Theatre Studios explores the history of the studio model in England, first established by Konstantin Stanislavsky, Jacques Copeau and others in the early twentieth century, and later developed in the UK primarily by Michel Saint-Denis, George Devine, Michael Chekhov and Joan Littlewood, whose studios are the focus of this study. Cornford offers in-depth accounts of the radical, collective work of these leading theatre companies of the mid-twentieth century, considering the models of ensemble theatre-making that they developed and their remnants in the newly publicly-funded UK theatre establishment of the 1960s. In the process, this book develops an approach to understanding the politics of artistic practices rooted in the work of John Dewey, Antonio Gramsci and the standpoint feminists. It concludes by considering the legacy of the studio movement for twenty-first-century theatre, partly by tracking its echoes in the work of Secret Theatre at the Lyric, Hammersmith (2013-2015). Students and makers of theatre alike will find in this book a provocative and illuminating analysis of the politics of performance-making and a history of the theatre as a site for developing counterhegemonic, radically democratic, anti-individualist forms of cultural production.

The Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance provides a comprehensive introduction to and analysis of the global art form butoh. Originating in Japan in the 1960s, butoh was a major innovation in twentieth century dance and performance, and it continues to shape-shift around the world. Taking inspiration from the Japanese avant-garde, Surrealism, Happenings, and authors such as Genet and Artaud, its influence can be seen throughout contemporary performing arts, music, and visual art practices. This Companion places the form in historical context, documents its development in Japan and its spread around the world, and brings together the theory and the practice of this compelling dance. The interdisciplinarity evident in the volume reflects the depth and the breadth of butoh, and the editors bring specially commissioned essays by leading scholars and dancers together with translations of important early texts.

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.

This book examines the enactment of gendered in/equalities across diverse Cultural forms, turning to the insights produced through the specific modes of onto-epistemological enquiry of embodied performance. It builds on work from the GRACE (Gender and Cultures of Equality in Europe) project and offers both theoretical and methodological analyses of an array of activities and artworks. The performative manifestations discussed include theatre, installations, social movements, mega-events, documentaries, and literary texts from multiple geopolitical locales. Engaging with the key concepts of re-enactment and relationality, the contributions explore the ways in which in/equalities are relationally re-produced in and through individual and collective bodies. This multi- and trans-disciplinary collection of essays creates fruitful dialogues within and beyond Performance Studies, sitting at the crossroads of ethnography, event studies, social movements, visual studies, critical discourse analysis, and contemporary approaches to textualities emerging from post-colonial and feminist studies.

- A comprehensive guide to musicals that are based on musicians' existing back catalogues - how they work, why they work and why they are so successful. - Written for musical theatre students at all levels - primarily on the 150 BA degrees across the UK and North America. - The first book to address this relatively new genre of musical theatre, doing so with in-depth and wide ranging analysis.

This collection provides an in-depth exploration of surtitling for theatre and its potential in enhancing accessibility and creativity in both the production and reception of theatrical performances. The volume collects the latest research on surtitling, which encompasses translating lyrics or sections of dialogue and projecting them on a screen. While most work has focused on opera, this book showcases how it has increasingly played a role in theatre by examining examples from well-known festivals and performances. The 11 chapters underscore how the hybrid nature and complex semiotic modes of theatrical texts, coupled with technological advancements, offer a plurality of possibilities for applying surtitling effectively across different contexts. The book calls attention to the ways in which agents in theatrical spaces need to carefully reflect on the role of surtitling in order to best serve the needs of diverse audiences and produce inclusive productions, from translators considering appropriate strategies to directors working on how to creatively employ it in performance to companies looking into all means available for successful implementation. Offering a space for interdisciplinary dialogues on surtitling in theatre, this book will be of interest to scholars in audiovisual translation, media accessibility, and theatre and performance studies.

Jennifer Johnson profiles the real-life stories if more than sixty women who have no college education, are married with kids, and ears an average of $16,000 per year, giving us an important window into a large, poorly understood segment of US society. Through the words of these women, Johnson captures the essence of women's working-class experience: from job stagnation, low self-esteem, and social isolation to camaraderie among co-workers, loyalty to one's roots, and even prise in a job well done. This compassionately told book offers a captivating an emotional study of the difference class makes in women's lives, as well as the problems, restrictions, and rewards to all women.

Contents:
List of illustrations Contributors Preface Acknowledgements 1. General Introduction: Between theory and practice Phillip B. Zarrilli Part I Theories and Meditations on Acting 2. Introduction Phillip B. Zarrilli 3. The Actor's Presence: Three phenomenal modes Bert O. States 4. On Acting and Not-Acting Michael Kirby 5. "Just Be Your Self": Logocentrism and difference in performance theory Philip Auslander 6. The Actor's Emotions Reconsidered: A psychological task-based perspective Elly Konijn Part II (Re)Considering the Body and Training 7. Introduction Phillip B. Zarrilli 8. An Amulet Made of Memory: The significance of exercises in the actor's dramaturgy Eugenio Barba 9. Meyerhold's Biomechanics Mel Gordon 10. Etienne Decroux's Promethean Mime Deidre Sklar 11. Actor Training in the Neutral Mask Sears A. Eldredge and Hollis W. Huston 12. Bali and Grotowski: Some parallels in the training process I. Wayan Lendra 13. Culture is the Body Tadashi Suzuki 14. My Bodies: The performer in West Java Kathy Foley 15. "On the edge of a breath, looking": Cultivating the actor's bodymind through Asian martial/meditation arts Phillip B. Zarrilli 16. The Gardzenice Theatre Association of Poland Paul Allain 17. Effector Patterns of Basic Emotions: A psychophysiological method for training actors Susana Bloch, Pedro Orthous and Guy Santibañez-H Part III (Re)Considering the Actor in Performance 18. Introduction Phillip B. Zarrilli 19. Brecht and the Contradictory Actor John Rouse 20. Dario Fo: The roar of the clown Ron Jenkins 21. Forum Theatre Augusto Boal 22. Resisting the "Organic": A feminist actor's approach Lauren Love 23. Rachel Rosenthal Creating Her Selves Eelka Lampe 24. Task and Vision: Willem Dafoe in LSD Philip Auslander 25. David Warrilow: Creating symbol and cipher Laurie Lassiter 26. Robert Wilson and the Actor: Performing in Danton's Death Ellen Halperin-Royer 27. Anna Deavere Smith: Part I: the World Becomes You: and interview with Carol Martin; Part II: Acting as Incorporation . Richard Schechner Notes Bibliography and References Cited Bibliographical Note: Actors speaking on acting Index

Embodied Playwriting: Improv and Acting Exercises for Writing and Devising is the first book to compile new and adapted exercises for teaching playwriting in the classroom, workshop, or studio through the lens of acting and improvisation. The book provides access to the innovative practices developed by seasoned playwriting teachers from around the world who are also actors, improv performers, and theatre directors. Borrowing from the embodied art of acting and the inventive practice of improvisation, the exercises in this book will engage readers in performance-based methods that lead to the creation of fully imagined characters, dynamic relationships, and vivid drama. Step-by-step guidelines for exercises, as well as application and coaching advice, will support successful lesson planning and classroom implementation for playwriting students at all levels, as well as individual study. Readers will also benefit from curation by editors who have experience with high-impact educational practices and are advocates for the use of varied teaching strategies to increase accessibility, inclusion, skill-building, and student success. Embodied Playwriting offers a wealth of material for teachers and students of playwriting courses, as well as playwrights who look forward to experimenting with dynamic, embodied writing practices.

This volume in the Routledge Key Guides series provides a round-up of the fifty musicals whose creations were seminal in altering the landscape of musical theater discourse in the English-speaking world. Each entry summarises a show, including a full synopsis, discussion of the creators' process, show's critical reception, and its impact on the landscape of musical theater. This is the ideal primer for students of musical theater - its performance, history, and place in the modern theatrical world - as well as fans and lovers of musicals.

The most comprehensive volume on performance art from the Americas to have appeared in English, Corpus Delecti is a unique collection of historical and critical studies of contemporary Latin performance. Drawing on live art from the 1960s to the present day, these fascinating essays explore the impact of Latin American politics, popular culture and syncretic religions on Latin performance.
Including contributions by artists as well as scholars, Fusco's collection bridges the theory/practice divide and discusses a wide variety of genres. Among them are:
* body art
* carpa
* vaudeville
* staged political protest
* tropicalist musical comedies
* contemporary Venezuelan performance art
* the Chicano Art movement
* queer Latino performance
The essays demonstrate how specific social and historical contexts have shaped Latin American performance. They also show how those factors have affected the choices artists make, and how their work draw upon and respond to their environment.

eBook available with sample pages: HB:0415194539

This accessible and engaging text covering sketch, sitcom and comedy drama, alongside improvisation and stand-up, brings together a panoply of tools and techniques for creating short and long-form comedy narratives for live performance, TV and online. Referencing a broad range of comedy from both sides of the Atlantic, spanning several decades and including material on contemporary internet sketches, it offers all kinds of useful advice on creating comic narratives for stage and screen: using life experience as raw material; constructing comedy worlds; creating comic characters, their relationships and interactions; structuring sketches, scenes and routines; and developing and plotting stories. The book's interviewees, from the UK and the USA, feature stand-ups, sketch comics, improvisers and TV comedy producers, and include Steve Kaplan, Hollywood comedy guru and author of The Hidden Tools of Comedy, Will Hines teacher and improviser from the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre and Lucy Lumsden TV producer and former Controller of Comedy Commissioning for BBC. Written by "the ideal person to nurture new talent" (The Guardian), Creating Comedy Narratives for Stage & Screen includes material you won't find anywhere else and is a stimulating resource for comedy students and their teachers, with a range and a depth that will be appreciated by even the most eclectic and multi-hyphenated writers and performers.

Since the 1960s, visual art practices - from body art to minimalism - have taken contemporary art outside the museum and gallery, by embracing theatricality and performance and exploding the boundaries set by traditional art criticism. Such practices prompt us to reassess our ways of contructing meaning from art, making us receptive to the element of performance both in the processes of art production, and in the act of interpretation itself. Performing the Body/Performing the Text explores the new performativity in art theory and practice, examining ways of rethinking interpretive processes in visual culture. This collection undertakes two parallel projects: exploring art practices which perform the subject, and examining ways in which modes of performativity in contemporary art offers new models for interpreting artworks. Demonstrating how modernist art criticism attempts to fix the work with more stable sets of aesthetic meanings, the contributors argue that interpretation needs to be recognised as much more dynamic and contingent. It does not come `naturally' at the moment of contact with the artwork, but is worked out as an ongoing, open performance between artists and spectators, with meaning circulating fluidly in the complex web of connections between artists, patrons, collectors, and between both specialised and non-specialised viewers within the arena of encounter. Offering its own performance script, and embracing both canonical `fine' artists such as Manet, De Kooning and Jasper Johns, and performance artists such as Vito Acconci, Gunter Brus and the Sacred Naked Nature Girls, Performing the Body/Performing the Text offers radical re-readings of art works and points confidently towards new models for understanding art.