Theatre Books: Online Versions & Excerpts

A2 Drama and Theatre Studies: The Essential Introduction for Edexcelbuilds on the skills developed during the AS year to provide clear and informative guidance to Units 3 and 4 of the specification. The textbook provides further information on rehearsing, performing, directing and textual analysis, together with new material on deconstructing a script, devising theatre and preparing for the final examination."

"Acting Reframes presents theatre and film practitioners with a methodology for using Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) as a tool to aid their practice. Author Robert Barton uses the NLP approach to illustrate a range of innovative methods to help actors and directors, including: * reducing performance anxiety * enabling clearer communication * intensifying character analysis * stimulating imaginative rehearsal choices."

"John Arden was one of the major playwrights to have emerged during the 1950s, yet his work has arguably been misunderstood. In this book, first published in 1974, Albert Hunt s primary concern is to relate the plays written by John Arden alone, as well as those written in collaboration with Margaretta D Arcy, both to Arden s whole concept of theatre, and to his social and political attitudes."

Part I: Histories 1. "Þus for thy goode I shedde my bloode": Violence and Beauty in the Late Medieval English Biblical Cycles Leanne Groeneveld 2. Staging Beauty; or, A History of Violence: Rending the Aesthetic in Jeffrey Hatcher’s Compleat Female Stage Beauty Deneen Senasi 3. Beauty, Violence, and the East: Paradigms of Femininity in Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century British Women’s Oriental Narratives Marianna D’Ezio 4. "Hearts as innocent as hers": The Drowned Woman in Victorian Literature and Art Lynn Alexander Part II: Aesthetics 5. Violence and Beauty: Jacques Lacan’s Antigone Andrew Slade 6. "All beauty must die": The Aesthetics of Murder, from Thomas De Quincey to Nick Cave David McInnis 7. Environmentality and Air Travel Disasters: Representing the Violence of Plane Crashes Christopher Schaberg Part III: Resistance 8. Deconstructing Neoliberalism: Sledgehammering the End of History Robert Bennett 9. A Queer Craving: Muscle and the Dynamics of Beauty, Homoerotic Desire, and Sadomasochism in Japanese Gay Pink Cinema Mark DeStephano 10. Subversion of the Violent Gaze: Sins Invalid and the Aesthetics of Disabled Bodies Tara Wood 11. Coming Home from Iraq: Women Warriors and Feminine Vistas of Violence Elizabeth Bonjean

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

Introduction Five Phases of Directing a Musical: Conception, Collaboration, Rehearsal, Production, Performance What is a Musical? Conventions of the Musical Theatre How To Use This Guide The First Phase: Conception Timetable One 1. Preparing for Collaboration 2. Imagining The Chorus The Second Phase: Collaboration Timetable Two 3. Choreographic Collaboration 4. Directing the Design The Third Phase: Rehearsal Timetable Three 5. Auditions 6. Staging and Coaching The Fourth Phase: Production Timetable Four 7. Moving Into The Theatre The Final Phase: Performance Timetable Five 8. Shaping the Production 9. Opening Night and Beyond

"In this engaging cross-disciplinary study, Timothy Murray examines the artistic struggle over traumatic fantasies of race, gender, sexuality, and power. Establishing a retrospective dialogue between past and present, stage and video, Drama Trauma links the impact of trauma on recent political projects in performance and video with the specters of difference haunting Shakespeare's plays. The book provides close readings of cultural formations as diverse as Shakespearean drama, the Statue of Liberty, contemporary plays by women, African-American performance, and feminist interventions in video, performance and installation. The texts discussed include: * installations by Mary Kelly and Dawn Dedeaux, * plays by Ntozake Shange, Rochelle Owens, Adrienne Kennedy, Marsha Norman and Amiri Baraka * performances by Robbie McCauley, Jordan, Orlan, and Carmelita Tropicana * stage, film and video productions of King Lear, Othello, Romeo and Juliet and All's Well that Ends Well."

"Looking at European drama through an ecological lens, this book chronicles nature and the environment as primary topics in major plays from ancient to recent times. Cless focuses on the few, yet well-known plays in which nature is at stake in the action or the environment is a dramatic force. Though theater predominantly explores human and cultural themes, these plays fully display the power of the other-than-human world and its endangerment during the history of Europe. While offering a broad overview, the book features extensive case studies of several playwrights, plays, and eco-theater productions: Aristophanes’ The Birds, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest, and Giraudoux’s The Madwoman of Chaillot. In each case, Cless connects nature in the play to nature in the life of the playwright based on biographical research into the understanding of natural philosophy and awareness of the immediate environment that influenced the specific play."

Introduction. Chapter 1: What is Ensemble? Chapter 2: Anthropology of Ensemble Chapter 3: Leading Ensemble Chapter 4: Creating Ensemble Chapter 5: Archetypes Within Ensemble Chapter 6: Mending and Maintaining Ensemble Chapter 7: Ensemble Making: Specific Recipes. Conclusion

"Roberta Carreri is one of acclaimed theatre company Odin Teatret's longest-serving actors, and the last to be trained by Eugenio Barba himself. In this book, she relives the milestones of her professional journey, including: her first experiences of street theatre the discovery of Asian performance traditions pedagogical activities and character creation encounters with artists and spectators the inception of her solo performances, Judith and Salt Interwoven with rich photographic documentation and a wealth of biographical information, this inspiring handbook reveals the professional secrets of an Odin Teatret actor as well as the story of a life of work, research, and passion."

"This book is a guide to introducing the craft of playwriting into the secondary English curriculum at key stage 3, using the TEEP (Teacher Effectiveness Enhancement Programme) framework. The authors also provide a particular focus on applying this versatile scheme of work to other areas of the curriculum, including Citizenship and PSHE.Playwriting Across the Curriculum also contains schemes of work for: pupils with special educational needs (SEN); pupils with English as an additional language (EAL); adaptation to Adult Literacy Core Curriculum."

"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."

"Theatre in Practice provides students with all of the 'must have' Drama skills required for A-Level, International Baccalaureate, BTEC and beyond. Practical, step-by-step exercises and diagrams give access to the key figures and processes central to drama, including: Stanislavski, Brecht, Lecoq and Berkoff devising theatre rehearsing and performing monologues and duologues how to approach directing a play improvising. Each chapter offers advice for both students and teachers, with notes and follow-on exercises ideal for individual study and practice."

Contents: Introduction -- Basic firearms -- Choose your weapons! -- Acquiring props -- Backstage protocol & gun wrangling -- Looking the part -- Staging your shootout -- Shooting your shootout -- Troubleshooting -- Consequences -- Realities of modern combat -- Covering yourself (legal issues)

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"These three plays by the great comic playwright Aristophanes (c. 446-386 BCE), the well-known Lysistrata, and the less familiar Women at the Thesmophoria and Assemblywomen, are the earliest surviving portrayals of contemporary women in the European literary tradition. These plays provide a unique glimpse of women not only in their familiar domestic roles but also in relation to household and city, religion and government, war and peace, theater and festival, and, of course, to men."

"Nashe's varied output fuels efforts to reconsider print culture and the history of the book, histories of sexuality and pornography, urban culture, the changing nature of patronage, the relationship between theater and print, and evolving definitions of literary authorship and 'literature' as such."

"In this volume, the author argues that blood was, crucially, a means by which dramatists negotiated shifting contours of domesticity in 16th and 17th century England. Early modern English drama vividly addressed contemporary debates over an expanding idea of "the domestic," which encompassed the domus as well as sex, parenthood, household order, the relationship between home and state, and the connections between family honor and national identity. The author contends that the domestic ideology expressed by theatrical depictions of marriage and household order is one built on the simultaneous familiarity and violence inherent to blood."

another online version
"Carnival and Literature in Early Modern England explores the elite and popular festive materials appropriated by authors during the English Renaissance in a wide range of dramatic and non-dramatic texts. Although historical records of rural, urban, and courtly seasonal customs in early modern England exist only in fragmentary form, Jennifer Vaught traces the sustained impact of festivals and rituals on the plays and poetry of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English writers. She focuses on the diverse ways in which Shakespeare, Spenser, Marlowe, Dekker, Jonson, Milton and Herrick incorporated the carnivalesque in their works."

"Taking into account the near single-sex constitution of early modern universities, the book argues that performances of university plays, and student responses to them, were key ways of exploring and shaping early modern masculinity. Christopher Marlow shows how the plays dealt with their academic and social contexts, and analyses their responses to competing versions of masculinity. He also considers the implications of university authority and royal patronage for scholarly performances of masculinity; the effect of the literary traditions of classical friendship and platonic love on academic representations of male behaviour; and the relationship between university drama and masculine initiation rituals."

"Considering plays by Philip Massinger, Richard Brome, Ben Jonson, John Ford and James Shirley, this study addresses the political import of Caroline drama as it engages with contemporary struggles over authority between royal prerogative, common law and local custom in seventeenth-century England."

"Engaging with fiction and history-and reading both genres as texts permeated with early modern anxieties, desires, and apprehensions-this collection scrutinizes the historical intersection of early modern European superstitions and English stage literature. Contributors analyze the cultural mechanisms that shape, preserve, and transmit beliefs. They investigate where superstitions come from and how they are sustained and communicated within early modern European society. It has been proposed by scholars that once enacted on stage and thus brought into contact with the literary-dramatic perspective, belief systems that had been preserved and reinforced by historical-literary texts underwent a drastic change. By highlighting the connection between historical-literary and literary-dramatic culture, this volume tests and explores the theory that performance of superstitions opened the way to disbelief."

"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."

"Despite his significant influence as a courtier, diplomat, playwright and theatre manager, Thomas Killigrew (1612-1683) remains a comparatively elusive and neglected figure. The original essays in this interdisciplinary volume shine new light on a singular, contradictory Englishman 400 years after his birth. They increase our knowledge and deepen our understanding not only of Killigrew himself, but of seventeenth-century dramaturgy, and its complex relationship to court culture and to evolving aesthetic tastes."

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"Literary adaptation flourished throughout the eighteenth century, encouraging an interactive relationship between writers, readers, and artists when well-known works were transformed into new forms across a variety of media. Laurence Sterne offers a particularly dynamic subject: the immense interest provoked by The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman and A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy inspired an unrivalled number and range of adaptations from their initial publication onwards."

"Drawing from extensive archival research, Holzapfel conducts close readings of iconic dramas and their productions—including Scribe’s The Glass of Water, Zola’s Thérèse Raquin, Ibsen’s A Doll House, Strindberg’s The Father, and Hauptmann’s Before Sunrise—alongside analyses of artwork by major painters and photographers—such as Chardin, Nadar, Millais, Rejlander, and Liebermann. In a radical challenge to existing criticism, Holzapfel argues that realism in theatre was never the attempt to reproduce an exact copy of the seen world but rather the struggle to make visible the act of seeing."

"he premise of this volume is the idea that the melodramatic aesthetic is central to our understanding of nineteenth-century music drama, broadly defined as spoken plays with music, operas and other hybrid genres that combine music with text and/or image. This relationship is examined closely, and its evolution in the twentieth century in selected operas, musicals and films is understood as an extension of this nineteenth-century aesthetic."

"Smoothly blending performance theory, literary analysis, and historical insights, Cecilia Feilla explores the mutually dependent discourses of feeling and politics and their impact on the theatre and theatre audiences during the French Revolution. Remarkably, the most frequently performed and popular plays from 1789 to 1799 were not the political action pieces that have been the subject of much literary and historical criticism, but rather sentimental dramas and comedies, many of which originated on the stages of the Old Regime. Feilla suggests that theatre provided an important bridge from affective communities of sentimentality to active political communities of the nation, arguing that the performance of virtue on stage served to foster the passage from private emotion to public virtue and allowed groups such as women, children, and the poor who were excluded from direct political participation to imagine a new and inclusive social and political structure."

The ward of the castle / by Miss Burke -- The mysterious marriage / by Harriet Lee -- The old oak chest / by Jane Scott -- Raymond de Percy / by Margaret Harvey -- St. Clair of the Isles / by Elizabeth Polack -- The bond / by Catherine Gore -- Dacre of the South / by Catherine Gore

"Tragic Coleridge explores the tragic vision of existence that Coleridge derived from Classical drama, Shakespeare, Milton and contemporary German thought. Coleridge viewed the hardships of the Romantic period, like the catastrophes of Greek tragedy, as stages in a process of humanity's overall purification."

"Two outstanding examples of socialist-themed plays are combined in this remarkable volume. The Conspiracy of Feelings by Yurii Olesha (1899-1960) is based on his highly respected short novel Envy about the struggle between the old and new in Soviet society. The play, called The Conspiracy of Feelings, is not a simple adaptation, but an original work that reconceived the novel. The play explores the precarious position of the intelligentsia in the new collective state. The Little Theatre of The Green Goose was written by Konstanty Ildefons Galczynski (1905-53) who was one of Poland's most beloved poets. After World War II, he began work as a playwright, inventing a colorful theatre troupe of performers (animal and human) and contributing a new instalment of The Little Theatre of the Green Goose each week to Przekroj, the Cracow literary magazine. Intended for reading only, The Green Goose went unperformed in Galczynski's life and was finally staged in 1955 and gained a permanent place in the theatre and became a force for the creation of the new Polish drama that flourished in the 1960s."

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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

"Locating its key texts within the traditions of historical drama, self-reflexivity in European theatre, debates in the politics and aesthetics of postmodernism, and currents in contemporary historiography, this book provides a new critical idiom for discussing the major works of the genre and others that utilize its techniques. Feldman studies landmarks in the theatre history of postwar Britain by Weiss, Stoppard, Brenton, Wertenbaker and others, focusing on European revolutionary politics, the historiography of the World Wars and the effects of British colonialism. The playwrights under consideration all use the device of the play-within-the-play to explore constructions of nationhood and of Britishness, in particular. Those plays performed within the framing works are produced in places of exile where, Feldman argues, the marginalized negotiate the terms of national identity through performance."

"The volume offers clear discussions of Genet's plays, detailing philosophical, historical, political and aesthetic considerations, in order to render the complexity of his theatre exhilarating, rather than intimidating. These concise and accessible presentations included in the book's first half, provide a starting point from which then to explore ways in which different directors, designers and actors have approached Genet's theatre. Genet's plays have been staged many hundreds of times over the past sixty years, from Paris to Tokyo, from London to So Paulo. The book includes a spectrum of productions - over 30, from 1947 to 2007 - to illustrate the sheer range of theatrical styles that Genet's texts inspire. Reflecting not only on key plays and productions from the French playwright but on his early life and later political activism, David Bradby and Clare Finburgh provide a comprehensive account of a playwright and theorist whose plays caused rioting in his native country, and whose writing both for and beyond the theatre demonstrate a new approach to the relationships between art and life."

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"In this challenging book, first published in 1987, Michelene Wandor looks at the best-known plays in the thirty years prior to publication, from Look Back in Anger onwards. Wandor investigates the representation of the family and different forms of sexuality in these plays and re-reviews them from a perspective that throws into sharp relief the function of gender as an important determinant of plot, setting and the portrayal of character. Juxtaposing the period before 1968, when statutory censorship was still in force, with the years following its abolition, Wandor scrutinises the key plays of, among others, Osborne, Pinter, Wesker, Arden, and Delaney. Each one is analysed in terms of its social context: the influence of World War II, the testing of gender roles, the development of the Welfare State and changes in family patterns, and the impact of feminist, Left-wing and gay politics."

"Providing analyses of current negotiations of nineteenth-century texts, discourses and traumas, this volume explores the contemporary commodification and nostalgic recreation of the past. It brings together critical perspectives of experts in the fields of Victorian literature and culture, contemporary literature, and neo-Victorianism, with contributions by leading scholars in the fieldnbsp;including Rosario Arias, Cora Kaplan, Elizabeth Ho, Marie-Luise Kohlke and Sally Shuttleworth. Neo-Victorian Literature and Culture interrogates current fashions in neo-Victorianism and their ideological leanings,nbsp;the resurrection of cultural icons, and the reasons behind our relationship with and immersion in Victorian culture."

"This volume explores Salome's appropriation and reincarnation across the arts - not just Wilde's heroine, nor Richard Strauss's - but Salome as a cultural icon in fin-de-siècle society, whose appeal for ever new interpretations of the biblical story still endures today. Using Salome as a common starting point, each chapter suggests new ways in which performing bodies reveal alternative stories, narratives and perspectives and offer a range and breadth of source material and theoretical approaches."

"The three playwrights presented together in this volume On the Road to Ourselves), Elena Gremina (Behind the Mirror) and Olga Mikhailova (Russian Dream). The selected plays contain many elements which will appeal to Western directors and audiences: well-drawn characters, engaging plots, lively wit. Central to the three plays selected in this volume is a complex interaction of Russian and Western value systems, a theme that becomes increasingly relevant for Russian audiences with each passing season and no less relevant for Europeans and Americans."

Newer than new -- Peter Nichols -- David Mercer -- Charles Wood -- Edward Bond -- Tom Stoppard -- Peter Terson -- Joe Orton -- David Story -- Three farceurs: Alan Ayckbourn, David Cregan, Simon Gray -- Three social realists: John Hopkins, Alan Plater, Cecil P. Taylor -- The legacy of realism: William Corlett, Kevin Laffan, Christopher Hampton, Barry England, Anthony Shaffer, Robert Shaw, David Caute -- The dark fantastic: Peter Barnes, Colin Spencer, David Pinner, David Selbourne, David Hare, Roger Milner, David Halliwell, Howard Brenton, Heathcote Williams

"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. "

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

"Anne Bogart is an award-winning theatre maker, and a best-selling writer of books about theatre, art, and cultural politics. In this her latest collection of essays she explores the story-telling impulse, and asks how she, as a product of postmodernism, can reconnect to the primal act of making meaning and telling stories. She also asks how theatre practitioners can think of themselves not as stagers of plays but orchestrators of social interactions and participants in an on-going dialogue about the future."

"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."

August Wilson and the four B's : influences / Mark William Rocha -- Wilson and Fugard : politics and art / Joanne Gordon -- The Bb burden : the invisibility of Ma Rainey's black bottom / Eileen Crawford -- August Wilson's folk traditions / Trudier Harris -- ghosts from "down there" : the southernness of August Wilson / Patricia Gantt -- Father, son and Holy ghost : from the local to the mythical in August Wilson / Pamela jean Monaco -- Approaches to Africa : the poetics of memory and the body in two August Wilson plays / Gunilla Theander Kester -- Ma Rainey and the Boyz : gender ideology in August Wilson's Broadway canon / Kim Marra -- Developing his song : August Wilson's Fences / Joan Fishman -- Subtle imposition : the Lloyd Richards-August Wilson formula / Sandra G. Shannon -- Seven guitars : August Wilson's economy of blues / David L.G. Arnold -- Alternatives ... opposites ... convergences : an interview with Lloyd Richards / Richard Pettengill -- The historical perspective : an interview with August Wilson / Richard Pettengill

"'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."

"This vibrant anthology of radio plays features works by one of Poland's 'angry young men' playwrights. Ireneusz Iredynski made his debut in literature as a Polish 'angry young man' in the late 1950s. He moved with great versatility from verse to stage plays, film-scripts and plays for radio. While some of the plays in this collection seem to present a bleak view of life, they show a gentler side of Iredynski. Here it is people's dreams rather than their worst nightmares that are explored. In these plays, situations are kept simple and the theatrical technique is spare and economical, but yet, the playwright demonstrates an unfailing theatrical flair and shows himself a master of dramatic tension and the final unexpected twist."

"Lyric Incarnate examines the plays of Aleksandr Blok, the pre-eminent poet of Russian Symbolism and one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. Blok's plays have received less attention than his poetry in the West, and this book is the first and only English-language monograph devoted to Blok the playwright. In chronological succession, each of Blok's major plays is examined in detail. Special attention is accorded to Blok's relations with the major directors of his time, particularly Meyerhold and Stanislavsky. Blok's role, for instance, in Meyerhold's formulation of the theatre of the grotesque proved to be critical, and his relation to the Moscow Art Theatre just before the October Revolution helped to define the future course of that theatre. Blok's innovative dramatic technique is carefully studied at each stage in his career, from his earliest "lyric dramas" , such as A Puppet Show and The Stranger, to his great tragedy The Rose and the Cross."

Scott T. Cummings considers comic sketches, opera libretti and unpublished pieces, as well as her best-known plays, in order to trace the evolution of her dramaturgy from the whimsical Off-Off Broadway plays of the 1960s to the sober, meditative work of the 1990s. The book also reflects on her practice as an inspirational teacher of playwriting and the primary director of her own plays."

Introduction: Beyond the Tipping Point 1. New Playwriting Strategies: Overview and Terms Part I: Strategies of Language and Character 2. On Multivocality and Speech Genres 3. Polyvocality and the Ascendancy of the Hybrid Play 4. The Theatricality of Character 5. The Transformation of Character 6. Len Jenkin’s Dramaturgy of Character: From Stage Figures to Archetypes 7. Mac Wellman: Language-Based Character 8. Crossover Poetics: Sarah Ruhl and Suzan Lori-Parks Part II: Strategies of Structure and Form 9. Units and Building Blocks 10. Scenes, Acts, and Revisions 11. Foundations of Contemporary Monologue 12.Dialogic Monologue: Structure and Antistructure Works Consulted

"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. "

"In this volume, the author argues that blood was, crucially, a means by which dramatists negotiated shifting contours of domesticity in 16th and 17th century England. Early modern English drama vividly addressed contemporary debates over an expanding idea of "the domestic," which encompassed the domus as well as sex, parenthood, household order, the relationship between home and state, and the connections between family honor and national identity. The author contends that the domestic ideology expressed by theatrical depictions of marriage and household order is one built on the simultaneous familiarity and violence inherent to blood."

"The plays illustrate that rumour and crowd are mutually dependent; they also betray a fascination with the fact that crowd and rumour make individuality disappear. Shakespeare dramatizes these mechanisms, relating the crowd to class conflict, to rhetoric, to the theatre and to the organization of the state; and linking rumour to fear, to fame and to philosophical doubt. Paying attention to all levels of collectivity, Wiegandt emphasizes the close relationship between the crowd onstage and the Elizabethan audience. He argues that there was a significant - and sometimes precarious - metatheatrical blurring between the crowd on the stage and the crowd around the stage in performances of crowd scenes."

"Analysing six Greek tragedies - the Orestes triology, Ajax, Antigone and Philoctetes- and Hamlet, this book also contains a chapter on the Greek and the Elizabethan dramatic forms and one on religious drama."

"The guild buildings of Shakespeare's Stratford represent a rare instance of a largely unchanged set of buildings which draw together the threads of the town's civic life. With its multi-disciplinary perspectives on this remarkable group of buildings, this volume provides a comprehensive account of the religious, educational, legal, social and theatrical history of Stratford, focusing on the sixteenth century and Tudor Reformation."

"A comprehensive collection of the best writing about this Shakespearian play, both as dramatic literature and theatrical performance, this book is an excellent resource companion to the text. This collected wisdom was originally published in 1986. It contains pieces of commentary from as far back as the late 18th Century but also highly acclaimed critical pieces from more recent years, organised into six general themes."

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.

"This book will constitute an original intervention into longstanding but insistently relevant debates around the significance of notions of 'performativity' to the critical analysis of early modern drama. In particular, the book aims to: show how the investigation of performativity can enable readings of Shakespeare and Jonson that challenge the dominant methodological frameworks within which those plays have come to be read; demonstrate that the thought of performativity does not come to rest in the simplicity of method or instrumentality, and that it resists its own claim that language and action might be understood as unproblematically instrumental; demonstrate that this self-resistance occurs or takes place as a moment in the process of articulating the claims of the performative, and that this process is itself in an important sense dramatic."

"Now in its third edition Shakespeare: The Basics is an insightful and informative introduction to the work of William Shakespeare. Exploring all aspects of Shakespeare s plays including the language, cultural contexts, and modern interpretations, this text looks at how a range of plays from across the genres have been understood. Updates in this edition include: -- Ecocritical, queer, presentist and gendered discussions of Shakespeare s work -- Studies of new performances including Tennant and Tate s Much Ado About Nothing -- Critical discussions of race and politics in Othello and King Lear -- Case studies of modern film versions of Shakespeare s works -- A chronology of Shakespeare s work and contemporary events

"This volume combines two classic works on Hamlet, first published in 1919 and 1922. The first book's original description says that it contains a theory which attempts to explain an everlasting problem - it insists that Hamlet is neither a failure not an accident, but a very great work of art. In a final chapter, the play is examined as an aesthetic document. It is a profoundly interesting and not unprovocative work. The second book reviews and attempts to resolve the most interesting debate of any Shakespeare play and presents proper method for investigating the genesis of the plays in this way."

"This vibrant anthology of radio plays features works by one of Poland's 'angry young men' playwrights. Ireneusz Iredynski made his debut in literature as a Polish 'angry young man' in the late 1950s. He moved with great versatility from verse to stage plays, film-scripts and plays for radio. While some of the plays in this collection seem to present a bleak view of life, they show a gentler side of Iredynski. Here it is people's dreams rather than their worst nightmares that are explored. In these plays, situations are kept simple and the theatrical technique is spare and economical, but yet, the playwright demonstrates an unfailing theatrical flair and shows himself a master of dramatic tension and the final unexpected twist."

"Lyric Incarnate examines the plays of Aleksandr Blok, the pre-eminent poet of Russian Symbolism and one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century. Blok's plays have received less attention than his poetry in the West, and this book is the first and only English-language monograph devoted to Blok the playwright. In chronological succession, each of Blok's major plays is examined in detail. Special attention is accorded to Blok's relations with the major directors of his time, particularly Meyerhold and Stanislavsky. Blok's role, for instance, in Meyerhold's formulation of the theatre of the grotesque proved to be critical, and his relation to the Moscow Art Theatre just before the October Revolution helped to define the future course of that theatre. Blok's innovative dramatic technique is carefully studied at each stage in his career, from his earliest "lyric dramas" , such as A Puppet Show and The Stranger, to his great tragedy The Rose and the Cross."