Theater--theory/text/performance

After Brecht: British Epic Theater is the first book to fully explore contemporary British drama in the light of the influence of German playwright Bertolt Brecht. Focusing on the work of Howard Brenton, Edward Bond, Caryl Churchill, David Hare, Trevor Griffiths, and John McGrath, the book examines Brechtian techniques and style within the work of each playwright, while highlighting the divergent development of each. The book has been enriched by the author's in-depth conversations with the playwrights. The topics covered include contemporary politics and the theater, the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and such well-known fringe companies as Foco Novo, Joint Stock, Portable Theatre, and 7:84. Reinelt examines each playwright within an interpretive frame drawn from an application of Brecht's theories and practice to the historically specific situation of post-war British theater. The book will appeal to those interested in the relationship between politics and art and contemporary European theater and its antecedents.

The performances of Luis Valdez's El Teatro Campesino, the farmworkers' theater, and Amiri Baraka's Black Revolutionary Theater (BRT) during the '60s and '70s offer preeminent examples of social protest theater during a momentous and tumultuous historical juncture. In Taking It to the Streets, Harry Elam compares the performance methodologies, theories, and practices of the two groups, highlighting their cross-cultural commonalities and providing insights into the complex genre of social protest performance and its interchange with its audience. He examines the ways in which ritual can be seen to operate within the productions of El Teatro and the BRT, uniting audience and performers in subversive, celebratory protest by transforming spectators into active participants within the theater walls - and into revolutionary activists outside.

"Using examples from theatrical cultures and performances around the world and from classical times to the contemporary, The Haunted Stage explores the ways in which theatre reuses material, both physical and narrative, and how this process relates to theatrical reception. Any regular theatregoer is familiar with the effect of a performance calling to mind the actor's previous performances in earlier productions. Sometimes this reinforces the impression the production is seeking to give, and other times it distracts, but the ghost in the memory of the spectator in either case crucially informs the process of reception."--BOOK JACKET.

"Almost without exception, studies of the avant-garde take for granted the premise that the influential experimental practices associated with the avant-garde began primarily as a European phenomenon that in turn spread around the world. These ten original essays, especially commissioned for Not the Other Avant-Garde, forge a radically new conception of the avant-garde by demonstrating the many ways in which the first--and second--wave avant-gardes were always already a transnational phenomenon, an amalgam of often contradictory performance traditions and practices developed in various cultural locations around the world, including Africa, the Middle East, Mexico, Argentina, India, and Japan. Essays from leading scholars and critics--including Marvin Carlson, Sudipto Chatterjee, John Conteh-Morgan, Peter Eckersall, Harry J. Elam Jr., Joachim Fiebach, David G. Goodman, Jean Graham-Jones, Hannah Higgins, and Adam Versenyi--suggest collectively that the very concept of the avant-garde is possible only if conceptualized beyond the limitations of Eurocentric paradigms. Not the Other Avant-Garde is groundbreaking in both avant-garde studies and performance studies and will be a valuable contribution to the fields of theater studies, modernist studies, art history, literature, and music history."--Publisher's website.

Critical Theory and Performance presents a broad range of critical and theoretical methods and applies them to contemporary and historical performance genres—from stage plays, dance-dramas, performance art, cabaret, stand-up comedy, and jazz to circus, street theater, and shamanistic ritual. As the first comprehensive introduction to critical theory’s rich and diverse contributions to the study of drama, theater, and performance, the book has been highly influential for more than a decade in providing fertile ground for academic investigations in the lively field of performance studies. This updated and expanded edition presents nineteen new essays by the field’s leading scholars and practitioners as well as new critical introductions by editors Janelle G. Reinelt and Joseph R. Roach. Reflecting recent trends in performance studies, this revised edition now includes discussions of critical race theory, postcolonial studies, gender and sexualities, and mediatized cultures. The resulting volume is a unique and indispensable tool for critics, teachers, and students that paves the way for future scholarship.

"This groundbreaking new study considers Samuel Beckett as a "profoundly visual" writer whose work reflects a preoccupation with the visual as creative model. While much as been written on Beckett's fiction and drama, almost nothing has appeared on his writings on art, on his preferences in painting, and on his many indirect collaborations with painters. Yet Beckett's thinking on art had everything to do with his aims as a creative writer.". "Broadly interdisciplinary, The Painted Word sheds light on Beckett's references to and exploration of the visual arts in his creative work and on the dramatic and fictive compositional strategies he shared with a number of artists. The book will appeal to scholars familiar with Beckett's work and to those interested in the dynamics of word and image interconnections."--BOOK JACKET.