This book provides an engaging and contextualised insight into a South African township-based arts centre that has survived the vicissitudes of steady militarisation in townships during some of the worst years of apartheid as well as the exhilaration of a new democratic policy while attempting to circumnavigate different policies and funding dispensations.

Sibikwa provides arts centres across the world and especially those in decolonising countries with strategies for survival in tumultuous times. This multi-disciplinary book maps and co-ordinates wider historical, political, and social contextual concerns and events with matters specific to a community-based east of Johannesburg and provides an exploration and analysis by experts of authentic theatre-making and performance, dance, indigenous music, arts in education and NGO governance. It has contemporary significance and raises important questions regarding inclusivity and transformation, the function and future of arts centres, community-based applied arts practices, creativity, and international partnerships.

This study will be of great interest to students and scholars in theatre and performance, indigenous music, dance, and South African history.

Table of Contents

List of contributors

Acknowledgements

　

PART 1

Chapter 1. The Political is Personal: Smal Ndaba and Phyllis Klotz in Thumbnail Portraits of Origins and Orientations

Sarah Roberts

Chapter 2. Founding Sibikwa: A Professional Partnership Tempered in the Forge of Apartheid’s Final Years

Sarah Roberts

Chapter 3. Democracy, the First Decade: The Mandela-Mbeki Years (1994-2005)

Sarah Roberts

Chapter 4. The Trouble with Freedom: Mbeki’s Dream of an African Renaissance, Nation-building and Issues Surrounding HIV/AIDS in South Africa

Sarah Roberts

Chapter 5. Issues of Governance, Policy, Delivery, and Accountability Escalate: Sibikwa Responds to Developments in Arts and Culture Policy Documents and with Theatre-in-Education Projects

Sarah Roberts

　

Chapter 6. The Struggle for Social Justice in Confronting Gender-based Violence and Srategies of Intensifying an African Cultural Heritage as the Project Moves into the Future

Sarah Roberts

Appendix :1 A Chronology of Major Political Events, Cultural Developments and Sibikwa Plays

PART II

Chapter 7.Governance of Sibikwa Arts Centre: A Reflection on the Agility, Progress, and Longevity of the Organisation

Munyaradzi Chatikobo and Caryn Green

Chapter 8. Sibikwa’s Educational Programmes

Vanessa Bower and Hazel Barnes

Appendix 2: A Chronology of Educational and Vocational Training Programmes

Chapter 9. Living Proof: Thirty Years of Sibikwa’s Theatre Productions

Sarah Roberts

Appendix 3: A Chronology of Sibikwa Productions

Chapter 10. Celebrating Sibikwa’s Legacy of Dance and Physical Theatre from Community to Professional Dance Development

Clare Craighead and Lliane Loots

Appendix 4: A Chronology of Sibikwa Dance Company Productions and Festivals

Chapter 11. Keeping the African Sound Relevant

Evans Netshivhambe

Appendix 5: A Chronology of Sibikwa’s Music History

Chapter 12. Framing the Intersectional Gender Politics of the Sibikwa Legacy

Lliane Loots

Appendix 6- A Chronology of Gender Based Productions, Festivals and Training

Index

List of Contributors

Phyllis Klotz is the artistic director and co-founder of the Sibikwa Arts Centre in Benoni and has been at the forefront of arts training and development for youth for over 40 years. Her work has always been focused on the empowerment of young black females. She has been and still is involved in developmental theatre and arts education and is recognised as an expert in the development of community arts centres. She is the recipient of several awards for her contribution to South African theatre and has directed and co-written the seminal theatre piece, You Strike a Woman, You Strike a Rock. She has served on boards of the National Arts Council, State Theatre, CATHSSETA and the Market Theatre. She is also the recipient of the Naledi Lifetime Achievement Award.

Smal Ndaba is the co-founder and managing director of the Sibikwa Arts Centre; as an actor, playwright and director he has toured all over Southern Africa, the USA and Europe and has gained both national and international recognition for his work. He has initiated arts programmes to assist street children and juvenile prisoners; he assists South African and Mozambican community arts centres to build capacity. The majority of plays directed and written by Smal, focus on community issues. Smal has over 30 years’ experience working in the community arts and imparts his knowledge frequently through conducting workshops in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana and the USA. He is joint winner of the Naledi Lifetime Achievement Award 2005 with co-director Phyllis Klotz.

Prof Hazel Barnes is retired head of the Drama and Performance Studies Programme at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg campus where she lectured, researched, performed and directed theatre and also developed the applied drama and theatre option. She was the university orator for a number of years and also assistant Dean. Since retirement she has been a Mellon visiting scholar at the University of Cape Town and visiting lecturer and chair of the research committee of the Drama for Life Programme University of the Witwatersrand. She has written on the use of applied drama with the deaf, for reconciliation and trauma recovery, and on the work of South African playwrights, Greig Coetzee, whose plays she has anthologised, and Mandla Mothwe.

Vanessa Bower studied English and Speech & Drama and taught at various institutions in Cape Town. In 1998 she joined the staff of Sibikwa Community Theatre Project, where she facilitated teacher training programmes for seven years. She was later involved in the Learnership Programmes and subsequently trained a number of artists in arts facilitation at Sibikwa, in preparation for the Artists in Schools Programme. She has published a book on Assessment of Arts & Culture and has produced Creative Arts teacher support manuals for the Gauteng Department of Education. She has also provided training in Workplace Communications.

Munyaradzi Chatikobo is a Lecturer in Drama for Life and Cultural Policy and Management in the Wits School of Arts. He has considerable experience in Cultural Leadership and Arts Management training. His academic and research interests are in Cultural Policy and Management which includes Community Arts, Culture and Development, Cultural and Creative Industries, Culture and Diplomacy as well as Social and Cultural Entrepreneurship. He is a board member for Nhimbe Trust and CHIPAWO Trust in Zimbabwe. He is also a Non-Executive Director of Andani.Africa. He is a registered PhD candidate in the Wits School of Arts and his area of study is Cultural Policy and Community Theatre in South Africa. In 2018 he teamed up with Avril Joffe, Johanna Mavhungu and Annabell Lebethe to author a book chapter on Cultural Governance in South Africa. The chapter appears in a book edited by Ian W King and Annick Schramme titled Cultural Governance in the Global Context; An International Perspective on Arts Organisations (Palgrave).

Clare Craighead has been the company manager to Flatfoot Dance Company for the past 15 years. She holds an MA degree in Drama and Performance Studies from UKZN and has published in Critical Arts, South African Theatre Journal, South African Dance Journal and Agenda: A Journal of Feminist Media. Craighead spearheaded and continues to facilitate the JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Festival’s graduate writing residency programme. "JOMBA! KHULUMA". which is an intensive platform that takes graduate students - under festival conditions - through the rigours of reviewing and critically engaging dance. She has also been a contract lecturer/tutor to UKZN’s Drama and Performance Studies and Gender Studies Programmes and has a long-standing position as a moderator for Embury Institute for Education’s "Education and Diversity" module. Currently she is working as a lecturer at Durban University of Technology’s Drama and Production Studies Department.

Dr Lliane Loots holds the position of Lecturer in the Drama and Performance Studies Programme at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She has a MA degree in Gender Studies and completed her PhD in 2018 looking at contemporary dance/performance histories on the African continent. As an artist/scholar her PhD research is framed within an ethnographic and autoethnographic paradigm with a focus on narrative as methodology. Loots has published widely within this area of academic/praxis enquiry. Loots holds the founding position of Artistic Director for UKZN’s Centre for Creative Arts annual international JOMBA! Contemporary Dance Experience – a festival that turns 23 in 2021. She has recently completed a 3-year stretch on the National Arts Festival’s Artistic Committee for dance. Loots founded Flatfoot Dance Company as a professional dance company in 2003 when it grew out of a dance training programme that originally began in 1994. As the artistic director and resident choreographer for Flatfoot, she has won numerous national choreographic awards and commissions and has travelled extensively in Europe, America and within the African continent with her dance work. Loots was awarded the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters) by the French government in 2017 for her work in the South African dance sector.

Dr Evans Netshivhambe (ORCiD: 0000-0003-0362-4110) is a young South African composer lecturing in African music at the University of Pretoria with an interest in African music identity through African art composition. His PhD in African music composition incorporates Venda rhythmic elements into African art music, exploring a new 'sound world' through composition. He is currently a lecturer in African music studies, at the University of Pretoria. In 2008, Evans was awarded third prize in a choral music competition held by the Southern African Music Rights Organisation (SAMRO), which showcased 20th century choral music style. He also received three commissions from the SAMRO Foundation (in 2010, 2011 and 2012 respectively).

Dr Sarah Roberts’(ORCiD:0000-0002-4383-4668) areer synthesises professional practice with a commitment to education, development and scholarship. Recently retired from the University of the Witwatersrand, where she was an Associate Professor, she has developed and implemented a range of undergraduate courses in cultural studies, performance and design in the Division of Theatre and Performance. Her focus on developing improvisation skills and the agency of actors as an ensemble is documented in publications in the Journal of the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa and the Journal of Contemporary Drama in English. A multi-award-winning professional production designer, her portfolio includes significant productions emerging from South Africa since 1985 including designing the stage for the Union Building Gardens for President Nelson Mandela’s inauguration in addition to landmark productions across the spectrum of musical theatre, contemporary dance and drama, including Sarafina!, Sophiatown andNothing But the Truth. These productions, including a significant number of Sibikwa productions over the span of thirty years, have been feted nationally and internationally. One of the original Board members of Sibikwa at its inception, she served as a trustee for the project for ten years and has since continued to be closely associated with a range of Sibikwa projects, productions and conferences.

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Voice Studies brings together leading international scholars and practitioners, to re-examine what voice is, what voice does, and what we mean by "voice studies" in the process and experience of performance. This dynamic and interdisciplinary publication draws on a broad range of approaches, from composing and voice teaching through to psychoanalysis and philosophy, including: voice training from the Alexander Technique to practice-as-research; operatic and extended voices in early baroque and contemporary underwater singing; voices across cultures, from site-specific choral performance in Kentish mines and Australian sound art, to the laments of Kraho Indians, Korean pansori and Javanese wayang; voice, embodiment and gender in Robertson's 1798 production of Phantasmagoria, Cathy Berberian radio show, and Romeo Castellucci's theatre; perceiving voice as a composer, listener, or as eavesdropper; voice, technology and mobile apps. With contributions spanning six continents, the volume considers the processes of teaching or writing for voice, the performance of voice in theatre, live art, music, and on recordings, and the experience of voice in acoustic perception and research. It concludes with a multifaceted series of short provocations that simply revisit the core question of the whole volume: what is voice studies?

What sort of thing is a theatre image? How is it produced and consumed? Who is responsible for the images? Why do the images stay with us when the performance is over? How do we learn to speak of what we see and imagine? And how do we relate what we experience in the theatre to what we share with each other of the world? The Illuminated Theatre is a book about theatricality and spectatorship in the early twenty-first century. In a wide-ranging analysis that draws upon theatrical, visual and philosophical approaches, it asks how spectators and audiences negotiate the complexities and challenges of contemporary experimental performance arts. It is also a book about how European practitioners working across a range of forms, from theatre and performance to dance, opera, film and visual arts, use images to address the complexities of the times in which their work takes place. Through detailed and impassioned accounts of works by artists such as Dickie Beau, Wendy Houstoun, Alvis Hermanis and Romeo Castellucci, along with close readings of experimental theoretical and art writing from Gillian Rose to T.J. Clark and Marie-Jose Mondzain, the book outlines the historical, aesthetic and political dimensions of a contemporary 'suffering of images.'

What sort of thing is a theatre image? How is it produced and consumed? Who is responsible for the images? Why do the images stay with us when the performance is over? How do we learn to speak of what we see and imagine? And how do we relate what we experience in the theatre to what we share with each other of the world? The Illuminated Theatre is a book about theatricality and spectatorship in the early twenty-first century. In a wide-ranging analysis that draws upon theatrical, visual and philosophical approaches, it asks how spectators and audiences negotiate the complexities and challenges of contemporary experimental performance arts. It is also a book about how European practitioners working across a range of forms, from theatre and performance to dance, opera, film and visual arts, use images to address the complexities of the times in which their work takes place. Through detailed and impassioned accounts of works by artists such as Dickie Beau, Wendy Houstoun, Alvis Hermanis and Romeo Castellucci, along with close readings of experimental theoretical and art writing from Gillian Rose to T.J. Clark and Marie-Jose Mondzain, the book outlines the historical, aesthetic and political dimensions of a contemporary 'suffering of images.'

A transdisciplinary approach to practice-as-research, complete with its own elaborate theory of practice and a set of four multi-year-performance research projects through which the theory plays out. Its methodology is at times ethnographic as Henry Daniel deftly inserts himself and his Caribbean West African ancestry into a series of complex cortical and geographic maps, which become choreographic in every sense of the term. The central argument in the book is based on a claim that human beings are cognitively embodied through their own lived experiences of movement through space and time; the spaces we inhabit and the practices we engage in are documented through cortical and cartographic maps. In short, as we inhabit and move through spaces our brains organise our experiences into unique cortical and spatial maps, which eventually determine how we see and deal with, i.e., 'become' subjects in a world that we also help create. The argument is that through performance, as a re-cognising and re-membering of these movements, we can claim the knowledge that is in the body as well as in the spaces through which it travels. To demonstrate how the brain organises our experiences of the world according to cartographic (graphically mapping procedures) and cortical (motor, sensory and visual functions) mapping and exploring the impact of this mapping to choreographic practice, considering how maps might be disrupted or altered by change of circumstances. This is illustrated through scientific, creative and reflective approaches to exploring neurological process of embodied experiences, as well as the analysis of projects that have utilized this practice thus far. Audience will include Dance and Performance Studies Scholars; Dancers and Choreographers; Undergraduate and Advanced Students; Researchers

Originally published in 1995. In three parts - introduction, criticism and reviews - this volume examines the goriest of Shakespeare's works. The editor's exhaustive introduction runs through the pattern of changing scholarship and commentary, introducing the key interests in the play, from its authorship to its language, rhetoric and performance. Early commentaries focused on arguing about whether the play was truly Shakespeare's. A selection of the most important of these are included here followed by later investigations looking at myriad topics and characters - revenge, violence, race, Aaron, women, tragedy and Tamora. The large section of reviews of stage performances, arranged chronologically, ranges from 1857 to 1990. Two final pieces interestingly survey stage history of Titus in Japan and in Germany.

Originally published in 1995. Providing the most influential historical criticism, but also some contemporary pieces written for the volume, this collection includes the most essential study and reviews of this tragic play. The first part contains critical articles arranged chronologically while the second part presents reviews of stage performances from 1901 to 1988 from a variety of sources. Chapters chosen are representative of their given age and critical approach and therefore show the changing responses and the topics that interested critics in the play through the years. Coriolanus is an unsympathetic character and the play has been traditionally less popular than other tragedies - a comprehensive introduction by the editor discusses these attitudes to the play and the reasons behind them.

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.

Part of the popular and successful Routledge Performance Practitioners series Includes a wealth of both original exercises and invaluable primary material Written with input from Hart's close collaborators and company members

Humans have always marked time, whether by using using the earth's natural rhythms or with the clock. Unlike pre- industrial people, living in an age of social acceleration is dominated by clock-time and network time, presenting many more options than can possibly be achieved in a human lifespan. This book explores the possibility of an alternative experience of time, one that is closer to the pure duration described by philosopher Henri Bergson. The discussions in this book contribute to contemporary performance analysis, philosophy and Bergson studies as well as exploring aspects of immersive and participatory performance, walking practices, ritual and online performance. Using durational performances as case studies, the author demonstrates new insights into Bergson's philosophy alongside key theorists in psychology and anthropology. Through a series of performance analyses, Bergson's philosophy of duration is coupled with ideas from Maslow, Csikszentmihalyi and Victor Turner to speculate on the possibilities available in challenging an experience of the world in which time is short, but the possibility of experience is abundant. The main audience is an academic and student market. Undergraduate and postgraduate students of theatre studies, performance and the performing arts, doctoral researchers, researchers interested in time and performance, the relationship between performance and philosophy, those with an interest in philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and psychology will all find much of interest. Potential wider readership in those who are interested in the phenomenon of social acceleration, in performance philosophy as well in Bergson's philosophy.

Dramaturgy, in its many forms, is a fundamental and indispensable element of contemporary theatre. In its earliest definition, the word itself means a comprehensive theory of "play making." Although it initially grew out of theatre, contemporary dramaturgy has made enormous advances in recent years, and it now permeates all kinds of narrative forms and structures: from opera to performance art; from dance and multimedia to filmmaking and robotics. In our global, mediated context of multinational group collaborations that dissolve traditional divisions of roles as well as unbend previously intransigent rules of time and space, the dramaturg is also the ultimate globalist: intercultural mediator, information and research manager, media content analyst, interdisciplinary negotiator, social media strategist. This collection focuses on contemporary dramaturgical practice, bringing together contributions not only from academics but also from prominent working dramaturgs. The inclusion of both means a strong level of engagement with current issues in dramaturgy, from the impact of social media to the ongoing centrality of interdisciplinary and intermedial processes. The contributions survey the field through eight main lenses: world dramaturgy and global perspective dramaturgy as function, verb and skill dramaturgical leadership and season planning production dramaturgy in translation adaptation and new play development interdisciplinary dramaturgy play analysis in postdramatic and new media dramaturgy social media and audience outreach. Magda Romanska is Visiting Associate Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, Associate Professor of Theatre and Dramaturgy at Emerson College, and Dramaturg for Boston Lyric Opera. Her books include The Post-Traumatic Theatre of Grotowski and Kantor (2012), Boguslaw Schaeffer: An Anthology (2012), and Comedy: An Anthology of Theory and Criticism (2014).

Originally published in 1986. Among the most frequently performed and high admired of Shakespeare's plays, Twelfth Night is examined here in this collection of writings from well-known essayists and scholars. The chapters present to the modern reader discussions of the play to enhance understanding and study of both the text and performances. Opening essays address individual characters; then some accounts of its potential and theatrical reviews are included; finally followed by critical studies looking at various parts and themes. The editor's introduction explains the usefulness of each chapter and gives an overview of the selection.

Beginning with Richard Drew's controversial photograph of a man falling from the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, Learning How to Fall investigates the changing relationship between world events and their subsequent documentation, asking: Does the mediatization of the event overwhelm the fact of the event itself? How does the mode by which information is disseminated alter the way in which we perceive such information? How does this impact upon our memory of an event? T. Nikki Cesare Schotzko posits contemporary art and performance as not only a stylized re-envisioning of daily life but, inversely, as a viable means by which one might experience and process real-world political and social events. This approach combines two concurrent and contradictory trends in aesthetics, narrative, and dramaturgy: the dramatization of real-world events so as to broaden the commercial appeal of those events in both mainstream and alternative media, and the establishment of a more holistic relationship between politically and aesthetically motivated modes of disseminating and processing information. By presenting engaging and diverse case studies from both the art world and popular culture - including Aliza Shvarts's censored senior thesis at Yale University, Kerry Skarbakka's provocative photographs of falling, Didier Morelli's crawl through Toronto, and Aaron Sorkin's The Newsroom - Learning How to Fall creates a new understanding of the relationship between the event and its documentation, where even the truth of an event might be called into question.

Originally published in 1984. With selections organised chronologically, this collection presents the best writing on one of Shakespeare's most studied plays. The structure displays the changing responses to the play and includes a wide range of criticism from the likes of Coleridge, Hazlitt, Moulton, Granville-Barker, Orwell, Levin, Stampfer, Gardner and Speaight interspersed with short entries from Keats, Raleigh, Freud and others. The final chapter by the editor elucidates his own thoughts on Lear, building on his commentary in the Introduction which puts the collection in context.

Originally published in 1986. This volume points to the rich variety of critical responses to the Henry IV plays and their complexity. It includes selections from characteristic thought of the neoclassical age, character criticism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, historical and new criticism, theatrical interpretation and other pieces by the likes of Samuel Johnson and W. H. Auden. The editor's introduction explains the collection's relevance and puts the pieces in context. Several chapters look at the character of Falstaff and the changing response and critique through time. Organised chronologically, the collection then ends with two pieces of theatrical criticism.

Originally published in 1984. The four parts of this collection of articles, from 1601 to the 1970s, look at the historical and political dynamics of the play, the play in the theatre, the psychology of its characters, and its poetry and rhetoric. Bringing together the best that was written about Richard II, this volume represents the collective wisdom of Shakespeare scholars and provides the most insightful criticism in one place. An unpopular play for many years due to the perceived weak main character and the theme of deposition, the play later gained popularity and interest in its psychology and political investigation. The poetry in particular has garnered enthusiastic response and is mentioned in most of the pieces included here.

Les Waters is a master director who has worked with many of the most important American theatre artists of the 21st century. A thorough examination of his creative practice and body of work amounts to a picture of American theatre in our time. While collaboration is promoted and celebrated in practical theatre courses and professional training programs far and wide, this book offers concrete and situation-specific examples of how accomplished theatre artists have grapple with the challenges of creating together. The book features writing from the full spectrum of professional disciplines (actors, designers, stage managers, and dramaturgs, as well as directors and playwrights).

Jerzy Grotowski's Journeys to the East is an unusual collection of facts, quotations, and commentaries documenting the real and metaphorical journeys of the Polish theatre director and 'teacher of performers' into a geographical and cultural dimension which we used to and still call the Orient. Grotowski's contacts and meetings with the East are placed here in the context of his biography. Painstakingly researched by Grotowski's main biographer Zbigniew Osinski, this book is necessary reading for those interested in Grotowski's deep relationship with the East and in the inspiration he drew from its various cultures. The book will appeal to all readers who feel a need to have a glimpse of the East from the perspective of one of the main theatre reformers in the twentieth century.

Zbigniew Cynkutis writings constitute invaluable testimony of his work with Jerzy Grotowski during the theatre of productions phase and beyond. Cynkutis insights elucidate aspects of the Laboratory Theatre s praxis and provide a unique perspective on the questions most often asked about Grotowski. Authored by one of the Laboratory Theatre s most accomplished actors, this book draws on long-term theatre research and deep knowledge of the craft of acting to offer practical advice indispensable to the professional and aspiring actor alike. The volume offers the English-speaking reader an unprecedented richness of primary source material, which sheds new light on the practical work of one of the most influential theatre directors of the 20th century. Cynkutis voice is sincere and direct, and will continue to inspire new generations of theatre practitioners. " "Dominika Laster, Yale University"

Acting with Grotowski: Theatre as a Field for Experiencing Life" explores the actor-director dynamic through the experience of Zbigniew Cynkutis, one of Polish director Jerzy Grotowski s foremost collaborators. Cynkutis s work as an actor, combined with his later work as a director and theatre manager, gave him a visionary overview based on precise embodied understanding.

Cynkutis s writings yield numerous insights into the commitment needed to make innovative, challenging theatre. A central component of "Acting with Grotowski "is his distinctive approach to training: Conversations with the Body includes a range of techniques and approaches to warming up, rehearsing and creating work from a physical starting point, beautifully illustrated by Bill Ireland.

The book comprises reflections and practical suggestions on a range of subjects theatre and culture, improvisation, ethics, group dynamics, and Cynkutis s vision for the Wroc aw Second Studio. It contains visual and textual materials from Cynkutis s own private archive, such as diary entries and letters. "Acting with Grotowski "demonstrates the thin line that separates life and art when an artist works with extreme commitment in testing political and social conditions."

Step down a little closer; you don't want to miss a thing. Join fifty-year sideshow veteran, Rick West, on a strange and wonderful trip through behind-the-scenes tales of his life as a showman. The strange, the bizarre, the unusual comprise this engaging memoir bursting at the seams with rare images of two-headed cows, Bigfoot creatures, pickled punks, showgirls, humongous hogs, 3,500-pound steers, and much, much more. From attending the Ozark Empire Fair at age five to revealing the true story behind Frank Hansen's infamous Minnesota Iceman, the author takes the reader into the world of America's sideshows and midway grind shows. It's all here; it's all on the inside. See it now or miss it forever. It's showtime!

This edited collection charts the development of contemporary dance in Central and Eastern Europe since the literal and symbolic revolutions of 1989. Central Europe and the former Soviet Bloc countries were a major presence in dance - particularly theatrical dance - throughout the twentieth century. With the fragmentation of traditional structures in the final decade of the century came a range of aesthetic and ideological responses from dance practitioners. These ranged from attempts to reform classical ballet to struggles for autonomy from the state, and the nature of each was influenced by a set of contexts and circumstances particular to each country. Each contribution covers the strategies of a different country's dance practitioners, using a similar structure in order to invite comparisons. In general, they address: Historical context, showing the roots of contemporary dance forms The socio-political climates that influenced emerging companies and forms The relationships between aesthetic exploration and institutional patronage The practitioners who were central to the development of dance in each country A diagnosis of the current state of the art and how it has come about The book's main through-line is the concept of community, and how all of the different approaches that it documents have in some way engaged with this notion, consciously or otherwise. This can take the form of oppositional relationships, institutional formations, or literally, in identifiable communities of dancers and choreographers.

Towards a Theory of Mime is a genuinely unique book about non-verbal communication and performance. Combining a broad global history of the evolution of human communication with an introduction to the general practice of mime, Alexander Iliev traces a lineage from Marceau and Barrault to his own distinguished practice as performer and teacher. The book moves from a fascinating description of the first principles of gestural language to a stunning sequence of specific exercises in practical training. Written in a sometimes poetic, always accessible and often humorous style, Towards a Theory of Mime conveys complex ideas in a strikingly accessible way. Alexander Iliev has over forty years experience practising and teaching both theatre and anthropology around the world. He is currently Associate Professor at the National Academy in Sofia.

Live Art is a contested category, not least because of the historical, disciplinary and institutional ambiguities that the term often tends to conceal. Live Art can be usefully defined as a peculiarly British variation on particular legacies of cultural experimentation - a historically and culturally contingent translation of categories including body art, performance art, time-based art, and endurance art. The recent social and cultural history of the UK has involved specific factors that have crucially influenced the development of Live Art since the late 1970s. These have included issues in national cultural politics relating to sexuality, gender, disability, technology, and cultural policy. In the past decade there has been a proliferation of festivals of Live Art in the UK and growing support for Live Art in major venues. Nevertheless, while specific artists have been afforded critical essays and monographs, there is a relative absence of scholarly work on Live Art as a historically and culturally specific mode of artistic production. Through essays by leading scholars and critical interviews with influential artists in the sector, Critical Live Art addresses the historical and cultural specificity of contemporary experimental performance, and explores the diversity of practices that are carried out, programmed, read or taught as Live Art. This book is based on a special issue of Contemporary Theatre Review.

Zbigniew Cynkutis writings constitute invaluable testimony of his work with Jerzy Grotowski during the theatre of productions phase and beyond. Cynkutis insights elucidate aspects of the Laboratory Theatre s praxis and provide a unique perspective on the questions most often asked about Grotowski. Authored by one of the Laboratory Theatre s most accomplished actors, this book draws on long-term theatre research and deep knowledge of the craft of acting to offer practical advice indispensable to the professional and aspiring actor alike. The volume offers the English-speaking reader an unprecedented richness of primary source material, which sheds new light on the practical work of one of the most influential theatre directors of the 20th century. Cynkutis voice is sincere and direct, and will continue to inspire new generations of theatre practitioners. " "Dominika Laster, Yale University"

Acting with Grotowski: Theatre as a Field for Experiencing Life" explores the actor-director dynamic through the experience of Zbigniew Cynkutis, one of Polish director Jerzy Grotowski s foremost collaborators. Cynkutis s work as an actor, combined with his later work as a director and theatre manager, gave him a visionary overview based on precise embodied understanding.

Cynkutis s writings yield numerous insights into the commitment needed to make innovative, challenging theatre. A central component of "Acting with Grotowski "is his distinctive approach to training: Conversations with the Body includes a range of techniques and approaches to warming up, rehearsing and creating work from a physical starting point, beautifully illustrated by Bill Ireland.

The book comprises reflections and practical suggestions on a range of subjects theatre and culture, improvisation, ethics, group dynamics, and Cynkutis s vision for the Wroc aw Second Studio. It contains visual and textual materials from Cynkutis s own private archive, such as diary entries and letters. "Acting with Grotowski "demonstrates the thin line that separates life and art when an artist works with extreme commitment in testing political and social conditions."