Theatre Books: Online Versions & Excerpts

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Contents: Toward a physical characterization -- Dressing a character -- Characters and types -- Making the body expressive -- Plasticity of motion -- Restraint and control -- Diction and singing -- Intonations and pauses -- Accentuation: the expressive word -- Perspective in character building -- Tempo-rhythm in movement -- Speech tempo-rhythm -- Stage charm -- Toward an ethics for the theatre -- Patterns of accomplishment -- Some conclusions on acting.

"'Global Ibsen' examines the different ways in which Ibsen's plays were & are performed in different cultures on five continents. It also examines the impact of such performances on the theatre, social life & politics of these cultures. It shows that performing Ibsen means performing multiple modernities."

Part 1: Placements & Boundaries 1. The Theatre ici Marvin Carlson 2. Monarchs on Trial at the Early Modern Court Janette Dillon 3. What time is this place? Continuity, Conflict & the Right to the City: Lessons from Haymarket Square Loren Kruger 4. Performing Like a City: London's South Bank & the Cultural Politics of Urban Governance Michael McKinnie 5. What is Sydney about Sydney theatre?: Performance Space & the Creation of a ‘Matrix of Sensibility’ Gay McAuley 6. Thresholds of Tolerance: Censorship, Artistic Freedom & the Theatrical Public Sphere Christopher Balme 7. "Set in Poland, that is to say Nowhere": Alfred Jarry & the Politics of Topological Space Nicolas Salazar-Sutil Part 2: Utopia & Heterotopia 8. Equality & Theatre Architecture: Voltaire’s Private Theatre Ludger Schwarte 9. Rousseau's Heterotopology of Theatre Juliane Rebentisch 10. Heterotopias of the Public Sphere: Theatre & Festival around 1800 Patrick Primavesi 11. Other Space or Space of Others?: Reflections on Contemporary Political Theatre Benjamin Wihstutz 12. Opéra Pagaï’s Entreprise de Détournement: Collages of Geographic, Imaginary & Discursive Spaces Susan Haedicke Part 3: Strategies of Spatial Appropriation 13. Policies of Spatial Appropriation Erika Fischer-Lichte 14. "Moment to Moment—Space": The Architecture Performances of Gordon Matta-Clark Philip Ursprung 15. Uncanny Connections: William Forsythe’s Choreographic Installations Kirsten Maar 16. Change through Rapprochement: Spatial Practices in Contemporary Performances Jens Roselt 17. Life Politics/Life Aesthetics: Environmental Performance in red, black, GREEN: a blues Shannon Jackson

Part I: Strategies and Dynamics 1. Postcolonial Modernity: Theatre in Morocco & the Interweaving Loop Khalid Amine 2. Cultural Interweaving in Mexican Political Cabaret Gastón A. Alzate 3. Farewell & Welcome Back, My Concubine: Female Impersonation on the Chinese Stage Shen Lin 4. Performing Orientalist, Intercultural & Globalized Modernities: The Case of Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir by the Théâtre du Soleil Brian Singleton Part II: Rituals & Festivals 5. Oceanic Imagination, Intercultural Performance, Pacific Historiography Margaret Werry 6. Dancing for the Dead Jacqueline Lo 7. Un/familiar Landscapes: Tragedy & Festivals Natascha Siouzouli 8. "Let the Games Begin": Pageants, Protests, Indigeneity (1968–2010) Helen Gilbert Part III: Failures and Resistances 9. Hauntings of the Intercultural: Enigmas & Lessons on the Borders of Failure Rustom Bharucha 10. Strategic Unweaving: Itō Michio & the Diasporic Dancing Body Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei 11. Linguistic & Cultural Interweaving on the Contemporary English & American Stages Marvin Carlson 12. Failed Stages: Postcolonial Public Spheres & the Search for a Caribbean Theatre Christopher Balme Epilogue: Global Pathways Homi K. Bhabha

[on order May 2023]
The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance provides an analytical, informative and engaging introduction to important people, companies, events, concepts and practices that have defined the complementary fields of theatre and performance studies. This fully updated second edition contains three easy to use alphabetized sections including over 120 revised entries on topics and people ranging from performance artist Ron Athey, to directors Vsevold Meyerhold and Robert Wilson, megamusicals , postdramatic theatre and documentation."

"This book explores the ways that pre-existing 'national' works or 'national theatre' sites can offer a rich source of material for speaking to the contemporary moment because of the resonances or associations they offer of a different time, place, politics, or culture. Featuring a broad international scope, it offers a series of thought-provoking essays that explore how playwrights, directors, theatre-makers, and performance artists have re-staged or re-worked a classic national play, performance, theatrical form, or theatre space in order to engage with conceptions of and questions around the nation, nationalism, and national identity in the contemporary moment, opening up new ways of thinking about or problematizing questions around the nation and national identity. Chapters ask how productions engage with a particular moment in the national psyche in the context of internationalism and globalization, for example, as well as how productions explore the interconnectivity of nations, intercultural agendas, or cosmopolitanism. They also explore questions relating to the presence of migrants, exiles, or refugees, and the legacy of colonial histories and post-colonial subjectivities. The volume highlights how theatre and performance has the ability to contest and unsettle ideas of the nation and national identity through the use of various sites, stagings, and performance strategies, and how contemporary theatres have portrayed national agendas and characters at a time of intense cultural flux and repositioning."

ch4ck availability of print version
A. Designers; B. Performing Arts; C. Ballet & Dance in the Western World; D. Opera, Operetta, Music Theatre in the Western World; E. Commedia Dell'Arte; F. Masquerade, Carnival, Fancy Dress; G. Instruction; H. Reference; I. Iconography; J. Indexes

"Starting with the play’s first mainstream production in the U.S. in 1930, Emily B. Klein explores the varied iterations of Lysistrata that have graced the American stage, page, and screen since the Great Depression. These include the Federal Theatre’s 1936 Negro Repertory production, the 1955 movie musical The Second Greatest Sex and Spiderwoman Theater’s openly political Lysistrata Numbah!, as well as Douglas Carter Beane’s Broadway musical, Lysistrata Jones, and the international Lysistrata Project protests, which updated the classic in the contemporary context of the Iraq War."

"First published in 1985, The Subject of Tragedy takes the drama of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as the starting point for an analysis of the differential identities of man and woman. Catherine Belsey charts, in a range of fictional and non-fictional texts, the production in the Renaissance of a meaning for subjectivity that is identifiably modern. The subject of liberal humanism - self-determining, free origin of language, choice and action - is highlighted as the product of a specific period in which man was the subject to which woman was related."

Introduction -- Part 1: Redefinitions of ensemble Michael Boyd (Royal Shakespeare Company): A "contingent community" in a free market economy -- Gabor Tompa (Hungarian Theatre of Cluj): Between the East & the West today -- Hermann Wundrich (The Berliner Ensemble): How The Berliner Ensemble changes with time -- Yuri Butusov (guest director Satirikon Theatre): Directing as an art of composition -- Max Stafford-Clark (Out of joint): A tried & tested ensemble methodology -- Elizabeth Lecompte (The Wooster Group): "A group of people around a place" -- Lyn Gardner (The guardian newspaper): On regional theatre-making -- Part 2: Working processes Anton Adassinsky & Elena Yarovaya (Derevo): Beyond words -- Emma Rice (Kneehigh Theatre): From a community to The West End -- Joanna Holden (Northern Stage, Kneehigh, Cirque du soleil): On being an ensemble actor in the UK -- Ian Morgan (Song of the goat): An actor's journey between Wales & Wroclaw -- Dan Rothenberg (Pig Iron): "Comic figures repurposed" -- Adriano Shaplin (The Riot Group): Ensemble as a musical "intersubjective unit" -- Hanna Slattne (Tinderbox Theatre): Working together in Northern Ireland -- Alexander Kelly (Third Angel) & Chris Thorpe (Unlimited Theatre): On writing & performance in an ensemble -- Part 3: Ensemble & the audience Mike Alfreds (ex-shared experience, method & madness): Sharing the experience of imagination -- Greg Allen (The Neo-futurists): An interactive ensemble -- Phelim McDermott (Improbable): "Safe emergencies" -- Peter Eckersall (Not yet it's difficult): The dramaturgy of long-term cross-cultural collaboration -- Katarina Pejovic and Boris Bakal (Shadow casters): Ensemble as a tool of civic engagement -- David Bauwens, Alexander Devriendt, Joeri Smet (Ontroerend Goed): On courting the audience -- Richard Jordan (Richard Jordan Productions): Towards a global ensemble

"This edited collection charts the development of contemporary dance in Central and Eastern Europe since the literal and symbolic revolutions of 1989. Central Europe and the former Soviet Bloc countries were a major presence in dance - particularly theatrical dance - throughout the twentieth century. With the fragmentation of traditional structures in the final decade of the century came a range of aesthetic and ideological responses from dance practitioners. These ranged from attempts to reform classical ballet to struggles for autonomy from the state, and the nature of each was influenced by a set of contexts and circumstances particular to each country. Each contribution covers the strategies of a different country's dance practitioners, using a similar structure in order to invite comparisons. In general, they address: Historical context, showing the roots of contemporary dance forms The socio-political climates that influenced emerging companies and forms The relationships between aesthetic exploration and institutional patronage The practitioners who were central to the development of dance in each country A diagnosis of the current state of the art and how it has come about"

another online version
Contents: 1 A very good place to start: The beginning, up to the eighteenth century; 2 Early musical theatre in America, 1735-1865; 3 First stirrings, 1866-1902; 4 The turn of the century, 1900-07: A new era of great American songwriters begins; 5 The Princess and the great revues, 1907-20; 6 The Jazz Age, 1920-29: A period of great songwriters; 7 A double whammy, 1929-39: The Great Depression and talking movies threaten the Broadway musical; 8 A bright golden haze, 1939-45: The American musical comes of age; 9 The Golden Age, 1945-64: An era of great musical dramatists; 10 The search for relevancy, 1964-70; 11 New directions, 1970-82; 12 Joint ventures and mega-musicals, 1982-93: British rule; 13 The corporate musical, 1993-2001; 14 The new millennium, 2001-14

Violence and rupture : misfires of the ephemeral / Peggy Phelan -- Happening again : reinventing Allan Kaprow / Michael Ned Holte -- Voices, variations, and deviations : from the LACE archive of southern California performance art / Suzanne Lacy and Jennifer Flores Sternad -- Lost bodies : early 1970s Los Angeles performance art in art history / Amelia Jones

"In Performance Theatre and the Poetics of Failure, Sara Jane Bailes begins with Samuel Beckett and considers failure in performance as a hopeful strategy. She examines the work of internationally acclaimed UK and US experimental theatre companies Forced Entertainment, Goat Island and Elevator Repair Service, addressing accepted narratives about artistic and cultural value in contemporary theatre-making. Her discussion draws on examples where misfire, the accidental and the intentionally amateur challenge our perception of skill and virtuosity in such diverse modes of performance as slapstick and punk."

"Judith Malina and The Living Theatre have been icons of political theatre for over six decades. What few realise is that she originally studied under one of the giants of twentieth century culture, Erwin Piscator, in his Dramatic Workshop at The New School in New York. Piscator founded the Workshop after emigrating to New York, having collaborated with Brecht to create "epic theatre" in Germany. The Piscator Notebook documents Malina's intensive and idiosyncratic training at Piscator's school. Part diary, part theatrical treatise, this unique and inspiring volume combines: complete transcriptions of Malina's diaries from her time as a student at the Dramatic Workshop, as well as reproductions of various of Piscator's syllabi and teaching materials; notes on Malina's teachers, fellow students - including Marlon Brando and Tennessee Williams - and New School productions; studies of Piscator's process and influence, along with a new essay on the relationship between his teaching, Malina's work with the Living Theatre and "The Ongoing Epic"; an introduction by performance pioneer, Richard Schechner."

Introduction / Lance Gharavi -- Religious Actors. Religion, Ritual, & Performance / Ronald L. Grimes -- Spiritual Logic from Ritual Bodies / Donnalee Dox -- Embodying the Disembodied: Hesychasm, Meditation, & Michael Chekhov's higher ego / R. Andrew White -- Becoming-Lucid: Theatre & Tantra / Anthony Kubiak -- Jew Media: Performance & Technology for the 58th Century / Henry Bial -- Plain Speech Acts: Reading Quakerism with Theatre & Performance Studies / Tamara Underiner -- Dramas & Theatres. The Religious Drama of Egypt's Ali Ahmed Bakathir / Marvin Carlson -- A Transdiasporic Paradigm: the Afox? Filhos de Gandhy / Isis Costa McElroy -- The Decline of Israeli Society as a Black Mass in the Theatre of Shmuel Hasfari / Gad Kaynar -- Return to Tradition: The Symbolist Legacy to the Present-Day Arts / Daniel Gerould -- Who is Rama? / Richard Schechner -- Secularization & its Discontents. Feeling Secular / Ann Pellegrini -- About[/]Doing: Religion & Theatre in the Academy / Lance Gharavi -- Performing Coexistence with Good Faith Intolerance / John Fletcher

another online version
The Routledge Companion to Actors' Shakespeare is a window onto how today's actors contribute to the continuing life and relevance of Shakespeare's plays. The process of acting is notoriously hard to document, but this volume reaches behind famous performances to examine the actors' craft, their development and how they engage with playtexts. Each chapter relies upon privilieged access to its subject to offer an unparalleled insight into contemporary practice. This volume explores the techniques, interpretive approaches and performance styles of the following actors: Simon Russell Beale, Sinead Cusack, Judi Dench, Kate Duchene, Colm Feore, Mariah Gale, John Harrell, Greg Hicks, Rory Kinnear, Kevin Kline, Adrian Lester, Marcelo Magni, Ian McKellen, Patrice Naiambana, Vanessa Redgrave, Piotr Semak, Anthony Sher, Jonathan Slinger, Kate Valk, Harriet Walter This twin volume to The Routledge Companion to Directors' Shakespeare is an essential work for both actors and students of Shakespeare.

"Starting with the play’s first mainstream production in the U.S. in 1930, Emily B. Klein explores the varied iterations of Lysistrata that have graced the American stage, page, and screen since the Great Depression. These include the Federal Theatre’s 1936 Negro Repertory production, the 1955 movie musical The Second Greatest Sex and Spiderwoman Theater’s openly political Lysistrata Numbah!, as well as Douglas Carter Beane’s Broadway musical, Lysistrata Jones, and the international Lysistrata Project protests, which updated the classic in the contemporary context of the Iraq War."

"Shakespeare, Trauma and Contemporary Performance examines how contemporary performances of Shakespeare's texts on stage and screen engage with violent events and histories. The book attempts to account for - but not to rationalize - the ongoing and pernicious effects of various forms of violence as they have emerged in selected contemporary performances of Shakespeare's texts, especially as that violence relates to apartheid, colonization, racism, homophobia and war. Ranging from the mainstream to the fringe, key performances discussed include Gregory Doran's Titus Andronicus (1995) for Johannesburg's Market Theatre; Don C. Selwyn's New Zealand-made film, The Maori Merchant of Venice (2001); Philip Osment's appropriation of The Tempest in This Island's Mine for London's Gay Sweatshop (1988); and Nicholas Hytner's Henry V (2003) for the National Theatre in London."

Prologue: Pacing in Public; 1 Performance, Aesthetics, and Support; 2 Quality Time: Social Practice Debates in Contemporary Art; 3 High Maintenance: The Sanitation Aesthetics of Mierle Laderman Ukeles; 4 Staged Management: Theatricality and Institutional Critique; 5 Tech Support: Labor in the Global Theatres of The Builders Association and Rimini Protokoll; 6 Welfare Melancholia: The Public Works of Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset; 7 Unfederated Theatre: Paul Chan Waiting in New Orleans; Epilogue: Dependent Care

General Editor's Note, Kimball King * Introduction, Joanne Gordon * Chronology * Broadway Babies: Images of Women in the Musicals of Stephen Sondheim, Laura Hanson * Comedy Tonight!: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way tot the Forum, Lois Kivesto * Company 25 Years Later, John Olson * Nixon's America and Follies: Reappraising a Musical Theater Classic, James Fisher * The Last of Sheila: Sondheim as Master Games-Player, Douglas Braverman * On Performing Sondheim (A Little Night Music Revisited), David Craig * "More Beautiful than True" or "Never Mind the Small Disaster": The Art of Illusion in Pacific Overtures, Leonard Fleischer * Psychology, Evil and Sweeney Todd or, "Don't I Know You, Mister?", Judith Schlesinger * Sondheim: The Idealist, Mari Cronin * "Let the Pupil Show the Master" Stephen Sondheim and Oscar Hammerstein II, Andrew Milner * Portrait of the Artist: Sunday in the Park with George and "Revolutionary" Musical Drama, Edward T. Bonahue, Jr. * Assassins and the Concept Musical, Scott Miller * Passion: Not Just Another Simple Love Story, Gary Konas * Revisiting Greece: the Sondheim Chorus, Barbara Means Fraser

1. Marina Abramovic: Interview 2. Laurie Anderson: The Speed of Change 3. Adolph Appiah: Actor, Space, Light, Painting 4. Antonin Artaud: Theatre of Cruelty 5. Bobby Baker: Performance Artists Bobby Baker 6. Rustom Bharucha 7. Eugenio Barba: Words or Presence 8. Pina Bausch: Not How People Move but What Moves Them 9. Julian Beck: Acting Exercises 10. Samuel Beckett: Quad 11.Walter Benjamin: What is Epic Theatre? 12. Augusto Boal: Theatre as Discourse 13. Bertolt Brecht: Short Description of a New Technique in Acting Which Produces an Alienation Effect 14. Peter Brook: The Deadly Theatre 15. Trisha Brown: Trisha Brown: An Interview 16. John Cage: Four Statements on the Dance 17. Edward Gordon Craig: The Actor and the Uber-Marionette 18. Merce Cuningham: You Have to Love Dancing To Stick To It 19. Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker: Interview with David Hughes 20. Isadora Duncan: The Dancer of the Future 21. tim Etchells: On Performance Writing 22. Hanns Eisler 23. Richard Foreman: How To Write a Play 24. Karen Finley: Interview with Andrea Juno 25. George Maciunas: Expanded Arts Diagram 26. Roselee Goldberg: Performance Art from Futurism to the Present 27. Martha Graham: Graham 1987 28. Guillermo Gómez-Peña: The Art of Camoflauge 29. Philip Glass 30. Matthew Goulish: The Creature from the Black Lagoon 31. Jerzy Grotowski: Statement of Principles 32. Tatsumi Hijikata: Man, Once Dead, Crawl Back! 33. Alfred Jarry: On the Futility of the 'Theatrical' in Theatre 34. Tadeusz Kantor: The Theatre of Death: A Manifesto 35. Wasily Kandinsky: On Stage Composition 36. Allan Kaprow: Assemblages, Environments and Happenings 37. Elizabeth LeCompte: Interview 38. Robert Lepage: Robert Lepage in Conversation 39. F.T. Marinetto: The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism 40. Meredith Monk: Process Notes on Atlas 41. Vsevolod Meyerhold: First Attempts at a Stylised Theatre 42. Ariane Mnouchkine: Building up the Muscle of the Imagination 43. Heiner Müller: 19 Answers by Heiner Müller 44. Lloyd Newson: Interview with Jo Butterworth 45. Erwin Piscator: Epic Satire 46. Hans-Thies Lehmann: Prologue from Postdramatic Theatre 47. Yvonne Rainer: A Quasi Survery of Some 'Minimalist' Tendencies in the Quantatively Minimal Dance Activity Midst the Plethora, or an Analysis of Trio A 48. Hans Richter: How did Dada Begin? 49. Richard Shechner: The Five Avant Gardes...or None? 50. Carolee Schneeman: Meat Joy 51. Oskar Schlemmer: Man and Art Figure 52. Wole Soyinka: Theatre in African Traditional Cultures: Survival Patterns 53. Konstantin Stanislavski: Intonation and Pauses 54. Gertrude Stein: Look at Me Now Here I Am 55. Stelarc: Interview with Nicholas Zurbrugg 56 Bill Viola: The Visionary Landscape of Perception 57. Robert Wilson: Interview A Chronology of Texts A Bibliography of Performance

"In Exercises for Rebel Artists, Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Roberto Sifuentes use their extensive teaching and performance experience with La Pocha Nostra to help students and practitioners to create 'border art'. Designed to take readers right into the heart of radical performance, the authors use a series of crucial practical exercises, honed in workshops worldwide, to help create challenging theatre which transcends the boundaries of nation, gender, and racial identity."

another online version
Contents: 1 A very good place to start: The beginning, up to the eighteenth century; 2 Early musical theatre in America, 1735-1865; 3 First stirrings, 1866-1902; 4 The turn of the century, 1900-07: A new era of great American songwriters begins; 5 The Princess and the great revues, 1907-20; 6 The Jazz Age, 1920-29: A period of great songwriters; 7 A double whammy, 1929-39: The Great Depression and talking movies threaten the Broadway musical; 8 A bright golden haze, 1939-45: The American musical comes of age; 9 The Golden Age, 1945-64: An era of great musical dramatists; 10 The search for relevancy, 1964-70; 11 New directions, 1970-82; 12 Joint ventures and mega-musicals, 1982-93: British rule; 13 The corporate musical, 1993-2001; 14 The new millennium, 2001-14

"Herbert Blau founded, with Jules Irving, the legendary Actor's Workshop of San Francisco, in 1952, starting with ten people in a loft above a judo academy. Over the course of the next 13 years and its hundred or so productions, it introduced American audiences to plays by Brecht, Beckett, Pinter, Genet, Arden, Fornes, and various unknown others. Most of the productions were accompanied by a stunningly concise and often provocative programme note by Blau. These documents now comprise, within their compelling perspective, a critique of the modern theatre. They vividly reveal what these now canonical works could mean, first time round, and in the context of 1950s and 60s American culture, in the shadow of the Cold War."

General Editor's Note, Kimball King * Introduction, Joanne Gordon * Chronology * Broadway Babies: Images of Women in the Musicals of Stephen Sondheim, Laura Hanson * Comedy Tonight!: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way tot the Forum, Lois Kivesto * Company 25 Years Later, John Olson * Nixon's America and Follies: Reappraising a Musical Theater Classic, James Fisher * The Last of Sheila: Sondheim as Master Games-Player, Douglas Braverman * On Performing Sondheim (A Little Night Music Revisited), David Craig * "More Beautiful than True" or "Never Mind the Small Disaster": The Art of Illusion in Pacific Overtures, Leonard Fleischer * Psychology, Evil and Sweeney Todd or, "Don't I Know You, Mister?", Judith Schlesinger * Sondheim: The Idealist, Mari Cronin * "Let the Pupil Show the Master" Stephen Sondheim and Oscar Hammerstein II, Andrew Milner * Portrait of the Artist: Sunday in the Park with George and "Revolutionary" Musical Drama, Edward T. Bonahue, Jr. * Assassins and the Concept Musical, Scott Miller * Passion: Not Just Another Simple Love Story, Gary Konas * Revisiting Greece: the Sondheim Chorus, Barbara Means Fraser

"This collection of interviews offers unprecedented insight into the plays and creative works of Suzan-Lori Parks, as well as being an important commentary on contemporary theater and playwriting, from jazz and opera to politics and cultural memory. " Suzan-Lori Parks in Person" contains 18 interviews, some previously untranscribed or specially undertaken for this book, plus commentaries on her work by major directors and critics, including Liz Diamond, Richard Foreman, Bonnie Metzgar and Beth Schachter. These contributions combine to honor the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in drama, and explore her ideas about theater, history, race, and gender. "

another online version
1. Ariane Mnouchkine: activism, formalism, cosmopolitanism - Brian Singleton 2. Patrice Chéreau: staging the European crisis - David Fancy 3. Lev Dodin: the director and cultural memory - Peter Lichtenfels 4. Silviu Purcărete: contemporising classics -Aleksandar Sasha Dundjerovic 5. Frank Castorf and the Volksbühne: Berlin’s theatre of deconstruction - Marvin Carlson 6. Daniel Mesguich: ‘unsummarisable’ mises en scene - Jim Carmody 7. Declan Donnellan and Cheek by Jowl: ‘to protect the acting’ - Aleks Sierz 8. Piotr Borowski and Poland’s Studium Teatralne, Poland: where process becomes performance - Paul Allain 9. Christoph Marthaler: the musicality, theatricality and politics of postdramatic direction - David Barnett 10. Jan Lauwers: performance realities — memory, history, death - Janelle Reinelt 11. Simon McBurney: shifting under/soaring over the boundaries of Europe - Steve Knapper 12. Romeo Castellucci: the director on this earth - Alan Read 13. Kristian Frédric: boxing with the ‘gods’ - Judith G. Miller 14. Calixto Bieito: staging excess in, across and through Europe - Maria M. Delgado 15. Rodrigo García and La Carniceria Teatro: from the collective to the director - Lourdes Orozco 16. Katie Mitchell: learning from Europe - Dan Rebellato 17. Thomas Ostermeier: mission neo(n)realism and a theatre of actors and authors - Peter Boenisch Postscripts 18. Thomas Ostermeier: on Europe, theatre, communication and exchange - James Woodall 19. Peter Sellars: identity, culture and the politics of theatre in Europe - Maria M. Delgado 20. The director’s new tasks - Patrice Pavis

another online version
Contents: 1 Where did mise en scene come from? Origins and theory; 2 On the frontiers of mise en scene; 3 The difference between mise en scene and performance; 4 Tendencies in French scenography; 5 The mise en jeu of contemporary texts; 6 The intercultural trap: rituality and mise en scene in the video art of Guillermo Gomez-Pena; 7 Theatre in another culture: a Korean example; 8 Media on the stage; 9 The deconstruction of postmodern mise en scene; 10 Physical theatre and the dramaturgy of the actor; 11 The splendour and the misery of interpreting the classics; 12 Staging calamity: mise en scene and performance at Avignon 2005; 13 Conclusions: Where is mise en scene going?

"Off Nevsky Prospekt is the first study to be published in English of the exceptionally rich and diverse theatre studio movement which has flourished in St Petersburg during the 1980s and '90s. Professor Markova charts the development of the theatre studios - from their beginnings as a reaction to the repressive atmosphere of the Soviet period and through the "theatre bacchanalia" of the Perestroika years. She then surveys today's vibrant scene, with analyses of key productions and interviews with many of the central figures, and describes how theatre studios have subverted the conventions of the past to create a new dialogue with the changing society from which their audience is drawn."

"The Venetian Origins of the Commedia dell'Arte is a striking new enquiry into the late-Renaissance stirrings of professional secular comedy in Venice, and their connection to the development of what came to be known as the Commedia dell'Arte. The book contends that through a symbiotic collaboration between patrician amateurs and plebeian professionals, innovative forms of comedy developed in the Venice region, fusing 'high' and 'low' culture in a provocative mix that had a truly mass appeal. Rich with anecdotes, images, and literary - often ribald - comic passages, Peter Jordan's central argument has important implications for the study of Venetian art, popular theatre and European cultural history

"One of the original members of Jerzy Grotowski's acting company, Zygmunt Molik'sVoice and Body Work explores the unique development of voice and body exercises throughout his career in actor training. This book, constructed from conversations between Molik and author Giuliano Campo, provides a fascinating insight into the methodology of this practitioner and teacher, and focuses on his 'Body Alphabet' system for actors, allowing them to combine both voice and body in their preparatory process."

"Feminist Theaters in the USA is a fresh, informative portrait of a key era in feminist and theater history It is vital reading for feminist students, theater historians and theater practitioners. Their continued movement forward will be challenged and enriched by this timely look back at the trials and accomplishments of their predecessors. Canning interviews over thirty women who took part in the dynamic feminist theater of the 1970s and 1980s. They provide first-hand accounts of the excitement, struggles and innovations which formed their experience. From this foundation Cannning constructs a compelling combination of historical survey, critique and celebration which explores: * The history of the groups and their formation * The politics which shaped their work * Their methods and creative processes * The productions they brought to the stage * The reception from critics and audiences"

"Starting with the play’s first mainstream production in the U.S. in 1930, Emily B. Klein explores the varied iterations of Lysistrata that have graced the American stage, page, and screen since the Great Depression. These include the Federal Theatre’s 1936 Negro Repertory production, the 1955 movie musical The Second Greatest Sex and Spiderwoman Theater’s openly political Lysistrata Numbah!, as well as Douglas Carter Beane’s Broadway musical, Lysistrata Jones, and the international Lysistrata Project protests, which updated the classic in the contemporary context of the Iraq War."