Volume 34 of Theatre History Studies revisits the foundations of theatre, explores the boundaries and definitions of theatre, and illuminates how writing about the history of theatre is itself a form of historiography.The five essays are arranged chronologically, starting with Alan Sikes’s discussion of the Abydos Passion Play. Sikes challenges the long-held interpretation of that ritualized annual reenactment of the death, dismemberment, and return to life of Egyptian god...

In this book, Erika Fischer-Lichte traces the emergence of performance as 'an art event' in its own right. In setting performance art on an equal footing with the traditional art object, she heralds a new aesthetics.The peculiar mode of experience that a performance provokes – blurring distinctions between artist and audience, body and mind, art and life – is here framed as the breeding ground for a new way of understanding performing arts, and through them even wider social and cu...

Butch Queens Up in Pumpsexamines Ballroom culture, in which inner-city LGBT individuals dress, dance, and vogue to compete for prizes and trophies. Participants are affiliated with a house, an alternative family structure typically named after haute couture designers and providing support to this diverse community. Marlon M. Bailey’s rich first-person performance ethnography of the Ballroom scene in Detroit examines Ballroom as a queer cultural formation that upsets dominant notio...

The first comparative study on the history and practice of popular theatre in Britain and overseas. The fragmentation of social groups in the face of the global mass media has begun to threaten the survival of popular theatre companies. This study traces the development of various types of community theatre, from the '70s to the present day. Integrating a comparative history of popular theatre with the contributions of current, active popular theatre makers, this book will appeal both to t...

‘It’s all real. All of it. Everything bad is real’ - MoeAlistair McDowall’s Pomona was first staged in 2014 and won properly startling, and startled, acclaim. Its edgeland setting permits a surrealistic disengagement of linear forms of time, which is both dreamlike and wildly funny; nightmarish and ominously enveloping. The play has as its imaginative springboard a landscape which is both real and surreal. It offers an unforgettable journey into radical uncertaint...

This is the first volume to focus specifically on Rabindranath Tagore’s dramatic literature, visiting translations and adaptations of Tagore’s drama, and cross-cultural encounters in his works. As Asia’s first Nobel Laureate, Tagore’s highly original plays occupy a central position in the Indian theatrescape. Tagore experimented with dance, music, dance drama, and plays, exploring concepts of environment, education, gender and women, postcolonial encounters, romantic idealism, and universa...

The story of a railway worker's son who became one of the most powerful, outspoken and charismatic figures in European theatre. Sir Peter Hall has been director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, artistic director of Glyndebourne, and director of Britain's National Theatre from 1973 to 1988. He has directed over 150 productions of plays, operas and films, and now runs his own acclaimed theatre company.

There is Nothing Like a Dane is an affectionate compilation of mostly funny (but sometimes serious) bits and pieces about Hamlet - interwoven with Clive Francis's delectable caricatures of various members of the theatrical profession strutting their stuff.The great hall of fame is duly visited, though its inhabitants are not always as dignified as they would like to seem. Here are glimpses in word and pictures of the likes of Donald Wolfit, Kenneth Branagh, John Gielgud, He...

Carousel (1945), with music by Richard Rodgers and the book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, was their second collaboration following the surprising success of Oklahoma! (1943). They worked again with Theresa Helburn and Lawrence Langner of the Theatre Guild (producers), Rouben Mamoulian (director), and Agnes de Mille (choreographer). But with Oklahoma! still running to sell-out houses, they needed to do something quite different. Based on a play, Liliom

The Art of Governance is an essential guide for trustees in the performing arts and for the artists, managers, and community leaders who work with them. This book provides the larger context in which trustees govern—the art, artists, history, institutions, and national policies of the performing arts—and also explores more practical issues, such as board development, planning, finance, and fundraising. A wide range of distinguished artists, trustees, managers, and consultants have...

Modern Asian Theatre and Performance 1900 – 2000 is a ground-breaking survey, tracking the advent of modern drama in Japan, India, China, Korea and Southeast Asia. It considers the shaping power of realism and naturalism, the influence of Western culture, the relationship between theatrical modernisation and social modernisation, and how theatre operates in contemporary Asian society.Organised by period, nation and region, each chapter provides:·a historical overvie...

In an era defined by the threat of nuclear annihilation, Western nations attempted to prepare civilian populations for atomic attack through staged drills, evacuations, and field exercises. In Stages of Emergency the distinguished performance historian Tracy C. Davis investigates the fundamentally theatrical nature of these Cold War civil defense exercises. Asking what it meant for civilians to be rehearsing nuclear war, she provides a comparative study of the civil defense maneuv...