Putting food and theatre into direct conversation, this volume focuses on how food and theatre have operated for centuries as partners in the performative, symbolic, and literary making of meaning. Through case studies, literary analyses, and performance critiques, contributors examine theatrical work from China, Japan, India, Greece, Italy, France, Germany, England, the United States, Chile, Argentina, and Zimbabwe, addressing work from classical, popular, and contemporary theatre practices. The investigation of uses of food across media and artistic genres is a burgeoning area of scholarly investigation, yet regarding representation and symbolism, literature and film have received more attention than theatre, while performance studies scholars have taken the lead in examining the performative aspects of food events. This collection looks across dramatic genres, historical periods, and cultural contexts, and at food in all of its socio-political, material complexity to examine the particular problems and potentials of invoking and using food in live theatre. The volume considers food as a transhistorical, global phenomenon across theatre genres, addressing the explosion of food studies at the end of the twentieth century that has shown how food is a crucial aspect of cultural identity.

What role can provocation play in the process of renewal, both of individuals and of societies? Provocation in Popular Culture is an investigation into the practice of specific provocateurs and the wider nature of cultural provocation, examining, among others: Banksy Sacha Baron Cohen Leo Bassi Pussy Riot Philippe Petit Archaos. Drawing on Bim Mason's own twenty-five year career as performer, teacher and creative director, this book explores the power negotiations involved in the relationship between provocateur and provoked, and the implications of maintaining a position on the 'edge'. Using neuroscience as a bridge, it proposes a similarity between complexity theory and cultural theories of play and risk. Three inter-related analogies for the 'edge' on which these performers operate - the fulcrum, the blade and the border - reveal the shifts between structure and fluidity, and the ways in which these can combine in a single moment.

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.'

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

What makes a woman 'bad' is commonly linked to certain 'qualities' or behaviours seen as morally or socially corrosive, dirty and disgusting. In Bad Girls, Dirty Bodies, Gemma Commane critically explores the social, sexual and political significance of women who are labelled 'bad', sluts or dirty. Through a variety of case studies drawn from qualitative and original ethnographic research, she argues that 'Bad Girls' disrupt heterosexual normativity and contribute new embodied knowledge. From neo-burlesque, sex-positive and queer performance art, to explicit entertainment and areas of popular culture; Commane situates 'bad' women as sites of power, possibility and success. Through the combination of case studies (Ms T, Empress Stah and RubberDoll, Mouse and Doris La Trine), Gemma Commane offers a challenge to those who think that sexual, slutty, bad, and dirty women are not worth listening to. Significantly, she unpicks the issues generated by women who are complicit in the subjugation, policing and marginalization of 'other' women, both in popular culture and in sites of subcultural resistance.

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

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.

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."

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."

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.

Improvisation is a performance practice that animates and activates diverse energies of inspiration, critique, and invention. In recent years it has coalesced into an exciting and innovative new field of interdisciplinary scholarly inquiry, becoming a cornerstone of both practical and theoretical approaches to performance."

The Improvisation Studies Reader" draws together the works of key artists and thinkers from a range of disciplines, including theatre, music, literature, film, and dance. Divided by keywords into eight sections, this book bridges the gaps between these fields. The book includes case studies, exercises, graphic scores and poems in order to produce a teaching and research resource that identifies central themes in improvisation studies. The sections include:

• Listening
• Trust/Risk
• Flow
• Dissonance
• Responsibility
• Liveness
• Surprise
• Hope

Each section of the Reader is introduced by a newly commissioned think piece by a key figure in the field, which opens up research questions reflecting on the keyword in question.

By placing key theoretical and classic texts in conversation with cutting-edge research and artists statements, this book answers the urgent questions facing improvising artists and theorists in the mediatized Twenty-First Century. "

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 anthology has been curated by a seasoned playwright, academic, director and actor who has lived experience of being deaf. * Would be recommended reading in deaf studies and deaf culture courses across the world. * This book is the first anthology of its kind.

In recent years we have witnessed an increasing convergence of work in International Politics and Performance Studies around the troubled, and often troubling, relationship between politics and aesthetics. Whilst examination of political aesthetics, aesthetic politics, and politics of aesthetic practice has been central to research in both disciplines for some time, the emergence of a distinctive 'performative turn' in International Politics and a critical return to the centrality of politics and the concept of 'the political' in Performance Studies highlights the importance of investigating the productivity of bringing the methods and approaches of the two fields of enquiry into dialogue and mutual relation. Exploring a wide range of issues including rioting, youth-driven protests, border security practices and the significance of cultural awareness in war, this text provides an accessible and cutting edge survey of the intersection of international politics and performance examining issues surrounding the politics of appearance, image, event and place; and discusses the development and deployment of innovative critical and creative research methods, from auto-ethnography to site-specific theatre-making, from philosophical aesthetics to the aesthetic thought of new securities scenario-planning. The book's focus throughout is on the materiality of performance practices-on the politics of making, spectating, and participating in a variety of modes as political actors and audiences-whilst also seeking to explicate the performative dynamics of creative and critical thinking. Structured thematically and framed by a detailed introduction and conclusion, the focus is on producing a dialogue between contributors and providing an essential reference point in this developing field. This work is essential reading for students of politics and performance and will be of great interest to students and scholars of IR, performance studies and cultural studies.