In The Theatre and Its Double, first published in 1938, Antonin Artaud puts forward his radical theories on drama and theatre, which he saw as being stifled by conservatism and a lack of experimentation. Containing the famous manifestos of the ‘Theatre of Cruelty’, this collection of essays analyses the underlying impulses of performance, provides suggestions on a physical-training method for actors, and features a long appreciation of the expressive values of Eastern dance drama. This new English translation of Artaud's canonical text by Mark Taylor-Batty retains the idiosyncratic nature of the author's writing, communicating its fervour and ambition, while achieving a much-needed clarity. Through doing so, it facilitates a fuller appreciation of Artaud’s artistic objectives and the original context in which they grew, aided by a newly translated set of his notes and drafts, and a selection of letters to his publisher, friends and associates concerning the book's genesis and the evolution of the concept of a ‘Theatre of Cruelty’. The commentary further contextualizes this material within Artaud’s broader oeuvre, from his collaboration with the Surrealist group through to his plans to stage his own adaptation of Percy Shelley’s Les Cenci in 1935. A welcome addition to any theatre-lover's or student's bookshelf, this translation of Artaud’s classic text offers clear and faithful insights into Artaud's theatre.

Drawing on rich interdisciplinary research that has laced the emerging subject of drag studies as an academic discipline, this book examines how drag performance is a political, socio-cultural practice with a widespread lineage throughout the history of performance. This volume maps the multi-threaded contexts of contemporary practices while rooting them in their fabulous historical past and memory. The book examines drag histories and what drag does with history, how it enacts or tells stories about remembering and the past. Featuring work about the USA, UK and Ireland, Japan, Australia, Brazil and Barbados, this book allows the reader to engage with a range of archival research including camp and history; ethnicity and drag; queering ballet through drag; the connections between drag king and queen history; queering pantomime performance; drag and military veterans; Puerto Rican drag performers and historical film.

This study explores the ways in which playtexts have evolved in relation to the sociocultural and cognitive conditions of a mediatized age, and how they, in form and content, respond to this environment and open up new critical possibilities in text and performance. The study combines theatre and media theory through the innovative concept of 'mediatized dramaturgy' and offers conceptual reflections on the ways in which a playtext negotiates the new reality of contemporary culture. The book scrutinizes the form of playtexts and works through the exchange between text and performance by exploring contemporary works such as Simon Stephens's Pornography, Caryl Churchill's Love and Information, and David Greig's The Yes/No Plays, and their selected productions. Offering a pioneering intervention that expands discussions about the mediatization of theatre, and new playwriting, Mediatized Dramaturgyproposes areas for discussion that appeal to researchers, audiences and practitioners with an interest in the sub-field of media and performance, and British and North American drama and theatre. Media technologies and their socio-cultural repercussions have increasingly influenced theatre, particularly since the ubiquitous prevalence of digital technologies from the 1990s onwards. Consequently, new modes such as digital and intermedial theatre have come to populate and transform the theatre practice and scholarship. In this changing theatrical landscape, what has happened to plays in the historically text-oriented British theatre? How has playtext changed in an age of theatre marked by mediatization and its possibilities?

Authenticity is one of the major values of our time. It is visible everywhere, from clothing to food to self-help books. While it is such a prevalent phenomenon, it is also very evasive. This study analyses the 'culture of authenticity' as it relates to theatre and establishes a theoretical framework for analysis. Daniel Schulz argues that authenticity is sought out and marked by the individual and springs from a culture that is perceived as inherently fake and lacking depth. The study examines three types of performances that exemplify this structure of feeling: intimate theatre seen in Forced Entertainment productions such as Quizoola! (1996, 2015), as well as one-on-one performances, such as Oentroerend Goed's Internal (2009); immersive theatres as illustrated by Punchdrunk's shows The Masque of the Red Death (2007) and The Drowned Man (2013) which provide a visceral, sensate understanding for audiences; finally, the study scrutinises the popular category of documentary theatre through various examples such as Robin Soan's Talking to Terrorists (2005), David Hare's Stuff Happens (2004), Edmund Burke's Black Watch (2007) and Dennis Kelly's pseudo-documentary play Taking Care of Baby (2007). It is specifically the value of the document that lends such performances their truth-value and consequently their authenticity. The study analyses how the success of these disparate categories of performance can be explained through a common concern with notions of truth and authenticity. It argues that this hunger for authentic, unmediated experience is characteristic of a structure of feeling that has superseded postmodernism and that actively seeks to resignify artistic and cultural practices of the everyday.

Fiery Temporalities in Theatre and Performance: The Initiation of History takes up the urgent need to think about temporality and its relationship to history in new ways, focusing on theatre and performance as mediums through which politically innovative temporalities, divorced from historical processionism and the future, are inaugurated. Wickstrom is guided by three temporal concepts: the new present, the penultimate, and kairos, as developed by Alain Badiou, Giorgio Agamben, and Antonio Negri respectively. She works across a field of performance that includes play texts by Aime Cesaire and C.L.R. James, and performances from Ni'Ja Whitson to Cassils, the Gob Squad to William Kentridge and African colonial revolts, Hofesh Schechter to Forced Entertainment to Andrew Schneider and Omar Rajeh. Along the way she also engages with Walter Benjamin, black international and radical thought and performance, Bruno Latour, Stefano Harney and Fred Moten's logistics and the hold, and accelerationism. Representing a significant contribution to the growing interest in temporality in Theatre and Performance Studies, the book offers alternatives to what have been prevailing temporal preoccupations in those fields. Countering investments in phenomenology, finitude, ghosting, repetition, and return, Wickstrom argues that theatre and performance can create a fiery sense of how to change time and thereby nominate a new possibility for what it means to live.

What do we watch when we watch war? Who manages public perceptions of war and how? Watching War on the Twenty-First-Century Stage: Spectacles of Conflict is the first publication to examine how theatre in the UK has staged, debated and challenged the ways in which spectacle is habitually weaponized in times of war. The 'battle for hearts and minds' and the 'war of images' are fields of combat that can be as powerful as armed conflict. And today, spectacle and conflict - the two concepts that frame the book - have joined forces via audio-visual technologies in ways that are more powerful than ever. Clare Finburgh's original and interdisciplinary interrogation provides a richly provocative account of the structuring role that spectacle plays in warfare, engaging with the works of philosopher Guy Debord, cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard, visual studies specialist Marie-Jose Mondzain, and performance scholar Hans-Thies Lehmann. She offers coherence to a large and expanding field of theatrical war representation by analysing in careful detail a spectrum of works as diverse as expressionist drama, documentary theatre, comedy, musical satire and dance theatre. She demonstrates how features unique to the theatrical art, namely the construction of a fiction in the presence of the audience, can present possibilities for a more informed engagement with how spectacles of war are produced and circulated. If we watch with more resistance, we may contribute in significant ways to the demilitarization of images. And what if this were the first step towards a literal demilitarization?

In a context of financial crisis that has often produced a feeling of identity crisis for the individual, the theatre has provided a unifying forum, treating spectators as citizens. This book critically deals with representative plays and playwrights who have stood out in the UK and internationally in the post-recession era, delivering theatre that in the process of being truthful to the contemporary experience has also redefined theatrical form and content. Built around a series of case-studies of seminal contemporary plays exploring issues of social and political crisis, the volume is augmented by interviews with UK and international directors, artistic directors and the playwrights whose work is examined. As well as considering UK stage productions, Angelaki analyses European, North American and Australian productions, of post-2000 plays by writers including: Caryl Churchill, Mike Bartlett, Dennis Kelly, Simon Stephens, Martin Crimp, debbie tucker green, Duncan Macmillan, Nick Payne and Lucy Prebble. At the heart of the analysis and of the plays discussed is an appreciation of what interconnects artists and audiences, enabling the kind of mutual recognition that fosters the feeling of collectivity. As the book argues, this is the state whereby the theatre meets its social imperative by eradicating the distance between stage and spectator and creating a genuinely shared space of ideas and dialogue, taking on topics including the economy, materialism, debt culture, the environment, urban protest, social media and mental health. Social and Political Theatre in 21st-Century Britain demonstrates that such contemporary playwriting invests in and engenders moments of performative reciprocity and spirituality so as to present the audience with a cohesive collective experience.

In a context of financial crisis that has often produced a feeling of identity crisis for the individual, the theatre has provided a unifying forum, treating spectators as citizens. This book critically deals with representative plays and playwrights who have stood out in the UK and internationally in the post-recession era, delivering theatre that in the process of being truthful to the contemporary experience has also redefined theatrical form and content. Built around a series of case-studies of seminal contemporary plays exploring issues of social and political crisis, the volume is augmented by interviews with UK and international directors, artistic directors and the playwrights whose work is examined. As well as considering UK stage productions, Angelaki analyses European, North American and Australian productions, of post-2000 plays by writers including: Caryl Churchill, Mike Bartlett, Dennis Kelly, Simon Stephens, Martin Crimp, debbie tucker green, Duncan Macmillan, Nick Payne and Lucy Prebble. At the heart of the analysis and of the plays discussed is an appreciation of what interconnects artists and audiences, enabling the kind of mutual recognition that fosters the feeling of collectivity. As the book argues, this is the state whereby the theatre meets its social imperative by eradicating the distance between stage and spectator and creating a genuinely shared space of ideas and dialogue, taking on topics including the economy, materialism, debt culture, the environment, urban protest, social media and mental health. Social and Political Theatre in 21st-Century Britain demonstrates that such contemporary playwriting invests in and engenders moments of performative reciprocity and spirituality so as to present the audience with a cohesive collective experience.

Authenticity is one of the major values of our time. It is visible everywhere, from clothing to food to self-help books. While it is such a prevalent phenomenon, it is also very evasive. This study analyses the 'culture of authenticity' as it relates to theatre and establishes a theoretical framework for analysis. Daniel Schulz argues that authenticity is sought out and marked by the individual and springs from a culture that is perceived as inherently fake and lacking depth. The study examines three types of performances that exemplify this structure of feeling: intimate theatre seen in Forced Entertainment productions such as Quizoola! (1996, 2015), as well as one-on-one performances, such as Oentroerend Goed's Internal (2009); immersive theatres as illustrated by Punchdrunk's shows The Masque of the Red Death (2007) and The Drowned Man (2013) which provide a visceral, sensate understanding for audiences; finally, the study scrutinises the popular category of documentary theatre through various examples such as Robin Soan's Talking to Terrorists (2005), David Hare's Stuff Happens (2004), Edmund Burke's Black Watch (2007) and Dennis Kelly's pseudo-documentary play Taking Care of Baby (2007). It is specifically the value of the document that lends such performances their truth-value and consequently their authenticity. The study analyses how the success of these disparate categories of performance can be explained through a common concern with notions of truth and authenticity. It argues that this hunger for authentic, unmediated experience is characteristic of a structure of feeling that has superseded postmodernism and that actively seeks to resignify artistic and cultural practices of the everyday.

Readers and acolytes of the vital early 1950s-mid 1960s writers known as the Beat Generation tend to be familiar with the prose and poetry by the seminal authors of this period: Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane Di Prima, and many others. Yet all of these authors, as well as other less well-known Beat figures, also wrote plays-and these, together with their countercultural approaches to what could or should happen in the theatre-shaped the dramatic experiments of the playwrights who came after them, from Sam Shepard to Maria Irene Fornes, to the many vanguard performance artists of the seventies. This volume, the first of its kind, gathers essays about the exciting work in drama and performance by and about the Beat Generation, ranging from the well-known Beat figures such as Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs, to the "Afro-Beats" - LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Bob Kaufman, and others. It offers original studies of the women Beats - Di Prima, Bunny Lang - as well as groups like the Living Theater who in this era first challenged the literal and physical boundaries of the performance space itself.

Readers and acolytes of the vital early 1950s-mid 1960s writers known as the Beat Generation tend to be familiar with the prose and poetry by the seminal authors of this period: Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane Di Prima, and many others. Yet all of these authors, as well as other less well-known Beat figures, also wrote plays-and these, together with their countercultural approaches to what could or should happen in the theatre-shaped the dramatic experiments of the playwrights who came after them, from Sam Shepard to Maria Irene Fornes, to the many vanguard performance artists of the seventies. This volume, the first of its kind, gathers essays about the exciting work in drama and performance by and about the Beat Generation, ranging from the well-known Beat figures such as Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs, to the "Afro-Beats" - LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Bob Kaufman, and others. It offers original studies of the women Beats - Di Prima, Bunny Lang - as well as groups like the Living Theater who in this era first challenged the literal and physical boundaries of the performance space itself.

Constituting the first comprehensive look at Ruth Maleczech's work, Jessica Brater's companion is a landmark study in innovative theatre practice, bringing together biography, critical analysis, and original interviews to establish a portrait of this Obie-award winning theatre artist. Tracing Maleczech's background, training, and influences, the volume contextualizes her work and the founding of Mabou Mines within the wider landscape of American avant-garde theatre. It considers her performances and productions, revealing both her interest in making ordinary women important onstage, and her predilection for resurrecting extraordinary women from history and finding their resonances within a contemporary theatrical context. Brater considers Maleczech's investment in redrawing the boundaries of what women are allowed to say, both on stage and off, and shows how her commitment to radical artistic and production risks has reshaped the contours of a contemporary theatrical experience. Highlights of the volume include discussion of productions such as Mabou Mines' Lear, Dead End Kids, Hajj, Lucia's Chapters of Coming Forth by Day, Red Beads, and La Divina Caricatura, as well as a close look at Maleczech's final work-in-progress, Imagining the Imaginary Invalid.

Talk-show confessions, online rants, stand-up routines, inspirational speeches, banal reflections and calls to arms: we live in an age of solo voices demanding to be heard. In The Contemporary American Monologue Eddie Paterson looks at the pioneering work of US artists Spalding Gray, Laurie Anderson, Anna Deavere Smith and Karen Finley, and the development of solo performance in the US as a method of cultural and political critique. Ironic confession, post-punk poetry, investigations of race and violence, and subversive polemic, this book reveals the link between the rise of radical monologue in the late 20th century and history of speechmaking, politics, civil rights, individual freedom and the American Dream in the United States. It shows how US artists are speaking back to the cultural, political and economic forces that shape the world. Eddie Paterson traces the importance of the monologue in Shakespeare, Brecht, Beckett, Chekov, Pinter, O'Neill and Williams, before offering a comprehensive analysis of several of the most influential and innovative American practitioners of monologue performance. The Contemporary American Monologue constitutes the first book-length account of US monologists that links the tradition of oratory and speechmaking in the colony to the appearance of solo performance as a distinctly American phenomenon.

Bertolt Brecht's reputation as a flawed, irrelevant or difficult thinker for the theatre can often go before him to such an extent that we run the risk of forgetting the achievements that made him and his company, the Berliner Ensemble, famous around the world. David Barnett examines both Brecht the theorist and Brecht the practitioner to reveal the complementary relationship between the two.This book aims to sensitize the reader to the approaches Brecht took to the world and the stage with a view to revealing just how carefully he thought about and realized his vision of a politicized, interventionist theatre. What emerges is a nuanced understanding of his concepts, his work with actors and his approaches to directing. The reader is encouraged to engage with Brecht's method that sought to 'make theatre politically' in order to locate the innovations he introduced into his stagecraft. There are many examples given of how Brecht's ideas can be staged, and the final chapter takes two very different plays and asks how a Brechtian approach can enliven and illuminate their production. Ultimately, the book invites readers, students and theatre-makers to discover new ways of apprehending and making use of Brecht.

Bertolt Brecht's reputation as a flawed, irrelevant or difficult thinker for the theatre can often go before him to such an extent that we run the risk of forgetting the achievements that made him and his company, the Berliner Ensemble, famous around the world. David Barnett examines both Brecht the theorist and Brecht the practitioner to reveal the complementary relationship between the two.This book aims to sensitize the reader to the approaches Brecht took to the world and the stage with a view to revealing just how carefully he thought about and realized his vision of a politicized, interventionist theatre. What emerges is a nuanced understanding of his concepts, his work with actors and his approaches to directing. The reader is encouraged to engage with Brecht's method that sought to 'make theatre politically' in order to locate the innovations he introduced into his stagecraft. There are many examples given of how Brecht's ideas can be staged, and the final chapter takes two very different plays and asks how a Brechtian approach can enliven and illuminate their production. Ultimately, the book invites readers, students and theatre-makers to discover new ways of apprehending and making use of Brecht.

The plays of the late Nobel laureate Harold Pinter have formed part of the canon of world theatre since the 1960s. Frequently revived on the professional stage, and studied on almost every Theatre Studies course, his importance and influence is hard to overestimate. This Critical Companion offers an assessment of Pinter's entire body of work for the stage, appraising his skill as a dramatist and considering his impact and legacy. Through a clear focus on issues of theatricality and the effect of the plays in performance "The Theatre of Harold Pinter "considers Pinter's chief narrative concerns and offers a unifying theme through which over four decades of work may be understood. Plays are considered in themed chapters that follow the chronological sequence of work, illuminating the development of his aesthetic and concerns. The volume features too a series of essays from other leading scholars presenting different critical perspectives on the work, including Harry Burton on Pinter's early drama; Ann Hall on Revisiting Pinter's Women; Chris Megson on Pinter's Memory Plays of the 1970s, and Basil Chiasson on Neoliberalism and Democracy.

The plays of the late Nobel laureate Harold Pinter have formed part of the canon of world theatre since the 1960s. Frequently revived on the professional stage, and studied on almost every Theatre Studies course, his importance and influence is hard to overestimate. This Critical Companion offers an assessment of Pinter's entire body of work for the stage, appraising his skill as a dramatist and considering his impact and legacy. Through a clear focus on issues of theatricality and the effect of the plays in performance "The Theatre of Harold Pinter "considers Pinter's chief narrative concerns and offers a unifying theme through which over four decades of work may be understood. Plays are considered in themed chapters that follow the chronological sequence of work, illuminating the development of his aesthetic and concerns. The volume features too a series of essays from other leading scholars presenting different critical perspectives on the work, including Harry Burton on Pinter's early drama; Ann Hall on Revisiting Pinter's Women; Chris Megson on Pinter's Memory Plays of the 1970s, and Basil Chiasson on Neoliberalism and Democracy.

This title offers informative critical introduction to Beckett's "Waiting for Godot", one of the most commonly studied modern plays."Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot" is not only an indisputably important and influential dramatic text - it is also one of the most significant western cultural landmarks of the twentieth century. Originally written in French, the play first amazed and appalled Parisian theatre-goers and critics before receiving a harshly dismissive initial critical response in Britain in 1955. Its influence since then on the international stage has been significant, impacting on generations of actors, directors and audiences.This guide provides a comprehensive critical introduction to "Waiting for Godot" from the controversial first performances to recent productions."Continuum Modern Theatre Guides" offer concise, accessible and informed introductions to the key plays of modern times. Each book is carefully structured to offer a systematic study of the play in its biographical, historical, social and political context, an in-depth study of the text, an overview of the work's production history including screen adaptations, and practical workshopping exercises. They also include a timeline and suggestions for further reading which highlight key critical approaches. This will enable students to develop their understanding of playwrights and theatre-makers, as well as inspiring them to broaden their studies.

To what extent is theatre a contagious practice, capable of undoing and enlivening people and cultures? Theatres of Contagion responds to some of the anxieties of our current political and cultural climate by exploring theatre's status as a contagious cultural force, questioning its role in the spread or control of medical, psychological and emotional conditions and phenomena. Observing a diverse range of practices from the early modern to contemporary period, the volume considers how this contagion is understood to happen and operate, its real and imagined effects, and how these have been a source of pleasure and fear for theatre makers, audiences and authorities. Drawing on perspectives from medicine, neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, law and affect theory, essays investigate some of the ways in which theatre can be viewed as a powerful agent of containment and transmission. Among the works analysed include a musical adaptation and an intercultural variation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet; a contemporary queer take on Hamlet; Grand Guignol and theatres of horror; the writings and influence of Artaud; immersive theatre and the work of Punchdrunk, and computer gaming and smartphone apps

Presenting a rigorous critical investigation of the reinvigoration of the political in contemporary British theatre, Ecologies of Precarity in Twenty-First Century Theatre provides a fresh understanding of how theatre has engaged with precarity, affect, risk, intimacy, care and relationality in recent times. The study makes a compelling case for reading precarity as a 'sticky' theatrical trope which carries the potential to re-animate our understanding of identity politics and responsibility for the lives of Others in an age of uncertainty. Approaching precarity as an ecology cutting across various practices, themes and aesthetics, the book features a comprehensive selection of theatre examples staged in the UK since the 1990s. Works by debbie tucker green, Alistair McDowall, Complicite, Simon Stephens, Stan's Cafe, Mike Bartlett, Caryl Churchill, The Paper Birds, and Belarus Free Theatre are put in dialogue with interdisciplinary feminist vocabularies developed by Judith Butler, Sara Ahmed, Lauren Berlant and Isabell Lorey. In focusing on areas such as children and youth at risk, human rights, environmental ethics and the politics of debt, the study makes a vital contribution to the burgeoning field of politics and theatre in the 21st century.

In The Theatre and Its Double, first published in 1938, Antonin Artaud puts forward his radical theories on drama and theatre, which he saw as being stifled by conservatism and a lack of experimentation. Containing the famous manifestos of the ‘Theatre of Cruelty’, this collection of essays analyses the underlying impulses of performance, provides suggestions on a physical-training method for actors, and features a long appreciation of the expressive values of Eastern dance drama. This new English translation of Artaud's canonical text by Mark Taylor-Batty retains the idiosyncratic nature of the author's writing, communicating its fervour and ambition, while achieving a much-needed clarity. Through doing so, it facilitates a fuller appreciation of Artaud’s artistic objectives and the original context in which they grew, aided by a newly translated set of his notes and drafts, and a selection of letters to his publisher, friends and associates concerning the book's genesis and the evolution of the concept of a ‘Theatre of Cruelty’. The commentary further contextualizes this material within Artaud’s broader oeuvre, from his collaboration with the Surrealist group through to his plans to stage his own adaptation of Percy Shelley’s Les Cenci in 1935. A welcome addition to any theatre-lover's or student's bookshelf, this translation of Artaud’s classic text offers clear and faithful insights into Artaud's theatre.

This book explores the ways that council estates have been represented in England across a range of performance forms. Drawing on examples from mainstream, site-specific and resident-led performance works, it considers the political potential of contemporary performance practices concerned with the council estate. Depictions of the council estate are brought into dialogue with global representations of what Chris Richardson and Hans Skott-Myhre call the 'hood', to tease out the specific features of the British context and situate the work globally. Katie Beswick's study provides a timely contribution to the ongoing national and global interest in social housing. As the housing market grows ever more insecure, and estates are charged with political rhetoric, theatre and socially engaged art set or taking place on estates takes on a new potency. Mainstream theatre works examined include Rita, Sue and Bob Too and A State Affair at the Soho Theatre, Port at the National Theatre, and DenMarked at the Battersea Arts Centre. The book also explores the National Youth Theatre's Slick and Roger Hiorns' Seizure, as well as community-based and resident led performances by Fourthland, Jordan McKenzie, Fugitive Images and Jane English.

What do we mean when we describe theatre as political today? How might theatre-makers' provocations for change need to be differently designed when addressing the precarious spectator-subject of twenty- first century neoliberalism? In this important study Liz Tomlin interrogates the influential theories of Jacques Ranciere to propose a new framework of analysis through which contemporary political dramaturgies can be investigated. Drawing, in particular, on Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Lilie Chouliaraki and Judith Butler, Tomlin argues that the capacities of the contemporary and future spectator to be 'effected' or 'affected' by politically-engaged theatre need to be urgently re-evaluated. Central to this study is Tomlin's theorized figuration of the neoliberal spectator-subject as precarious, individualized and ironic, with a reduced capacity for empathy, agency and the ability to imagine better futures. This, in turn, leads to a predilection for a response to injustice that is driven by a concern for the feelings of the subject-self, rather than concern for the suffering other. These characteristics are argued to shape even those spectator-subjects towards the left of the political spectrum, thus necessitating a careful reconsideration of new and long-standing dramaturgies of political provocation. Dramaturgies examined include the ironic invitations of Made in China and Martin Crimp, the exploration of affect in Kieran Hurley's Heads Up, the new sincerity that characterizes the work of Andy Smith, the turn to the staging of the spectators' 'other' in Developing Artists' Queens of Syria and Chris Thorpe and Rachel Chavkin's Confirmation, and the community activism of Common Wealth's The Deal Versus the People.

Robert Lepage and Ex Machina's theatricality is inter-disciplinary and inter-cultural, and, inevitably, characterised by intense hybridity. These complex features - while the source of an internationally celebrated theatrical innovation, and considerable pleasure for audiences - have nevertheless also prompted notable criticism. Robert Lepage / Ex Machina: Revolutions in Theatrical Space reads against the grain of criticism, providing readers with a fresh, practice-based and critical perspective by arguing that these innovative aesthetic practices operate simultaneously as positive cultural principles. Drawing directly on case studies of process and a wide range of productions, and building from in-depth interviews, this book intertwines theoretical and practical concerns, weighing them in balance, and, in doing so, produces for the reader a new critical perspective on Robert Lepage and Ex Machina. Through the course of his analysis, James Reynolds illustrates that underpinning the inter-disciplinary eclecticism of Ex Machina's practice is a profound engagement with social, cultural and political difference. Running through the work is a drive to create performances built around a principle of contradiction, through which audiences can apprehend difference in its myriad, infinite forms. Consequently, Robert Lepage / Ex Machina explores this embracing of difference in all its depth and complexity, opening a key way for readers to develop both their practical and theoretical appreciation of this practice. At the same time, the discourse around this vital, forward-looking practice is rebooted, not only by re-thinking its contribution to the vocabulary of drama and theatre, but also through revealing and assessing the critical discourse it initiates through performance.

Postdramatic theatre is an essential category of performance that challenges classical elements of drama, including the centrality of plot and character. Tracking key developments in contemporary European and North American performance, this collection redirects ongoing debates about postdramatic theatre, turning attention to the overlooked issue on which they hinge: form. Contributors draw on literary studies, film studies and critical theory to reimagine the formal aspects of theatre, such as space, media and text. The volume expands how scholars think of theatrical form, insisting that formalist analysis can be useful for studying the ways theatre is produced and consumed, and how theatre makers engage with other forms like dance and visual art. Chapters focus on a range of interdisciplinary artists including Tadeusz Kantor, Ann Liv Young and Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch, as well as theatre's enmeshment within institutional formations like funding agencies, festivals, real estate and healthcare. A timely investigation of the aesthetic structures and material conditions of contemporary performance, this collection refines what we mean, and what we don't, when we speak of postdramatic theatre.