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.

"Temperamental" was code for "homosexual" in the early 1950s, part of a secret language gay men used to communicate. The Temperamentals, Jon Marans' hit off-Broadway play, tells the story of two men--the communist Harry Hay and the Viennese refugee and designer Rudi Gernreich--as they fall in love while building the Mattachine Society, the first gay rights organization in the pre-Stonewall United States. This special edition includes Marans' script and production photos from the off-Broadway production of the play, along with a foreword by actor Michael Urie; an introduction by activist David Mixner; a look at Gernreich's fashion career by journalist Joel Nikolaou; and an afterword on Harry Hay by journalist Michael Bronski.

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.

British theatre from 1900 to 1950 has been subject to radical re-evaluation with plays from the period setting theatres alight and gaining critical acclaim once again; this book explains why, presenting a comprehensive survey of the theatre and how it shaped the work that followed. Rebecca D'Monte examines how the emphasis upon the working class, 'angry' drama from the 1950s has led to the neglect of much of the century's earlier drama, positioning the book as part of the current debate about the relationship between war and culture, the middlebrow, and historiography. In a comprehensive survey of the period, the book considers: - the Edwardian theatre; - the theatre of the First World War, including propaganda and musicals; -the interwar years, the rise of commercial theatre and influence of Modernism; - the theatre of the Second World War and post-war period. Essays from leading scholars Penny Farfan, Steve Nicholson and Claire Cochrane give further critical perspectives on the period's theatre and demonstrate its relevance to the drama of today. For anyone studying 20th-century British Drama this will prove one of the foundational texts.

Contemporary Scenography investigates scenographic concepts, practices and aesthetics in Germany from 1989 to the present. Facing the end of the political divide, the advent of the digital age and the challenges of globalization, German-based designers and scenographers have reacted in a variety of ways to these shifts in the cultural landscape. The edited volume, a compilation of 12 original chapters written in collaboration with acclaimed scenographers, stage designers and distinguished scholars, offers fresh insights and in-depth analyses of current artistic concepts, discourse and innovation in this multifaceted, dynamic field. The book covers a broad spectrum of scenography, including theatre works by Katrin Brack, Bert Neumann, Aleksandar Denic, Klaus Grunberg, Vinge/Muller and Rimini Protokoll, in addition to scenography in museums, exhibitions, social spaces and in various urban contexts. Presenting a range of perspectives, the volume explores the interdisciplinarity of contemporary scenography and its ongoing diversification, raising questions relating to cultural heritage, genre and media specificity, knowledge transfer, local versus global practices, internationalization and cultural exchange. Combined with a set of stimulating examples of scenographic design in action - presented through interviews, artists' statements and case studies - the contributors develop a theoretical framework for understanding scenography as an art practice and discourse.

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.

Set in both Melbourne and New York, 'Soulmates' is a tale of revenge as a best selling expatriate author engineers a scheme to bring her most craven critic undone. In 'Birthrights', Helen's operation prevents her from ever having children, so her sister Claudia bears her a child. Years later, however, Claudia discovers that she and her husband Martin can't conceive - the only baby she will ever bear is Kelly, the child she had for her sister.

Bringing together scholars and researchers in one volume, this study investigates how the thinking of the Ukrainian-Israeli somatic educationalist Moshe Feldenkrais (1904-84) can benefit and reflect upon the creative practices of dance, music and theatre. Since its inception, the Feldenkrais Method has been associated with artistic practice, growing contiguously with performance, cognitive and embodied practices in dance, music, and theatre studies. It promotes awareness of fine motor action for improved levels of action and skill, as well as healing for those who are injured. For creative artists, the Feldenkrais Method enables them to refine and improve their work. This book offers historical, scientific and practical perspectives that develop thinking at the heart of the Method and is divided into three sections: Historical Perspectives on Creative Practice, From Science into Creative Practice and Studies in Creative Practice. All the essays provide insights into self-improvement, training, avoiding injury, history and philosophy of artistic practice, links between scientific and artistic thinking and practical thinking, as well as offering some exercises for students and artistic practitioners looking to improve their understanding of their practice. Ultimately, this book offers a rich development of the legacy and the ongoing relevance of the Feldenkrais Method. We are shown how it is not just a way of thinking about somatic health, embodiment and awareness, but a vital enactivist epistemology for contemporary artistic thought and practice.

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.

Paul Kirby and Adriana Kelder have spent their lives in the theatre. In the late sixties, the couple who would later be called the Bonnie and Clyde of Canadian theater, helped run an alternative newspaper in Montreal. Charges of obscenity and sedition lead to their going on the lam and becoming the only known Canadian fugitives to flee to the U.S. during the Vietnam War.

Reiko Oya explores theatrical expressions of Shakespearean tragedy in Georgian London and the relations between the representative players of the time - David Garrick, John Philip Kemble and his sister Sarah Siddons, and Edmund Kean - and their close circle of friends. The book begins by analysing the tragic emotion that Garrick conveyed through his performance of King Lear, and the responses to it from such critics as Samuel Johnson and Elizabeth Montagu. The second chapter examines the concept of sublimity in Kemble and Siddons??? interpretations of Macbeth. The final chapter studies the disparity between the literary and the theatrical Hamlet in Kean??'s impersonation and William Hazlitt??'s response to it. With subjects ranging from Shakespearean promptbooks to paintings and the poetics of Romanticism, the book offers great insights into the exchange of ideas and inspirations among the cultural luminaries who surrounded the London stage.

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.

Euripides' Medea is one of the most popular Greek tragedies in the contemporary theatre. Numerous modern adaptations see the play as painting a picture of the struggle of the powerless under the powerful, of women against men, of foreigners versus natives. The play has been adapted into colonial and historical contexts to lend its powerful resonances to issues of current import. Black Medea is an anthology of six adaptations of the Euripidean tragedy by contemporary American playwrights that present Medea as a woman of color, combined with interviews, analytical essays and introductions which frame the original and adaptations. Placing six adaptations side by side and interviewing the playwrights in order to gain their insights into their work allows the reader to see how an ancient Greek tragedy has been used by contemporary American artists to frame and understand African American history. Of the six plays present in the volume, three have never before been published and one of the others has been out of print for almost thirty years. Thus the volume makes available to students, scholars and artists a significant body of dramatic work not currently available. Black Medea is an important book for scholars, students, artists and libraries in African American studies, classics, theatre and performance studies, women and gender Studies, adaptation theory and literature. Theatre companies, universities, community theatres, and other producing organizations will also be interested in the volume.

In this sophisticated and compelling introduction to puppet theatre, Penny Francis offers engaging contemporary perspectives on this universal art-form. She provides an account of puppetry's different facets, from its demands and techniques, through its uses and abuses, to its history and philosophy. Now recognized as a valuable and powerful medium used in the making of most forms of theatre and filmed work, those referring to Puppetry will discover something of the roots, dramaturgy, literature and techniques of this visual art form. The book gathers together material from an international selection of sources, bringing puppet theatre to life for the student, practitioner and amateur alike.

"Shakespeare's Theater: A Sourcebook "brings together in one volume the most significant Elizabethan and Jacobean texts on the morality of the theater.
A collection of the most significant Elizabethan and Jacobean texts on the morality of the theater.
Includes attacks on the stage by moralists, defences by actors and playwrights, letters by magistrates, mayors and aldermen of London, and extracts from legislation.
Demonstrates just how heated debates about the theater became in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
A general introduction and short prefaces to each piece situate the writers and debates in the literary, social, political and religious history of the time.
Brings together in one volume texts that would otherwise be hard to locate.
Student-friendly - uses modern spelling and includes vocabulary glosses and annotation.

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. Emotional Excess on the Shakespearean Stage demonstrates the links made between excess of emotion and madness in the early modern period. It argues that the ways in which today's popular and theatrical cultures judge how much is too much can distort our understanding of early modern drama and theatre. It argues that permitting the excesses of the early modern drama onto the contemporary stage might free actors and audiences alike from assumptions that in order to engage with the drama of the past, its characters must be just like us. The book deals with characters in the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries who are sad for too long, or angry to the point of irrationality; people who laugh when they shouldn't or make their audiences do so; people whose selfhood has broken down into an excess of fragmentary extremes and who are labelled mad. It is about moments in the theatre when excessive emotion is rewarded and applauded - and about moments when the expression of emotion is in excess of what is socially acceptable: embarrassing, shameful, unsettling or insane. The book explores the broader cultures of emotion that produce these theatrical moments, and the theatre's role in regulating and extending the acceptable expression of emotion. It is concerned with the acting of excessive emotion and with acting emotion excessively. And it asks how these excesses are produced or erased, give pleasure or pain, in versions of early modern drama in theatre, film and television today. Plays discussed include Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, The Spanish Tragedy, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Measure for Measure, and Coriolanus.

n 1549, Prince Philip of Spain made his entry into Antwerp together with his father, Emperor Charles V. For this occasion the rich city of commerce was transformed into a large theatrical space with triumphal arches and "tableaux vivants "as stage settings. The citizens and the princes acted as actors in a splendid parade, a battle array of four thousand participants, impressive tournaments and a huge firework display. This resulted in one of the most expensive and impressive festivities of the early modern period. The organizing municipality drew on various theatrical genres in an effort to bring about a renewal in the existing power relations between the Habsburg rulers and themselves, as well as the relations of the rulers with the population. Exactly how the city and the monarch were depicted was illustrative of the precious balance of power between the Habsburgs and the city fathers and of both parties toward their respective subjects. How these power relations were precisely staged in Antwerp is studied in this book.