A new edition of the celebrated introduction to dramaturgy training and practiceSince its release in 2010, Ghost Light: An Introductory Handbook for Dramaturgy has become the international standard for dramaturgy training and practice. The first textbook introduced students to the “ghost light” model of dramaturgy—a creatively engaged, artistically vibrant approach that draws on extensive knowledge of theatre history, practice, and theory—and this second e...

Monsters are fragmentary, uncertain, frightening creatures. What happens when they enter the realm of the theatre?The Monster in Theatre History explores the cultural genealogies of monsters as they appear in the recorded history of Western theatre. From the Ancient Greeks to the most cutting-edge new media, Michael Chemers focuses on a series of ‘key’ monsters, including Frankenstein’s creature, werewolves, ghosts, and vampires, to reconsider what monsters in performance might mea...

Staging Monstrous Bodies: Questioning Normative Orders brings together global perspectives from leading and emerging scholars to explore the intersections of monster studies and performances studies.Divided into three parts, the volume explores the connection between monstrosity and performance, such as representations of violence, gender and sexuality contexts, disability studies perspectives, anti-racism and post-colonial issues, and monstrosity as an artistic practice a...

Monstrous Utopias examines how monsters in performance, theatre, media, and literature reflect and subvert societal understandings.This book considers the ethical and hopeful work of monsters and examines ways in which playwrights, theatre and performance artists, film artists, drag artists, dancers, cultural practitioners, and activists have engaged the monster to reflect the ongoing fears (including racist, sexist, homophobic, and others) of our society and how those mon...

The long-awaited follow-up to Garland-Thomson's field-defining book Freakery, Freak Inheritance illuminates the convergence of the freak show era with the eugenics era, explicating the cultural work of the freak show as a compelling range of performances of cultural and social Others that emerge as eugenic targets from the late 19th century into the 20th century and beyond. This book explores the wildly popular performances that told compelling stories about categories of...

Monsters in Performance boasts an impressive range of contemporary essays that delve into topical themes such as race, gender, and disability, to explore what constitutes monstrosity within the performing arts.These fascinating essays from leading and emerging scholars explore representation in performance, specifically concerning themselves with attempts at social disqualification of "undesirables." Throughout, the writers employ the concept of "monstrosity" to describe t...

Bringing together international perspectives on the figure of the “monster” in performance, this edited collection builds on discussions in the fields of posthumanism, bioethics, and performance studies. The collection aims to redefine “monstrosity” to describe the cultural processes by which certain identities or bodies are configured to be threateningly deviant, whether by race, gender, sexuality, nationality, immigration status, or physical or psychological extraordinariness.The...

Collecting together Fin del Mundo, Valley of the Heart, and Adíos Mamá Carlota, this book compiles the latest plays of Luis Valdez and explores how they stand to be considered masterpieces by the man who brought the world Zoot Suit and La Bamba.Luis Valdez has been described as the “last of the great American playwrights,” referring to a Golden Age of U.S. playwriting that began with Eugene O’Neill and included Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, ...

The Theatre of Luis Valdez focuses on the life and work of American playwright and director Luis Valdez, probably best known for his landmark 1979 play Zoot Suit – the first play by a Latinx playwright to appear on Broadway – and founder of El Teatro Campesino, the oldest surviving community theatre in the United States.Built around first-hand discussions of Valdez’s work, this collection gives an in-depth understanding of where ‘the godfather of Chicano theatre’ ...

Working theatrically with technologySystemic Dramaturgy offers an invigorating, practical look at the daunting cultural problems of the digital age as they relate to performance. Authors Michael Mark Chemers and Mike Sell reject the incompatibility of theatre with robots, digital media, or video games. Instead, they argue that technology is the original problem of theatre: How can we tell this story and move this audience with these tools? And if we have d...

Theatre of the Sphere is Luis Valdez’s exploration of the principles that underlie his innovations as a playwright, teacher, and theatrical innovator. He discusses the unique aesthetic, more than five decades in the making, that defines the work of his group El Teatro Campesino—from shows staged on the backs of flatbed trucks by the participants in the Delano Grape Strike of the 1960s to international megahits like Zoot Suit.Opening with a history of El Teatro Cam...

In today's art world many strange, even shocking, things qualify as art. In this book, Cynthia Freeland explains why innovation and controversy are valued in the arts, weaving together philosophy and art theory with many fascinating examples. She discusses blood, beauty, culture, money, museums, sex, and politics, clarifying contemporary and historical accounts of the nature, function, and interpretation of the arts. Freeland also propels us into the future by surveying cutting-edge web si...