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

Aesthetic theory in the West has, until now, been dominated by ideas of effect, autonomy, and reception. Transformative Aesthetics uncovers these theories' mutual concern with the transformation of those involved. From artists to spectators, readers, listeners, or audiences, the idea of transformation is one familiar to cultures across the globe. Transformation of the individual is only one part of this aesthetic phenomenon, as contemporary artists are increasingly called upon to have a transformative, sustainable impact on society at large. To this end, Erika Fischer Lichte and Benjamin Wihstutz present a series of fresh perspectives on the discussion of aesthetics, uniting Western theory with that of India, China, Australia, and beyond. Each chapter of Transformative Aesthetics focuses on a different approach to transformation, from the foundations of aesthetics to contemporary theories, breaking new ground to establish a network of thought that spans theatre, performance, art history, cultural studies, and philosophy.

The Routledge Dictionary of Contemporary Theatre and Performance provides the first authoritative alphabetical guide to the theatre and performance of the last 30 years. Conceived and written by one of the foremost scholars and critics of theatre in the world, it literally takes us from Activism to Zapping, analysing everything along the way from Body Art and the Flashmob to Multimedia and the Postdramatic. What we think of as 'performance' and 'drama' has undergone a transformation in recent decades. Similarly how these terms are defined, used and critiqued has also changed, thanks to interventions from a panoply of theorists from Derrida to Ranciere. Patrice Pavis's Dictionary provides an indispensible roadmap for this complex and fascinating terrain; a volume no theatre bookshelf can afford to be without.

The Art of Experience provides an interdisciplinary analysis of selected plays from Ireland's premier female playwright, Marina Carr. Dagmara Gizlo explores the transformative impact of a theatrical experience in which interdisciplinary boundaries must be crossed. This book demonstrates that theatre is therapeutic and therapy is theatrical. The role of emotions, cognitions, and empathy in the theatrical experience is investigated throughout. Dagmara Gizlo utilises the methodological tools stemming from modern empirically grounded psychology (such as cognitive-behavioural therapy or CBT) to the study of theatre's transformative potential. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of theatre, performance, and literature, and will be a fascinating read for those at the intersection of cognitive studies and the humanities.

The Routledge Anthology of Early Modern Drama is the first new collection of the drama of Shakespeare's contemporaries in over a century. This volume comprises seventeen accessible, thoroughly glossed, modernized play-texts, intermingling a wide range of unfamiliar works-including the anonymous Look About You, Massinger's The Picture, Heminge's The Fatal Contract, Heywood's The Four Prentices of London, and Greene's James IV-with more familiar works such as Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, and Middleton's Women Beware Women. Each play is edited by a different leading scholar in the field of early modern studies, bringing specific expertise and context to the chosen play-text. With an unprecedented variety of plays, and critical introductions that focus on the diversity and strangeness of different early modern approaches to the artistic and commercial enterprise of play-making, The Routledge Anthology of Early Modern Drama will offer vital new perspectives on early modern drama for scholars, students, and performers alike.

New Theatre in Italy 1963-2013 makes the case for the centrality of late-millennium Italian avant-garde theatre in the development of the new forms of performance that have emerged in the 21st Century. Starting in the Sixties, young artists and militants in Italy reacted to the violence in their streets and ruptures in the family unit that are now recognized as having been harbingers of the end of the global post-war system. As traditional rituals of State and Church faltered, a new generation of cultural operators, largely untrained and driven away from political activism, formed collectives to explore new ways of speaking theatrically, new ways to create and experience performance, and new relationships between performer and spectator. Although the vast majority of the works created were transient, like all performance, their aesthetic and social effects continue to surface today across media on a global scale, affecting visual art, cinema, television and the behavioural aesthetics of social networks.

La Pocha Nostra: A Handbook for the Rebel Artist in a Post-Democratic Society marks a transformation from its sister book, Exercises for Rebel Artists, into a pedagogical matrix suited for use as a performance handbook and conceptual tool for artists, activists, theorists, pedagogues, and trans-disciplinary border crossers of all stripes. Featuring a newly reworked outline of La Pocha Nostra's overall pedagogy, and how it has evolved in the time of Trump, cartel violence, and the politics of social media, this new handbook presents deeper explanations of the interdisciplinary pedagogical practices developed by the group that has been labeled "the most influential Latino/a performance troupe of the past ten years." Co-written by Guillermo Gomez-Pena in collaboration with La Pocha Nostra's artistic co-director Saul Garcia-Lopez and edited by Paloma Martinez-Cruz, this highly anticipated follow-up volume raises crucial questions in the new neo-nationalist era. Drawing on field experience from ten years of touring, the authors blend original methods with updated and revised exercises, providing new material for teachers, universities, radical artists, curators, producers, and students. This book features: Introductions by the authors and editor to Pocha Nostra practice in a post-democratic society. Theoretical, historical, poetic, and pedagogical contexts for the methodology. Suggestions for how to use the book in the classroom and many other scenarios. Detailed, hands-on exercises for using Pocha Nostra-inspired methods in workshops. A step-by-step guide to creating large-scale group performances. New, unpublished photos of the Pocha Nostra methods in practice. Additional texts by Reverend Billy and Savitri D., Dragonfly, Francesca Carol Rolla, VestAndPage, Micha Espinosa, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Praba Pilar, L. M. Bogad, Anuradha Vikram, and Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens, among many others. The book is complemented by the new book Gomez-Pena Unplugged: Texts on Live Art, Social Practice and Imaginary Activism (2008-2019).

The Routledge Anthology of Early Modern Drama is the first new collection of the drama of Shakespeare's contemporaries in over a century. This volume comprises seventeen accessible, thoroughly glossed, modernized play-texts, intermingling a wide range of unfamiliar works-including the anonymous Look About You, Massinger's The Picture, Heminge's The Fatal Contract, Heywood's The Four Prentices of London, and Greene's James IV-with more familiar works such as Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, and Middleton's Women Beware Women. Each play is edited by a different leading scholar in the field of early modern studies, bringing specific expertise and context to the chosen play-text. With an unprecedented variety of plays, and critical introductions that focus on the diversity and strangeness of different early modern approaches to the artistic and commercial enterprise of play-making, The Routledge Anthology of Early Modern Drama will offer vital new perspectives on early modern drama for scholars, students, and performers alike.

In this fascinating volume, acclaimed theatre historian Erika Fischer-Lichte reflects on the role and meaning accorded to the theme of sacrifice in Western cultures as mirrored in particular fusions of theatre and ritual. Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual presents a radical re-definition of ritual theatre through analysis of performances as diverse as:
* Max Reinhardt's new people's theatre
* The mass spectacles of post-revolutionary Russia
* American Zionist pageants
* The Olympic Games
In offering both a performative and a semiotic analysis of such performances, Fischer-Lichte expertly demonstrates how theatre and ritual are fused in order to tackle the problem of community-building in societies characterized by loss of solidarity and disintegration, and exposes the provocative connection between the utopian visions of community they suggest, and the notion of sacrifice. This innovative study of 20th century performative culture boldly examines the complexities of political theatre, propaganda and manipulation of the masses, and offers a revolutionary approach to the study of theatre and performance history.

In this fascinating volume, acclaimed theatre historian Erika Fischer-Lichte reflects on the role and meaning accorded to the theme of sacrifice in Western cultures as mirrored in particular fusions of theatre and ritual. Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual presents a radical re-definition of ritual theatre through analysis of performances as diverse as:
* Max Reinhardt's new people's theatre
* The mass spectacles of post-revolutionary Russia
* American Zionist pageants
* The Olympic Games
In offering both a performative and a semiotic analysis of such performances, Fischer-Lichte expertly demonstrates how theatre and ritual are fused in order to tackle the problem of community-building in societies characterized by loss of solidarity and disintegration, and exposes the provocative connection between the utopian visions of community they suggest, and the notion of sacrifice. This innovative study of 20th century performative culture boldly examines the complexities of political theatre, propaganda and manipulation of the masses, and offers a revolutionary approach to the study of theatre and performance history.

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.

Le Theatre du Soleil traces the company's history from a group of young, barely trained actors, directors, and designers struggling to match their political commitment to a creative strategy, to their grappling with the concerns of migration, separation and exile in the early decades of the twenty-first century. Beatrice Picon-Vallin recounts how, in the 55 years since its founding, the Theatre du Soleil has established itself as one of the foremost names in modern theatre. Ariane Mnouchkine and her collaborators have developed a unique and ever-evolving style that combines a piercing richness of shape, color, and texture with precision choreography, innovative musical accompaniment, and multi-layered, metaphorical dreamscapes. This rich, storied history is illustrated by a wealth of spectacular rehearsal and production photos from the company's own archive and interviews with dozens of past and present members, including Mnouchkine herself. Judith G. Miller's timely translation of the first comprehensive history and analysis of a remarkable, award-winning company is a compelling read for both students and teachers of Drama and Theatre Studies.

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.

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.

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.

This expanded second edition of Contemporary European Theatre Directors is an ambitious and unprecedented overview of many of the key directors working in European theatre over the past 30 years. This book is a vivid account of the vast range of work undertaken in European theatre during the last three decades, situated lucidly in its artistic, cultural, and political context. Each chapter discusses a particular director, showing the influences on their work, how it has developed over time, its reception, and the complex relation it has with its social and cultural context. The volume includes directors living and working in Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Poland, Russia, Romania, the UK, Belgium, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, offering a broad and international picture of the directing landscape. Now revised and updated, Contemporary European Theatre Directors is an ideal text for both undergraduate and postgraduate directing students, as well as those researching contemporary theatre practices, providing a detailed guide to the generation of directors whose careers were forged and tempered in the changing Europe following the end of the Cold War.

Religious practitioners and theatregoers have much in common. So much, in fact, that we can say that religion is often a theatrical phenomenon, and that theatre can be a religious experience. By examining the phenomenology of religion, we can in turn develop a better understanding of the phenomenology of theatre. That is to say, religion can show us the ways in which theatre is not fake. This study explores the overlap of religion and theatre, especially in the crucial area of experience and personal identity. Reconsidering ideas from ancient Greece, premodern India, modern Europe, and the recent century, it argues that religious adherents and theatre audiences are largely, themselves, the mechanisms of their experiences. By examining the development of the philosophy of theatre alongside theories of religious action, this book shows how we need to adjust our views of both. Featuring attention to influential notions from Plato and Aristotle, from the Natyashastra, from Schleiermacher to Sartre, Bourdieu, and Butler, and considering contemporary theories of performance and ritual, this is vital reading for any scholar in religious studies, theatre and performance studies, theology, or philosophy.

This book traces the international performance history of Aristophanic comedy, and its implication in aesthetic and political controversies, from 421 BC to AD 2007. It includes Brechtian experiments in East Berlin, and musical theatre from Gilbert and Sullivan to Stephen Sondheim.

In this compilation, first published in 1999, Ian Ledsham compiles an extensive catalogue of the Shaw-Hellier Collection, complete with diagrams regarding how we use text.

Theatrical characters' dual existence on stage and in text presents a unique, challenging case for the analytical philosopher. Analytic Philosophy and the World of the Play re-examines the ontological status of theatre and its fictional objects through the "possible worlds" thesis, arguing that theatre is not a mirror of our world, but a re-creation of it. Taking a fresh look at theatre's key elements, including the hotly contested relationships between character and actor; onstage and offstage "worlds"; and the play-text and performance, Michael Y. Bennett presents a radical new way of understanding the world of the play.

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.

Dinomania 'Wildly inventive theatre company Kandinsky return with a head-spinningly smart show about Victorian fossil hunters...No-one else makes theatre quite like this.' Time Out Dinomania was originally commissioned by New Diorama Theatre, running from 19 February to 23 March 2019. 165 million years ago, an iguanodon is killed in the heart of a rainforest. Time passes, the rainforest becomes the South Downs, and every part of the iguanodon degrades and disappears - except one tooth. 197 years ago, in safe, affluent 1820s Sussex, a country doctor finds the tooth. But where does it fit in the story of an earth created by God just 6,000 years ago? Evening Standard 'Consistently smart and inventive.' The Stage 'Brilliant comic timing... I have rarely seen such an electric cast' A Younger Theatre 'This is such intelligent work from a seriously talented company' - Lyn Gardner for Stagedoor 'Sharply funny and exciting throughout' - The TLS 'For Kandinsky, this is yet another nuanced, reflective, and highly creative approach to theatre-making. Original and perceptive, this is storytelling at its best.' - Exeunt Trap Street 'Trap Street is an 80-minute show that melds an astonishing complexity of themes, a mastery of form and a deep, deep humanity ... another triumph for Kandinsky' Time Out This show premiered at New Diorama Theatre, running from 6 to 31 March 2018. It also ran at the Schaubuhne, Berlin from 5 to 7 April 2019 as part of the Festival of International New Drama (FIND) where the New York Times described it as: 'not only the highlight of the festival but one of the most ingenious pieces of new theater I have seen recently... The three-person cast deftly shifts between time periods in a mesmerizing single act that combines minimal stagecraft, improvised music and finely chiseled performances to create an anguished cry of moral outrage about neoliberal economic policies, gentrification and the erosion of the social security system.' It's 1961 and the concrete's just been poured for a brand new housing estate. It's beautiful, not because of the clean lines, indoor toilets and wide windows, but because the idea behind it is beautiful. This is the future, and it's for everyone. It's 2018 and the last tower of the estate is about to come down. The dream that saw it built has long since died and now the estate has to follow suit to make way for new buildings, based on new ideas. This is the future, whether you like it or not. 'Timely critique about the housing crisis is both angry and humane.' Evening Standard 'Compelling and intelligent' The Stage 'ferociously intelligent, poignant ... Trap Street effectively maps the process of British dreaming, and how that process is permanently written into the landscape itself.' Exeunt Kandinsky brings the company's trademark theatrical inventiveness to city life, exploring a community trying to find its way in a landscape shaped by power. TRAP STREET charts 50 years of changing attitudes to ownership and space in London, to ask what home means in 2018.

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.

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.