The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sound Art explores and delineates what Sound Art is in the 21st century. Sound artworks today embody the contemporary and transcultural trends towards the post-apocalyptic, a wide sensorial spectrum of sonic imaginaries as well as the decolonization and deinstitutionalization around the making of sound. Within the areas of musicology, art history, and, later, sound studies, Sound Art has evolved at least since the 1980s into a turbulant field of academic critique and aesthetic analysis. Summoning artists, researchers, curators, and critics, this volume takes note of and reflects the most recent shifts and drifts in Sound Art--rooted in sonic histories and implying future trajectories.

In her performances, videos, and installations, Sharon Hayes (b. 1970) explores the nexus between politics, history, speech, and desire. Her works modify or appropriate the language and tools of political dissent, creating unexpected affinities between important historical events and the present. Highlighted in this volume is the video installation Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) Screeds #13, 16, 20 & 29 (2003)-a work in which Hayes memorized the famous taped speeches by Patty Hearst and her kidnappers, the leftist radical group the Symbionese Liberation Army, and then reads them to an audience who corrects her mistakes. It is in these slippages between memory and history that the meaning of Hayes's work resides. This book also includes a group of new site-specific works that addresses the Whitney's role in the historic development of process-based, performative art and its engagement with politics that took place in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This book serves as document of Hayes's thinking process, featuring original contributions from Hayes and some two-dozen other writers, artists, and activists, which provide insight into the motivations and development of her projects. The catalogue includes images carefully selected by the artist-photographs, vinyl LP covers, fliers, images of Hayes's own work-and a short text response by each of the contributors. Contributors include: Dennis Adams, Lauren Berlant, Saramina Berman, Claire Bishop, Juli Carson, Kabir Carter, Christhian Diaz, Saeed Taji Farouky, Malik Gaines, Andrea Geyer, Leah Gilliam, Michela Griffo, Sharon Hayes, Holly Hughes, Chrissie Iles, Iman Issa, Hans Kuzmich, Cristobal Lehyt, Ralph Lemon, Brooke O'Harra, Jenni Olson, Dean Spade, Lynne Tillman, What, How & For Whom/WHW, Craig Willse. Distributed for the Whitney Museum of American Art Exhibition Schedule: Whitney Museum of American Art(06/21/12-09/09/12)

It's the middle of the night when 21-year-old Leo arrives on the doorstep of the West Village apartment where his feisty 91-year-old grandmother Vera lives. She's an old Communist who lives alone, he's a latter-day hippie, recently returned from a cross-country bike trip which ended traumatically. Over the course of a single month, these unlikely roommates infuriate, bewilder, and ultimately connect. When Leo's old girlfriend shows up and he begins to reveal the mysterious events of his journey, Leo and Vera discover the narrow line between growing up and growing old. Peopled with nuanced, beautifully-drawn characters, Amy Herzog's award-winning play has established her as a remarkable new talent. 4000 Miles had its 2011 world premiere at New York's Lincoln Center Theater.

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.

How does theatre shape the body and perceptions of it? How do bodies on stage challenge audience assumptions about material evidence and the truth? Theory for Theatre Studies: Bodies responds to these questions by examining how theatre participates in and informs theories of the body in performance, race, queer, disability, trans, gender, and new media studies. Throughout the 20th century, theories of the body have shifted from understanding the body as irrefutable material evidence of race, sex, and gender, to a social construction constituted in language. In the same period, theatre has struggled with representing ideas through live bodies while calling into question assumptions about the body. This volume demonstrates how theatre contributes to understanding the historical, contemporary and burgeoning theories of the body. It explores how theories of the body inform debates about labor conditions and spatial configurations. Theatre allows performers to shift an audience's understandings of the shape of the bodies on stage, possibly producing a reflexive dynamic for consideration of bodies offstage as well. In addition, casting choices in the theatre, most recently and popularly in Hamilton, question how certain bodies are "cast" in social, historical, and philosophical roles. Through an analysis of contemporary case studies, including The Balcony, Angels in America, and Father Comes Home from the Wars, this volume examines how the theatre theorizes bodies. Online resources are also available to accompany this book.

What is artistic resonance and how can it be linked to one's life and one's art? This latest book of essays from legendary theatre director Anne Bogart, considers the creation of resonance in the artistic endeavour, with a focus on the performing arts. The word 'resonance' comes from the Latin meaning to 're-sound' or 'sound together'. From music to physics, resonance is a common thread that evokes a response and, in general, is understood as a quality that makes something personally meaningful and valuable. For Bogart, curiosity is a key personal quality to be nurtured throughout life and that very same curiosity, as an artist, thinker and human being. Creating pathways between performance theory, art history, neuroscience, music, architecture and the visual arts, and consistently forging new thought-paths, the writing draws upon Anne Bogart's own life and artistic journeys to illuminate potent philosophical ideas. Woven with personal anecdotes, stories and reflections, this is a book that will be of interest to any theatre artist and anyone who reflects on the power of the arts, of theatre-making and what it means to be engaged in the artistic process.