Performance Studies: The Basics offers an overview of the multiple, often overlapping definitions of performance, from performance art, performance as everyday life, and rituals, to the performative dimensions of identity, such as gender, race and sexuality. This book defines the interdisciplinary field of performance studies as it has evolved over the past four decades at the intersection of academic scholarship and artistic and activist practices. It discusses performance as an important means of communicating and of understanding the world, highlighting its intersections with critical theory and arguing for the importance of performance in the study of human behaviour and social practices. Complete with a helpful glossary and bibliography, as well as suggestions for further reading, this book is an ideal starting point for those studying performance studies as well as for general readers with an interest in the subject.

In this second, fully revised edition of his acclaimed study of Barker's work, Charles Lamb sets out to make emotional sense of the characters and their interactions.

This is a detailed exploration of the 'scene of seduction' - the challenge, the secret, the abject and the catastrophic, processes which dominate Barker's work. For Lamb, the power of Barker's plays is to be found in the exposure to the irrational and its promotion of a state of unknowing.

This revised edition includes:

* a new interview with Barker;
* a revised introduction,
* an updated bibliography
* a full production chronology.

For students of Barker and for actors and directors working with this unique material, Lamb's book is a vital and illuminating text.

The Elements of Theatrical Expression puts forward 14 essential elements that make up the basic building blocks of theatre. Is theatre a language? Does it have its own unique grammar? And if so, just what would the elements of such a grammar be? Brian Kulick asks readers to think of these elements as the rungs of a ladder, scaling one after the other to arrive at an aerial view of the theatrical landscape. From such a vantage point, one can begin to discern a line of development from the ancient Greeks, through Shakespeare and Chekhov, to a host of our own contemporary authors. He demonstrates how these elements may be transhistorical but are far from static, marking out a rich and dynamic theatrical language for a new generation of theatre makers to draw upon. Suitable for directors, actors, writers, dramaturges, and all audiences who yearn for a deeper understanding of theatre, The Elements of Theatrical Expression equips its readers with the knowledge that they need to see and hear theatre in new and more daring ways.

Traditional carnival theory, based mainly on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and Victor Turner, has long defined carnival as inversive or subversive. The essays in this groundbreaking anthology collectively reverse that trend, offering a re-definition of 'carnival' that is focused not on the hierarchy it temporarily displaces or negates, but one that is rooted in the actuality of the festival event. Carnival details its new theory in terms of a carnival that is at once representative and distinctive: The Carnival of Trinidad-the most copied yet least studied major carnival in the world.
Editor Milla Cozart Riggio has compiled a body of work that takes the reader on a fascinating journey exploring the various aspects of carnival - its traditions, its history, its music, its politics - and prefaces each section with an illuminating essay. This beautifully illustrated volume features work by leading writers and experts on carnival from around the world, and includes two stunning photo essays by acclaimed photographers Pablo Delano and Jeffrey Chock.

A classic bestseller by one of the most important theatre practitioners of the 20th and early 21st centuries. This handbook has sold over 90,000 copies to students, teachers and theatre makers, giving them a broad range of theatre exercises to use in classrooms, rehearsals and community projects. Makes social and community theatre fun, engaging and easily accessible for a broad audience. No other book sets out all of Boal's methods in one place, not least in such a clear, practical manner.

Traditional carnival theory, based mainly on the work of Mikhail Bakhtin and Victor Turner, has long defined carnival as inversive or subversive. The essays in this groundbreaking anthology collectively reverse that trend, offering a re-definition of 'carnival' that is focused not on the hierarchy it temporarily displaces or negates, but one that is rooted in the actuality of the festival event. Carnival details its new theory in terms of a carnival that is at once representative and distinctive: The Carnival of Trinidad-the most copied yet least studied major carnival in the world.
Editor Milla Cozart Riggio has compiled a body of work that takes the reader on a fascinating journey exploring the various aspects of carnival - its traditions, its history, its music, its politics - and prefaces each section with an illuminating essay. This beautifully illustrated volume features work by leading writers and experts on carnival from around the world, and includes two stunning photo essays by acclaimed photographers Pablo Delano and Jeffrey Chock.

The Maternal in Creative Work examines the interrelation between art, creativity and maternal experience, inviting international artists, theorists and cultural workers to discuss their approaches to the central feminist question of the relation between maternity, generation and creativity. This edited collection explores various modes and forms of art practice which look at mothers as subjects and as artists of the maternal experience, and how the creative practice is used to accept, negotiate, resist or challenge traditional conceptions of mothering. The book brings together some of the major projects of maternal art from the last two decades and opens up new ways of conceptualizing motherhood as a creative and communicative practice. Chapters include intergenerational discussion of art practices in the 20th and 21st centuries, representations of breastfeeding and infertility in creative projects, the notion of the 'unfit mother' and childlessness, together with the experiences of women and men that take on maternal identities through many forms of kinship and social mothering. The Maternal in Creative Work will be essential reading for interdisciplinary students and scholars in cultural studies, gender studies and art theory and will have wider appeal to audiences interested in maternity, childcare, creativity and psychoanalysis.

This book addresses the politics of borders in the era of global art by exploring the identification of Chinese artists by location and exhibition. Focusing on performative, body-oriented video works by the post-1989 generation, it tests the premise of genealogical inscription and the ways in which cultural objects are attributed to the artist's residency, homeland or citizenship rather than cultural tradition, style or practice. Acknowledging historical definitions of Chineseness, including the orientalist assumptions of the past and the cultural-mixing of the present, the book's case studies address the paradoxes and contradictions of representation. An analysis of the historical matrix of global expositions reveals the structural connections among art, culture, capital and nation. -- .

Through a series of case studies, this book explores the role of live animals on the stage, from the early modern era to the present time. The contributors deal with visual and textual representations of performing animals; typologies of animals in the theatre; the hybridization of the drama with the circus, the zoo, and the cinema; as well as the semiotic transfer of animal roles from the text to the stage. The focus lies on the changing historical fortunes of the four-footed actor and on exploring the ways that attitudes to the animal affect their dramatic representations - within aesthetic contexts but also in their dramatized scientific use. Exploring snapshots of acting animals from their earliest manifestation on the early modern stage, the chapters contextualize and theorize particular uses of the animal actor, and key into current debates on the cutting edge of animal performance studies. While seeking to consider how these theoretical perspectives were formed, the collection delves into the multiple ways through which the animal presence problematizes the practice of theatricality. This book was originally published as a special issue of Studies in Theatre and Performance.

The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Screen provides a lively guide to film and television productions adapted from Shakespeare's plays. Offering an essential resource for students of Shakespeare, the companion considers topics such as the early history of Shakespeare films, the development of 'live' broadcasts from theatre to cinema, the influence of promotion and marketing, and the range of versions available in 'world cinema'. Chapters on the contexts, genres and critical issues of Shakespeare on screen offer a diverse range of close analyses, from 'Classical Hollywood' films to the BBC's Hollow Crown series. The companion also features sections on the work of individual directors Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Franco Zeffirelli, Kenneth Branagh, and Vishal Bhardwaj, and is supplemented by a guide to further reading and a filmography.

During the 1820s and 30s nautical melodramas "reigned supreme" on London stages, entertaining the mariners and maritime workers who comprised a large part of the audience for small theatres with the same sentimental moments and comic interludes of domestic melodrama mixed with patriotic images that communicated and reinforced imperial themes. However, generally the study of British theatre history moves from medieval and renaissance plays directly to the realism and naturalism of late Victorian and modern drama. Readers typically encounter a gap between Restoration and eighteenth-century plays like those of Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and late-nineteenth plays by Henrik Ibsen and Oscar Wilde. Nineteenth-century drama, with the possible exception of plays by Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth, remains all but invisible. Until recently, melodramatic plays written and performed during this "gap" received little scholarly attention, but their value as reflections of Britain's promulgation of imperial ideology - and its role in constructing and maintaining class, gender, and racial identities - have given discussions of melodrama force and momentum. The plays in included in these three volumes have never appeared in a critical anthology and most have not been republished since their original nineteenth-century editions. Each play is transcribed from the original documents and includes an author biography, a headnote about the play itself, full annotations with brief definitions of unfamiliar vocabulary, and explanatory notes. Comprehensive editorial apparatus details the nineteenth-century imperial, naval, political, and social history relevant to the plays' nautical themes, as well as discussing nineteenth-century theatre history, melodrama generally, and the nautical melodrama in particular. Contemporary theatre practices - acting, audiences, staging, lighting, special effects - are also examined. An extensive bibliography of primary and secondary texts; a complete index; and contemporary images of the actors, theatres, stage sets, playbills, costumes, and locales have been compiled to aid study further. The appendices include maps of Britain, Europe, and the East and West Indies.

Peter Harrop offers a reappraisal of mummers' plays, which have long been regarded as a form of 'folk' or 'traditional' drama, somehow separate from the mainstream of British theatre. This fresh view of folk and tradition explores how mummers' plays emerged in an 18th century theatrical environment of popular spouting clubs and private theatricals, yet quickly transformed into 'traditionary' drama with echoes of an ancient past. Harrop suggests that by the late 19th century the plays had been appropriated by antiquarians and folklorists, leaving mummer's plays as a strangely separate and categorised form. This book considers how that happened, and the ways in which these late 19th century ideas were absorbed into the mummers' plays, providing a new lease of life for them in the 20th and 21st centuries. Ideal for anyone with a specialised interest in this unique form, Mummers' Plays Revisited spans recent work in theatre history, performance studies and folklore to offer a comprehensive and engaging study.

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.

During the 1820s and 30s nautical melodramas "reigned supreme" on London stages, entertaining the mariners and maritime workers who comprised a large part of the audience for small theatres with the same sentimental moments and comic interludes of domestic melodrama mixed with patriotic images that communicated and reinforced imperial themes. However, generally the study of British theatre history moves from medieval and renaissance plays directly to the realism and naturalism of late Victorian and modern drama. Readers typically encounter a gap between Restoration and eighteenth-century plays like those of Oliver Goldsmith and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and late-nineteenth plays by Henrik Ibsen and Oscar Wilde. Nineteenth-century drama, with the possible exception of plays by Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth, remains all but invisible. Until recently, melodramatic plays written and performed during this "gap" received little scholarly attention, but their value as reflections of Britain's promulgation of imperial ideology - and its role in constructing and maintaining class, gender, and racial identities - have given discussions of melodrama force and momentum. The plays in included in these three volumes have never appeared in a critical anthology and most have not been republished since their original nineteenth-century editions. Each play is transcribed from the original documents and includes an author biography, a headnote about the play itself, full annotations with brief definitions of unfamiliar vocabulary, and explanatory notes. Comprehensive editorial apparatus details the nineteenth-century imperial, naval, political, and social history relevant to the plays' nautical themes, as well as discussing nineteenth-century theatre history, melodrama generally, and the nautical melodrama in particular. Contemporary theatre practices - acting, audiences, staging, lighting, special effects - are also examined. An extensive bibliography of primary and secondary texts; a complete index; and contemporary images of the actors, theatres, stage sets, playbills, costumes, and locales have been compiled to aid study further. The appendices include maps of Britain, Europe, and the East and West Indies.

In How and Why We Teach Shakespeare, 19 distinguished college teachers and directors draw from their personal experiences and share their methods and the reasons why they teach Shakespeare. The collection is divided into four sections: studying the text as a script for performance; exploring Shakespeare by performing; implementing specific techniques for getting into the plays; and working in different classrooms and settings. The contributors offer a rich variety of topics, including: working with cues in Shakespeare, such as line and mid-line endings that lead to questions of interpretation seeing Shakespeare's stage directions and the Elizabethan playhouse itself as contributing to a play's meaning using the "gamified" learning model or cue-cards to get into the text thinking of the classroom as a rehearsal playing the Friar to a student's Juliet in a production of Romeo and Juliet teaching Shakespeare to inner-city students or in a country torn by political and social upheavals. For fellow instructors of Shakespeare, the contributors address their own philosophies of teaching, the relation between scholarship and performance, and-perhaps most of all-why in this age the study of Shakespeare is so important. Chapter 10 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license. https://tandfbis.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9780367190798_oachapter10.pdf

'Who can turn skies back and begin again?' -Peter This book contends that Peter Grimes, widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential operas of the 20th century, is also one of the British theatre's finest 'lost' plays. Seeking to liberate Britten and Slater's work from the blinkered traditions of theatre and opera criticism, Sam Kinchin-Smith poses two questions: If an opera was created like a play, and can be staged as a play, is it a play? If a portion of its success and influence is the product of this newly identified theatrical engine, is it then a great play? The answers involve Wagner and W.G. Sebald, George Crabbe and Complicite, Akenfield and Twin Peaks. Challenging long-established narratives of post-war theatre history, this book makes a compelling case for why practitioners and scholars of performance ought to pay more attention to Britten and Slater's achievement - a milestone of unconventional English modernism - and perhaps to other operatic masterpieces too.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sound Art explores and delineates what Sound Art is in the 21st century. Sound artworks today embody the contemporary and transcultural trends towards the post-apocalyptic, a wide sensorial spectrum of sonic imaginaries as well as the decolonization and deinstitutionalization around the making of sound. Within the areas of musicology, art history, and, later, sound studies, Sound Art has evolved at least since the 1980s into a turbulant field of academic critique and aesthetic analysis. Summoning artists, researchers, curators, and critics, this volume takes note of and reflects the most recent shifts and drifts in Sound Art--rooted in sonic histories and implying future trajectories.

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.

The third edition of Pamela Howard's What is Scenography? expands on the author's holistic analysis of scenography as comprising space, text, research, art, performers, directors and spectators, to examine the changing nature of scenography in the twenty-first century. The book includes new investigations of recent production projects from Howard's celebrated career, including Carmen and Charlotte: A Tri-Coloured Play with Music, full-colour illustrations of her recent work and updated commentary from a wide spectrum of contemporary theatre makers. This book is suitable for students in Scenography and Theatre Design courses, along with theatre professionals.

Theatres of Conscience offers an invaluable and essential insight into four touring British theatre companies whose work and contributions to post-war British theatre have largely gone unnoticed. Combining a rigorous scholarly evaluation of their work and their broadly ideological and ethical contribution to wider post-war developments in British theatre. Peter Billingham offers the reader a unique insight into four companies which, motivated by enthusiasm, principles and creative innovation, sought to take the theatre of conscience to theatre-less communities in wartime Britain and during the following decade. Contemporaries of - amongst others - Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop, the Pilgrim Players, the Adelphi Players, the Compass Players and the Century Theatre represent a significant but rather overlooked phase in the development of twentieth-century British theatre.

Sexualities in History is a multidisciplinary collection of key articles by prominent scholars that looks at the constantly shifting meanings, languages, and practices of western sexualities. Offering a sustained exploration of sex as a social, cultural, and historical construct, this reader covers diverse topics like the construction of the body; reproduction and marriage; the impact of AIDs; sex in colonial contexts; postmodern sexual transgressions, and the discourse of pornography.

This major new study presents a political and cultural history of some of Ireland's key national theatre projects from the 1890s to the 1990s. Impressively wide-ranging in coverage, Theatre and the State in Twentieth-Century Ireland: Cultivating the People includes discussions on:
*the politics of the Irish literary movement at the Abbey Theatre before and after political independence;
*the role of a state-sponsored theatre for the post-1922 unionist government in Northern Ireland;
*the convulsive effects of the Northern Ireland conflict on Irish theatre.
Lionel Pilkington draws on a combination of archival research and critical readings of individual plays, covering works by J. M. Synge, Sean O'Casey, Lennox Robinson, T. C. Murray, George Shiels, Brian Friel, and Frank McGuinness. In its insistence on the details of history, this is a book important to anyone interested in Irish culture and politics in the twentieth century.

Contents:
Introduction. Chapter 1. Home Rule and the Irish Literary State Chapter 2. J.M. Synge and the Collapse of Constructive Unionism, 1902-09 Chapter 3. NTS Ltd. and the Rise of Sinn F`ein, 1910-22 Chapter 4. Cumann na nGaedheal and the Abbey Theatre, 1922-32 Chapter 5. Fianna Fail and 'the Nation's Prestige', 1932-48 Chapter 6. Irish Theatre and Modernization, 1948-68 Chapter 7. National Theatres in Northern Ireland, 1922-72 Chapter 8. National Theatre and the Political Crisis in Northern Ireland, 1968-92. Bibliography.

For this American edition of his legendary arts dictionary of information and opinion, the distinguished critic and arts historian Richard Kostelanetz has selected from the fuller third edition his entries on North Americans, including Canadians, Mexicans, and resident immigrants. Typically, he provides intelligence unavailable anywhere else, no less in print than online, about a wealth of subjects and individuals. Focused upon what is truly innovative and excellent, Kostelanetz also ranges widely with insight and surprise, including appreciations of artistic athletes such as Muhammad Ali and the Harlem Globetrotters, and such collective creations as Las Vegas and his native New York City. Continuing the traditions of cheeky high-style Dictionarysts, honoring Ambrose Bierce and Nicolas Slonimsky (both with individual entries), Kostelanetz offers a "reference book" to be treasured not only in bits and chunks, but continuously as one of the ten books someone would take if they planned to be stranded on a desert isle.

How do performances of Shakespeare change the meanings of the plays?
In this controversial new book, Sarah Werner argues that the text of a Shakespeare play is only one of the many factors that give a performance its meaning. By focusing on The Royal Shakespeare Company, Werner demonstrates how actor training, company management and gender politics fundamentally affect both how a production is created and the interpretations it can suggest.
Werner concentrates particularly on:
The influential training methods of Cicely Berry and Patsy Rodenburg
The history of the RSC Women's Group
Gale Edwards' production of The Taming of the Shrew
She reveals that no performance of Shakespeare is able to bring the plays to life or to realise the playwright's intentions without shaping them to mirror our own assumptions.
By examining the ideological implications of performance practices, this book will help all interested in Shakespeare's plays to explore what it means to study them in performance.