What is the secret DNA of theater? What makes it unique from its sister arts? Why was it invented? Why does it persist? And now, in such an advanced technological age, why do we still feel compelled to return to a mode of expression that was invented over two thousand years ago? These are some of the foundational questions that are asked in this study of theater from its inception to today. The Secret Life of Theater begins with a look at theater's origins in Ancient Greece. Next, it moves on to examine the history and nature of theater, from Agamenon to Angels in America, through theater's use of stage directions, revealing the many unspoken languages that are employed to communicate with its audiences. Finally, it looks at theater's ever-shifting strategies of engendering fellow-feeling through the use of emotion, allowing the form to become a rare space where one can feel a thought and think a feeling. In an age when many studies are concerned with the "how" of theater, this work returns us to theatre's essential "why." The Secret Life of Theater suggests that by reframing the question we can re-enchant this unique and ever-vital medium of expression.

What is the secret DNA of theater? What makes it unique from its sister arts? Why was it invented? Why does it persist? And now, in such an advanced technological age, why do we still feel compelled to return to a mode of expression that was invented over two thousand years ago? These are some of the foundational questions that are asked in this study of theater from its inception to today. The Secret Life of Theater begins with a look at theater's origins in Ancient Greece. Next, it moves on to examine the history and nature of theater, from Agamenon to Angels in America, through theater's use of stage directions, revealing the many unspoken languages that are employed to communicate with its audiences. Finally, it looks at theater's ever-shifting strategies of engendering fellow-feeling through the use of emotion, allowing the form to become a rare space where one can feel a thought and think a feeling. In an age when many studies are concerned with the "how" of theater, this work returns us to theatre's essential "why." The Secret Life of Theater suggests that by reframing the question we can re-enchant this unique and ever-vital medium of expression.

Choreographing Discourses brings together essays originally published by Mark Franko between 1996 and the contemporary moment. Assembling these essays from international, sometimes untranslated sources and curating their relationship to a rapidly changing field, this Reader offers an important resource in the dynamic scholarly fields of Dance and Performance Studies. What makes this volume especially appropriate for undergraduate and graduate teaching is its critical focus on twentieth- and twenty-first-century dance artists and choreographers - among these, Oskar Schlemmer, Merce Cunningham, Kazuo Ohno, William Forsythe, Bill T. Jones, and Pina Bausch, some of the most high-profile European, American, and Japanese artists of the past century. The volume's constellation of topics delves into controversies that are essential turning points in the field (notably, Still/Here and Paris is Burning), which illuminate the spine of the field while interlinking dance scholarship with performance theory, film, visual, and public art. The volume contains the first critical assessments of Franko's contribution to the field by Andre Lepecki and Gay Morris, and an interview incorporating a biographical dimension to the development of Franko's work and its relation to his dance and choreography. Ultimately, this Reader encourages a wide scope of conversation and engagement, opening up core questions in ethics, embodiment, and performativity.

The Birth of Modern Theatre: Rivalry, Riots, and Romance in the Age of Garrick is a vivid description of the eighteenth-century London theatre scene-a time when the theatre took on many of the features of our modern stage. A natural and psychologically based acting style replaced the declamatory style of an earlier age. The theatres were mainly supported by paying audiences, no longer by royal or noble patrons. The press determined the success or failure of a play or a performance. Actors were no longer shunned by polite society, some becoming celebrities in the modern sense. The dominant figure for thirty years was David Garrick, actor, theatre manager and playwright, who, off the stage, charmed London with his energy, playfulness, and social graces. No less important in defining eighteenth-century theatre were its audiences, who considered themselves full-scale participants in theatrical performances; if they did not care for a play, an actor, or ticket prices, they would loudly make their wishes known, sometimes starting a riot. This book recounts the lives-and occasionally the scandals-of the actors and theatre managers and weaves them into the larger story of the theatre in this exuberant age, setting the London stage and its leading personalities against the background of the important social, cultural, and economic changes that shaped eighteenth-century Britain. The Birth of Modern Theatre brings all of this together to describe a moment in history that sowed the seeds of today's stage.

The Cambridge Companion to the Circus provides a complete guide for students, scholars, teachers, researchers, and practitioners who are seeking perspectives on the foundations and evolution of the modern circus, the contemporary extent of circus studies, and the specialised literature available to support further enquiries. The volume brings together an international group of established and emerging scholars working across the multi-disciplinary domain of circus studies to present a clear overview of the specialised histories, aesthetics and distinctive performances of the modern circus. In sixteen commissioned essays, it covers the origins in commercial equestrian performance during the late-eighteenth century to contemporary inflections of circus arts in major international festivals, educational environments, and social justice settings.

Radical Doubt investigates ethical play across a spectrum of performances, on and off the stage. In witty, recursive, personal, and propulsive prose, Mady Schutzman elaborates on the Joker System, conceived by Augusto Boal, best known for Theatre of the Oppressed. The Joker System is a collaborative approach to representing social dilemmas through a rare fusion of destabilizing ambiguity and journalistic rigor. Schutzman models the Joker System while expanding well beyond the theatrical. In polyphonic compositions that perform their own philosophy, she uncovers illuminating links between calculus and conjuring, koans and resistance, humor and witnessing, complexity theory and sorely needed new practices of living in our divisive times. These life practices rely upon crafty and circuitous strategies to deliver their subversive punch. Jok(er)ing matters, Schutzman insists. When communities fragment and identities fixate, enter the trickster! Sonja Kuftinec Theatre Arts and Dance, University of Minnesota

This newly-updated second edition explores Pina Bausch's work and methods by combining interviews, first-hand accounts, and practical exercises from her developmental process for students of both dance and theatre. This comprehensive overview of her work offers new and exciting insight into the theatrical approach of a singular performance practitioner. This is an essential introduction to the life and work of one of the most significant choreographers/directors of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. As a first step towards critical understanding, and as an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners offer unbeatable value for today's student.

Radical Doubt investigates ethical play across a spectrum of performances, on and off the stage. In witty, recursive, personal, and propulsive prose, Mady Schutzman elaborates on the Joker System, conceived by Augusto Boal, best known for Theatre of the Oppressed. The Joker System is a collaborative approach to representing social dilemmas through a rare fusion of destabilizing ambiguity and journalistic rigor. Schutzman models the Joker System while expanding well beyond the theatrical. In polyphonic compositions that perform their own philosophy, she uncovers illuminating links between calculus and conjuring, koans and resistance, humor and witnessing, complexity theory and sorely needed new practices of living in our divisive times. These life practices rely upon crafty and circuitous strategies to deliver their subversive punch. Jok(er)ing matters, Schutzman insists. When communities fragment and identities fixate, enter the trickster! Sonja Kuftinec Theatre Arts and Dance, University of Minnesota

Since his emergence from the Flemish avant-garde movement of the 1980s, Ivo van Hove's directorial career has crossed international boundaries, challenging established notions of theatre-making. He has brought radical interpretations of the classics to America and organic acting technique to Europe. Ivo van Hove Onstage is the first full English language study of one of theatre's most prominent iconoclasts. It presents a comprehensive, multifaceted account of van Hove's extraordinary work, including key productions, design innovations, his revolutionary approach to text and ambience, and his relationships with specific theatres and companies.

Stunningly beautiful, deeply puzzling, profoundly moving or intensely unsettling - performance art can evoke a wide variety of responses. In this important and richly illustrated book, Catherine Wood, one of the world's leading curators and writers on the subject, provides the broadest and most up-to-date survey published in recent years. Wood proposes performance not as a genre of art separate from object-making but as an attitude that has infiltrated the entire terrain of contemporary art. From the musical-theatricals of Marvin-Gaye Chetwynd to the public encounters created by Tino Seghal and the social activism of Tania Bruguera, a hugely divergent set of practices has emerged in the past twenty to thirty years which embrace the worlds of sculpture and painting, spectacle and protest. Examining in turn individual, social and object-based approaches in the field, Wood first examines the influential performance art of the 1960s to 1980s: the body art of the Viennese actionists; the raw performances of Yoko Ono and Chris Burden; and the experiments of the Japanese Gutai group among others. She then explores how these sources have been revisited, reformed or rejected by contemporary artists in the twenty-first century. This impressive book encompasses international artists who fall outside the traditional European and North American focus, giving the reader the broadest and most up-to-date insight into the subject yet published.

Identity and Diversity in New Music: The New Complexities aims to enrich the discussion of how musicians and educators can best engage with audiences, by addressing issues of diversity and identity that have played a vital role in the reception of new music, but have been little-considered to date. Marilyn Nonken offers an innovative theoretical approach that considers how the environments surrounding new music performances influence listeners' experiences, drawing on work in ecological psychology. Using four case studies of influential new music ensembles from across the twentieth century, she considers how diversity arises in the musical environment, its impact on artists and creativity, and the events and engagement it makes possible. Ultimately, she connects theory to practice with suggestions for how musicians and educators can make innovative music environments inclusive.

The first comprehensive publication to capture Hayes's unique blend of performance and social engagement which has been at the forefront of questions of feminist history, queer time, and protest culture for over a decade American artist Sharon Hayes uses photography, film, video, sound, performance, and text to interrogate the intersections between the personal and collective sphere. Her deeply affective and queer approach to history and politics draws particular attention to the language of twentieth-century activism as well as drama, anthropology, and journalism. This book is the first to feature all of Hayes's most significant projects, from the ten-hour performance My Fellow American 1981-1988 to her Monument Lab addressing the absence of monuments to women in Philadelphia. A professor of fine art at the University of Pennsylvania, Hayes's work has been shown at the 2010 Whitney Biennial, Documenta 12 in Kassel, and the 55th Venice Biennale, as well as in the most prestigious museums around the world. Her re-examination of protest, speech, and history is one of the most powerful reflections of the complexity and the urgency of our times. Sharon Hayes is the latest addition to the acclaimed Phaidon Contemporary Artists Series.

The Birth of Modern Theatre: Rivalry, Riots, and Romance in the Age of Garrick is a vivid description of the eighteenth-century London theatre scene-a time when the theatre took on many of the features of our modern stage. A natural and psychologically based acting style replaced the declamatory style of an earlier age. The theatres were mainly supported by paying audiences, no longer by royal or noble patrons. The press determined the success or failure of a play or a performance. Actors were no longer shunned by polite society, some becoming celebrities in the modern sense. The dominant figure for thirty years was David Garrick, actor, theatre manager and playwright, who, off the stage, charmed London with his energy, playfulness, and social graces. No less important in defining eighteenth-century theatre were its audiences, who considered themselves full-scale participants in theatrical performances; if they did not care for a play, an actor, or ticket prices, they would loudly make their wishes known, sometimes starting a riot. This book recounts the lives-and occasionally the scandals-of the actors and theatre managers and weaves them into the larger story of the theatre in this exuberant age, setting the London stage and its leading personalities against the background of the important social, cultural, and economic changes that shaped eighteenth-century Britain. The Birth of Modern Theatre brings all of this together to describe a moment in history that sowed the seeds of today's stage.

The Mime Handbook covers the theory of mime corporel (Corporeal Mime) and explains the technique through dozens of clearly illustrated exercises. It provides an overview of the work and life of Etienne Decroux (1889-1991), founder of the 'mime corporel' and father of modern mime. Building onto Decroux's mime corporel, additional concepts are introduced on the use of space in physical theater and the creation of mime performances. Mime corporel is a physical theater technique that has revolutionized the physical expression for actors, dancers, and mime players. The philosophy of Etienne Decroux has permanently influenced approaches to performance, the use of space and the study of movement composition in the theater. The Mime Handbook is intended for anyone who creates, studies, or teaches physical theater. Directors, actors, dancers, mime players, and performance artists will discover fundamental ideas and techniques that will enrich their work. You can download page 88 of the book here.

Shakespeare, Performance and the Archive is a ground-breaking and movingly written exploration of what remains when actors evacuate the space and time of performance. An analysis of 'leftovers', it moves between tracking the politics of what is consciously archived and the politics of visible and invisible theatrical labour to trace the persistence of performance. In this fascinating volume, Hodgdon considers how documents, material objects, sketches, drawings and photographs explore scenarios of action and behaviour - and embodied practices. Rather than viewing these leftovers as indexical signs of a theatrical past, Hodgdon argues that the work they do is neither strictly archival nor documentary but performative - that is, they serve as sites of re-performance. Shakespeare, Performance and the Archive creates a deeply materialized historiography of performance and attempts to make that history do something entirely new. Barbara Hodgdon is Professor of English at the University of Michigan, now retired. Her major interest is in theatrical performances, especially performed Shakespeare. She is the author of: The End Crowns All, The Shakespeare Trade, and most recently the Arden edition of The Taming of the Shrew.

A bold reconception of ancient Greek drama by one of the most brilliant and original classical scholars of his generation When John Winkler died in 1990, he left an unpublished manuscript containing a highly original interpretation of the development and meaning of ancient Greek drama. Rehearsals of Manhood makes this groundbreaking work available for the first time, presenting an entirely novel picture of Greek tragedy and a vivid portrait of the cultural poetics of Athenian manhood. Ancient Athens was a military conclave as well as an urban capital, and male citizens were expected to embody the ideal of the Athenian citizen-soldier. Winkler understands Attic drama as a secular manhood ritual, a collaborative aesthetic and civic enterprise focused on the initiation of boys into manhood and the training, testing, and representation of young male warriors. Past efforts to discover the origins and development of Greek tragedy have largely treated drama as a literary genre, isolating it from other Athenian social practices. Winkler returns Greek tragedy to its social context, showing how it was one among many forms of display and performance cultivated by elite males in ancient Greece. The final work of a celebrated classical scholar, Rehearsals of Manhood highlights the civic function of the dramatic festivals at classical Athens as occasions for the examination and representation of boys on the verge of manhood, and offers a fresh explanation of how dramatic performance fit into the social life and gender politics of the Athenian state.

What did Bakhtin think about the theatre? That it was outdated? That is 'stopped being a serious genre' after Shakespeare? Could a thinker to whose work ideas of theatricality, visuality, and embodied activity were so central really have nothing to say about theatrical practice? Bakhtin and Theatre is the first book to explore the relation between Bakhtin's ideas and the theatre practice of his time. In that time, Stanislavsky co-founded the Moscow Art Theatre in 1898 and continued to develop his ideas about theatre until his death in 1938. Stanislavsky's pupil Meyerhold embraced the Russian Revolution and created some stunningly revolutionary productions in the 1920s, breaking with the realism of his former teacher. Less than twenty years after Stanislavsky's death and Meyerhold's assassination, a young student called Grotowski was studying in Moscow, soon to break the mould with his Poor Theatre. All three directors challenged the prevailing notion of theatre, drawing on, disagreeing with and challenging each other's ideas. Bakhtin's early writings about action, character and authorship provide a revealing framework for understanding this dialogue between these three masters of Twentieth Century theatre.

Performing Home is the first sustained study of the ways in which artists create artworks in, and in response to, domestic dwellings. In the context of growing interest in ideas and practices that cross between architecture, arts practice and performance, it is valuable to understand what happens when artists make work in and about specific buildings. This is particularly important with domestic dwellings, which can be bound up with experiences, issues, practices and understandings of home. The book focuses on a range of recent artistic projects to identify and investigate critical ways by which artists practise domestic dwellings. In doing so, it addresses the ways in which artists enquire into a dwelling, are resident in a dwelling, adapt the form of a dwelling, practise a mobile dwelling, and make a dwelling. By considering these practices together, Andrews demonstrates the breadth and significance of recent artistic engagement in and with domestic dwellings and highlights the contribution that artistic practice can make to the ways in which we understand the form and practice of a building. Performing Home will be of particular relevance to scholars, students and practitioners in architecture, art and performance, to those in geography, material culture and cultural studies, and to anyone seeking to make sense of the place in which they live.

This book provides a new social history of British performance cultures in the early decades of the twentieth century, where performance across stage and screen was generated by dynamic and transformational industries. Exploring an era book-ended by wars and troubled by social unrest and political uncertainty, A Social History of British Performance Cultures 1900-1939 makes use of the popular material cultures produced by and for the industries - autobiographies, fan magazines and trade journals, as well as archival holdings, popular sketches, plays and performances. Maggie B. Gale looks at how the performance industries operated, circulated their products and self-regulated their professional activities, in a period where enfranchisement, democratization, technological development and legislation shaped the experience of citizenship. Through close examination of material evidence and a theoretical underpinning, this book shows how performance industries reflected and challenged this experience, and explored the ways in which we construct our 'performance' as participants in the public realm. Suited not only to scholars and students of British theatre and theatre history, but to general readers as well, A Social History of British Performance Cultures 1900-1939 offers an original intervention into the construction of British theatre and performance histories, offering new readings of the relationship between the material cultures of performance, the social, professional and civic contexts from which they arise, and on which they reflect.

This collection of new essays explores connections between dance, modernism, and modernity by examining the ways in which leading dancers have responded to modernity. Burt and Huxley examine dance examples from a period beginning just before the First World War and extending to the mid-1950s, ranging across not only mainland Europe and the United States but also Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific Asian region, and the UK. They consider a wide range of artists, including Akarova, Gertrude Colby, Isadora Duncan, Katherine Dunham, Margaret H'Doubler, Hanya Holm, Michio Ito, Kurt Jooss, Wassily Kandinsky, Margaret Morris, Berto Pasuka, Uday Shankar, Antony Tudor, and Mary Wigman. The authors explore dancers' responses to modernity in various ways, including within the contexts of natural dancing and transnationalism. This collection asks questions about how, in these places and times, dancing developed and responded to the experience of living in modern times, or even came out of an ambivalence about or as a reaction against it. Ideal for students and practitioners of dance and those interested in new modernist studies, Dance, Modernism, and Modernity considers the development of modernism in dance as an interdisciplinary and global phenomenon.

Dramaturgy of Migration: Staging Multilingual Encounters in Contemporary Theatre examines the function of dramaturgy and the role of the dramaturg in making a theatre performance situated at the crossroads of multiple theatre forms and performative devices. This book explores how these forms and devices are employed, challenged, experimented with, and reflected upon in the work of migrant theatre by performance and dance artists. Meerzon and Pewny ask: What impact do peoples' movement between continents, countries, cultures, and languages have on the process of meaning production in plays about migration created by migrant artists? What dramaturgical devices do migrant artists employ when they work in the context of multilingual production, with the texts written in many languages, and when staging performances that target multicultural and multilingual theatregoers? And, finally, how do the new multilingual practices of theatre writing and performance meet and transform the existing practices of postdramatic dramaturgies? By considering these questions in a global context, the editors explore the overlapping complexities of migratory performances with both range and depth. Ideal for scholars, students, and practitioners of theatre, dramaturgy, and devising, Dramaturgy of Migration expresses not only the practicalities of migratory performances but also the emotional responses of the artists who stage them.

The Twenty-First Century Performance Reader combines extracts from over 70 international practitioners, companies, collectives and makers from the fields of Dance, Theatre, Music, Live and Performance Art, and Activism to form an essential sourcebook for students, researchers and practitioners. This is the follow-on text from The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader, which has been the key introductory text to all kinds of performance for over 20 years since it was first published in 1996. Contributions from new and emerging practitioners are placed alongside those of long-established individual artists and companies, representing the work of this century's leading practitioners through the voices of over 140 individuals. The contributors in this volume reflect the diverse and eclectic culture of practices that now make up the expanded field of performance, and their stories, reflections and working processes collectively offer a snapshot of contemporary artistic concerns. Many of the pieces have been specially commissioned for this edition and comprise a range of written forms - scholarly, academic, creative, interviews, diary entries, autobiographical, polemical and visual. Ideal for university students and instructors, this volume's structure and global span invites readers to compare and cross-reference significant approaches outside of the constraints and simplifications of genre, encouraging cross-disciplinary understandings. For those who engage with new, live and innovative approaches to performance and the interplay of radical ideas, The Twenty-First Century Performance Reader is invaluable.

Between 1955 and 1975 music theatre became a central preoccupation for European composers digesting the consequences of the revolutionary experiments in musical language that followed the end of the Second World War. The 'new music theatre' wrought multiple, significant transformations, serving as a crucible for the experimental rethinking of theatrical traditions, artistic genres, the conventions of performance, and the composer's relation to society. This volume brings together leading specialists from across Europe to offer a new appraisal of the genre. It is structured according to six themes that investigate: the relation of new music theatre to earlier and contemporaneous theories of drama; the use of new technologies; the relation of new music theatre to progressive politics; the role of new venues and environments; the advancement of new conceptions of the performer; and the challenges that new music theatre lays down for music analysis. Contributing authors address canonical works by composers such as Berio, Birtwistle, Henze, Kagel, Ligeti, Nono, and Zimmermann, but also expand the field to figures and artistic developments not regularly represented in existing music histories. Particular attention is given to new music theatre as a site of intense exchange - between practitioners of different art forms, across national borders, and with diverse mediating institutions.

Radical Street Performance is the first volume to collect together the fascinating array of writings by activists, directors, performers, critics, scholars and journalists who have documented street theatre around the world.
More than thirty essays explore the myriad forms this most public of performances can take:
* agit-prop
* invisible theatre
* demonstrations and rallies
* direct action
* puppetry
* parades and pageants
* performance art
* guerrilla theatre
* circuses
These essays look at performaces in Europe, Africa, China, India and both the Americas. They describe engagement with issues as diverse as abortion, colonialism, the environment and homophobia, to name only a few. Introduced by editor Jan Cohen-Cruz, the essays are organized into thematic sections: Agitating; Witnessing; Involving; Imagining; and Popularizing.
Radical Street Performance is an inspiring testimony to this international performance phenomenon, and an invaluable record of a form of theatre which continues to flourish in a televisual age.