Why do so many writers and audiences turn to theatre to resolve overwhelming topics of pain and suffering? This collection of essays from international scholars reconsiders how theatre has played a crucial part in encompassing and preserving significant human experiences. Plays about global issues, including terrorism and war, are increasing in attention from playwrights, scholars, critics and audiences. In this contemporary collection, a gathering of diverse contributors explain theatre's special ability to generate dialogue and promote healing when dealing with human tragedy. This collection discusses over 30 international plays and case studies from different time periods, all set in a backdrop of war. The four sections document British and American perspectives on theatres of war, global perspectives on theatres of war, perspectives on Black Watch and, finally, perspectives on The Great Game: Afghanistan. Through this, a range of international scholars from different disciplines imaginatively rethink theatre's unique ability to mediate the impacts and experiences of war. Featuring contributions from a variety of perspectives, this book provides a wealth of revealing insights into why authors and audiences have always turned to the unique medium of theatre to make sense of war.

This innovative project wrapped research around a youth theatre project. Young people of colour and from refugee backgrounds developed a sustained provocation for the people of Geelong, a large regional centre in Australia. The packed public performance-at the biggest venue in town-challenged locals to rethink assumptions. The audience response was insightful and momentous. The companion workshops for schools had profound impact with adolescent audiences. Internationally, this book connects with artistic, educational, and research communities, offering a substantial contribution to understandings of racism. This book is a provocative, transdisciplinary meditation on race, culture, the arts and change.

Casuistry and Early Modern Spanish Literature examines a neglected yet crucial field: the importance of casuistical thought and discourse in the development of literary genres in early modern Spain. Faced with the momentous changes wrought by discovery, empire, religious schism, expanding print culture, consolidation of legal codes and social transformation, writers sought innovation within existing forms (the novella, the byzantine romance, theatrical drama) and created novel genres (most notably, the picaresque). These essays show how casuistry, with its questioning of example and precept, and meticulous concern with conscience and the particularities of circumstance, is instrumental in cultivating the subjectivity, rhetorical virtuosity and spirit of inquiry that we have come to associate with the modern novel.

Offering one of the first scholarly examinations of digital and distanced performance since the global shutdown of theaters in March 2020, Barbara Fuchs provides both a record of the changes and a framework for thinking through theater's transformation. Though born of necessity, recent productions offer a new world of practice, from multi-platform plays on Zoom, WhatsApp, and Instagram, to enhancement via filters and augmented reality, to urban distanced theater that enlivens streetscapes and building courtyards. Based largely outside the commercial theater, these productions transcend geographic and financial barriers to access new audiences, while offering a lifeline to artists. This study charts how virtual theater puts pressure on existing assumptions and definitions, transforming the conditions of both theater-making and viewership. How are participatory, site-specific, or devised theater altered under physical-distancing requirements? How do digital productions blur the line between film and theater? What does liveness mean in a time of pandemic? In its seven chapters, Theater of Lockdown focuses on digital and distanced productions from the Americas, Europe, and Australia, offering scholarly analysis and interviews. Productions examined include Theater in Quarantine's "closet work" in New York; Forced Entertainment's (Sheffield, UK), End Meeting for All, I, II, and III; the work of Madrid-based company Grumelot; and the virtuosic showmanship of EFE Tres in Mexico City.

This book provides an overview of the inception, development and achievements of British socialist and workers theatre – a feat which has not been attempted before. It explores the connections between politics and culture (specifically theatre) and between political theory and cultural (theatrical) expression. The book is organized chronologically and uncovers much in labour and theatre history which is in danger of being lost. It can also be seen as a way into different moments in its subject’s story (e.g. post-Ibsen naturalism; agitprop theatre; ‘fringe’ theatre of the 1970s) and the relationship of such forms to specific political events and ideas at specific points in history.

This book offers an innovative account of how audiences and actors emotionally interacted in the English theatre during the middle decades of the eighteenth century, a period bookended by two of its stars: David Garrick and Sarah Siddons. Drawing upon recent scholarship on the history of emotions, it uses practice theory to challenge the view that emotional interactions between actors and audiences were governed by empathy. It carefully works through how actors communicated emotions through their voices, faces and gestures, how audiences appraised these performances, and mobilised and regulated their own emotional responses. Crucially, this book reveals how theatre spaces mediated the emotional practices of audiences and actors alike. It examines how their public and frequently political interactions were enabled by these spaces.

The era known as the Thaw (1953-64) was a crucial period in the history of the Soviet Union. It was a time when the legacies of Stalinism began to unravel and when brief moments of liberalisation saw dramatic changes to society. By exploring theatre productions, plays and cultural debates during the Thaw, this book sheds light on a society in flux, in which the cultural norms, values and hierarchies of the previous era were being rethought. Jesse Gardiner demonstrates that the revival of avant-garde theatre during the Thaw was part of a broader re-engagement with cultural forms that had been banned under Stalin. Plays and productions that had fallen victim to the censor were revived or reinvented, and their authors and directors rehabilitated alongside waves of others who had been repressed during the Stalinist purges. At the same time, new theatre companies and practitioners emerged who reinterpreted the stylized techniques of the avant-garde for a post-war generation. This book argues that the revival of avant-garde theatre was vital in allowing the Soviet public to reimagine its relationship to state power, the West and its own past. It permitted the rethinking of attitudes and prejudices, and led to calls for greater cultural diversity across society. Playwrights, directors and actors began to work in innovative ways, seeking out the theatre of the future by re-engaging with the proscribed forms of the past.