Kalina Stefanova surveys Eastern European theatre after the collapse of the Soviet Union, presenting factual information about the many different spheres of theatre there today -- from playwriting, directing and acting, to repertoire creation and theatre management. She covers the current theatre situation in Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and the Ukraine, including interviews with major directors and playwrights such as Yury Lyubimov, Vaclav Havel, Andrei Sherban, and Ismail Kadare. By presenting material never previously published on theatre life during the Communist years, she is able to compare theatre before and after the political changes.

Flash and Crash Days deals with the theatre produced in Brazil during the 1980s and 1990s, especially its postmodernist directors, women playwrights and theatre companies. It attempts to answer the following questions: Did the thriving stage of the 1950s and 1960s wither during the reign of terror in the early 1970s, unleashed in the wake of the 1968 state of siege declared by the generals? Did the return to civilian government fail to create conditions for a new theatre? This book examines how the absence of censorship, on the one hand, and the exigencies of protest and ideological purity on the other have given rise to a variety of theatrical modes which Brazil has never experienced in the past, allowing all voices the opportunity to be heard.

eBook available with sample pages: HB:0415194539

Inside The Performance Workshop: A Sourcebook for Rasaboxes and Other Exercises is the first full-length volume dedicated to the history, theory, practice, and application of a suite of performer training exercises developed by Richard Schechner and elaborated by the editors and contributors. This work began in the 1960s with The Performance Group, and has continued to evolve. Rasaboxes - a featured set of exercises - is an interdisciplinary approach for training emotional expressivity through the use of breath, body, voice, movement, and sensation. It brings together: the concept of rasa from classical Indian performance theory and practice research on emotion from neuroscience and psychology experimental performance practices theories of ritual, play, and performance This book combines both practical 'how-to' guidance, and applications in diverse contexts including undergraduate and graduate actor training, television acting, K-12 education, devising, and drama therapy. The book serves as an introduction to the work as well as an essential resource for experienced practitioners.

Kristin Linklater is one of the most internationally recognised names in the field of voice training, and this volume explores her work and life whilst also putting her work into practice. Charting the development of Linklater's process, including her work at LAMDA, the Lincoln Centre, NYU, Columbia, and the KLVC on Orkney, the book provides a comprehensive overview of one of the world's leading voice coaches. This book contains: A detailed biography of Linklater's life, including her work with Iris Warren at LAMDA, as well as the founding of her own companies and the KLVC on Orkney Detailed analysis of her key text, Freeing the Natural Voice and her work with Carol Gilligan on The Company of Women, an all-female Shakespeare company they co-conceived A comprehensive set of exercises - several of these previously unpublished This book offers essential reading and an invaluable practice handbook to the contemporary performer, voice teacher and actor trainer. 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.

In this lively and varied tribute to Martin Banham, Layiwola has assembled critical commentaries and two plays which focus primarily on Nigerian theatre - both traditional and contemporary.
Dele Layiwola, Dapo Adelugba and Sonny Oti trace the beginnings of the School of Drama in 1960, at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, where Martin Banham played a key and influential role in the growth of thriving Nigerian theatre repetoire and simulaneously encouraging the creation of a new theatre based on traditional Nigerian theatre forms.
This comparative approach is taken up in Dele Layiwola's study of ritual and drama in the context of various traditions worldwide, while Oyin Ogunba presents a lucid picture of the complex use of theatre space in Yoruba ritual dramadar
drama.
Harsh everyday realitites, both physical and political, are graphically demonstrated by Robert McClaren (Zimbabwe) and Oga Steve Abah (Nigeria) who both show surprising and alarming links between extreme actual experiences and theatre creation and performance.
The texts of the two plays - When Criminals Turn Judges by Ola Rotimi, The Hand that Feeds the King by Wale Ogunyemi, are followed by Austin O. Asagba's study of oral tradition and text in plays by Osofisan and Agbeyegbe, and Frances Harding's study on power, language, and imagery in Wole Soyinka's plays.

The most comprehensive volume on performance art from the Americas to have appeared in English, Corpus Delecti is a unique collection of historical and critical studies of contemporary Latin performance. Drawing on live art from the 1960s to the present day, these fascinating essays explore the impact of Latin American politics, popular culture and syncretic religions on Latin performance.
Including contributions by artists as well as scholars, Fusco's collection bridges the theory/practice divide and discusses a wide variety of genres. Among them are:
* body art
* carpa
* vaudeville
* staged political protest
* tropicalist musical comedies
* contemporary Venezuelan performance art
* the Chicano Art movement
* queer Latino performance
The essays demonstrate how specific social and historical contexts have shaped Latin American performance. They also show how those factors have affected the choices artists make, and how their work draw upon and respond to their environment.

It is said that British Drama was shockingly lifted out of the doldrums by the 'revolutionary' appearance of John Osborne's Look Back in Anger at the Royal Court in May 1956. But had the theatre been as ephemeral and effeminate as the Angry Young Men claimed? Was the era of Terence Rattigan and 'Binkie' Beaumont as repressed and closeted as it seems?
In this bold and fascinating challenge to the received wisdom of the last forty years of theatrical history, Dan Rebellato uncovers a different story altogether. It is one where Britain's declining Empire and increasing panic over the 'problem' of homosexuality played a crucial role in the construction of an enduring myth of the theatre. By going back to primary sources and rigorously questioning all assumptions, Rebellato has rewritten the history of the Making of Modern British Drama.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203009991

It is said that British Drama was shockingly lifted out of the doldrums by the "revolutionary" appearance of John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger" at the Royal Court in May 1956. But had the theatre been as ephemeral and effeminate as the Angry Young Men claimed? Was the era of Terence Rattigan and 'Binkie' Beaumont as repressed and closeted as it seems?
In this bold and fascinating challenge to the received wisdom of the last forty years of theatrical history, Dan Rebellato uncovers a different story altogether. It is one where Britain's declining Empire and increasing panic over the "problem" of homosexuality played a crucial role in the construction of an enduring myth of the theatre. By going back to primary sources and rigorously questioning all assumptions, Rebellato has rewritten the history of the making of modern British drama.

This text is an investigation and celebration of the Jonson canon from the point of view of the theatre practitioner as well as the teacher. Reflecting the increasing interest in the wider field of Renaissance drama, the book bridges the theory/practice divide by debating how Jonson's drama operates in performance and including discussions with and between practitioners. It includes: essays on Jonson on stage; Jonson in the classroom; Jonson and women; and edited transcripts of interviews with contemporary practitioners. Contributors include: Sam Mendes, Geoffrey Rush (Oscar winning actor), Colin Ellwood, Genista Macintosh and John Nettles. The aim of the title is to suggest new perspectives and new possibilities of engaging rewardingly with the drama of Ben Jonson.

This is the first anthology to focus exclusively on the lives of Black South African women. This collection represents the work of both female and male writers, including national and international award-winning playwrights. The collection includes six full-length and four one-act plays, as well as interviews with the writers, who candidly discuss the theatrical and political situation in the new South Africa. Written before and after apartheid, the plays present varying approaches and theatrical styles from solo performances to collective creations.
The plays dramatise issues as diverse as:
* women's rights
* displacement from home
* violence against women
* the struggle to keep families together
* racial identity
* education in the old and new South Africa
* and health care.

Michael Chekhov and Sanford Meisner: Collisions and Convergence in Actor Training offers a comprehensive analysis of the Sanford Meisner Acting Technique in comparison to the Michael Chekhov Acting Technique. This compilation reveals the connections as well as the contradictions between these two very different approaches, while highlighting meaningful bridges and offering in-depth essays from a variety of sources, including master teachers with years of experience and new and rising stars in the field. The authors provide philosophical arguments on actor training, innovative approaches to methodology, and explorations into integration, as well as practical methods of application for the classroom or rehearsal room, or scaffolded into a curriculum. Michael Chekhov and Sanford Meisner: Collisions and Convergence in Actor Training is an excellent resource for professors teaching Introductory, Intermediate or Advanced Acting Technique as well as acting program directors and department chairs seeking new, impactful research on actor training.

Cutting Plays for Performance offers a practical guide for cutting a wide variety of classical and modern plays. This essential text offers insight into the various reasons for cutting, methods to serve different purposes (time, audience, story), and suggests ways of communicating cuts to a production team. Dealing with every aspect of the editing process, it covers structural issues, such as plot beats, rhetorical concepts, and legal considerations, why and when to cut, how to cut with a particular goal in mind such as time constraints, audience and storytelling, and ways of communicating cuts to a production team. A set of practical worksheets to assist with the planning and execution of cuts, as well as step-by-step examples of the process from beginning to end in particular plays help to round out the full range of skills and techniques that are required when approaching this key theatre-making task. This is the first systematic guide for those who need to cut play texts. Directors, dramaturgs, and teachers at every level from students to seasoned professionals will find this an indispensable tool throughout their careers.

Catherine the Great (1729-1796) wrote over two dozen plays and operettas, but not until this edition has a complete translation of any of them been available to an English- speaking readership.
Oh, These Times (1772) is a satirical attack on many vices Catherine wished to root out from her society: religious hypocrisy, superstition and slander. The main character, Mrs. Pious, is a superficially religious old woman who resembles Moliere's Tartuffe.
Catherine again sets her sights on superstition in The Siberian Shaman (1786), this time by satirizing shamanism as a deceitful profession which preys on the gullible. This play was part of a group of three plays usually known as Catherine's "anti-masonic" trilogy, written as a warning against the growing influence of the freemasons.
In a comprehensive introduction, Lurana Donnels O'Malley relates the plays to Catherine's status and philosophy.

In this selection of research articles Butterworth focuses on investigation of the practical and technical means by which early English theatre, from the fifteenth to the early seventeenth century, was performed. Matters of staging for both 'pageant vehicle' and 'theatre-in-the-round' are described and analysed to consider their impact on playing by players, expositors, narrators and prompters. All these operators also functioned to promote the closely aligned disciplines of pyrotechnics and magic (legerdemain or sleight of hand) which also influence the nature of the presented theatre. The sixteen chapters form four clearly identified parts-staging, playing, pyrotechnics and magic-and drawing on a wealth of primary source material, Butterworth encourages the reader to rediscover and reappreciate the actors, magicians, wainwrights and wheelwrights, pyrotechnists, and (in modern terms) the special effects people and event managers who brought these early texts to theatrical life on busy city streets and across open arenas. The chapters variously explore and analyse the important backwaters of material culture that enabled, facilitated and shaped performance yet have received scant scholarly attention. It is here, among the itemised payments to carpenters and chemists, the noted requirements of mechanics and wheelwrights, or tucked away among the marginalia of suppliers of staging and ingenious devices that Butterworth has made his stamping ground. This is a fascinating introduction to the very 'nuts and bolts' of early theatre. Staging, Playing, Pyrotechnics and Magic: Conventions of Performance in Early English Theatre is a closely argued celebration of stagecraft that will appeal to academics and students of performance, theatre history and medieval studies as well as history and literature more broadly. It constitutes the eighth volume in the Routledge series Shifting Paradigms in Early English Drama Studies and continues the valuable work of that series (of which Butterworth is a general editor) in bringing significant and expert research articles to a wider audience.

For literary scholars, plays are texts; for scenographers, plays are performances. Yet clearly a drama is both text and performance. Dramatic Spaces examines period-specific stage spaces in order to assess how design shaped the thematic and experiential dimensions of plays. This book highlights the stakes of the debate about spatiality and the role of the spectator in the auditorium - if audience members are co-creators of the drama, how do they contribute? The book investigates: Roman comedy and Shakespearean dramas in which the stage-space itself constituted the primary scenographic element and actors' bodies shaped the playing space more than did sets or props the use of paid applauders in nineteenth-century Parisian theaters and how this practice reconfigured theatrical space transactions between stage designers and spectators, including work by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, William Ritman, and Eiko Ishioka Dramatic Spaces aims to do for stage design what reader-response criticism has done for the literary text, with specific case studies on Coriolanus, The Comedy of Errors, Romeo and Juliet, Tales of Hoffman, M. Butterfly and Tiny Alice exploring the audience's contribution to the construction of meaning.

Renaissance Drama in Action is a fascinating exploration of Renaissance theatre practice and staging. Covering questions of contemporary playhouse design, verse and language, staging and rehearsal practices, and acting styles, Martin White relates the characteristics of Renaissance theatre to the issues involved in staging the plays today. This refreshingly accessible volume: * examines the history of the plays on the English stage from the seventeenth century to the present day * explores questions arising from reconstructions, with particular reference to the new Globe Theatre * includes interviews with, and draws on the work and experience of modern theatre practitioners including Harriet Walter, Matthew Warchus, Trevor Nunn, Stephen Jeffreys, Adrian Noble and Helen Mirren * includes discussions of familiar plays such as The Duchess of Malfi and 'Tis Pity She's A Whore, as well as many lesser known play-texts Renaissance Drama in Action offers undergraduates and A-level students an invaluable guide to the characteristics of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, and its relationship to contemporary theatre and staging.

In the second volume of his "Mask: A Release of Acting Resources" David Griffiths provides a detailed and sensitive view of the Japanese Noh theatre: historically, philosophically (with an evaluation of Zeami's treatises) and in respect of the rigorous practicalities of Noh training. The latter is given particular authority and insight because of the access Griffiths had to Noh actors in training and performance. Greatly enhanced by the author's illustrations, this volume gives one of the most accessible introductions to Noh that is available in English. Appended to the descriptive and analytic material is a short play, "The Dove," written by Griffiths (and subsequently professionally performed) described as 'unashamedly' acknowledging its Noh influence. This one woman piece is a sensitive and evocative drama with subtle references to its cultural source. Its potential as an exercise in mask work is excellent.

In the third volume of his "Mask: A Release of Acting Resources" David Griffiths concentrates his attention on Commedia dell'arte. Acknowledging the amount of information already available in this area, the author provides a brief but extremely lively historical/critical commentary. Despite existing on what seem to be "diametrically opposite sides of the theatrical spectrum," Griffiths points to the fascinating common factors between the genres of the Japanese Noh theatre and Commedia dell'arte. He proposes six similarities: characters familiar to their audience who appear masked, minimal properties and scenery with the focus on the actor; the "families" of performers, a sharp mind as well as an agile body, a professional living on his skills and patronage; and a knowledgeable audience. "Please Be Gentle," the witty and rumbustious play that completes this book, explores the various tricks and devices of Commedia dell'arte acting within a form and a fram

With this special issue of Performing Arts International, the papers and presentations from the Black Theatre in Higher Education Conference, held in London in April 1994 and organized by Hazel Carey and Ruth Tompsett, are made more widely available. It offers readers a chance to engage in debates on topical issues, to widen their knowledge and understanding of black performance, and to catch something of its spirit from the combination here of critical comment, practitioner insight, and personal testimony. For academics, critics, and practitioners alike, to study, attend, or participate in black theatre is to be engaged in a rich and diverse contemporary arts reality.

Live Perfromance Integrated Access disability Extant Theatre

The Art of Knife Fighting for Stage and Screen: An Actor's and Director's Guide to Staged Violence provides detailed information for the safe use of knives and daggers in a theatrical setting and an in-depth understanding of safe theatrical weapons. The book starts with an extensive safety review, then moves on to the basic techniques of dagger fighting, starting with grip and body postures. Readers will then learn about the basic actions of cuts, parries, blocks, and disarms. During this process, they will explore the connection between body and weapon and start learning the elements of storytelling through choreography. Special attention is given to suicides, threats, and murder and how directors, choreographers, performers, teachers, and students can approach these techniques in a way that is physically and mentally safe. The book also covers the use of throwing knives, knife flips, and other tricks to help add a little flair to your fight. The Art of Knife Fighting for Stage and Screen teaches the safe theatrical use of the knife for directors, performers, educators, and students of stage combat.

Auditioners often complain of seeing the same speeches over and over again. Director, Simon Dunmore, has seen well over ten thousand audition speeches performed, and has drawn on his experience to select and edit a new collection of fascinating, fresh and unusual audition speeches from Shakespeare's plays. This book brings together fifty speeches for women from plays frequently ignored such as Coriolanus, Pericles and Love's Labours Lost. It also includes good, but over-looked speeches from the more popular plays such as Diana from All's Well That Ends Well, Perdita from The Winter's Tale and Hero from Much Ado About Nothing. Each speech is accompanied by a character description, brief explanation of the context, and notes on obscure words, phrases and references - all written from the viewpoint of the auditioning actor.

Why should the digital bring about ideas of progress in the theatre arts? This question opens up a rich seam of provocative and original thinking about the uses of new media in theatre, about new forms of cultural practice and artistic innovation, and about the widening purposes of the theatre's cultural project in a changing digital world. Through detailed case-studies on the work of key international theatre companies such as the Elevator Repair Service and The Mission Business, Bill Blake explores how the digital is providing new scope for how we think about the theatre, as well as how the theatre in turn is challenging how we might relate to the digital.

The Routledge Companion to Interdisciplinary Studies in Singing, Volume I: Development introduces the many voices necessary to better understand the act of singing-a complex human behaviour that emerges without deliberate training. Presenting research from the social sciences and humanities alongside that of the natural sciences and medicine alike, this companion explores the relationship between hearing sensitivity and vocal production, in turn identifying how singing is integrated with sensory and cognitive systems while investigating the ways we test and measure singing ability and development. Contributors consider the development of singing within the context of the entire lifespan, focusing on its cognitive, social, and emotional significance in four parts: Musical, historical and scientific foundations Perception and production Multimodality Assessment In 2009, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada funded a seven-year major collaborative research initiative known as Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing (AIRS). Together, global researchers from a broad range of disciplines addressed three challenging questions: How does singing develop in every human being? How should singing be taught and used to teach? How does singing impact wellbeing? Across three volumes, The Routledge Companion to Interdisciplinary Studies in Singing consolidates the findings of each of these three questions, defining the current state of theory and research in the field. Volume I: Development tackles the first of these three questions, tracking development from infancy through childhood to adult years.