In many European countries mass theater was a widespread expression of "community art" that became increasingly popular shortly before World War I. From Max Reinhardt's lavish open-air spectacles to socialist workers' Laienspiel (lay theater), theater visionaries focused on ever larger groups for entertainment as well as political agitation.

Despite wide research on the Soviet and German cases, examples from the Low Countries have hardly been examined. However, mass plays in Flanders and the Netherlands had a distinctive character, displaying an ideological heterogeneity not seen elsewhere. Mass Theatre in Inter-War Europe places this peculiar phenomenon of the Low Countries in its European context and sheds light on the broader framework of mass movements in the interwar period.

Contributors: Staf Vos (Het Firmament), Karel Vanhaesebrouck (Universite Libre de Bruxelles/Rits), Evelien Jonckheere (Ghent University), Ad van der Logt (Leiden University), Frank Peeters (University of Antwerp)"

This extended new edition of a seminal text marks the 30th anniversary of the original book's major intervention in the discipline. Bradby and Williams' field-defining book introduced the continental-European approach to directing, recognising the work of the modern stage director as an artist in his or her own right for the first time. Now edited by Peter M. Boenisch in collaboration with David Williams, this new edition includes an additional four chapters by leading contemporary experts on theatre direction. Covering recent practices and developments, as well as new trends in the academic research on directing, Directors' Theatre interrogates working ethics and performance aesthetics, directors' work with actors as a central creative source and their responses to the ongoing reassessment of theatre's role and function in contemporary culture. This long-awaited reissue will make a classic, authoritative study on directors and directing accessible to a new generation of students, scholars and artists. It is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Theatre, Performance Studies and Directing. New to this Edition: - Includes four new chapters written by leading contemporary experts on theatre direction: Patrice Pavis, Katalin Trencsenyi, the research team of Luk Van den Dries, and DuskaRadosavljevic - New chapters discuss recent approaches and developments in theatre directing as well as research on directing, including artists such as Luk Perceval, Daniel Jeanneteau, Improbable and Ivo van Hove, while also introducing the development of theatre direction in Eastern Europe - The original text has been carefully revised by David Williams and chapters have been supplemented with new introductions and conclusions

This handsome book peers into Troubleyn/Laboratorium, the workspace, collective art space, and creative incubator of Belgian multidisciplinary artist Jan Fabre (b. 1958), whose performances, staged since the 1980s, have brought him international acclaim and recognition. Expressing the collective aims of Fabre's theatre company, Troubleyn/Laboratorium functions as his workspace as well as a nurturing environment for the activities of his theater company and young artists alike, in which artists are free to develop and materialize their creative impulses. The building, situated in a progressive multicultural neighborhood in northern Antwerp, houses a uniquely integrated collection of art works from international visual artists, writers, theatre makers, and philosophers, with whom Jan Fabre feels a close affinity and whose works represent the overall cooperative spirit of the space itself. Fostering an environment that is as progressive as the artist's varied oeuvre, Troubleyn/Laboratorium provides the grounds for an idealistic hotbed of artistic activity and this publication offers a glimpse of that possible utopia. Distributed for Mercatorfonds

This extended new edition of a seminal text marks the 30th anniversary of the original book's major intervention in the discipline. Bradby and Williams' field-defining book introduced the continental-European approach to directing, recognising the work of the modern stage director as an artist in his or her own right for the first time. Now edited by Peter M. Boenisch in collaboration with David Williams, this new edition includes an additional four chapters by leading contemporary experts on theatre direction. Covering recent practices and developments, as well as new trends in the academic research on directing, Directors' Theatre interrogates working ethics and performance aesthetics, directors' work with actors as a central creative source and their responses to the ongoing reassessment of theatre's role and function in contemporary culture. This long-awaited reissue will make a classic, authoritative study on directors and directing accessible to a new generation of students, scholars and artists. It is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Theatre, Performance Studies and Directing. New to this Edition: - Includes four new chapters written by leading contemporary experts on theatre direction: Patrice Pavis, Katalin Trencsenyi, the research team of Luk Van den Dries, and DuskaRadosavljevic - New chapters discuss recent approaches and developments in theatre directing as well as research on directing, including artists such as Luk Perceval, Daniel Jeanneteau, Improbable and Ivo van Hove, while also introducing the development of theatre direction in Eastern Europe - The original text has been carefully revised by David Williams and chapters have been supplemented with new introductions and conclusions