This book discusses the evolution of Commedia dell'Arte in the Asia-Pacific where through the process of reinvention and recreation it has emerged as a variety of hybrids and praxes, all in some ways faithful to the recreated European genre. The contributors in this collection chart their own training in the field and document their strategies for engaging with this form of theatre. In doing so, this book examines the current thoughts, ideas, and perceptions of Commedia - a long-standing theatre genre, originating in a European-based collision between neo-classical drama and oral tradition. The contributing artists, directors, teachers, scholars and theatre-makers give insight into working styles, performance ideas, craft techniques and ways to engage an audience for whom Commedia is not part of their day-to-day culture. The volume presents case studies by current practitioners, some who have trained under known Commedia 'masters' (e.g. Lecoq, Boso, Mazzone-Clementi and Fava) and have returned to their country of origin where they have developed their performance and teaching praxis, and others (e.g. travelling from Europe to Japan, Thailand, Singapore and China) who have discovered access points to share or teach Commedia in places where it was previously not known. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in Performing arts, Italian studies, and History as well as practitioners in Commedia dell'Arte.

This collection uncovers connections and coincidences that challenge the old stories of pioneering performers who crossed the Atlantic and Pacific oceans from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. It investigates songlines, drama, opera, music theatre, dance, and circus-removing traditional boundaries that separate studies of performance, and celebrating difference and transformation in style, intention, and delivery. Well known, or obscure, travelling performers faced dangers at sea and hazardous journeys across land. Their tracks, made in pursuit of fortune and fame, intersected with those made by earlier storytellers in search for food. Touring Performance and Global Exchange takes a fresh look at such tracks-the material remains-demonstrating that moving performance does far more than transfer repertoires and people; it transforms them. Touring performance has too often beenconceived in diasporic terms, as a fixed product radiating out from a cultural centre. This collection maps different patterns-ones that comprise reversed flows, cross currents, and continually proliferating centres of meaning in complex networks of global exchange. This collection will be of great interest to scholars and students in theatre, music, drama studies, and cultural history.

This book examines Commedia dell'Arte as a performative genre, and one that should be analysed through the framework of dramaturgy and dramaturgical practice. This volume examines the way Commedia has been explored in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and details its reinventors' dramaturgic approaches, both focusing in on specific examples such as Jacques Lecoq, Dario Fo and Antonio Fava, and also suggesting how modern discoveries may aid the study of historical performance practice. It also discusses how audiences read and receive masks; the relationship between the different masked and unmasked roles; the range of performance activities that come under the umbrella term 'improvisation'; the performative construction of a role performed 'live' from a scenario; the role of language and embodied locality in performance; and the performative relationship between performative commedia and literary tragicomedy. Its focus is dramaturgy, and so it may be read both as a text describing various theatrical practices from 1946 onwards and as a way of creating one's own contemporary Commedia practice. It is an important read for any student or scholar of Commedia dell'Arte and theatre historians grappling with the status of this unique and influential performance form.

dancehall, dance and performance studies, sociology, cultural geography, anthropology, post-colonial studies, diaspora studies, musicology, and gender studies.

In What a Body Can Do, Ben Spatz develops, for the first time, a rigorous theory of embodied technique as knowledge. He argues that viewing technique as both training and research has much to offer current debates over the role of practice in the university, including the debates around "practice as research." Drawing on critical perspectives from the sociology of knowledge, phenomenology, dance studies, enactive cognition, and other areas, Spatz argues that technique is a major area of historical and ongoing research in physical culture, performing arts, and everyday life.

Theatrical Speech Acts: Performing Language explores the significance and impact of words in performance, probing how language functions in theatrical scenarios, what it can achieve under particular conditions, and what kinds of problems may arise as a result. Presenting case studies from around the globe-spanning Argentina, Egypt, Germany, India, Indonesia, Korea, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Thailand, the UK and the US-the authors explore key issues related to theatrical speech acts, such as (post)colonial language politics; histories, practices and theories of translation for/in performance; as well as practices and processes of embodiment. With scholars from different cultural and disciplinary backgrounds examining theatrical speech acts-their preconditions, their cultural and bodily dimensions as well as their manifold political effects-the book introduces readers to a crucial linguistic dimension of historical and contemporary processes of interweaving performance cultures. Ideal for drama, theater, performance, and translation scholars worldwide, Theatrical Speech Acts opens up a unique perspective on the transformative power of language in performance.

Routledge Performance Practitioners is a series of introductory guides to the key theatre-makers of the last century. Each volume explains the background to and the work of one of the major influences on twentieth- and twenty-first-century performance. Antonin Artaud was an active theatre-maker and theorist whose ideas reshaped contemporary approaches to performance. This is the first book to combine an overview of Artaud's life with a focus on his work as an actor and director; an analysis of his key theories, including the Theatre of Cruelty and the double; a consideration of his work as a director at the Theatre Alfred Jarry and his production of Strindberg's A Dream Play; and a series of practical exercises to develop an approach to theatre based on Artaud's key ideas. As a first step towards critical understanding and as an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners are unbeatable value for today's student.

1. Reconstructs historical performances in detail unavailable elsewhere. 2. Reveals a forgotten history of female celebrity. 3. The focus on history reveals a great deal about contemporary aerial and circus practice.

performance theory, art and public policy, art and social justice, global catastrophes and local actions

* The program and philosophy described in the book is unique as it presents the concept with a basis in behavioral analysis, and how improvised theatre can be used as a tool, rather than as simply a recreational activity or social event * Includes a comprehensive listing of 80+ different games/activities. Each activity is clearly explained, including the methodology, process and insight for teachers, as well as the underlying purpose each game is designed to address * In addition to professionals teaching social skills to individuals with autism spectrum disorder, the content of the book is also designed so that parents of special needs students can easily access the activities for at-home instruction and recreational use with their children

Forms of Emotion analyses how drama, theatre and contemporary performance present emotion and its human and nonhuman diversity. This book explores the emotions, emotional feelings, mood, and affect, which make up a spectrum of 'emotion', to illuminate theatrical knowledge and practice and reflect the distinctions and debates in philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, and other disciplines. This study asserts that specific forms of emotion are intentionally unified in drama, theatre, and performance to convey meaning, counteract separation and subversively champion emotional freedom. The book progressively shows that the dramatic and theatrical representation of the nonhuman reveals how human dominance is offset by emotional connection with birds, animals, and the natural environment. This book will be of great interest to students and researchers interested in the emotions and affect in dramatic literature, theatre studies, performance studies, psychology, and philosophy as well as artists working with emotionally expressive performance.

performance, communication studies, literature, narratives strategies

1. The book includes extensive context about the historical and newsworthy events that surround nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants in correlation to the plays analyzed. 2. The critically acclaimed HBO series Chernobyl is explored in chapter three and evaluated for the feeling of doom it creates for an audience watching. 3. The book makes comparisons of the pandemic to nuclear science history, acknowledging that culturally we do not always listen to scientific advice, and assessing how powerful governments often dismiss scientific dissent.

D'Oyly Carte, Opera, Classical, art management, Richard D'Oyly Carte, theatre production

performance environments, emerging and multisensational atmospheres hypersensorial scenographies

This study of the Piscatorbuhne season of 1927-1928 uncovers a vital, previously neglected current of radical experiment in modern theater, a ghost in the machine of contemporary performance practices. A handful of theater seasons changed the course of 20th- and 21st-century theatre. But only the Piscatorbuhne of 1927-1928 went bankrupt in less than a year. This exploration tells the story of that collapse, how it predicted the wider collapse of the late Weimar Republic, and how it relates to our own era of political polarization and economic instability. As a wider examination of Piscator's contributions to dramaturgical and aesthetic form, The Piscatorbuhne Century makes a powerful and timely case for the renewed significance of the broader epic theater tradition. Drawing on a rich archive of interwar materials, Drew Lichtenberg reconstructs this germinal nexus of theory and praxis for the modern theatre. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in theatre, performance, art, and literature.

The Original Portrayal of Mozart's Don Giovanni offers an original reading of Mozart's and Da Ponte's opera Don Giovanni, using as a lens the portrayal of the title role by its creator, the baritone Luigi Bassi (1766-1825). Although Bassi was coached in the role by the composer himself, his portrayal has never been studied in depth before, and this book presents a large number of new sources (first- and second-hand accounts), which allows us to reconstruct his performance scene by scene. The book confronts Bassi's portrayal with a study of the opera's early German reception and performance history, demonstrating how Don Giovanni as we know it today was not only created by Mozart, Da Ponte and Luigi Bassi but also by the early German adapters, translators, critics and performers who turned the title character into the arrogant and violent villain we still encounter in most of today's stage productions. Incorporating discussion of dramaturgical thinking of the late Enlightenment and the difficult moral problems that the opera raises, this is an important study for scholars and researchers from opera studies, theatre and performance studies, music history as well as conductors, directors and singers.

Collaborative Spirit-Writing and Performance in Everyday Black Lives is about the interconnectedness between collaboration, spirit, and writing. It is also about a dialogic engagement that draws upon shared lived experiences, hopes, and fears of two Black persons: male/female, straight/gay. This book is structured around a series of textual performances, poems, plays, dialogues, calls and responses, and mediations that serve as claim, ground, warrant, qualifier, rebuttal, and backing in an argument about collaborative spirit-writing for social justice. Each entry provides evidence of encounters of possibility, collated between the authors, for ourselves, for readers, and society from a standpoint of individual and collective struggle. The entries in this Black performance diary are at times independent and interdependent, interspliced and interrogative, interanimating and interstitial. They build arguments about collaboration but always emanate from a place of discontent in a caste system, designed through slavery and maintained until today, that positions Black people in relation to white superiority, terror, and perpetual struggle. With particular emphasis on the confluence of Race, Racism, Antiracism, Black Lives Matter, the Trump administration, and the Coronavirus pandemic, this book will appeal to students and scholars in Race studies, performance studies, and those who practice qualitative methods as a new way of seeking Black social justice.

Collaborative Spirit-Writing and Performance in Everyday Black Lives is about the interconnectedness between collaboration, spirit, and writing. It is also about a dialogic engagement that draws upon shared lived experiences, hopes, and fears of two Black persons: male/female, straight/gay. This book is structured around a series of textual performances, poems, plays, dialogues, calls and responses, and mediations that serve as claim, ground, warrant, qualifier, rebuttal, and backing in an argument about collaborative spirit-writing for social justice. Each entry provides evidence of encounters of possibility, collated between the authors, for ourselves, for readers, and society from a standpoint of individual and collective struggle. The entries in this Black performance diary are at times independent and interdependent, interspliced and interrogative, interanimating and interstitial. They build arguments about collaboration but always emanate from a place of discontent in a caste system, designed through slavery and maintained until today, that positions Black people in relation to white superiority, terror, and perpetual struggle. With particular emphasis on the confluence of Race, Racism, Antiracism, Black Lives Matter, the Trump administration, and the Coronavirus pandemic, this book will appeal to students and scholars in Race studies, performance studies, and those who practice qualitative methods as a new way of seeking Black social justice.

Commedia dell'Arte Scenarios gathers together a collection of scenarios from some of the most important Commedia dell'Arte manuscripts, many of which have never been published in English before. Each script is accompanied by an editorial commentary that sets out its historical context and the backstory of its composition and dramaturgical strategies, as well as scene summaries, and character and properties lists. These supplementary materials not only create a comprehensive picture of each script's performance methods but also offer a blueprint for readers looking to perform the scenarios as part of their own study or professional practice. This collection offers scholars, performers and students a wealth of original performance texts that brig to life one of the most foundational performance genres in world theatre.

Commedia dell'Arte Scenarios gathers together a collection of scenarios from some of the most important Commedia dell'Arte manuscripts, many of which have never been published in English before. Each script is accompanied by an editorial commentary that sets out its historical context and the backstory of its composition and dramaturgical strategies, as well as scene summaries, and character and properties lists. These supplementary materials not only create a comprehensive picture of each script's performance methods but also offer a blueprint for readers looking to perform the scenarios as part of their own study or professional practice. This collection offers scholars, performers and students a wealth of original performance texts that brig to life one of the most foundational performance genres in world theatre.

History, Opera, Music, Stage, Voice, Theatre, Performance

For whom does the actor perform? To answer this foundational question of the actor's art, Grotowski scholar Kris Salata explores acting as a self-revelatory action, introduces Grotowski's concept of "carnal prayer," and develops an interdisciplinary theory of acting and spectating. Acting after Grotowski: Theatre's Carnal Prayer attempts to overcome the religious/secular binary by treating "prayer" as a pre-religious, originary deed, and ultimately situates theatre along with ritual in their shared territory of play. Grounded in theatre practice, Salata's narrative moves through postmodern philosophy, critical theory, theatre, performance, ritual, and religious studies, concluding that the fundamental structure of prayer, which underpins the actor's deed, can be found in any self-revelatory creative act.

Performing Home is the first sustained study of the ways in which artists create artworks in, and in response to, domestic dwellings. In the context of growing interest in ideas and practices that cross between architecture, arts practice and performance, it is valuable to understand what happens when artists make work in and about specific buildings. This is particularly important with domestic dwellings, which can be bound up with experiences, issues, practices and understandings of home. The book focuses on a range of recent artistic projects to identify and investigate critical ways by which artists practise domestic dwellings. In doing so, it addresses the ways in which artists enquire into a dwelling, are resident in a dwelling, adapt the form of a dwelling, practise a mobile dwelling, and make a dwelling. By considering these practices together, Andrews demonstrates the breadth and significance of recent artistic engagement in and with domestic dwellings and highlights the contribution that artistic practice can make to the ways in which we understand the form and practice of a building. Performing Home will be of particular relevance to scholars, students and practitioners in architecture, art and performance, to those in geography, material culture and cultural studies, and to anyone seeking to make sense of the place in which they live.

1) This book presents a comprehensive narrative of North Indian Folk theatre as a counter culture. 2) Rich in empirical material, it shows how North Indian Folk theatres are challenging the cultural hegemony. 3) This book will be of interest to departments of South Asian studies and Cultural studies across UK and USA.