The book provides an investigation grounded in performance practice and practice-as-research methodology on the issues of authorship and collaborative labour. This investigation is set in the context of a world more and more characterized by fragmentation, displacement and virtual communication and relationships. It addresses and playfully engages with the following questions: what is a collaborative body? How can one sole performer enact and convey a collaborative practice? How can one body on stage carry out several voices at once? Can we stand in for others? How do we maintain a sense of 'being-together' while being alone in a room? The book contains the full-length definitive version of the performance score from A Duet Without You, an original performance piece created between 2013 and 2015 by Chloe Dechery in collaboration with a range of high-profile artistic collaborators working inter- and cross-disciplinary, including Karen Christopher (Goat Island), Michael Pinchbeck, Deborah Pearson (Forest Fringe), Simone Kenyon and Pedro Ins. In addition to the main performance score, another original text has been produced and is included as a 'template' version of the script to be adapted and enacted by existing or potential future collaborators - the idea being that any reader could appropriate and reinterpret a version of the performance score and create their own personalised rendition of the show. Besides these two new and original performance scores, there is a complementary collection of essays, ranging from performative responses and co-authored articles to in-depth theoretical essays, written by a selection of pre-eminent writers, artists and academics. Primary readership will be those teaching, researching or studying in theatre and performance studies, visual arts, fine arts, art history, creative writing, poetry, philosophy or French literature. Will also be of interest to art school students and those with an interest in theatre.

This book is for you if: you want to reflect on the big questions of life - suffering, injustice, faith; you find the Old Testament a bit wieldy and want a straightforward way into one of the most powerful books in the Bible; you want a way to read Job in a week and reflect on it; you want to have a fascinating evening in a home group; you wish to hold a theological seminar on this key aspect of Old Testament Wisdom; you want to present Job as a drama to the general public

Phantom of the Opera is the longest-running, largest-grossing musical of all time. This book is the story of the stage show, film, and sequel, and the controversies that have surrounded them. You will learn why: Sarah Brightman had to leave the UK after her divorce from Lloyd Webber and how she became the highest paid soprano in the world. Gerard Butler was cast as a "younger, hotter" Phantom in the film, and why diehard fans thought he was not ugly enough. Lloyd Webber ignored early warnings that fans would spurn a sequel-a decision that cost him millions. A social media campaign led to the demise of the Phantom sequel, and how it was reborn. Phantom of the Opera: A Social History of the World's Most Popular Musical is the first book that fully documents the history of a musical now in its 31st year of a continual run that has become a cultural force.

This is the first textbook designed for students, practitioners and scholars of the performing arts who are curious about the power of the cognitive sciences to throw light on the processes of performance. It equips readers with a clear understanding of how research in cognitive neuroscience has illuminated and expanded traditional approaches to thinking about topics such as the performer, the spectator, space and time, culture, and the text. Each chapter considers four layers of performance: conventional forms of theatre, performance art, and everyday life, offering an expansive vision of the impact of the cognitive sciences on performance in the widest sense. Written in an approachable style, An Introduction to Theatre, Performance and the Cognitive Sciences weaves together case studies of a wide range of performances with scientific evidence and post-structural theory. Artists such as Robert Wilson, Societas Raffaello Sanzio, Ariane Mnouchkine, Bertolt Brecht, and Antonin Artaud are brought into conversation with theories of Gilles Deleuze, Shaun Gallagher, Alva Noe, Tim Ingold and the science of V. S. Ramachandran, Vittorio Gallese, and Antonio Damasio. John Lutterbie offers a complex understanding of not only the act of performing but the forces that mark the place of theatre in contemporary society. In drawing on a variety of scientific articles, Lutterbie provides readers with an accessible account of significant research in areas in the field and reveals how the sciences can help us understand the experience of art.

Canada's recent sesquicentennial celebrations were the latest in a long, steady progression of Canadian cultural memory projects. Unbecoming Nationalism investigates the power of commemorative performances in the production of nationalist narratives. Using 'unbecoming' as a theoretical framework to unsettle or decolonize nationalist narratives, Helene Vosters examines an eclectic range of both state-sponsored social memory projects and counter-memorial projects to reveal and unravel the threads connecting reverential military commemoration, celebratory cultural nationalism, and white settler-colonial nationalism. Vosters brings readings of institutional, aesthetic, and activist performances of Canadian military commemoration, settler-colonial nationalism, and redress into conversation with literature that examines the relationship between memory, violence, and nationalism from the disciplinary arenas of performance studies, Canadian studies, critical race and Indigenous studies, memory studies, and queer and gender studies. In addition to using performance as a theoretical framework, Vosters uses performance to enact a philosophy of praxis and embodied theory.