Using the tools of performance studies, gender theory, and cultural history, Brenda Foley explores the striking similarities between beauty pageantry and striptease. For example, women in both project a 'normal' femininity and adhere to a strict hierarchy (Miss America contestants look down upon Miss Universe contestants, while theatrical 'burlesque artists' saw themselves as far above mere carnival strippers). Undressed for Success collects extensive primary source research - newspapers, journals, trade publications, photography collections, press releases, memoirs, and interviews with both strippers and pageant contestants - and employs a wide array of gender, feminist, and performance theory to analyze them.

From the aftermath of World War II to the convulsions of Brexit, festivals have deployed Shakespeare as a model of inclusive and progressive theatre to seek cultural solutions to Europe's multi-faceted crises. Shakespeare on European Festival Stages is the first book to chart Shakespeare's presence at continental European festivals. It examines the role these festivals play in European socio-cultural exchanges, and the impact festivals make on the wider production and circulation of staged Shakespeare across the continent. This collection offers authoritative, lively and informed accounts of the production of Shakespeare at the following festivals: the Avignon Festival and Le Printemps des comediens in Montpellier (France), the Almagro festival (Spain), Shakespeare at Four Castles (Czech Republic and Slovakia), the International Shakespeare Festival in Craiova (Romania), the Shakespeare festivals in Elsinore (Denmark), Gdansk (Poland), Gyula (Hungary), Itaka (Serbia), Neuss (Germany), Patalenitsa (Bulgaria), Rome and Verona (Italy). Shakespeare on European Festival Stages is essential reading for students, scholars and practitioners interested in Shakespeare in performance, in translation and in a post-national Shakespeare that knows no borders and belongs to all of Europe.

David Garrick played over 90 roles on the British stage as well as writing plays, songs, and innumerable letters. As a theatrical manager he watched over the Drury Lane theater for 29 seasons.

"Drama and the Sacraments in Sixteenth-Century England" is the first book-length study of the relationship between early modern drama and sacramental ritual and theology. The book examines a range of dramatic forms, including morality plays, Tudor interludes and the Elizabethan professional stage. Offering new insights into the religious practices on which early modern subjectivity is founded, David Coleman both uncovers neglected texts and documents, and offers radical new ways of reading canonical Renaissance plays.

Because of its contemporary coverage, this volume is particularly interesting and useful. . . . Reference collections that deal with theater questions could find it a good source even without its two predecessor volumes, but the set as a whole is recommended. "Choice"

An outstanding reference collection is completed with the publication of DurhaM's "American Theatre Companies, 1931-1986," an indispensable guide to an aspect of American theatre not covered elsewhere. The American theatre has undergone a process of decentralization and the focus has shifted from Broadway, once the proving ground for all nationally known theatre talent, to fine regional theatres across the nation. This volume surveys the fifty-year period in which this transformation occurred. The work consists of seventy-eight entries that profile a wide range of types of theatre companies including art theatres, units of the Federal Theatre project, workers' theatre, experimental theatre groups, ethnic theatre groups, children's theatre companies, and regional repertory companies, large and small. The Profiles section contains information-packed narratives from both published and unpublished sources that describe, analyze, and evaluate management policies, facilities, personnel, and repertories of these organizations. Each entry contains an extensive list of key personnel, including managers, designers, actors, and actresses, as well as plays that company produced. A bibliography of sources and a guide to archival resources for further study follows each entry. Two additional appendices are devoted to chronological and state-by-state listings of theatre companies. The volume concludes with an index of personal names and play titles.

This important resource should be a part of every university's reference collection. It will be consulted by students and scholars of theatre and drama, American history, American popular culture, and American social and cultural history, as will its companion volumes "American Theatre Companies, 1749-1887" (Greenwood Press, 1986) and "American Theatre Companies, 1888-1930" (Greenwood Press, 1987).

In the 1960s, Kurokawa's historic no tradition, as theatre and festival, came under the spotlight of the Japanese public. Advertised as 'secret no of the snow country' it soon became one of the most well-known and long-studied folk performing arts traditions. That a secluded village isolated by mountainous country around it should have developed and sustained a high cultural entertainment such as no theatre and integrated it into Shinto shrine festivals, prompted considerable interest among folklore scholars, theatre researchers, politicians, and tourists alike. Even today Kurokawa no continues to be regarded as an example of an earlier form of Japanese culture and folk tradition that essentially has been frozen in time over the course of many centuries. In this volume, the author provides a detailed record of the history and development of Kurokawa no and the processes of its transmission over the generations. The author also examines its impact on the wider cultural life of Japan and its literary heritage, the travel industry, government policy and folklore traditions in Japan generally. In addition, Kurokawa No offers an invaluable, authentic case study in the wider context of notions of Japanese self-perception and self-representation.

This book investigates the shifting relationship between performance and subjectivity over the course of the Modern era. Each chapter details a different set of performance strategies designed to grant the subject a stable sense of self-identity, and each explores the fallout from the ultimate failure of these strategies to offer the subject a fixed and enduring image of itself. The conclusion examines the implications of this failure for new Postmodern conceptions of subjectivity and poses questions about the use of performance in the self-fashioning of future generations.

"Exploring the themes of the event, ephemerality and democracy that mark the encounter between performance and philosophy, this original study elaborates fresh perspectives on the experiences of undoing, fiasco and disaster that shadow both the both stage and everyday life"--

This collection of essays is dedicated to the theory and practice of drama translation. The focus is on foreign-language plays translated into English and staged in Anglo-American theatres. In this connection, concepts like acculturation and cultural transfer,

Between the trials of Oscar Wilde in the 1890s and the beginnings of legal reforms in the 1960s, the West End stage was dominated by the work of gay playwrights. Many of their plays, such as Private Lives, Blithe Spirit and The Deep Blue Sea are established classics and continue to inform our culture. In this fascinating book, covering both familiar and lesser-known works, Sean O'Connor examines the legacy of Wilde as a playwright and as a gay man, and explores in the works of Somerset Maugham, Noel Coward and Terence Rattigan the resonance of Wilde's agenda for tolerance and his creed of individuality. O'Connor contextualises these plays against the enormous social and historical changes of the twentieth century. He also examines the legal restrictions which regulated the personal lives of these writers and required them to evolve sophisticated strategies in order to express on stage, albeit obliquely, their dilemmas as gay men. From the delicate homoerotic frissons of Rattigan's early comedies to Coward's defiantly pro-sex stance, Straight Acting is a provocative and witty insight into the subtly subversive tactics of gay writers working in that apparently most conservative of forms, the 'well-made play'.

This book examines the surge of queer performance produced across Ireland since the first stirrings of the Celtic Tiger in the mid-1990s, up to the passing of the Marriage Equality referendum in the Republic in 2015.

In this dynamic collection a team of experts map the development of Live Art culturally, thematically and historically. Supported with examples from around the world, the text engages with a number of key practices, asking what these practices do and how they can be contextualized and understood.

This book examines Field Day's cultural intervention into the Northern Irish 'Troubles' through individual readings of the fourteen plays produced by the enterprise. It argues that at the heart of this project were performances, in a variety of different forms and registers, of an ethics of translation that disrupted notions of Irish identity.

This volume is the first to offer a comprehensive critical examination of the intersections between contemporary ethical thought and post-1989 British playwriting. Its coverage of a large number of plays and playwrights, international range of contributors and original argumentation make it a key point of reference for students and researchers.

Volume Four of the distinguished American Theatre: A Chronicle of Comedy and Drama series offers a thorough, candid, and fascinating look at the theatre in New York during the last decades of the twentieth century.

Between the 1890s and the 1930s, advancements in communication and travel encouraged widespread international cultural exchange, and Americans increasingly came into contact with Russian culture and theatrical performance. A number of factors, including emigration from Russia, world war, revolutionary activities in both Russia and the United States, and developments in modernism in the American theatre influenced the way those performances were received by American artists and audiences. Examining the work of impresarios, financiers, and the press as well as the artists themselves, Hohman demonstrates how a variety of Russian theatrical styles were introduced and incorporated into American theatre and dance.

Breden shifts the focus of academic study away from product and towards process, demonstrating how an understanding of process assists in the reading of the theatrical product. The rehearsal processes of theatre companies are an oft-neglected area of research in Drama and Performance Studies. This work on the Catalan devising collective Els Joglars and the Madrid producing venue Teatro de la Abadia seeksto redress the balance with a close analysis of methodologies employed in rehearsal. In effect, both companies have created distinctive rehearsal processes by applying ideas and techniques from a wider European context to a Spanish theatre scene which had been seen to follow rather than develop trends and techniques visible in theatre across France, Italy and Germany. Critically, their hybrid rehearsal processes generate heightened theatrical results forthe audience. Thus the book shifts the focus of academic study away from product and towards process, demonstrating how an understanding of process assists in the reading of the theatrical product. Simon David Breden obtained a PhD in Drama & Hispanic Studies from Queen Mary, University of London. He has worked as a professional director and expert in Spanish theatre in London and Madrid.

What do you do if you find yourself weeping in the stalls? How should you react to Jude Law's trousers or David Tennant's hair? Are you prepared to receive toilet paper in the post? What if the show you just damned turns out to be a classic? If you gave it a five-star rave will anyone believe you? Drawing on his long years of experience as a national newspaper critic, Mark Fisher answers such questions with candour, wit and insight. Learning lessons from history's leading critics and taking examples from around the world, he gives practical advice about how to celebrate, analyse and discuss this most ephemeral of art forms - and how to make your writing come alive as you do so. Today, more people than ever are writing about theatre, but whether you're blogging, tweeting or writing an academic essay, your challenges as a critic remain the same: how to capture a performance in words, how to express your opinions and how to keep the reader entertained. This inspirational book shows you the way to do it. Foreword by Chris Jones, Chief theater critic, Chicago Tribune

Why is it that in going to see plays we are also touched or moved by them, and is there more than metaphor involved in such claims? Considering these and other questions, this book examines a range of contemporary performance works in which performers and their audiences occupy a shared realm of feelings, in which the play is not always the thing.

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre is recognised worldwide as both a monument to and significant producer of the dramatic art of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. But it has established a reputation too for commissioning innovative and distinctive new plays that respond to the unique characteristics and identity of the theatre. This is the first book to focus on the new drama commissioned and produced at the Globe, to analyse how the specific qualities of the venue have shaped those works and to assess the influences of both past and present in the work staged. The author argues that far from being simply a monument to the past, the reconstructed theatre fosters creativity in the present, creativity that must respond to the theatre's characteristic architecture, the complex set of cultural references it carries and the heterogeneous audience it attracts. Just like the reconstructed 'wooden O', the Globe's new plays highlight the relevance of the past for the present and give the spectators a prominent position. In examining the score of new plays it has produced since 1995 the author considers how they illuminate issues of staging, space, spectators, identity and history - issues that are key to an understanding of much contemporary theatre. Howard Brenton's In Extremis and Anne Boleyn receive detailed consideration, as examples of richly productive connection between the playwright's creativity and the theatre's potential. For readers interested in new writing for the stage and in the work of one of London's totemic theatre spaces, New Playwriting at Shakespeare's Globe offers a fascinating study of the fruitful influences of both past and present in today's theatre.

David Greig has been described as 'one of the most interesting and adventurous British dramatists of his generation' ("Daily Telegraph") and 'one of the most intellectually stimulating dramatists around' ("Guardian"). Since he began writing for theatre in the early nineties, his work has been both copious and remarkably varied, defying neat generalisations or attempts to pigeon-hole his work. Besides his original plays, he has adapated classics, is co-founder of the Suspect Culture Theatre Group and is currently Dramaturge for the National Theatre of Scotland. This Critical Companion provides an analytical survey of his work, from his early plays such as "Europe" and "The Architect "through to more recent works "Damascus," "Dunsinane "and "Ramallah"; it also considers the plays produced with Suspect Culture and his work for young audiences. As such it is the first book to provide a critical account of the full variety of his work and will appeal to students and fans of contemporary British theatre.Clare Wallace provides a detailed analysis of a broad selection of plays and their productions, reviews current discourses about his work and offers a framework for enquiry. The Companion features an interview with David Greig and a further three essays by leading academics offering a variety of critical perspectives.

American documentary theatre records the social issues that continue to shape the United States at the close of the twentieth century. This book provides an historical and critical survey of documentary theatre in the United States since John Reed's The Pageant of the Paterson Strike (1913). It defines documentary theatre as a dramatic representation of societal forces using a close reexamination of events, individuals, or situations. While documentary theatre reinvents itself from time to time, this study demonstrates that its constituent parts remain roughly the same. Because documentary theatre is rooted in oral traditions, it offers an alternative to conventional journalistic treatments of social history. Through a close look at the history of documentary theatre, the volume concludes that a new period of expression is presently underway in the United States. Numerous social issues have marked the growth of the United States, and many of these continue to shape contemporary American culture. While many of these issues have been treated in novels, they have also captured the attention of playwrights. Documentary theatre explores the issues and events at the very heart of society. But in spite of its significance, this dramatic form continues to escape, for the most part, the awareness of the theatre community and its public. This book is an historical and critical survey of documentary theatre in the United States since John Reed's The Pageant of the Paterson Strike (1913). It defines documentary theatre as a dramatic representation of societal forces using a close reexamination of events, individuals, or situations. By listing current and more distant examples of American documentary theatre, the book shows that the genre is richly steeped in the oral history tradition. Therefore, American documentary theatre is an alternative to conventional journalism. For the theatre practitioner, the volume provides valuable insight about the process of making a documentary play. For the investigative researcher, the book shows that documentary theatre possesses a non-Aristotelian dramatic structure, in contrast to the strictly narrative form generally found in conventional drama. Through an overview of numerous plays, the book observes that even though documentary theatre reinvents itself from time to time, its constituent parts remain roughly the same. It concludes that a new period of expression is presently underway in the United States, one that affirms that the theatre is a vital part of society and is as important as religion, education, and government.