Critical Theory and Performance presents a broad range of critical and theoretical methods, and applies them to contemporary and historical performance genres - from stage plays, dance-dramas, performance art, cabaret, stand-up comedy, and jazz to circus, street theater, and shamanistic ritual. As the first comprehensive introduction to critical theory's rich and diverse contributions to the study of drama, theater, and performance, the book has been highly influential for more than a decade in providing fertile ground for academic investigations of the lively field of performance studies. The revised edition presents sixteen new essays by the field's leading critics and practitioners, reflecting recent trends in performance studies and paving the way for future work. The essays are organized into nine theoretical categories (Performance Analysis, Postcolonial Studies, Critical Race Theory, History and Historiography, After Marx, Gender and Sexualities, Psychoanalysis, Performance Studies, and Mediatized Cultures), each contextualized with an introduction by editors Janelle G. Reinelt and Joseph R. Roach. The resulting volume is a unique and indispensable tool for scholars, teachers, and students.

The Player's Passion reinterprets theories of acting in light of the history of science, examining acting styles from the seventeenth to the twentieth century and measuring them against prevailing conceptions of the human body. The author explores how dominant theories of emotion, from the Galenic humor to the Pavlovian reflex, have shaped the critic's changing standards of the natural order of life and the actor's physical embodiment of it. The Player's Passion has become a classic among theater historians and students of acting, and received the prestigious Barnard Hewitt Award for outstanding research in theater history. A wider audience will appreciate the book for its consideration of how far an idea can spread from its original discipline into the broader currents of intellectual history and popular comprehension.

In the early eighteenth century, a delegation of Iroquois visited Britain, exciting the imagination of the London crowds with images of the "feathered people" and warlike "Mohocks." Today, performing in a popular Afrodiasporic tradition, "Mardi Gras Indians" or "Black Masking Indians" take to the streets of New Orleans at carnival time and for weeks thereafter, parading in handmade "suits" resplendent with beadwork and feathers. What do these seemingly disparate strands of culture share over three centuries and several thousand miles of ocean? Interweaving theatrical, musical, and ritual performance along the Atlantic rim from the eighteenth century to the present, Cities of the Dead explores a rich continuum of cultural exchange that imaginatively reinvents, recreates, and restores history. Joseph Roach reveals how performance can revise the unwritten past, comparing patterns of remembrance and forgetting in how communities forge their identities and imagine their futures. He examines the syncretic performance traditions of Europe, Africa, and the Americas in the urban sites of London and New Orleans, through social events ranging from burials to sacrifices, auctions to parades, encompassing traditions as diverse as Haitian Voudon and British funerals. Considering processes of substitution, or surrogation, as enacted in performance, Roach demonstrates the ways in which people and cultures fill the voids left by death and departure. The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this classic work features a new preface reflecting on the relevance of its arguments to the politics of performance and performance in contemporary politics.

"A thick, tangled and deliciously idiosyncratic history of hair." Times Literary Supplement The Enlightenment (1650-1800) was the Golden Age of hair. Hair dominated fashion as never before or since, with more men and women than ever donning elaborate wigs and hairdos. Such unprecedentedly extravagant styling naturally increased the demand for the services of professional hairdressers, whose numbers grew apace throughout the period. They, in turn, created a new range of hair-care products and a new literature of hair-care advice, ranging from hairstyles to hygiene, thus enlarging the market and further stimulating consumption. A Cultural History of Hair in the Enlightenment offers a record of their marketing success, mindful that the ultimate product of this culture of consumption was the consumer. Literary and visual arts celebrated the ambitious tetes and coifs of the period, but they also lampooned and caricatured the most fashionable in society. By exploring paintings, prints, plays, poems, novels, treatises, and advice manuals, the contributors to this volume show how hair in this period expanded beyond the fashionable and the superstitious, and became newly understood as material, inspiring empirical research and powering applications such as in the woolen goods industry. The essays in this volume-covering Religion and Ritualized Belief, Self and Society, Fashion and Adornment, Production and Practice, Health and Hygiene, Gender and Sexuality, Race and Ethnicity, Class and Social Status, and Cultural Representations-explore hair's many meanings and its importance during the Enlightenment period.

In the early eighteenth century, a delegation of Iroquois visited Britain, exciting the imagination of the London crowds with images of the "feathered people" and warlike "Mohocks." Today, performing in a popular Afrodiasporic tradition, "Mardi Gras Indians" or "Black Masking Indians" take to the streets of New Orleans at carnival time and for weeks thereafter, parading in handmade "suits" resplendent with beadwork and feathers. What do these seemingly disparate strands of culture share over three centuries and several thousand miles of ocean? Interweaving theatrical, musical, and ritual performance along the Atlantic rim from the eighteenth century to the present, Cities of the Dead explores a rich continuum of cultural exchange that imaginatively reinvents, recreates, and restores history. Joseph Roach reveals how performance can revise the unwritten past, comparing patterns of remembrance and forgetting in how communities forge their identities and imagine their futures. He examines the syncretic performance traditions of Europe, Africa, and the Americas in the urban sites of London and New Orleans, through social events ranging from burials to sacrifices, auctions to parades, encompassing traditions as diverse as Haitian Voudon and British funerals. Considering processes of substitution, or surrogation, as enacted in performance, Roach demonstrates the ways in which people and cultures fill the voids left by death and departure. The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of this classic work features a new preface reflecting on the relevance of its arguments to the politics of performance and performance in contemporary politics.

The colorful handmade costumes of beads and feathers swirl frenetically, as the Mardi Gras Indians dance through the streets of New Orleans in remembrance of a widely disputed cultural heritage. Iroquois Indians visit London in the early part of the eighteenth century and give birth to the "feathered people" in the British popular imagination.

What do these seemingly disparate strands of culture share over three hundred years and several thousand miles of ocean? Artfully interweaving theatrical, musical, and ritual performance from the eighteenth century to the present in London and New Orleans, "Cities of the Dead" takes a look at a rich continuum of intercultural exchange that reinvents, recreates, and restores history.

Complemented with fifty-five illustrations, including spectacular photos of the famed Mardi Gras Indians, this fascinating work employs an entirely unique approach to the study of culture. Rather than focusing on one region, "Cities of the Dead" explores broad cultural connections over place and time, showing through myriad examples how performance can revise the unwritten past.

The colorful handmade costumes of beads and feathers swirl frenetically, as the Mardi Gras Indians dance through the streets of New Orleans in remembrance of a widely disputed cultural heritage. Iroquois Indians visit London in the early part of the eighteenth century and give birth to the "feathered people" in the British popular imagination.

What do these seemingly disparate strands of culture share over three hundred years and several thousand miles of ocean? Artfully interweaving theatrical, musical, and ritual performance from the eighteenth century to the present in London and New Orleans, "Cities of the Dead" takes a look at a rich continuum of intercultural exchange that reinvents, recreates, and restores history.

Complemented with fifty-five illustrations, including spectacular photos of the famed Mardi Gras Indians, this fascinating work employs an entirely unique approach to the study of culture. Rather than focusing on one region, "Cities of the Dead" explores broad cultural connections over place and time, showing through myriad examples how performance can revise the unwritten past.