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      • Trusted Partner
        Theatre studies
        September 2012

        Trauma-Tragedy

        Symptoms of contemporary performance

        by Patrick Duggan

        Trauma-tragedy investigates the extent to which performance can represent the 'unrepresentable' of trauma. Throughout, there is a focus on how such representations might be achieved and if they could help us to understand trauma on personal and social levels. In a world increasingly preoccupied with and exposed to traumas, this volume considers what performance offers as a means of commentary that other cultural products do not. The book's clear and coherent navigation of complex relation between performance and trauma and its analysis of key practitioners and performances (from Sarah Kane to Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, Harold Pinter to Forced Entertainment, and Phillip Pullman to Franco B) make it accessible and useful to students of performance and trauma studies, yet rigorous and incisive for scholars and specialists. Duggan explores ideas around the phenomenological and socio-political efficacy and impact of performance in relation to trauma. Ultimately, the book advances a new performance theory or mode, 'trauma-tragedy', that suggests much contemporary performance can generate the sensation of being present in trauma through its structural embodiment in performance, or 'presence-in-trauma effects'.

      • Trusted Partner
        Theatre studies
        July 2013

        Treading the bawds

        Actresses and playwrights on the Late Stuart stage

        by Gilli Bush-Bailey

        Drawing on feminist cultural materialist theories and historiographies, 'Treading the bawds' analyses the collaboration between actresses Elizabeth Barry and Anne Bracegirdle and women playwrights such as Aphra Behn and Mary Pix, and traces a line of influence from the time of the first theatres royal to the rebellion that resulted in the creation of a player's co-operative. Bush-Bailey offers a fresh approach to the history of women, seeing their neglected plays in the context of performance. By combining detailed analysis of selected plays within the broader context of a playhouse managed by its leading actresses, Bush-Bailey challenges the received historical and literary canons, including a radical solution to the mysterious identity of the anonymous playwright 'Ariadne'. It is a story of female collaboration and influence with the spotlight focused on the very public world of women in the commercial business of theatre.

      • Trusted Partner
        Theatre studies
        July 2013

        Treading the bawds

        Actresses and playwrights on the Late Stuart stage

        by Gilli Bush-Bailey

      • Trusted Partner
        Theatre studies
        July 2012

        Treading the bawds

        Actresses and playwrights on the Late Stuart stage

        by Gilli Bush-Bailey

        Drawing on feminist cultural materialist theories and historiographies, 'Treading the bawds' analyses the collaboration between actresses Elizabeth Barry and Anne Bracegirdle and women playwrights such as Aphra Behn and Mary Pix, and traces a line of influence from the time of the first theatres royal to the rebellion that resulted in the creation of a player's co-operative. Bush-Bailey offers a fresh approach to the history of women, seeing their neglected plays in the context of performance. By combining detailed analysis of selected plays within the broader context of a playhouse managed by its leading actresses, Bush-Bailey challenges the received historical and literary canons, including a radical solution to the mysterious identity of the anonymous playwright 'Ariadne'. It is a story of female collaboration and influence with the spotlight focused on the very public world of women in the commercial business of theatre.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2017

        The hurt(ful) body

        Performing and beholding pain, 1600–1800

        by Tomas Macsotay, Cornelis van der Haven, Karel Vanhaesebrouck

        This book offers a cross-disciplinary approach to pain and suffering in the early modern period, based on research in the fields of literary studies, art history, theatre studies, cultural history and the study of emotions. The volume's two-fold approach to the hurt body, defining 'hurt' from the perspectives of both victim and beholder - as well as their combined creation of a gaze - is unique. It establishes a double perspective about the riddle of 'cruel' viewing by tracking the shifting cultural meanings of victims' bodies, and confronting them to the values of audiences, religious and popular institutional settings and practices of punishment. It encompasses both the victim's presence as an image or performed event of pain and the conundrum of the look - the transmitted 'pain' experienced by the watching audience.

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        March 2017

        Performance art in Eastern Europe since 1960

        by Amy Bryzgel, Marsha Meskimmon

        This volume presents the first comprehensive academic study of the history and development of performance art in the former communist countries of Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe since the 1960s. Covering 21 countries and more than 250 artists, this text demonstrates the manner in which performance art in the region developed concurrently with the genre in the West, highlighting the unique contributions of Eastern European artists. The discussions are based on primary source material-interviews with the artists themselves. It offers a comparative study of the genre of performance art in countries and cities across the region, examining the manner in which artists addressed issues such as the body, gender, politics and identity, and institutional critique.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        January 2017

        After '89

        Polish theatre and the political

        by Bryce Lease, Maria M. Delgado, Maggie B. Gale

        After '89 takes as its subject the dynamic new range of performance practices that have been developed since the demise of communism in the flourishing theatrical landscape of Poland. After 1989, the theatre has retained its historical role as the crucial space for debating and interrogating cultural and political identities. Providing access to scholarship and criticism not readily accessible to an English-speaking readership, this study surveys the rebirth of the theatre as a site of public intervention and social criticism since the establishment of democracy and the proliferation of theatre makers that have flaunted cultural commonplaces and begged new questions of Polish culture. Lease argues that the most significant change in performance practice after 1989 has been from opposition to the state to a more pluralistic practice that engages with marginalised identities purposefully left out of the rhetoric of freedom and independence.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        November 2017

        As You Like It

        by Jim Bulman, Robert Shaughnessy

        This book examines the modern performance history of one of Shakespeare's best-loved and most enduring comedies, and one that has given opportunities for generations of theatre-makers and theatre-goers to explore the pleasures of pastoral, gender masquerade and sexual ambiguity. Powered by Shakespeare's greatest female comic role, the play invites us into a deeply English woodland that has also been richly imagined as a space of dreams. The study retrieves the untold stories of stage productions in Britain, France and Germany, which include Royal Shakespeare Company productions starring Vanessa Redgrave, Eileen Atkins and Juliet Stevenson, the ground-breaking all-male productions at the National Theatre in 1967 and by Cheek by Jowl in 1992, and the versions directed by Jacques Copeau in Paris in 1934, and by Peter Stein in Berlin in 1977. It also addresses the four major screen versions of the play, ranging from Paul Czinner's 1936 film to Kenneth Branagh's seventy years later.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        November 2017

        As You Like It

        by Jim Bulman, Robert Shaughnessy

        This book examines the modern performance history of one of Shakespeare's best-loved and most enduring comedies, and one that has given opportunities for generations of theatre-makers and theatre-goers to explore the pleasures of pastoral, gender masquerade and sexual ambiguity. Powered by Shakespeare's greatest female comic role, the play invites us into a deeply English woodland that has also been richly imagined as a space of dreams. The study retrieves the untold stories of stage productions in Britain, France and Germany, which include Royal Shakespeare Company productions starring Vanessa Redgrave, Eileen Atkins and Juliet Stevenson, the ground-breaking all-male productions at the National Theatre in 1967 and by Cheek by Jowl in 1992, and the versions directed by Jacques Copeau in Paris in 1934, and by Peter Stein in Berlin in 1977. It also addresses the four major screen versions of the play, ranging from Paul Czinner's 1936 film to Kenneth Branagh's seventy years later.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        November 2017

        As You Like It

        by Jim Bulman, Robert Shaughnessy

        This book examines the modern performance history of one of Shakespeare's best-loved and most enduring comedies, and one that has given opportunities for generations of theatre-makers and theatre-goers to explore the pleasures of pastoral, gender masquerade and sexual ambiguity. Powered by Shakespeare's greatest female comic role, the play invites us into a deeply English woodland that has also been richly imagined as a space of dreams. The study retrieves the untold stories of stage productions in Britain, France and Germany, which include Royal Shakespeare Company productions starring Vanessa Redgrave, Eileen Atkins and Juliet Stevenson, the ground-breaking all-male productions at the National Theatre in 1967 and by Cheek by Jowl in 1992, and the versions directed by Jacques Copeau in Paris in 1934, and by Peter Stein in Berlin in 1977. It also addresses the four major screen versions of the play, ranging from Paul Czinner's 1936 film to Kenneth Branagh's seventy years later.

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        September 2017

        Directing scenes and senses

        The thinking of Regie

        by Peter Boenisch, Maria M. Delgado, Maggie B. Gale, Peter Lichtenfels

        As European theatre directors become a familiar presence on international stages and a new generation of theatre makers absorbs their impulses, this study develops fresh perspectives on Regie, the Continental European tradition of staging playtexts. Leaving behind unhelpful clichés that pit, above all, the director against the playwright, Peter M. Boenisch stages playful encounters between Continental theatre and Continental philosophy. The contemporary Regie work of Thomas Ostermeier, Frank Castorf, Ivo van Hove, Guy Cassiers, tg STAN, and others, here meets the works of Friedrich Schiller and Leopold Jessner, Hegelian speculative dialectics, and the critical philosophy of Jacques Rancière and Slavoj Zizek in order to explore the thinking of Regie - how to think Regie, and how Regie thinks.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        March 2017

        Acts of supremacy

        by Richard Cave, Brendan Gregory, Michael Pickering, J. Bratton

        At the height of the British Empire's fortunes, the stage represented the most influential form of popular entertainment. Acts of supremacy looks at the way in which this medium was utilised to mould popular concepts of empire and nationhood and the authors convey the significance of all levels of entertainment in shaping English identity and perception of other ethnic groups. The authors go beyond the traditional interpretation of politicians' blatant inculcation of patriotic fervour through plays and jingoistic songs. Additionally, they reveal the complex cultural negotiations that gave ordinary people a sense of their part in the imperial structure. Focusing upon minstrel shows, melodramas, comic routines and songs, the book shows that the public were encouraged to identify themselves with and to internalise the qualities required for empire builders and natural leaders. It concludes that the average British man, whatever his class or country, could come to think of himself as a member of a superior race fit to rule the world. Only Irish drama of the period significantly challenged this pattern. Acts of supremacy should be of interest to students of drama and cultural history as well as social and political historians.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        October 2017

        Extending ecocriticism

        Crisis, collaboration and challenges in the environmental humanities

        by Peter Barry, William Welstead

        This volume of essays explores the scope for a further extension of ecocriticism across the environmental humanities. Contributors, who include both established academics and early career researchers in the humanities, were given free rein to interpret the brief. The collection is unusual in that it considers collaboration between individuals both in the same discipline and across creative disciplines. Subjects include familiar environments close to home and those such as Iceland and Antarctica, where narratives of climate, geology and ecology provide a stark backdrop to creative output. A further innovation is the inclusion of essays on public art, natural heritage interpretation and the visualisation and aesthetic impact of wind farms. The book will be of interest to writers, artists, students and researchers in the environmental humanities and those with a general interest in the cultural response to the environment.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        October 2017

        Extending ecocriticism

        Crisis, collaboration and challenges in the environmental humanities

        by Peter Barry, William Welstead

        This volume of essays explores the scope for a further extension of ecocriticism across the environmental humanities. Contributors, who include both established academics and early career researchers in the humanities, were given free rein to interpret the brief. The collection is unusual in that it considers collaboration between individuals both in the same discipline and across creative disciplines. Subjects include familiar environments close to home and those such as Iceland and Antarctica, where narratives of climate, geology and ecology provide a stark backdrop to creative output. A further innovation is the inclusion of essays on public art, natural heritage interpretation and the visualisation and aesthetic impact of wind farms. The book will be of interest to writers, artists, students and researchers in the environmental humanities and those with a general interest in the cultural response to the environment.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        October 2017

        Extending ecocriticism

        Crisis, collaboration and challenges in the environmental humanities

        by Peter Barry, William Welstead

        This volume of essays explores the scope for a further extension of ecocriticism across the environmental humanities. Contributors, who include both established academics and early career researchers in the humanities, were given free rein to interpret the brief. The collection is unusual in that it considers collaboration between individuals both in the same discipline and across creative disciplines. Subjects include familiar environments close to home and those such as Iceland and Antarctica, where narratives of climate, geology and ecology provide a stark backdrop to creative output. A further innovation is the inclusion of essays on public art, natural heritage interpretation and the visualisation and aesthetic impact of wind farms. The book will be of interest to writers, artists, students and researchers in the environmental humanities and those with a general interest in the cultural response to the environment.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2017

        The hurt(ful) body

        Performing and beholding pain, 1600–1800

        by Tomas Macsotay, Cornelis van der Haven, Karel Vanhaesebrouck

        This book offers a cross-disciplinary approach to pain and suffering in the early modern period, based on research in the fields of literary studies, art history, theatre studies, cultural history and the study of emotions. The volume's two-fold approach to the hurt body, defining 'hurt' from the perspectives of both victim and beholder - as well as their combined creation of a gaze - is unique. It establishes a double perspective about the riddle of 'cruel' viewing by tracking the shifting cultural meanings of victims' bodies, and confronting them to the values of audiences, religious and popular institutional settings and practices of punishment. It encompasses both the victim's presence as an image or performed event of pain and the conundrum of the look - the transmitted 'pain' experienced by the watching audience.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2017

        The hurt(ful) body

        Performing and beholding pain, 1600–1800

        by Tomas Macsotay, Cornelis van der Haven, Karel Vanhaesebrouck

        This book offers a cross-disciplinary approach to pain and suffering in the early modern period, based on research in the fields of literary studies, art history, theatre studies, cultural history and the study of emotions. The volume's two-fold approach to the hurt body, defining 'hurt' from the perspectives of both victim and beholder - as well as their combined creation of a gaze - is unique. It establishes a double perspective about the riddle of 'cruel' viewing by tracking the shifting cultural meanings of victims' bodies, and confronting them to the values of audiences, religious and popular institutional settings and practices of punishment. It encompasses both the victim's presence as an image or performed event of pain and the conundrum of the look - the transmitted 'pain' experienced by the watching audience.

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