Performative theatre is one of the most important trends of our time. It is emblematic of the work of many European theatrical artists in the early twenty-first century. Annamaria Cascetta does not propose a model or a historical overview, but rather strives to identify the salient features of a significant trend in the theatrical research and transformation of our time by analysing some crucial examples from outstanding works, of great international resonance. She draws on work by artists from different generations, all active between the late twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first, and in various European countries, performed in a number of European theatres in recent years. The aim is to apply a method of analysis in depth, bringing out the technical elements of contemporary "performative theatre" in the field, and above all to highlight the close links between it and the urgent and troubled issues and problems of history and society in the phase of cultural and anthropological transition we are experiencing.

At present, we are witnessing a significant transformation of established forms of spectatorship in theatre, performance art and beyond. In particular, immersive and participatory forms of theatre allow audiences and performers to interact in a shared performance space. Staging Spectators in Immersive Performances discusses forms and concepts of contemporary spectatorship and explores various modes of audience participation in theory as well as in practice. The volume also reflects on what new terms and methods must be developed in order to address the theoretical challenges of contemporary immersive performances. Split into three parts, Staging Spectators in Immersive Performances, respectively, focuses on various strategies for mobilising the audience, methodological questions for research on being a spectator in immersive and participatory forms of theatre, and thematising new modes of partaking and ways of spectating in contemporary art. Poignantly capturing experiences that can be viewed as manifestations of affective relationality in the strongest possible sense, this volume will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as Theatre and Performance Studies, Media Studies and Philosophy.

Archaeologies of Presence is a brilliant exploration of how the performance of presence can be understood through the relationships between performance theory and archaeological thinking. Drawing together carefully commissioned contributions by leading international scholars and artists, this radical new work poses a number of essential questions: What are the principle signifiers of theatrical presence? How is presence achieved through theatrical performance? What makes a memory come alive and live again? How is presence connected with identity? Is presence synonymous with 'being in the moment'? What is the nature of the 'co-presence' of audience and performer? Where does performance practice end and its documentation begin? Co-edited by performance specialists Gabriella Giannachi and Nick Kaye, and archaeologist Michael Shanks, Archaeologies of Presence represents an innovative and rewarding feat of interdisciplinary scholarship.

Drama in Medieval and Early Modern Europe moves away from the customary conceptual framework that artificially separates 'medieval' from 'early modern' drama to explore the role of drama and spectacle in England, France, the Low Countries, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, and the German-speaking areas that now constitute Austria and Germany. This book investigates the ranges of dramatic and performative techniques and strategies that playmakers across Europe used to adapt their work to the changing contexts in which they performed, and to the changing or expanding audiences that they faced. It considers the different views expressed through drama and spectacle on shared historical events, how communities coped with similar issues and why they ritually recycled these themes through reinvented or alternative forms that replaced or existed alongside their predecessors. A wide variety of genres of play are discussed throughout, including visitatio sepulchri (visit to the tomb) plays; Easter and Passion plays and morality plays; the French civic mystere; Italian sacre rappresentazioni performed by choirboys in the context of the church; Burgertheater from the Swiss Confederacy; drama performed for the purpose of royal entertainment and propaganda; May and summer games; and the commercial, professional theatre of Shakespeare and Lope de Vega. Examining the strength of drama in relation to the larger cultural forces to which it adapted, and demonstrating the use of social, political, economic, and artistic networks to educate and support the social structures of communities, Drama in Medieval and Early Modern Europe offers a broader understanding of a shared European past across the traditional chronological divide of 1500. It is ideal for students of social history, and the history of medieval and early modern drama or literature.

Examining the artistic, intellectual, and social life of performance, this book interrogates Theatre and Performance Studies through the lens of display and modern visual art. Moving beyond the exhibition of immaterial art and its documents, as well as re-enactment in gallery contexts, Guy's book articulates an emerging field of arts practice distinct from but related to increasing curatorial provision for 'live' performance. Drawing on a recent proliferation of object-centric events of display that interconnect with theatre, the book approaches artworks in terms of their curation together and re-theorizes the exhibition as a dynamic context in which established traditions of display and performance interact. By examining the current traffic of ideas and aesthetics moving between theatricality and curatorial practice, the study reveals how the reception of a specific form is often mediated via the ontological expectations of another. It asks how contemporary visual arts and exhibition practices display performance and what it means to generalize the 'theatrical' as the optic or directive of a curatorial concept. Proposing a symbiotic relation between theatricality and display, Guy presents cases from international arts institutions which are both displayed and performed, including Tate Modern and the Guggenheim, and assesses their significance to the enduring relation between theatre and the visual arts. The book progresses from the conventional alignment of theatricality and ephemerality within performance research and teases out a new temporality for performance with which contemporary exhibitions implicitly experiment, thereby identifying supplementary modes of performance which other discourses exclude. This important study joins the fields of Theatre and Performance Studies with exciting new directions in curation, aesthetics, sociology of the arts, visual arts, the creative industries, the digital humanities, cultural heritage, and reception and audience theories.

Time and Performer Training addresses the importance and centrality of time and temporality to the practices, processes and conceptual thinking of performer training. Notions of time are embedded in almost every aspect of performer training, and so contributors to this book look at: age/aging and children in the training context how training impacts over a lifetime the duration of training and the impact of training regimes over time concepts of timing and the 'right' time how time is viewed from a range of international training perspectives collectives, ensembles and fashions in training, their decay or endurance. Through focusing on time and the temporal in performer training, this book offers innovative ways of integrating research into studio practices. It also steps out beyond the more traditional places of training to open up time in relation to contested training practices that take place online, in festival spaces and in folk or amateur practices. Ideal for both instructors and students, each section of this well-illustrated book follows a thematic structure and includes full-length chapters alongside shorter provocations. Featuring contributions from an international range of authors who draw on their backgrounds as artists, scholars and teachers, Time and Performer Training is a major step in our understanding of how time affects the preparation for performance.

A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Tragedy, Theater and Death shines a spotlight on what theater, and especially tragedy, tells us about our ontological selves, by exploring both Euripides' Bacchae and the work of Tadeusz Kantor. Focusing on the theatrical tradition of the West, the book examines Euripides' Bacchae, a tragedy about the nature of tragedy, suggesting that the tragic can be defined as an ontological duality rooted in the early experience of the infant's separation from mother, with whom s/he had, until then, formed a fused Unit. The traumatic rupture of this primal Unit is inscribed in the unconscious as death. The book then considers the defining binary structure of the theatrical setting - (spectator/spectated or fantasy/reality) - before arguing that in staging our ontological dividedness, theater shows its relation to death to be organic. The book concludes by examining in detail the principal works of Polish theater director Tadeusz Kantor, whose search for theater's identity was, essentially, a search for human identity. Erudite and far-reaching, A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Tragedy, Theater and Death will interest psychoanalysts as well as students, scholars and researchers across the dramatic arts wishing to draw on psychoanalytic ideas.

This title was first published in 1988: In this book the author has translated five postwar experimental Japanese plays and recreated the artistic, social and spiritual milieu in which they were created. He describes the turning point in Japanese thinking about the nature and limitations of a Western-oriented modern culture, and the creation of "underground" theatres which in which evolved a new mythology of history. Professor Goodman sees these developments as an interplay between personal and political (ie revolutionary) salvation.

The prolific theatrical activity that abounded on the stages of early modern Europe demonstrates that drama was a genre that transcended national borders. The transnational character of early modern theater reflects the rich admixture of various dramatic traditions, such as Spain's comedia and Italy's commedia dell'arte, but also the transformations across cultures of Spanish novellas to French plays and English interludes. Of particular import to this study is the role that women and gender played in this cross-pollination of theatrical sources and practices. Contributors to the volume not only investigate the gendered effect of Spanish texts and literary types on English and French drama, they address the actual journeys of Spanish actresses to French theaters and of Italian actresses to the Spanish stage, while several emphasize the movement of royal women to various courts and their impact on theatrical activity in Spain and abroad. In their innovative focus on women's participation and influence, the chapters in this volume illustrate the frequent yet little studied transnational and transcultural points of contact between Spanish theater and the national theaters of England, France, Austria, and Italy.

Incapacity and Theatricality acknowledges the distinctive contribution to contemporary theatrical performance made by actors with intellectual disabilities. It presents a close examination of certain key theatrical performances across a variety of different media, including John Cassavetes' 1963 social issues film A Child Is Waiting; the performance art collaboration between Robert Wilson and Christopher Knowles; and the provocative pranksterism of Christoph Schlingensief's talent show mockumentary FreakStars 3000. Tracing a global path of performances, Incapacity and Theatricality offers an analysis of how actors with intellectual disabilities have emerged onto the main stage, and how their inclusion calls into question long-held assumptions about both theatre and intellectual disability. For postgraduate students, or anyone interested in the shifting dynamics of twenty-first century theatre, McCaffrey's work offers a vital consideration of the intersubjective relations between people with and without intellectual disabilities and ultimately addresses urgent questions about the situation and representation of the contemporary subject caught up somewhere between incapacity and theatricality.

Artists especially from dance and performance art as well as opera are involved to an increasing degree in the transfer between different media, not only in their productions but also the events, materials, and documents that surround them. At the same time, the focus on that which remains has become central to any discussion of performance. Performing Arts in Transition explores what takes place in the moments of transition from one medium to another, and from the live performance to that which "survives" it. Case studies from a broad range of interdisciplinary scholars address phenomena such as: The dynamics of transfer between the performing and visual arts. The philosophy and terminologies of transitioning between media. Narratives and counternarratives in historical re-creations. The status of chronology and the document in art scholarship. This is an essential contribution to a vibrant, multidisciplinary and international field of research emerging at the intersections of performance, visual arts, and media studies.

In setting foot on stage, every performer risks the possiblity of failure. Indeed, the very performance of any human action is inextricable from its potential not to succeed. This inherent potential has become a key critical trope in contemporary theatre, performance studies, and scholarship around visual cultures. Beyond Failure explores what it means for our understanding not just of theatrical practice but of human social and cultural activity more broadly. The essays in this volume tackle contemporary debates around the theory and poetics of failure, suggesting that in the absence of success can be found a defiance and hopefulness that points to new ways of knowing and being in the world. Beyond Failure offers a unique and engaging approach for students and practitioners interested not only in the impact of failure on the stage, but what it means for wider social and cultural debates.

Shakespeare and Venice is the first book length study to describe and chronicle the mythology of Venice that was formulated in the Middle Ages and has persisted in fiction and film to the present day. Graham Holderness focuses specifically on how that mythology was employed by Shakespeare to explore themes of conversion, change, and metamorphosis. Identifying and outlining the materials having to do with Venice which might have been available to Shakespeare, Holderness provides a full historical account of past and present Venetian myths and of the city's relationship with both Judaism and Islam. Holderness also provides detailed readings of both The Merchant of Venice and of Othello against these mythical and historical dimensions, and concludes with discussion of Venice's relevance to both the modern world and to the past.

Tadeusz Kantor - a theoretician, director, innovator and painter famed for his very visual theatre style - was a key figure in European avant-garde theatre. He was also known for his challenging theatrical innovations, such as extending stages and the combination of mannequins with living actors. The book combines: a detailed study of the historical context of Kantor's work an exploration of Kantor's own writings on his theatrical craft a stylistic analysis of the key works, including The Dead Class and Let the Artists Die, and their critical reception an examination of the practical exercises devised by Kantor. As a first step towards critical understanding, and as an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners offer unbeatable value for today's student.

This handbook collects, for the first time, the state of research on role-playing games (RPGs) across disciplines, cultures, and media in a single, accessible volume. Collaboratively authored by more than 50 key scholars, it traces the history of RPGs, from wargaming precursors to tabletop RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons to the rise of live action role-play and contemporary computer RPG and massively multiplayer online RPG franchises, like Fallout and World of Warcraft. Individual chapters survey the perspectives, concepts, and findings on RPGs from key disciplines, like performance studies, sociology, psychology, education, economics, game design, literary studies, and more. Other chapters integrate insights from RPG studies around broadly significant topics, like transmedia worldbuilding, immersion, transgressive play, or player-character relations. Each chapter includes definitions of key terms and recommended readings to help fans, students, and scholars new to RPG studies find their way into this new interdisciplinary field.

As practitioner-researchers, how do we discuss and analyse our work without losing the creative drive that inspired us in the first place? Built around a diverse selection of writings from leading researcher-practitioners and emerging artists in a variety of fields, The Creative Critic: Writing as/about Practice celebrates the extraordinary range of possibilities available when writing about one's own work and the work one is inspired by. It re-thinks the conventions of the scholarly output to propose that critical writing be understood as an integral part of the artistic process, and even as artwork in its own right. Finding ways to make the intangible nature of much of our work 'count' under assessment has become increasingly important in the Academy and beyond. The Creative Critic offers an inspiring and useful sourcebook for students and practitioner-researchers navigating this area. Please see the companion site to the book, http://www.creativecritic.co.uk, where some of the chapters have become unfixed from the page.

This book is a manifesto. It is about rethinking performance autoethnography, about the formation of a critical performative cultural politics, about what happens when everything is already performative, when the dividing line between performativity and performance disappears. This is a book about the writing called autoethnography. It is also about what this form of writing means for writers who want to perform work that leads to social justice. Denzin's goal is to take the reader through the history, major terms, forms, criticisms and issues confronting performance autoethnography and critical interpretive. To that end many of the chapters are written as performance texts, as ethnodramas. A single thesis organizes this book: the performance turn has been taken in the human disciplines and it must be taken seriously. Multiple informative performance models are discussed: Goffman's dramaturgy; Turner's performance anthropology; performance ethnographies by A. D. Smith, Conquergood, and Madison; Saldana's ethnodramas; Schechter's social theatre; Norris's playacting; Boal's theatre of the oppressed; and Freire's pedagogies of the oppressed. They represent different ways of staging and hence performing ethnography, resistance and critical pedagogy. They represent different ways of "imagining, and inventing and hence performing alternative imaginaries, alternative counter-performances to war, violence, and the globalized corporate empire" (Schechner 2015). This book provides a systematic treatment of the origins, goals, concepts, genres, methods, aesthetics, ethics and truth conditions of critical performance autoethnography. Denzin uses the performance text as a vehicle for taking up the hard questions about reading, writing, performing and doing critical work that makes a difference.

Drama and the Politics of Generational Conflict in Shakespeare's England examines the intersection between art and culture and explains how ideas about age circulated in early modern England. Stephannie Gearhart illustrates how a variety of texts - including drama by Shakespeare, Jonson, and Middleton - placed elders' and youths' voices in dialogue with one another to construct the period's ideology of age and shape elder-youth relations.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor and Francis, an informa company.

Performance Art in the Second Public Sphere is the first interdisciplinary analysis of performance art in East, Central and Southeast Europe under socialist rule. By investigating the specifics of event-based art forms in these regions, each chapter explores the particular, critical roles that this work assumed under censorial circumstances. The artistic networks of Yugoslavia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, East Germany and Czechoslovakia are discussed with a particular focus on the discourses that shaped artistic practice at the time, drawing on the methods of Performance Studies and Media Studies as well as more familiar reference points from art history and area studies.

Breaks down a dramaturgy's key roles and competencies, mapping out the profession for both current and future dramaturgs. The Basics format ensures a clear, accessible and jargon-free explanation of every aspect of the craft, making this the ideal introduction. Dramaturgy itself is one of the main theatrical skills, distinct from acting and directing but only relatively recently having begun to receive proper attention and recognition.

Global Media, Biopolitics and Affect shows how mediations of bodily vulnerability have become a strong political force in contemporary societies. In discussions and struggles concerning war involvement, healthcare issues, charity, democracy movements, contested national pasts, and climate change, performances of bodily vulnerability is increasingly used by citizens to raise awareness, create sympathy, encourage political action, and to circulate information in global media networks. The book thus argues that bodily vulnerability can serve as a catalyst for affectively charging and disseminating particular political events or issues by means of media. To investigate how, when and why that happens, and to evaluate the long-term social impacts of mediating bodily vulnerability, the book offers a theoretical framework for understanding the role of bodily vulnerability in contemporary digital media culture. Likewise, it presents a range of close empirical case studies in the areas of illness blogging, global protests after the killing of Neda Agda Soltan in Iran, charity communication, green media activism, online war commemoration and digital witnessing related to conflicts in Sarajevo and Ukraine.

Taking performance as a key word, this book explores important Japanese artists and art works in the 1960s in relation to the formation of postwar Japan. In response to the social upheavals of the 1960s, Eckersall shows how art interacted with society in unique and transformational ways. He includes case studies of rarely discussed artists and performances by Zero Jigen, Ichiyanagi Toshi, Iimura Takahiko and the contemporary group Port B, as well as dynamic cultural events such as the 1964 Olympic Games, mass protests and the 1970 Osaka Expo.A unique aspect of Eckersall's study is his interdisciplinary approach, which draws on Japanese writing on the 1960s in tandem with performance theory. By interweaving arguments about the critical role of performance as an artistic medium and as a social dramaturgy, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of contemporary Japanese society and culture, cultural historians and people interested in theatre and performance studies.

This interdisciplinary collection of essays brings together scholars in the fields of art history, theatre, visual culture, and literature to explore intersections between the European avant-garde (c. 1880–1945) and themes of health and hygiene, such as illness, contagion, cleanliness, and contamination. Examining the artistic oeuvres of some of the canonical names of modern art – including Edgar Degas, Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, George Orwell, Marcel Duchamp, and Antonin Artaud – this book investigates instances where the heightened political, social, and cultural currencies embedded within issues of hygiene and contagion have been mobilised, and subversively exploited, to fuel the critical strategy at play. This edited volume promotes an interdisciplinary and socio-historically contextualised understanding of the criticality of the avant-garde gesture and cultivates scholarship that moves beyond the limits of traditional academic subjects to produce innovative and thought-provoking connections and interrelations across various fields. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, literature, theatre, cultural studies, modern history, medical humanities, and visual culture.