Introduction to Puppetry Arts shares the history, cultures, and traditions surrounding the ancient performance art of puppetry, along with an overview of puppet construction and performance techniques used around the world. From its earliest beginnings in the ancient Middle East and Asia, through its representations in Medieval/Renaissance Europe, up until its modern-day appearances in theatre, television, and film, this book offers a thorough overview of how this fascinating art form originated and evolved. It also includes easy-to-follow instructions on how to create puppets for performance and display and an in-depth resource list and bibliography for further research and information. Written for students in puppetry arts and stagecraft courses, Introduction to Puppetry Arts offers a comprehensive look at this enduring craft and provides a starting point for creating a wide range of puppets, from marionettes and hand puppets to mascots and character costumes.

Introduction to Puppetry Arts shares the history, cultures, and traditions surrounding the ancient performance art of puppetry, along with an overview of puppet construction and performance techniques used around the world. From its earliest beginnings in the ancient Middle East and Asia, through its representations in Medieval/Renaissance Europe, up until its modern-day appearances in theatre, television, and film, this book offers a thorough overview of how this fascinating art form originated and evolved. It also includes easy-to-follow instructions on how to create puppets for performance and display and an in-depth resource list and bibliography for further research and information. Written for students in puppetry arts and stagecraft courses, Introduction to Puppetry Arts offers a comprehensive look at this enduring craft and provides a starting point for creating a wide range of puppets, from marionettes and hand puppets to mascots and character costumes.

The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Global Appropriation brings together a variety of different voices to examine the ways that Shakespeare has been adapted and appropriated onto stage, screen, page, and a variety of digital formats. The thirty-nine chapters address topics such as trans- and intermedia performances; Shakespearean utopias and dystopias; the ethics of appropriation; and Shakespeare and global justice as guidance on how to approach the teaching of these topics. This collection brings into dialogue three very contemporary and relevant areas: the work of women and minority scholars; scholarship from developing countries; and innovative media renderings of Shakespeare. Each essay is clearly and accessibly written, but also draws on cutting edge research and theory. It includes two alternative table of contents, offering different pathways through the book - one regional, the other by medium - which open the book up to both teaching and research. Offering an overview and history of Shakespearean appropriations, as well as discussing contemporary issues and debates in the field, this book is the ultimate guide to this vibrant topic. It will be of use to anyone researching or studying Shakespeare, adaptation, and global appropriation.

How does the production of performance engage with the fundamental issues of our advanced neo-capitalist age? Andre Lepecki surveys a decade of experimental choreography to uncover the dual meaning of 'performance' in the twenty-first century: not just an aesthetic category, but a mode of political power. He demonstrates the enduring ability of performance to critique and subvert this power, examining this relationship through five 'singularities' in contemporary dance: thingness, animality, persistence, darkness, and solidity. Exploring the works of Mette Ingvartsen, Yvonne Rainer, Ralph Lemon, Jerome Bel and others, Lepecki uses his concept of 'singularity'-the resistance of categorization and aesthetic identification-to examine the function of dance and performance in political and artistic debate.

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.

Czech action art - a medium similar to performance art that does not require an audience - emerged out of the political and social turmoil of the 1960s. This movement has received little critical attention, however, as the Iron Curtain prevented its dissemination to an international audience. Here theorist and art historian Pavlina Morganova gives this art scene its due, chronicling its inception and tracing its evolution through to the present. Morganova explains the various forms of action art, from the "actions" and "happenings" of the 1960s; to the actions of land art that encompass stones, trees, water, or fire; to recent displays of body art; to the actions of the latest generation of artists, who are using the principles of action art in contemporary postconceptual and participative art. Along the way, she introduces the most prominent Czech artists of each specific niche, including Milan Knizak, Zorka Saglova, Ivan Kafka, Petr Stembera, Karel Miler, Jiri Kovanda, and Katerina Seda, and demonstrates not only the changes in the art forms themselves but also the shifting roles of artists and spectators after World War II. With over one hundred illustrations, Czech Action Art introduces this heretofore overlooked but fascinating art form to a global readership.

Stanislavski: The Basics is an engaging introduction to the life, thought and impact of Konstantin Stanislavski. Regarded by many as a great innovator of twentieth century theatre, this book examines Stanislavski's: * life and the context of his writings * major works in English translation * ideas in practical contexts * impact on modern theatre With further reading throughout, a glossary of terms and a comprehensive chronology, this text makes the ideas and theories of Stanislavski available to an undergraduate audience.

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.

Devising Theatre is a practical handbook that combines a critical analysis of contemporary devised theatre practice with descriptions of selected companies, and suggestions for any group devising theatre from scratch. It is the first book to propose a general theory of devised theatre. After identifying the unique nature of this type of performance, the author examines how devised theatre is perceived by professional practitioners, and provides an historical overview illustrating how it has evolved since the 1960s. Alison Oddey examines the particular working practices and products of a number of professional companies, including a Reminiscence theatre for the elderly and a theatre-in-education group, and offers ideas and exercises for exploration and experimentation.

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.

Originally published in 1993. Presenting excerpts and articles on the themes and characters from the most famous story of young lovers, this collection brings together scholarship relating to the language, performance, and impact of the play. Ordered in three parts, the chapters cover analysis, reviews and interpretation from a wide ranging array of sources, from the play's contemporary commenters to literary critics of the early 1990's. The volume ends with an article by the editor on the action in the text which concludes the final section of 8 pieces looking at the story as being a product of Elizabethan Culture. It considers the attitude to the friar, to morality and suicide, the stars and fate, and gender differences. Comparisons are made to Shakespeare's source as well as to productions performed long after the Bard's death.

Active Analysis combines two of Maria Knebel's most important books, On Active Analysis of the Play and the Role and The Word in the Actor's Creative Work, in a single edition conceived and edited by one of Knebel's most famous students, the renowned theatre and film director, Anatoli Vassiliev. This is the first English translation of an important and authoritative fragment of the great Stanislavski jigsaw. A landmark publication. This book is an indispensable resource for professional directors, student directors, actors and researchers interested in Stanislavski, directing, rehearsal methods and theatre studies more generally.

Anna Halprin traces the life's work of this radical dance-maker, documenting her early career as a modern dancer in the 1940s through to the development of her groundbreaking approach to dance as an accessible and life-enhancing art form. Now revised and reissued, this book: sketches the evolution of the San Francisco Dancers' Workshop, exploring Halprin's connections with the avant-garde theatre, music, visual art and architecture of the 1950s and 60s offers a detailed analysis of Halprin's work from this period provides an important historical guide to a time when dance was first explored beyond the confines of the theatre and considered as a healing art for individuals and communities. As a first step towards critical understanding, and an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners offer unbeatable value for today's student.

ORLAN: A Hybrid Body of Artworks is an in-depth academic account of ORLAN's pioneering art in its entirety. The book covers her career in performance and a range of other art forms. This single accessible overview of ORLAN's practices describes and analyses her various innovative uses of the body as artistic material. Edited by Simon Donger with Simon Shepherd and ORLAN herself, the collection highlights her artistic impact from the perspectives of both performance and visual cultures. The book features: vintage texts by ORLAN and on ORLAN's work, including manifestos, key writings and critical studies ten new contributions, responses and interviews by leading international specialists on performance and visual arts over fifty images demonstrating ORLAN's art, with thirty full colour pictures a new essay by ORLAN, written specially for this volume a new bibliography of writing on ORLAN an indexed listing of ORLAN's artworks and key themes.

What does a hemispheric Americas look like when done through the lens of punk music, visuals and literature? That is the core premise of this book, presented through a collage of analytical, aesthetic and experiential takes on punk across the continent. This book challenges the dominant vision of punk - particularly its white masculine protagonists and deep Anglocentrism - by analysing punk as a critical lens into the disputed territories of 'America', a term that hides the heterogeneous struggles, global histories, hopes and despairs of late twentieth and early twenty-first century experience. Compiling academic essays and punk paraphernalia (interviews, zines, poetry and visual segments) into a single volume, the book seeks to explore punk life through its multiple registers, through vivid musical dialogues, excessive visual displays and underground literary expression. The kaleidoscopic accounts include everything from sustained academic inquiry and photo portraits to anarchist manifestos and interview excerpts with notable punk figures. The result is a radically heterogenous mixture that seeks to reposition punk and las Americas as intrinsically bound up in each other's history: for better and for worse. Out of critical pasts, within an urgent present and toward many different possible futures. This volume critically refashions punk to suggest it emerges from within the long-term historical experience of las Americas in all their plurality and is useful as a mode of critique towards the hegemonic dimensions of America in its imperial singularity. The book is rooted in a theory of 'radical heterogeneity' and thus represents a collage-like juxtaposition of punk perspectives from across the entire hemisphere and via divergent contributions: academic, experiential and aesthetic. Readership for this collection will include both academic and general readers. Primary readership will be academic. It will appeal to researchers, scholars, educators and students in the following fields: American studies, Latin American studies, media and communication, cultural studies, sociology, history, music, ethnomusicology, anthropology, art, literature. General readership will be among those interested in the following areas - anarchism, music, subculture, literature, independent publishing, photography.

This acclaimed volume is the first to provide a comprehensive overview of Jerzy Grotowski's long and multi-faceted career. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Grotowski's life and work.
Edited by the two leading experts on Grotowski, the sourcebook features:
*essays from the key performance theorists who worked with Grotowski, including Eugenio Barba, Peter Brook, Jan Kott, Eric Bentley, Harold Clurman, and Charles Marowitz
*writings which trace every phase of Grotowski's career from his 'theatre of production' to 'objective drama' and 'art as vehicle'
*a wide-ranging collection of Grotowski's own writings, plus an interview with his closest collaborator and 'heir', Thomas Richards
*an array of photographs documenting Grotowski and his followers in action
*a historical-critical study of Grotowski by Richard Schechner.

In !Presente! Diana Taylor asks what it means to be physically and politically present in situations where it seems that nothing can be done. As much an act, a word, an attitude, a theoretical intervention, and a performance pedagogy, Taylor maps !presente! at work in scenarios ranging from conquest, through colonial enactments and resistance movements, to present moments of capitalist extractivism and forced migration in the Americas. !Presente!-present among, with, and to; a walking and talking with others; an ontological and epistemic reflection on presence and subjectivity as participatory and relational, founded on mutual recognition-requires rethinking and unlearning in ways that challenge colonial epistemologies. Showing how knowledge is not something to be harvested but a process of being, knowing, and acting with others, Taylor models a way for scholarship to be present in political struggles.

A missed phone call. A misheard word. An indiscernible noise. All these can make the difference between life and death. Failures to listen are frequently at the root of the marginalization and exclusion of certain forms of life. Audibility decides livability. Shattering Biopolitics elaborates for the first time the intimate and complex relation between life and sound in recent European philosophy, as well as the political stakes of this entanglement. Nowhere is aurality more pivotal than in the dialogue between biopolitical theory and deconstruction about the power over and of life. Closer inspection of these debates reveals that the main points of contention coalesce around figures of sound and listening: inarticulate voices, meaningless sounds, resonant echoes, syncopated rhythms, animal cries, bells, and telephone rings. Shattering Biopolitics stages a series of "over-hearings" between Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben who often mishear or completely miss hearing in trying to hear too much. Notions of power and life are further diffracted as Helene Cixous, Catherine Malabou, and Jean-Luc Nancy join in this high-stakes game of telephone. This self-destructive character of aurality is akin to the chanciness and risk of death that makes life all the more alive for its incalculability. Punctuating the book are a series of excurses on sound-art projects that interrogate aurality's subordination and resistance to biopower from racialized chokeholds and anti-migrant forensic voice analysis to politicized speech acts and activist practices of listening. Shattering Biopolitics advances the burgeoning field of sound studies with a new, theoretically sophisticated analysis of the political imbrications of its object of inquiry. Above all, it is sound's capacity to shatter sovereignty, as if it were a glass made to vibrate at its natural frequency, that allows it to amplify and disseminate a power of life that refuses to be mastered.

Lighting Dance pioneers the discussion of the ability of lighting design to foreground shadow in dance performances. Through a series of experiments integrating light, shadow, and improvised dance movement, it highlights and analyses what it advances as an innovative expression of shadow in dance as an alternative to more conventional approaches to lighting design. Different art forms, such as painting, film, and dance pieces from Loie Fuller, the Russell Maliphant Dance Company, Elevenplay, Pilobolus, and the Tao Dance Theater served to inspire and contextualise the study. From lighting to psychology, from reviews to academic books, shadows are examined as a symbolic and manipulative entity. The book also presents the dance solo Sombreiro, which was created to echo the experiments with light, shadow, and movement aligned to an interpretation of cultural shadow (Jung 1954, in Samuels, Shorter, and Plaut 1986; Casement 2006; Ramos 2004; Stein 2004; and others). The historical development of lighting within dance practices is also outlined, providing a valuable resource for lighting designers, dance practitioners, and theatre goers interested in the visuality of dance performances.

The Second World War went beyond previous military conflicts. It was not only about specific geographical gains or economic goals, but also about the brutal and lasting reshaping of Europe as a whole. Theatre in Europe Under German Occupation explores the part that theatre played in the Nazi war effort. Using a case-study approach, it illustrates the crucial and heavily subsidised role of theatre as a cultural extension of the military machine, key to Nazi Germany's total war doctrine. Covering theatres in Oslo, Riga, Lille, Lodz, Krakau, Warsaw, Prague, The Hague and Kiev, Anselm Heinrich looks at the history and context of their operation; the wider political, cultural and propagandistic implications in view of their function in wartime; and their legacies. Theatre in Europe Under German Occupation focuses for the first time on Nazi Germany's attempts to control and shape the cultural sector in occupied territories, shedding new light on the importance of theatre for the regime's military and political goals.

Teaching Acting with Practical Aesthetics uses constructivist pedagogy to teach acting via Practical Aesthetics, a system of actor training created in the mid-1980s by David Mamet. The book melds the history of Practical Aesthetics, Practical Aesthetics itself, educational theory, and compatible physical work into the educational approach called Praxis to create a comprehensive training guide for the modern actor and theatre instructor. It includes lesson plans, compatible voice and movement exercises, constructivist teaching materials, classroom handouts, and a suggested calendar for Acting courses. Written for Acting instructors at the college and secondary levels, Acting scholars, and professionals looking for a new way to perform, Teaching Acting with Practical Aesthetics offers detailed instructions to help students sharpen their performing skills and excel on stage.

In the 21st century, actors face radical changes in plays and performance styles, as they move from stage to screen and grapple with new technologies that present their art to ever-expanding audiences. Active Analysis offers the flexibility of mind, body, and spirit now urgently needed in acting. Dynamic Acting through Active Analysis brings to light this timely legacy, born during the worst era of Soviet repression and hidden for decades from public view. Part I unfolds like a mystery novel through letters, memoirs, and transcripts of Konstantin Stanislavsky's last classes. Far from the authoritarian director of his youth, he reveals himself as a generous mentor, who empowers actors with a brand new collaborative approach to rehearsals. His assistant, Maria Knebel, first bears witness to his forward-looking ideas and then builds the bridge to new plays in new styles through her directing and influential teaching. Part II follows a 21st century company of diverse actors as they experience the joy of applying Active Analysis to their own creative and professional work.

Lighting Dance pioneers the discussion of the ability of lighting design to foreground shadow in dance performances. Through a series of experiments integrating light, shadow, and improvised dance movement, it highlights and analyses what it advances as an innovative expression of shadow in dance as an alternative to more conventional approaches to lighting design. Different art forms, such as painting, film, and dance pieces from Loie Fuller, the Russell Maliphant Dance Company, Elevenplay, Pilobolus, and the Tao Dance Theater served to inspire and contextualise the study. From lighting to psychology, from reviews to academic books, shadows are examined as a symbolic and manipulative entity. The book also presents the dance solo Sombreiro, which was created to echo the experiments with light, shadow, and movement aligned to an interpretation of cultural shadow (Jung 1954, in Samuels, Shorter, and Plaut 1986; Casement 2006; Ramos 2004; Stein 2004; and others). The historical development of lighting within dance practices is also outlined, providing a valuable resource for lighting designers, dance practitioners, and theatre goers interested in the visuality of dance performances.

'Actors always talk about what the audience does. I don't understand, we are just sitting here.' Audience as Performer proposes that in the theatre, there are two troupes of performers: the actors and the audience. Although academics have scrutinised how audiences respond, make meaning and co-create while watching a performance, little research has considered the behaviour of the theatre audience as a performance in and of itself. This insightful book describes how an audience performs through its myriad gestural, vocal and paralingual actions, and considers the following questions: If the audience are performers, who are their audiences? How have audiences' roles changed throughout history? How do talkbacks and technology influence the audience's role as critics? What influence does the audience have on the creation of community in theatre? How can the audience function as both consumer and co-creator? Drawing from over 140 interviews with audience members, actors and ushers in the UK, USA and Austrialia, Heim reveals the lived experience of audience members at the theatrical event. It is a fresh reading of mainstream audiences' activities, bringing their voices to the fore and exploring their emerging new roles in the theatre of the Twenty-First Century.