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.

Two generations of sisters navigate class, race, love and family on "Mud Row," an area in the East End of West Chester, Pennsylvania. Elsie hopes to move up in the world by marrying into "the talented tenth," while her sister Frances joins the fight for Civil Rights. Decades later, estranged sisters Regine and Toshi are forced to reckon with their shared heritage and each other, when Regine inherits granny Elsie's house. "Morisseau gives exquisite voice to four women occupying the same four walls - and by doing so, an entire community sings." - The Philadelphia Inquirer "Morisseau's writing is rich and authentic. Tense, heartbreaking, and ultimately inspiring, Mud Row pulses with the the love Morisseau feels for her characters and the real life people who inspire them." - Talkin' Broadway "A tale so exciting and engrossing." - Broad Street Review

'We - artists, thinkers, creators - have a responsibility to communicate the truth of the climate emergency. The world is shape-shifting and our culture must too.' This book is a guide to one hundred brilliant plays addressing the most urgent and important issue of our time: the climate crisis. The plays - drawn from around the world, written by one hundred different writers, and demonstrating a vast span of styles, genres and cast sizes - all speak to an aspect of the climate emergency. Encompassing both famous plays and lesser-known works, the selection includes recent writing that explicitly wrestles with these issues, as well as classic texts in which these resonances now ring out clearly. Each play is explored in a concise essay illuminating key themes, and highlighting its contribution to our understanding of climate issues, with sections including Resources, Energy, Migration, Responsibility, Fightback and Hope. 100 Plays to Save the World is a book to provoke as well as inspire - to start conversations, to inform debate, to challenge our thinking, and to be a launch pad for future productions. It is also an empowering resource for theatre directors, producers, teachers, youth leaders and writers looking for plays that speak to our present moment. Above all, it is a call to arms, to step up, think big, and unleash theatre's power to imagine a better future into being. The book includes a foreword by Daze Aghaji, a leading youth climate justice activist. 'This book is a kind of miracle, a thrilling compendium of plays that speak to the enormous environmental crisis of our time. Freestone and O'Hare have exquisite taste and brilliant analysis, illuminating plays I've never heard of, as well as plays I thought I knew. 100 Plays to Save the World should be required reading for everyone who believes in the power of theatre to move the world; I will certainly never plan a season again without referring to it.' Oskar Eustis, Artistic Director, The Public Theater, New York 'This book is dynamite. Through lively play analysis and accessible environmental know-how, it will galvanise theatre-makers to step up and artists to be heard. Theatre must play its part in the climate fight and this book shows us how.' Kwame Kwei-Armah, Artistic Director, Young Vic Theatre, London

The economic crisis in Argentina in 2001-2002 that spilled over into Uruguay causing fiscal and political problems is the starting point for my research on space and theater, and it demonstrates why we must look at the River Plate in both global and local ways. Connections among monetary policies, industries, and legal, social, and political movements mean that national spaces like Uruguay's are fraught with tensions that come from both within and outside of borders. Recent economic crises like the one that is occurring in Greece, further demonstrate how nation states and trade blocks must constantly negotiate power as they toggle between national and international pressures. Nation states are being prompted to reconceive perspectives on governance that fall away from the parameters of Westphalian autonomy and reconcile their views with trends that instead require thinking about power as a network with shifting centers. The introduction launches the study by addressing these political and economic trends, the spatial turn in theater and performance studies, the rise of multiculturalism, and also examines the Uruguayan historical context of the post-dictatorship and impunity laws that pit national sovereignty against international human rights laws. These crises are enacted on the Uruguayan stage and contextualized through networks and spatial topographies, intertextualties on the page, explorations of history and memory, and ultimately notions of identity in four areas: the postdramatic and economic realm (chapter one: Peveroni), cultural geography and pyschogeography (chapter two: Morena), midrash and questions of human rights and growing fascist trends (chapter three: Sanguinetti), and finally in mapmaking on the stage through mise-en-perf/performise and "wayfinding" through sites of contested power (chapter four: Calderon). The concluding chapter (Blanco) looks at the reinterpretation of Greek tragedy as a commentary on the messy process of democratization. Here, access to the polis and power are problematized through the lens of international sex trafficking and gendered roles that exclude portions of the populace from participation in the process of self-governance.

Harold Pinter is one of the most important writers in English of the late twentieth century and early twenty-first century. This brief biography offers fresh insights into his life and work, concentrating on the themes, patterns, relationships, ideas and language common to his life and creative output. Placing Pinters life and work alongside each other, the study illuminates Pinters vision of society, politics, gender, sex, violence and human relationships. Drawing upon the full-range of his output, his letters, journalism, writings about him, Baker combines a biographical approach with close (re)readings of his work to create a fresh perspective on his life and art. The book offers students, academics and readers a rich depiction of Harold Pinter, the man and the writer.

Where did cabaret come from? What has it got to do with pre-war Berlin, decadent society and Nazis? How does it turn into media cabaret and the sisterhood of sleaze? Is cabaret a primary vehicle for exploring the range of sexual practices and alternative sexual identities? In this new book William Grange brings into one place for the first time the range of practices now associated with the form of cabaret. Beginning with its origins in speciality German theatres and the development both of the sheet music industry and disc recordings, Grange tracks the form through into its golden age in the 1920s and beyond. The book's three sections deal first with the emergence of Berlin as the 'German Chicago', where cabaret flourished in the midst of post-war political turmoil. The abolition of censorship allowed nude dancing and sexually explicit songs and routines. It also saw the introduction of kick-line dancing and black performers. In the book's second and third sections Grange takes the story forward into the post second-world-war world, describing how the form moved outwards from central Europe to move across the whole world, reaching Singapore and Australia, and as it did so settling into the range of forms in which we know it today. Some of these forms became 'media cabaret' looking towards the new media age, the postmodernism that followed on from modernism. To this age, even in its new forms, cabaret brought its old habits of making challenges to assumptions around gender identities and sexual practices. As throughout its whole history, cabaret was a form that provided particular vehicles for female performers. And whereas it once served up whore songs and nude dancing it now offers a sisterhood of sleaze.

"Broadway is a commercial institution. It has nothing whatsoever to do with pretentious artistic notions. It's there for one purpose, and one purpose alone- to make money." So begins the comments by the successful Broadway and television producer Alexander Cohen made just before his recent death-his thoughts on the state of Broadway today."The theatre is too much in transition these days]. It's static; treading water, so to speak. I'm only interested in keeping my current shows open as long as I can." The words of Sir Cameron Mackintosh-his personal views on the current state of the art.Executive Producer Steven Rivellino has taken a long hard look at the business of theatre-Broadway and the West End-at the turn of this new century, and Bright Lights, Big Changes is his own candid personal analysis. Rivellino, author of the successful Mysterious Places, Mysterious Dreams, has cleverly zeroed in on what makes the industry tick. He easily articulates how the industry has changed; how we arrived where we are today; and openly discusses some of the current and future trends in theatrical production we will be seeing in the coming years.Bright Lights, Big Changes is a cogent and succinct analysis of the business of theatre today, on both sides of the Atlantic-a must read for anyone working within the industry, students of theatre; and for those passionate theatre lovers worldwide.

This book addresses theatre's contribution to the way we think about ecology, our relationship to the environment, and what it means to be human in the context of climate change. It offers a detailed study of the ways in which contemporary performance has critiqued and re-imagined everyday ecological relationships, in more just and equitable ways. The broad spectrum of ecologically-oriented theatre and performance included here, largely from the UK, US, Canada, Europe, and Mexico, have problematised, reframed, and upended the pervasive and reductive images of climate change that tend to dominate the ecological imagination. Taking an inclusive approach this book foregrounds marginalised perspectives and the multiple social and political forces that shape climate change and related ecological crises, framing understandings of the earth as home. Recent works by Fevered Sleep, Rimini Protokoll, Violeta Luna, Deke Weaver, Metis Arts, Lucy + Jorge Orta, as well as Indigenous activist movements such as NoDAPL and Idle No More, are described in detail.

This book critically engages with the study of theatre and performance in colonial India, and relates it with colonial (and postcolonial) discussions on experience, freedom, institution-building, modernity, nation/subject not only as concepts but also as philosophical queries. It opens up with the discourse around 'Indian theatre' that was started by the orientalists in the late 18th century, and which continued till much later. The study specifically focuses on the two major urban centres of colonial India: Bombay and Calcutta of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It discusses different cultural practices in colonial India, including the initiation of 'Indian theatre' practices, which resulted in many forms of colonial-native 'theatre' by the 19th century; the challenges to this dominant discourse from the 'swadeshi jatra' (national jatra/theatre) in Bengal, which drew upon earlier folk and religious traditions and was used as a tool by the nationalist movement; and the Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA) that functioned from Bombay around the 1940s, which focused on the creation of one national subject - that of the 'Indian'. The author contextualizes the relevance of the concept of 'Indian theatre' in today's political atmosphere. She also critically analyses the post-Independence Drama Seminar organized by the Sangeet Natak Akademi in 1956 and its relevance to the subsequent organization of 'Indian theatre'. Many theatre personalities who emerged as faces of smaller theatre committees were part of the seminar which envisioned a national cultural body. This book is an important contribution to the field and is of interest to researchers and students of cultural studies, especially Theatre and Performance Studies, and South Asian Studies.

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.

In this book, Paul Whitfield White examines the interplay between theatre and religion in provincial England from the early Tudors to 1660. In challenging the critical narrative of secularization, suppression, and demise, he recasts the history of that drama in the light of fresh sources and scholarship. The project engages with recent interests in Shakespearean criticism concerning the theatrical culture of the north of England, where a documented contemporary touring troupe performed Shakespeare's plays in Catholic households. Defying the 'medieval/renaissance' divide of past drama/literature scholarship, the book begins in the early Tudor period, when parish revels flourished as part of a nationwide surge in religious fund-raising and charity. It proceeds with the argument that the history of early modern theatre in provincial society, as in London, remained vibrant and diverse for popular audiences in many parts of the country, and that religion contributed to that vitality and variety.

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.

Ekkehard Schall's life was devoted to the theatre. In this autobiographical memoir, he offers a lifetime of experience, expertise and memories of working with some of the great German writers, actors and directors of the twentieth century.

A member of the Berliner Ensemble established by Bertolt Brecht and his wife Helene Weigel in 1949, Ekkehard Schall worked on numerous productions of Brecht's plays and others with the Ensemble between 1952 and 1995. In the 1970s and 80s he combined the roles of leading actor and deputy director of the Ensemble. In all he played over sixty roles and achieved greatest success in the role as Arturo Ui, a role he played over 500 times.

"The Craft of Theatre: Seminars and Discussions in Brechtian Theatre" offers the reader a first-hand account of Schall's work, of his insights and his appreciation of the Brechtian roles he assumed and of the work of Germany's most important theatre. "The Craft of Theatre "is an important addition to Brechtian studies and to the biography of Germany's most totemic theatre.

'When you see Schall at work during his two-hour performance, it's as if you were watching Brecht himself on stage. Schall's technical skills embody all of Brechtian dramatic theory and practice, just as Brecht's thoughts and opinions infuse his performances.' "NewYork City Tribune"

Many of the greatest avant-garde artists of the early twentieth century were Ukrainians or came from Ukraine. Whether living in Paris, St. Petersburg or Kyiv, they made major contributions to painting, sculpture, theatre, and film-making. Because their connection to Ukraine has seldom been explored, English-language readers are often unaware that figures such as Archipenko, Burliuk, Malevich, and Exter were inspired both by their country of origin and their links to compatriots. This book traces the avant-garde development from its pre-war years in Paris to the end of the 1920s in Kyiv. It includes chapters on the political dilemmas faced by this generation, the contribution of Jewish artists, and the work of several emblematic figures: Mykhailo Boichuk, David Burliuk, Kazimir Malevich, Vadym Meller, Ivan Kavaleridze, and Dziga Vertov.

This book explores the cultural conditions that led to the emergence and proliferation of Saint Hermenegildo as a stage character in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It considers how this saint became a theatrical trope enabling the Society of Jesus to address religious and secular concerns of the post-Tridentine Church, and to discuss political issues such as the supremacy of the pope over the monarch and the legitimacy of regicide. The book goes on to explain how the Hermenegildo narrative developed outside of Jesuit colleges, through works by professional dramatist Lope de Vega and Mexican nun Juana Ines de la Cruz. Stefano Muneroni takes a global approach to the staging of Hermenegildo, tracing the character's journey from Europe to the Americas, from male to female authors, and from a sacrificial to a sacramental paradigm where the emphasis shifts from bloodletting to spiritual salvation. Given its interdisciplinary approach, this book is geared toward scholars and students of theatre history, religion and drama, early modern theology, cultural studies, romance languages and literature, and the history of the Society of Jesus..

A comprehensive 'how to' book on the Laban system of movement - from the author of Laban for Actors and Dancers. Laban for All offers a simplified version of Rudolf Laban's system for analysing - and annotating - the way the human being moves. It can be used by relative beginners upwards. The reader is introduced to the language and terms of Laban, with each new concept accompanied by very specific, clearly illustrated exercises - each designed to strengthen and deepen our understanding. When the basic vocabulary has been explained and demonstrated, its expressive possibilities in drama and dance are further explored. The result is a thorough - and thoroughly practical - grounding in the most significant movement system of modern times.

This book is a study of the plays, performances and writings of Christina Reid. It explores Reid's work through her own words, both in interviews and writings; through theoretical engagements in other disciplines, such as psychology and geography; and through responses to her plays in production. It is a compilation of sorts, gathering together interviews, critical material, unpublished works and theatrical reviews to reflect the breadth and depth of Reid's contribution to the theatrical culture of Northern Ireland, during the Troubles and beyond.

This book explores what happens to socially committed performance when state systems of social security are dismantled. Since 2010, a punishing programme of economic austerity and a seismic overhaul of the Welfare State in the United Kingdom has been accompanied by an ideological assault on dependency; a pervasive scapegoating of the poor, young, and disabled; and an intensification of the discursive relationship between morality and work. This book considers the artistic, material, and ideological consequences of such shifts for applied and socially engaged performance. Performing Welfare reveals how such arts practices might reconstitute notions of work and labour in socially constructive ways. It focuses on the political potential of participation during a period in which classifications of labour and productivity are intensely contested. It examines the migration of discourses from state policy to the cultural sector; narratives of community and aesthetics of dependency; the paradoxes of visibility in creative projects with stigmatised participants; the implicit relationship of participatory performance to neoliberal productivity; and, the parallels between gendered divisions of labour, social reproduction, and applied performance. It will appeal to students, scholars, and practitioners interested in applied and socially engaged performance, participation, community, representation, the welfare state, social policy, labour, and unemployment.

Fourteen scholars who work on campus or in the theater address this issue of what it means to play offstage. With their individual definition of what "offstage" could mean, the results were, predictably, varied. They employed a variety of critical approaches to the question of what happens when the play moves into the audience or beyond the physical playhouse itself? What are the social, cultural, and political ramifications? Questions of "how" and "why" actors play offstage admit the larger "role" their production has for the world outside the theater, and hence this collection's sub-title: "The Theater As a Presence or Factor in the Real World." Among the various topics, the essays include: breaking the "fourth wall" and thereby making the audience part of the performance; the theater of political protest (one contributor staged Waiting for Godot in Zuccotti Park as part of the Occupy Wall Street protests); "landscape" or "town" theater using citizens as actors or trekking theater where the production moves among various locations in the community; the way principles of the theater can inform corporate management; the genre of semi-scripted comedy and quasi-impromptu spectacle (such as reality TV or flash mobs); digitalized performances of Shakespeare; the role of Greek Theater in the midst of the country's current economic and political crisis; how the area outside the theater became part of the performance inside Shakespeare's Globe; Timothy Leary's Psychedelic Celebrations designed to reproduce the offstage experience of LSD; WilliamVollmann's use of Noh theater to fashion a personal model and process of life-transformation; liminal theater which erases the line between onstage and off. The collection thus complements through actual performance criticism those studies that see the theater as a commentary on issues-social, political, economic; and it reverses the Editor's own earlier collection The Audience As Player, which examined interactive theater where the spectator comes onstage.

This volume offers researchers and practitioners new perspectives on applied theatre work, exploring the relationship between applied theatre and its intent, success and value. Applied theatre is a well-established field focused on the social application of the arts in a range of contexts including schools, prisons, residential aged care and community settings. The increased uptake of applied theatre in these contexts requires increased analysis and understanding of indications of success and value. This volume provides critical commentary and questions regarding issues associated with developing, delivering and evaluating applied theatre programs. Part 1 of the volume presents a discussion of the ways the concept of change is presented to and by funding bodies, practitioners, participants, researchers and policy makers to discover and analyse the relationships between applied theatre practice, transformative intent, and evaluation. Part 2 of the volume offers perspectives from key authors in the field which extend and contextualize the discussion by examining key themes and practice-based examples.

This study shows how theater was an important feature of convent life from the early fifteenth century, probably in all of Catholic Europe and its colonies. For this study, mainly devoted to Tuscany, the author has found an extensive corpus of theatrical works of convent provenance, which argues for the widespread practice of theater in the convents. She traces its chief characteristics--what the nuns' own writings tell us about their literacy and that of their audiences, and how their lives and work intersect with secular society and literary culture.

This book examines contemporary approaches to adaptation in theatre through seventeen international case studies. It explores company and directorial approaches to adaptation through analysis of the work of Kneehigh, Mabou Mines, Robert Le Page and Katie Mitchell. It then moves on to look at the transformation of the novel onto the stage in the work of Mitchell, and in The Red Badge of Courage, The Kite Runner, Anne Frank, and Fanny Hill. Next, it examines contemporary radical adaptations of Trojan Women and The Iliad. Finally, it looks at five different approaches to postmodern metatheatrical adaptation in early modern texts of Hamlet, The Changeling, and Faustus, as well as the work of the Neo-Futurists, and the mash-up Medea/Macbeth/Cinderella. Overall, this comprehensive study offers insights into key productions, ideas about approaches to adaptation, and current debates on fidelity, postmodernism and remediation.

The book is based on a series of unique oral histories and interviews with actors who love the stage first and foremost. Editor Joan Jeffri focuses on the experience of actors in their training and career development, and on their relationships to society, culture, and institutions. Although names like Alan Alda are recognizable from other media, these actors all grew up being nourished by the stage. Their stories show that theatre is everywhere in this country--not only on Broadway, but also in churches, in schools, in regions, and in towns. These interviews and a thorough introduction provide a history of the American theatre for almost a century--the Yiddish theatre, the WPA, the start of regional theatre, off- and off-off-Broadway, and the Great White Way--through the voices of those who lived it.

This book examines the intersection between sound and modernity in dramatic and musical performance in Manila and the Asia-Pacific between 1869 and 1948. During this period, tolerant political regimes resulted in the globalization of capitalist relations and the improvement of transcontinental travel and worldwide communication. This allowed modern modes of theatre and music consumption to instigate the uniformization of cultural products and processes, while simultaneously fragmenting societies into distinct identities, institutions, and nascent nation-states. Taking the performing bodies of migrant musicians as the locus of sound, this book argues that the global movement of acoustic modernities was replicated and diversified through its multiple subjectivities within empire, nation, and individual agencies. It traces the arrival of European travelling music and theatre companies in Asia which re-casted listening into an act of modern cultural consumption, and follows the migration of Manila musicians as they engaged in the modernization project of the neighboring Asian cities.