Assembling a remarkable group of scholars, these essays explore how the circulation and exchange of "vectors of the radical" shape the avant-garde. Mapping the movement of scripts, theatre activists, performances, and other material entities, they provide unprecedented perspectives on the transnational performance culture of the avant-garde.

In Argentine theatre spanning from the democratic transition to the early twenty-first century, the expression of human fragility has taken diverse forms, revealing the transformative engagement of performance with memory politics and human rights over the course of the postdictatorial period. This book examines the intervention of theatre and performance in the memory politics surrounding Argentina's return to democracy and in the context of the growing influence of global economic, legal, and cultural systems in the nineties onward. Though staged locally, the plays and performances analyzed in this book invite spectators to imagine global communities, to rethink shifting definitions of solidarity and justice, and to reflect on the relationship between the politics of memory, identity, and place.

The Romantic Stage: A Many-Sided Mirror examines late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British theatre and drama with the conviction that they made an essential contribution to the aesthetic and ideological complexity of the British culture of the day. The essays collected in this volume seek to capture the richness and diversity of British Romantic theatre and drama and situate them at the centre of the multiple, and often radical, literary and social transformations that the Age brought about. The volume is divided into four main sections: "Contextualizing Romantic Theatre and Drama", "Drama across the Arts", "Staging the Gothic (Fear on Stage)" and "Texts, Theories and Contexts". Each section is dedicated to a particular aspect of English Romantic drama examined through interdisciplinary, international and inter-generic perspectives.

Staging Black Feminisms explores the development and principles of black British women's plays and performance since the late Twentieth century. Using contemporary performance theory to explore key themes (such as migration, motherhood, sexuality, and mixed race identity), it offers close textual readings and production analysis of a range of plays, performance poetry and live art works by practitioners, including Patience Agbabi, Jackie Kay, Valerie Mason John, Winsome Pinnock, Jacqueline Rudet, Debbie Tucker Green, Dorothea Smartt, Su Andi, and Susan Lewis.

Gilbert Murray translated and made available to modern readers The Epitrepontes of Menander or The Arbitration for the first time in 1945. The Arbitration is among the most frequently quoted and most famous of Menander's plays and - being less farcical than others - belongs to his mature style. With an interesting and informative introduction, this translation will be of value to any student of Classics and Ancient Greek drama.

"Hoem's ethnography is sure-footed, subtle and comprehensive, and has the additional virtue of being backed by a considerable body of primary texts.a valuable contribution to the understanding of Tokelau culture in its various manifestations as well as of some of the processes by which social changes are continuously negotiated." . The Journal of the Polynesian Society ""The book is .rich in discussions of Pacific anthropologists and theories of space and migration, but I feel that it stands out as a deeply humane and informative ethnography of the Tokelau people and their self-presentation in the modern Pacific."" . JRAI The Argonauts in the Pacific, famous through Malinowski's work, have not been exempt from general historical developments in the world around them. By focusing on two plays performed by the Tokelau Te Ata, a theater group, the author reveals the self-perceptions of the Tokelau and highlights the dynamic relationship between issues of representation and political processes such as nation building, infrastructural changes and increased regional migration. It is through an analysis of communicative practices, which the author carried out in the home atolls and in the diasporic communities in New Zealand, that we arrive at a proper understanding of how global processes affect local institutions and everyday interaction. Ingjerd Hoem is Head of the Institute for Pacific Archaeology and Cultural History, Kon-Tiki Museum.

Both dramatic and musical theater are part of the tradition that has made Austria - especially Vienna - and the old Habsburg lands synonymous with high culture in Central Europe. Many works, often controversial originally but now considered as classics, are still performed regularly in Vienna, Prague, Budapest, or Krakow. This volume not only offers an excellent overview of the theatrical history of the region, it is also an innovative, cross-disciplinary attempt to analyse the inner workings and dynamics of theater through a discussion of the interplay between society, the audience, and performing artists. Michael Cherlin is Professor of Music Theory, University of Minnesota. Halina Filipowicz is Professor of Slavic Literatures, University of Wisconsin, Madison. Richard L. Rudolph is Professor Emeritus, University of Minnesota.

How has the media, beginning with the Persian Gulf War, altered political analysis and how has this alteration in turn affected socially-critical art? Jeanne Colleran examines more than forty plays, most of which were written in direct response to the emergent New World Order and the subsequent 1991 war in Iraq as well as to the 9/11 attacks and the retaliatory actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. These works are drawn primarily from the British and American stage - the principal partners in these conflicts. The writers include prominent figures (Harold Pinter, Caryl Churchill, Sam Shepard, Tony Kushner, David Hare, Trevor Griffiths, Naomi Wallace, and Neil LaBute), work by theatre groups and artistic directors (San Francisco Mime Troupe, Nicolas Kent and the Tricycle Theatre, and Alan Buchman and Culture Project), and plays by emerging playwrights and by writers who work primarily as journalists or in other media (Anne Nelson, Lawrence Wright, George Packer, Robin Soans, and others).

The Aesthetic Exception theorises anew the relation between art and politics. It challenges critical trends that discount the role of aesthetic autonomy, to impulsively reassert art as an effective form of social engagement. But it equally challenges those on the flipside of the efficacy debate, who insist that art's politics is limited to a recondite space of 'autonomous resistance'. The book shows how each side of the efficacy debate overlooks art's exceptional status and its social mediations. Mobilising philosophy and cultural theory, and employing examples from visual art, performance, and theatre, it proposes four alternative tests to 'effect' to offer a nuanced account of art's political character. Those tests examine how art relates to politics as a practice that articulates its historical conjuncture, and how it prefigures the 'new' through simulations capable of activating the political life of the spectator. -- .

The Reception of Aeschylus' Plays through Shifting Models and Frontiers addresses the need for an integrated approach to the study and staging of Aeschylus' plays. It offers an invigorating discussion about the transmission and reception of his plays and explores the interrelated tasks of editing, translating, adapting and remaking them for the page and the stage. The volume seeks to reshape current debates about the place of his tragedies in the curriculum and the repertory in a scholarly manner that is accessible and innovative. Each chapter makes a significant and original contribution to its selected topic, but the collective strength of the volume rests on its simultaneous appeal to readers in theatre studies, classical studies, performance studies, comparative studies, translation studies, adaptation studies, and, naturally, reception studies.

Performance and Cosmopolitics is a ground-breaking study of cross-cultural theatre in the Australasian region. Focusing on a range of theatrical events and practices in avant-garde, mainstream and community contexts, this book explores the cultural, political and ethical dimensions of Australia's engagement with Asia. Aboriginal theatre is also featured as an important aspect of regional arts traffic. A complex and fascinating analysis that sheds light on international arts marketing, broader trends in cross-cultural performance training, and current debates in performance studies.

Since the Enlightenment, French theatre has occupied a prominent place within French thought, society and culture, but as a subject of study, it has remained a purview of theatre historians, literary scholars and aestheticians. They focus on the emergence of the modern theatre as change generated from within bourgeois literary drama but ignore theatre as a complex social practice. Theatre, Politics, and Markets in Fin-de-Siecle Paris investigates the dynamic relationships among the avant-garde, official culture and the commercial sphere, arguing against the neat divide of 'high' and 'low' culture by showing how cultural forms of varying social origins influenced each other.

Eighteenth-century drama is often dismissed as homogenous, aesthetically uninteresting, or politically complacent. This book reveals the incredibly intriguing and intricate nature of the periods history plays and their often messy dramatisaton of the complexities of patriotic rhetoric and national identification.

It was a strange notion in 1900, that leading lights of the legitimate stage would ever join a bill of "turns" or short acts, everything from, and in between, song-and-dance, trained animals, blackface, aerialists, criminals regaling crowds with their exploits, eating fire. "Transatlantic Stage Stars in Vaudeville and Variety "shows renowned actors showing rough fare in rough times. Celebrity will be seen changing, always, even to twisting its foremost exemplars in the wind.

Both dramatic and musical theater are part of the tradition that has made Austria - especially Vienna - and the old Habsburg lands synonymous with high culture in Central Europe. Many works, often controversial originally but now considered as classics, are still performed regularly in Vienna, Prague, Budapest, or Krakow. This volume not only offers an excellent overview of the theatrical history of the region, it is also an innovative, cross-disciplinary attempt to analyse the inner workings and dynamics of theater through a discussion of the interplay between society, the audience, and performing artists.

This collection brings together a group of distinguished and original theater historians engaged in rethinking the nature of early modern theater history as a discipline. Whether focusing on the relation between scripts and performance practice, the structure of theatrical companies, the social dimensions of drama, or the archaeology of the stage, all are concerned with basic questions of evidence and interpretation, and offer significant, and often startling, revisions of our view of the early modern theater.

It's 1850, and a marvellous international exhibition is being planned in Paris. The publicity agents claim that this exhibition will be so fascinating that a whale has swum all the way up the Seine to see it. Not likely? Well, Sylvie, from a small country village, decides to go and see for herself. Along the way, she tumbles through a series of crazy adventures, because everyone, but everyone , has some sort of interest in this exhibition. Especially a notorious gang of crooks that wants to steal one of the prize exhibits, the fabulous crown jewels of an Indian Raja. A lot of people end up looking for Sylvie : the gang, the cops, two fanatically comical detectives, and an assortment of larger-than-life characters. Also looking for Sylvie is her admirer, Emile, who flatly doesn't believe there is a whale, but has a very good reason to hope that there is one. Can the twinkle-eyed Captain Duval supply the necessary whale, all in the name of love? This material is free of any royalty obligation for use by schools and amateur dramatic groups. It may be produced on stage, used for play-reading, or simply read for fun.

'Other' Spanish theatres challenges established opinions on modern Iberian theatre by considering the roles of contrasting figures and companies who have impacted upon both the practice and the perception of Spanish and European stages. In questioning the primacy of the dramatist, this pioneering study offers a new interpretation of a nation's theatrical culture that has been viewed primarily through the prisms of a select number of playwrights. Accordingly many of the conclusions reached are new ones, and the case, for acknowledging the wide influence of Spanish practitioners on theatre in Europe and the Americas is made in persuasive terms. Through a bold documentation and interrogation of key productions and their reception both at home and abroad, 'Other' Spanish theatres focuses on the doing of performance, asking provocative questions around how performances are tested against the texts that remain. In a broad and detailed study Delgado selects six case studies which map out alternative readings of a nation's theatrical innovation through the twentieth century: muse and mentor to Federico Garcia Lorca, Margarita Xirgu; theatrical innovator and influence on Orson Welles, Enrique Rambal; tragedienne Maria Casares feted by George Craig Camus, Genet and Cocteau; actress, producer and director Nuria Espert; international director Lluis Pasqual and Catalan performance company La Cubana. -- .

What can society learn about disability through the way it is portrayed in TV, films and plays?

This insightful and accessible text explores and analyses the way disability is portrayed in drama, and how that portrayal may be interpreted by young audiences. Investigating how disabilities have been represented on stage in the past, this book discusses what may be inferred from plays which feature disabled characters through a variety of critical approaches.

In addition to the theoretical analysis of disability in dramatic literature, the book includes two previously unpublished playscripts, both of which have been performed by secondary school aged students and which focus on issues of disability and its effects on others. The contextual notes and discussion which accompany these plays and projects provide insights into how drama can contribute to disability education, and how it can give a voice to students who have special educational needs themselves.

Other features of this wide-ranging text include:

• an annotated chronology that traces the history of plays that have featured disabled characters
• an analysis of how disability is used as a dramatic metaphor
• consideration of the ethics of dramatising a disabled character
• critical accounts of units of work in mainstream school seeking to raise disability awareness through engagement with practical drama and dramatic texts
• a description and evaluation of a drama project in a special school.

In tackling questions and issues that have not, hitherto, been well covered, Drama, Disability and Education will be of enormous interest to drama students, teachers, researchers and pedagogues who work with disabled people or are concerned with raising awareness and understanding of disability.

First published in 1986, this compilation offers a guide to the major aspects of contemporary British theatre. In the period covered, Britain was among the world leaders in theatre as the post-war years saw a remarkable surge in theatrical creativity, associated with the experimental, innovatory and diverse range and styles of playwrights such as John Osborne, Arnold Wesker, Samuel Beckett, Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter. Directors came into their own as theatrical entrepreneurs and the new medium of television provided a further channel for the talents of writers such as Dennis Potter and distinguished actors including Ian McKellen, Alan Howard, Judi Dench and Sinead Cusack to name but a few. This volume contains entries on playwrights and their plays, on prominent directors, actors and theatre groups; on alternative theatre, schools of dramatic practice and stage history; on certain critical categories and theatre terminology. It will be of interest to students of drama, the critic, the aspiring writer or actor, and a desirable acquisition for theatre enthusiasts.

First published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 1970, this book is a faithful representation of the original edition of Beltaine, a literary magazine edited by W. B. Yeats from May 1899 to April 1900. Beltaine was the first of several magazines of the Irish Literary Theatre (later to become The Abbey Theatre) in which Yeats's editorial role was of utmost importance. It was an occasional publication and focused on promoting current works of Irish playwrights whilst challenging those of their English opponents. The magazine mainly consists of a series of essays on the theatre in Dublin, and supplementing these are explanations and discussions of new plays, excerpts from which are often included. This book will be of interest to those with an interest in Yeats, early nineteenth-century literature, and Irish theatre.

First published in 1970, this book includes all of the annual editions and also a final pamphlet of Samhain: October 1901 - November 1908, a literary magazine edited by W. B. Yeats. Samhain was one of the several magazines that the Irish Literary Theatre (later to become The Abbey Theatre) produced and it was born when the original magazine, Beltaine, came to an end in 1900. Yeats's editorial role was essential to the publication which served to publicize the work of the Theatre, promote current works of Irish playwrights and challenging those of their English opponents. The magazine mainly consists of a series of essays on the theatre in Dublin, and supplementing these are explanations and discussions of new plays, excerpts from which are often included. This book will be of interest to those with an interest in Yeats, early nineteenth-century literature, and Irish theatre.

This exciting collection of essays explores the complex area of madness and performance. The book spans from the 18th century to the present and unearths the overlooked history of theatre and performance in, and about, psychiatric asylums and hospitals. The book will appeal to historians, social scientists, theatre scholars, and artists alike.

This ground-breaking collection focuses on how theatre, dance, and other forms of performance are helping to transform our ecological values. Top scholars explore how familiar and new works of performance can help us recognize our reciprocal relationship with the natural world and how it helps us understand the way we are connected to the land.