeoning theories of the body. It explores how theories of the body inform debates about labor conditions and spatial configurations. Theatre allows performers to shift an audience's understandings of the shape of the bodies on stage, possibly producing a reflexive dynamic for consideration of bodies offstage as well. In addition, casting choices in the theatre, most recently and popularly in Hamilton, question how certain bodies are "cast" in social, historical, and philosophical roles. Through an analysis of contemporary case studies, including The Balcony, Angels in America, and Father Comes Home from the Wars, this volume examines how the theatre theorizes bodies. Online resources are also available to accompany this book.

Dorothy Parker holds a place in history as one of New York's most beloved writers. Now, for the first time in nearly a century, the public is invited to enjoy Mrs. Parker's sharp wit and biting commentary on the Jazz Age hits and flops in this first-ever published collection of her groundbreaking Broadway reviews.Starting when she was twenty-four at Vanity Fair as New York's only female theatre critic, Mrs. Parker reviewed some of the biggest names of the era: the Barrymores, George M. Cohan, W.C. Fields, Helen Hayes, Al Jolson, Eugene O'Neil, Will Rogers, and the Ziegfeld Follies. Her words of praise--and contempt--for the dramas, comedies, musicals, and revues are just as fresh and funny today as they were in the age of speakeasies and bathtub gin. Annotated with a notes section by Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, president of the Dorothy Parker Society, the volume shares Parker's outspoken opinions of a great era of live theatre in America, from a time before radio, talking pictures, and television decimated attendance. Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918-1923 provides a fascinating glimpse of Broadway in its Golden Era and literary life in New York through the eyes of a renowned theatre critic.

Irish theatre and its histories appear to be dominated by men and their actions. This book's socially and culturally contextualized analysis of performance over the last two decades, however reveals masculinities that are anything but hegemonic, played out in theatres and other arenas of performance all over Ireland.

Performing Southeast Asia: Performance, Politics and the Contemporary is an important reconsideration of the histories and practices of theatre and performance in a fluid and dynamic region that is also experiencing an overarching politics of complexity, precarity and populist authoritarian tendencies. In a substantial introductory essay and essays by leading scholars, activists and practitioners working inside the region, the book explores fundamental questions for the arts. The book asks how theatre contributes to and/or addresses the political condition in the contemporary moment, how does it represent the complexity of experiences in peoples' daily lives and how does theatre engage in forms of political activism and enable a diversity of voices to flourish. The book shows how, in an age of increasingly violent politics, political institutions become sites for bad actors and propaganda. Forces of biopolitics, neo-liberalism and religious and ethnic nationalism intersect in unpredictable ways with decolonial practices - all of which the book argues are forces that define the contemporary moment. Indeed, by putting the focus on contemporary politics in the region alongside the diversity of practices in contemporary theatre, we see a substantial reformation of the idea of the contemporary moment, not as a cosmopolitan and elite artistic practice but as a multivalent agent of change in both aesthetic and political terms. With its focus on community activism and the creative possibilities of the performing arts the region, Performing Southeast Asia, is a timely intervention that brings us to a new understanding of how contemporary Southeast Asia has become a site of contest, struggle and reinvention of the relations between the arts and society. Peter Eckersall The Graduate Center City University of New York Performing Southeast Asia - with chapters concerned with how regional theatres seek contextually-grounded, yet post-national(istic) forms; how history and tradition shape but do not hold down contemporary theatre; and how, in the editors' words, such artistic encounters could result in theatres 'that do not merely attend to matters of cultural heritage, tradition or history, but instead engage overtly with theatre and performance in the contemporary' - contributes to the possibility of understanding what options for an artistically transubstantiated now-ness may be: to the possibility, that is, of what might be called a 'Present-Tense Theatre'. C. J. W.-L. Wee Professor of English Nanyang Technological University Performing Southeast Asia examines contemporary performance practices and their relationship with politics and governance in Southeast Asia in the twenty-first century. In a region haunted historically by strongman politics, authoritarianism and militarism, religious tension and ethnic strife, the chapters reveal how contemporary theatre and performances in the present reflect yet challenge dominant socio-political discourses. The authors analyse works of political commitment and conviction, created and performed by Southeast Asian artists, as modes and platforms of reaction and resistance to the shifting political climates that inform contemporary life in urban Southeast Asia. The discussions center on issues of state hegemonies and biopolitics, finance and sponsorship, social liberalism and conservatism, the relevance of history and tradition, and globalisation and cultural practice. These diverse yet related concerns converge on an examination of the efficacies of theatre and performance as means of political intervention and transformation that point to alternative embodiments of political consciousness through which artists propose critical options for rethinking the state, citizenship, identity and belonging in a time of seismic socio-political change. The editors also reframe an understanding of 'the contemporary' not simply as a temporal adjective but, in the context of present Southeast Asia, as a geopolitical condition that shapes artistic and performance practices.

Theatre is at its best when it is disobedient, when it argues back to society. But what enables it to achieve this impact? What makes it a force to be reckoned with? What are the principles and the tools of the trade that shape it to be effective, powerful and resonant? Drawing from both theory and practice, and informed by conversations with recognized practitioners from across the UK, this book provides answers and makes an impassioned call for artists to reimagine, question and disrupt. Divided into two parts, 'In the World' and 'In the Room', the book presents a rounded picture of the possibilities of a 'disobedient' culture and includes many games and exercises for creative practitioners. In Part One the author offers a lexicon defining the spirit and impulse which characterises disobedient theatre: he describes the principles, the strategies, and the voice of the artist, before suggesting ways to survive as a creative practitioner. Part Two illustrates how these principles may be worked out in practice when creating new work, with the hands-on approaches supplemented by games and exercises to assist in generating material. Disobedient Theatre is for all those who have an interest in what makes theatre powerful, disturbing or even life-changing. It is a book for artists, thinkers, activists and all who believe in the function of art to offer new possibilities and to change and inform the evolution of society.

The book offers a compelling combination of analyis and detailed description of aesthetic projects with young refugee arrivals in Australia. In it the authors present a framework that contextualises the intersections of refugee studies, resilience and trauma, and theatre and arts-based practice, setting out a context for understanding and valuing the complexity of drama in this growing area of applied theatre. "Applied Theatre: Resettlement" includes rich analysis of three aesthetic case studies in Primary, Secondary and Further Education contexts with young refugees. The case studies provide a unique insight into the different age specific needs of newly arrived young people. The authors detail how each group and educational context shaped diverse drama and aesthetic responses: the Primary school case study uses process drama as a method to enhance language acquisition and develop intercultural literacy; the Secondary school project focuses on Forum Theatre and peer teaching with young people as a means of enhancing language confidence and creating opportunities for cultural competency in the school community, and the further education case study explores work with unaccompanied minors and employs integrated multi art forms (poetry, art, drama, digital arts, clay sculptures and voice work) to increase confidence in language acquisition and explore different forms of expression and communication about the transition process. Through its careful framing of practice to speak to concerns of power, process, representation and ethics, the authors ensure the studies have an international relevance beyond their immediate context. "Drama, Refugees and Resilience" contributes to new professional knowledge building in the fields of applied theatre and refugee studies about the efficacy of drama practice in enhancing language acquisition, cultural settlement and pedagogy with newly arrived refugee young people.

Four hundred years after Shakespeare's death, it is difficult to imagine a time when he was not considered a genius. But those 400 years have seen his plays banished and bowdlerized, faked and forged, traded and translated, re-mixed and re-cast. Shakespeare's story is not one of a steady rise to fame; it is a tale of set-backs and sea-changes that have made him the cultural icon he is today. This revealing new book accompanies an innovative exhibition at the British Library that will take readers on a journey through more than 400 years of performance. It will focus on ten moments in history that have changed the way we see Shakespeare, from the very first production of Hamlet to a digital-age deconstruction. Each performance holds up a mirror to the era in which it was performed. The first stage appearance by a woman in 1660 and a black actor playing Othello in 1825 were landmarks for society as well as for Shakespeare's reputation. The book will also explore productions as diverse as Peter Brook's legendary A Midsummer Night's Dream, Mark Rylance's 'Original Practices' Twelfth Night, and a Shakespeare forgery staged at Drury Lane in 1796, among many others.Over 100 illustrations include the only surviving playscript in Shakespeare's hand, an authentic Shakespeare signature, and rare printed editions including the First Folio. These - and other treasures from the British Library's manuscript and rare book collections - will feature alongside film stills, costumes, paintings and production photographs.In this book ten leading experts take a fresh look at Shakespeare, reminding us that the playwright's iconic status has been constructed over the centuries in a process that continues across the world today.

In the memoirs of no other contemporary theater personality (i.e., William Dunlap, Edward Cape Everard, James Fennell, William Wood), has a figure quite like John Durang emerged. His eagerness in grasping opportunities, expanding his skills, shaping his career, and establishing a home are unique, not only in themselves, but also in his articulation of these enterprises. Looking at his life through the lens of American national development illuminates the role of the theater in this critical and ongoing process, while also revealing the forms and repertory that shaped this theater. Remarkably few significant biographies are available of American dance and theatrical figures whose lives preceded the twentieth century. A small handful of memoirs by actors of the period fill in a small part of this gap, but memoirs-like John Durang's-need context and connections to be fully appreciated. The role of dance and theater in shaping the young United States is highlighted in this biography. John Durang: Man of the American Stage by Professor Lynn Matluck Brooks serves both general and theater-educated readerships. Interested groups include readers of American studies, dance, and theater.

This book is the first ever transnational theatre study of an African region. Covering nine nations in two volumes, the project covers a hundred years of theatre making across Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Tanzania, and Uganda. This volume focuses on the theatre of the Horn of Africa. The book shows how the theatres of Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia, little known in the outside world, have been among the continent's most politically important, commercially successful, and widely popular; making work almost exclusively in local languages and utilizing hybrid forms that have privileged local cultural modes of production. A History of African Theatre is relevant to all who have interests in African cultures and their relationship to the history and politics of the East African region.

This volume, examining the ways in which Shakespeare's plays are designed for hearers as well as spectators, has been prompted by recent explorations of the auditory dimension of early modern drama by such scholars as Andrew Gurr, Bruce Smith, and James Hirsh. To look at the dynamics of hearing in Shakespeare's plays involves a paradigm shift that changes how we understand virtually everything about them, from the architecture of the buildings, to playing spaces, to blocking, and to larger interpretative issues, including our understanding of character based on players' responses to what they hear, mishear, or refuse to hear. Who Hears in Shakespeare? Auditory Worlds on Stage and Screen is comprised of three sections on Shakespeare's texts and performance history: "The Poetics of Hearing and the Early Modern Stage"; "Metahearing: Hearing, Knowing, and Audiences, Onstage and Off"; and "Transhearing: Hearing, Whispering, Overhearing, and Eavesdropping in Film and Other Media." Chapters by noted scholars explore the complex reactions and interactions of onstage and offstage audiences and show how Shakespearean stagecraft, actualized on stage and adapted on screen, revolves around various situations and conventions of hearing-soliloquies,, asides, avesdropping, overhearing, and stage whispers. In short, Who Hears in Shakespeare? enunciates Shakespeare's nuanced, powerful stagecraft of hearing. The volume ends with Stephen Booth's afterword, his inspiring meditation on hearing that considers Shakespearean "audiences" and their responses to what they hear-or don't hear-in Shakespeare's plays.

Following the ethos and ambition of the Shakespeare NOW series, and harnessing the energy, challenge and vigour of the 'minigraph' form, Shakespeare and I is a provocative appeal and manifesto for a more personal form of criticism. A number of the most exciting and authoritative writers on Shakespeare examine and scrutinise their deepest, most personal and intimate responses to Shakespeare's plays and poems, to ask themselves if and how Shakespeare has made them the person they are. Their responses include autobiographical histories, reflections on their relationship to their professional, institutional or familial roles and meditations on the person-making force of religious or political conviction. A blog at http: //shakespearenowseries.blogspot.com enables both contributors and readers to continue the debate about why Shakespeare keeps us reading and what that means for our lives today. The book aims to inspire readers to think and write about their ever-changing personal relationship with Shakespeare: about how the poems and plays - and writing about them - can reveal or transform our sense of ourselves.