This volume offers the first comprehensive analysis of the work of East German theatre director Fritz Bennewitz in India between 1970 and 1994. Joerg Esleben has gathered together many of Bennewitz’ own writings, most published for the first time, in which he reflects on his production of plays by Bertolt Brecht, Shakespeare, Goethe, Chekhov, and Volker Braun. By translating these writings into English, the editors have provided unprecedented access to Bennewitz’ thinking about intercultur...

Fritz Bennewitz (1926-1995) was the director-in-chief of East Germany's Weimar National Theatre. Extraordinary in his capacity for cultural and linguistic adjustment, he directed productions in twelve countries, always adapting shows to make them meaningful to local audiences. Notably, Bennewitz conducted stagings of Goethe's Faust in four different languages over a series of seven productions — three in pre-unification Weimar, one in the reunited Germany, and one each in New York...

Contemplative landscape and contemplative space are familiar terms in the areas of design, landscape architecture and architecture. Krinke and her highly regarded contributors set out to explore definitions, theories, and case studies of contemplative landscapes. The contributors, Marc Treib, John Beardsley, Michael Singer, Lance Neckar, Heinrich Hermann and Rebecca Krinke have spent their careers researching, critiquing, and making landscapes. Here they investigate the role of contemplati...

A new simplified edition translated by Don Sanderson. The original three-volume work, first published in 1979, has been revised specially as a single volume paperback which concentrates on the development of Japanese literature.

Can contemporary art say anything about spirituality? John Updike calls modern art "a religion assembled from the fragments of our daily life," but does that mean that contemporary art is spiritual? What might it mean to say that the art you make expresses your spiritual belief?On the Strange Place of Religion in Contemporary Art explores the curious disconnection between spirituality and current art. This book will enable you to walk into a museum and talk about the spiri...

Diana Dimitrova studies the representation of gender and religion in Hindi drama from its beginnings in the second half of the nineteenth century until the 1960s - the period when urban proscenium Hindi theatre, which originated under Western influence, matured and thrived. Her focus is on how different religious and mythological models pertaining to women have been reworked in Hindi drama and whether the seven representative dramatists discussed in this book present conservative or libera...

This acclaimed volume is the first to provide a comprehensive overview of Jerzy Grotowski's long and multi-faceted career. It is essential reading for anyone interested in Grotowski's life and work. Edited by the two leading experts on Grotowski, the sourcebook features: *essays from the key performance theorists who worked with Grotowski, including Eugenio Barba, Peter Brook, Jan Kott, Eric Bentley, Harold Clurman, and Charles Marowitz *writings which trace every phase of Grotowski's care...

Happiness "is neither a privilege of the few, nor a fleeting state of mind: it is hidden behind a door that every person can open once they have found it, at the end of an arduous journey of self-discovery."The two Nobel Prize-winning writers Rabindranath Tagore and Hermann Hesse are arguably very different: one comes to us from the core of Indian culture, the other from the very heart of Old Europe; the former is an eternal wanderer, the latter a determined armchair traveller. Stil...

What is a good film? How does a screenplay relate to literature? Why is film censorship futile? Are film societies necessary? Does Bengali cinema still huddle under Satyajit Ray’s umbrella? Is the golden age of Indian cinema still to come? These are some of the questions raised and considered in this collection of essays by an author who draws upon his wide experience as a critic as well as a maker of films to talk about them.The book is divided into three sections. The first dwells on variou...

This book deals with one of the most important sources of the Stanislavsky System - Yoga, its practice and philosophy. Sergei Tcherkasski carefully collects records on Yoga in Stanislavsky's writings from different periods and discusses hidden references which are not explained by Stanislavsky himself due to the censorship in his day. Vivid examples of Yoga based training from the rehearsal practice of the Moscow Art Theatre and many of Stanislavsky's studios (the First Studio in 1910s, th...

A collection of texts by Eugenio Barba reconstructing the history of his relationships with the Asian classical theatres. Interweaving stories of journeys, meetings, anecdotes, reflections and technical descriptions, the author exposes the phases and changes in a passion that covers the fifty years of his professional trajectory. Little known or unpublished texts are included together with widely diffused articles which have become classics. The result is a book which examines in detail an...

In this passionate and controversial work, director and critic Rustom Bharucha presents the first major critique of intercultural theatre from a 'Third World' perspective.Bharucha questions the assumptions underlying the theatrical visions of some of the twentieth century's most prominent theatre practitioners and theorists, including Antonin Artaud, Jerzsy Grotowski, and Peter Brook. He contends that Indian theatre has been grossly mythologised and taken out of context by Western d...