* This book offers an exciting examination of the theatrical functions of medieval English stage directions as records of earlier performance. * Would be recommended reading in for any undergraduate or master's level students studying the medieval period in Performance studies, English Literature or in History (in particular in the UK and the US). * The closest competitors focus on after 1560 so this project is a first in its time period coverage.

***Listed in THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION's Weekly Book List, July 11, 2011***

Identifying an apprehension about the nature and constitution of urbanism in North American plays, "Urban Drama" examines how cities like New York City and Los Angeles became focal points for identity politics and social justice at the end of the twentieth century. In plays as different as Tony Kushner's "Angels in America," Anna Deavere Smith's "Twilight Los Angeles, 1992," and David Henry Hwang's "FOB," these concerns became spatialized against the urban environment, suggesting a shift of consciousness toward what critical geography has argued: The social is always spatial. "Urban Drama" interrogates how this shift informs playwriting in the 1980s and 1990s and inspires new modes of dramatic representation.

Within the study of drama, the question of how to relate text and performance-and what interpretive tools are best suited to analyzing them-is a longstanding and contentious one. Most scholars agree that reading a printed play is a means of dramatic realization absolutely unlike live performance, but everything else beyond this premise is contestable: how much authority to assign to playwrights, the extent to which texts and readings determine performance, and the capability of printed plays to communicate the possibilities of performance. Without denying that printed plays distort and fragment performance practice, this book negotiates an intractable debate by shifting attention to the ways in which these inevitable distortions can nevertheless enrich a reader's awareness of a play's performance potentialities. As author J. Gavin Paul demonstrates, printed plays can be more meaningfully engaged with actual performance than is typically assumed, via specific editorial principles and strategies. Focusing on the long history of Shakespearean editing, he develops the concept of the performancescape: a textual representation of performance potential that gives relative shape and stability to what is dynamic and multifarious.

Yoshi Oida is completely unique. A Japanese actor and director who has worked mainly in the West as a member of Peter Brook's theatre company in Paris, he blends the Oriental tradition of supreme and studied control with the Western performer's need to characterize and expose depths of emotion.
In this practical and captivating study of the actor's art, Yoshi Oida provides performers with all the simple tools which help place the technique of acting behind a cloak of invisibility. Throughout, Lorna Marshall provides a running commentary on Oida's work and methods which helps the reader understand the achievement of this singular artist. A brilliant book, "The Invisible Actor" is filled with abundant insights to help actors perfect their craft.

Explores ways undergraduate theatre programs can play a significant role in accomplishing the aims and learning outcomes of a contemporary liberal education. Kindelan argues that theatre's signature pedagogy helps all undergraduates become actively engaged in developing critical and value-focused skills through inquiry- and problem-based learning strategies (learning communities, capstone courses, undergraduate research, and service learning).

This book traces three tumultuous decades of avant-garde theatre in the U.S. It begins with the Living Theatre, and explores diverse ensembles such as The Open Theatre, The Performance Group, and Bread and Puppet Theatre. It also looks at the women's theatre movement, and examines the work of Robert Wilson, Meredith Monk, Richard Foreman and more. There are sections devoted to ritual concepts, theatre in the streets, radical participation of the spectator, workshops in prisons, spectacles such as the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, and much more. This giant colloquium involves the people who changed the face of theatre from the '60s onward. Filled with photos, drawings, private notes and fliers, it is part ongoing history, part document, part journal, part complaint and part blessing.

This book brings together experts across disciplines to examine the connection between digital technologies and human movement, and to consider the creative and artistic possibilities of technologized human motion.

The games and exercises in this book are designed to be used as warm-ups at the beginning of a theatre class. They have been used successfully with middle school students and they can easily be adapted for use with younger children, older teens and adults in various settings. The games are divided into thirteen sections for easy reference: 1. Clowning, 2. Cooperation and Teamwork, 3. Focus and Concentration, 4. Getting Ready, 5. Improvisation, 6. Listening, 7. Name Games, 8. Observation, 10. Pantomime, 11. Stretching and Relaxation, 12. Stage Movement, 13. Voice. The games have been adapted from many books, workshops and standard group activities. This is a comprehensive collection of tested games and exercises. A must book for every theatre library.

"A tapestry of plays, stories, and letters artistically woven together to form a beautiful new work worthy of Chekhov's own heart and hand. The American artists Sharon Gans and Jordan Charney have reconceived Chekhov in their duets and arias with sensitivity and passion of the finest dramatic caliber. The true wonder and character of Chekhov shines through...enlightening!" - Moscow Contemporary Theater

This examination of the relation between law and drama in Renaissance England establishes the diversity of their dialogue, encompassing critique and complicity, comment and analogy, but argues that the way in which drama addresses legal problems and dilemmas is nevertheless distinctive. As the resemblance between law and theatre concerns their formal structures rather than their methods and aims, an interdisciplinary approach must be alive to distinctions as well as affinities. Alert to issues of representation without losing sight of a lived culture of litigation, this study primarily focuses on early modern implications of the connection between legal and dramatic evidence, but expands to address a wider range of issues which stretch the representational capacities of both courtroom and theatre. The book does not shy away from drama's composite vision of legal realities but engages with the fictionality itself as significant, and negotiates the methodological challenges it posits.

In this book, Shelby Chan examines the relationship between theatre translation and identity construction against the sociocultural background that has led to the popularity of translated theatre in Hong Kong. A statistical analysis of the development of translated theatre is presented, establishing a correlation between its popularity and major socio-political trends. When the idea of home, often assumed to be the basis for identity, becomes blurred for historical, political and sociocultural reasons, people may come to feel "homeless" and compelled to look for alternative means to develop the Self. In theatre translation, Hongkongers have found a source of inspiration to nurture their identity and expand their "home" territory. By exploring the translation strategies of various theatre practitioners in Hong Kong, the book also analyses a number of foreign plays and their stage renditions. The focus is not only on the textual and discursive transfers but also on the different ways in which the people of Hong Kong perceive their identity in the performances.

Performance Affects explores performance projects in disaster and war zones to argue that joy, beauty and celebration should be the inspiration for the politics of community-based or participatory performance practice, seeking to realign the field of Applied Theatre away from effects towards an affective role, connected to sensations of pleasure.

More than one hundred years after Futurism exploded onto the European stage with its unique brand of art and literature, there is a need to reassess the whole movement, from its Italian roots to its international ramifications. In wide-ranging essays based on fresh research, the contributors to this collection examine both the original context and the cultural legacy of Futurism. Chapters touch on topics such as Futurism and Fascism, the geopolitics of Futurism, the Futurist woman, and translating Futurist texts. A large portion of the book is devoted to the practical aspects of performing Futurist theatrical ideas in the twenty-first century.

Alison Oddey takes us on a spectator's journey engaging with art forms that cross boundaries of categorization. She questions the role of the spectator and director, including interviews with Deborah Warner; the nature of art works and performance with artists Heather Ackroyd, Dan Harvey and Graeme Miller. She provocatively demonstrates the spectator as centre of the artistic experience, a new kind of making theatre-art, revealing its spirit and nature; searching for space and contemplation in a hectic Twenty-First century landscape.

The problem of language constituted the most contentious subject of the philosophies and human sciences in the twentieth-century and drove what came to be known as the "linguistic turn" to Western thought. Phenomenology, linguistics, analytic philosophy, speech act theory, anthropology, psychology, poststructuralism, media studies, and ordinary language philosophy-all addressed language as the primary vehicle of human thought and communication, and queried whether any accurate linguistic representation of reality were possible. The sound of the human voice lay at the center of the debate. The central question raised by Husserl's phenomenology and de Saussure's linguistics, and discussed throughout the century, concerned whether the sounds of the voice were intrinsic to meaning or were simply relative. In a related phenomenon, vocal experimentation marked the twentieth-century avant garde, which included the nonsense verbal texts of Dada; the electronic mediations of Samuel Beckett and Peter Handke; and the playful, ironic, and confrontational performances of Laurie Anderson, Karen Finley, and the Wooster Group. The experiments mirrored the fixation with voice and language as expressed in the philosophies and sciences. Yet despite the centrality of the voice for the philosophy of language, linguistic study, and performance, no book-length study before now has focused solely on vocal expression. The voice ranks with gesture as one of two media of communication available to every fully able-bodied human being, and yet theatre studies tends to take a visual approach to its objects of critique: the body, the dramatic text, and the mise-en-scene. Because the voice registers as a crucial media of expression in the theatre, theatre studies also can provide valuable contributions to the discussion of voice and language undertaken in other disciplines. The theatre as a social and public art form reveals a great deal about what we think and feel in regards to our communications with each other. This is the first book of theatre studies to identify and articulate theories of voice as expressed in the philosophies, human sciences, and physical sciences of the twentieth century. It also identifies parallels between the theories and the vocal practices of twentieth-century performances that shared similar concerns with issues of language and mediation. This book adopts as a central premise that the introduction and proliferation of electronic forms of communication stimulated the interest in voice and language in the scholarly discourses of the twentieth century and stimulated as well the fascination with the sounds of the voice as expressed in the twentieth-century avant garde. Dramatic Theories of Voice in the Twentieth Century is the only book of theatre and performance studies to address the sounds of the human voice and as such ranks as an invaluable addition to all theatre, philosophy, performance studies, communications, and cultural studies collections.

Charting the early dissemination of Shakespeare in the Nordic countries in the 19th century, this opens up an area of global Shakespeare studies that has received little attention to date. With case studies exploring the earliest translations of Hamlet into Danish; the first translation of Macbeth and the differing translations of Hamlet into Swedish; adaptations into Finnish; Kierkegaard's re-working of King Lear, and the reception of the African-American actor Ira Aldridge's performances in Stockholm as Othello and Shylock, it will appeal to all those interested in the reception of Shakespeare and its relationship to the political and social conditions. The volume intervenes in the current discussion of global Shakespeare and more recent concepts like 'rhizome', which challenge the notion of an Anglocentric model of 'centre' versus 'periphery'. It offers a new assessment of these notions, revealing how the dissemination of Shakespeare is determined by a series of local and frequently interlocking centres and peripheries, such as the Finnish relation to Russia or the Norwegian relation with Sweden, rather than a matter of influence from the English Cultural Sphere.

Advertised in its Prologue as a prequel to Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, Fletcher and Massinger's The False One is the first literary work completely to revolve around the affair between Caesar and Cleopatra. In its deployment of their liaison as a venue for the exploration and criticism of contemporary political manoeuvring and its high-spirited and pungent appropriation of Roman history, the play proves to be one of the most compelling Jacobean dramatizations of the classical past. This Revels Plays edition offers the first fully annotated, single-volume critical edition of The False One, with a thorough introduction that provides new insights on the date and the theatre of the play's first performance, examines the playwrights' reworking of their sources and explores the theatrical potential of a play that has hitherto regrettably been lost to the dramatic repertory. -- .

Focusing on Odin Teatret's latest work, this discussion is updated by drawing on fresh research. The group's productions since 2000 are included and the book offers a reassessment of Odin's actor training. Its community work and legacy are discussed and Barba's intercultural practice is viewed alongside two major Theatrum Mundi productions.

The Hedgerow Theatre was created by Jasper Deeter in 1923 in a rural Pennsylvania community devoted to the Arts and Crafts movement. Deeter, who had achieved some success in Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, abandoned the commercial stage and assembled a company dedicated to true repertory and to theater as a 'way of life.' It was an audacious experiment, but over the next thirty years Hedgerow prospered and became America's most successful repertory company. While it is popularly known for some of its famous alumnae, including Ann Harding and Richard Basehart, Hedgerow's genuine legacy is a living library of over 200 productions created by Deeter's idealistic, but determined, pursuit of "truth and beauty" in the theatre.

"Devising in Process" examines the creative processes of eight theatre companies making devising-based performances.
Companies covered include:
- The People Show
- Station House Opera
- Shunt
- The Red Room
- Faulty Optic Theatre of Animation
- theatre O
- Gecko
- Third Angel
Authors were granted unusual access to the rehearsal room, enabling them to provide unique insights into how ideas evolve and develop, how strategies and methods are applied and how roles and relationships are structured. Covering a broad range of styles, the collection explores physical theatre, political theatre, puppetry, live art, new writing and performance with new technology.
Accessibly framed, the book includes a comprehensive introduction which highlights similarities and differences in approach, examines the impact of economic and cultural factors and explores how definitions of devised theatre are changing and developing. This eye-opening collection will be important reading for students and practitioners interested in exploring 21st century devising processes.

This book argues that US theatre in the 20th century embraced the theories and practices of internationalism as a way to realize a better world and as part of the strategic reform of the theatre into a national expression. Live performance, theatre internationalists argued, could represent and reflect the nation like no other endeavour.