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164 results in Drama and Theatre: general interest

Page 1 of 9

The Archives and Afterlives of Nautch Dancers in India
  • Prarthana Purkayastha
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    September 2025
    Print publication:
    30 September 2025
  • In a time of colonial subjugation, subaltern, illicit and courtesan dancers in India radically disturbed racist, casteist and patriarchal regimes of thought. The criminalized 'nautch' dancer, vilified by both British colonialism and Indian nationalism, appears in this book across multiple locations, materials and timelines: from colonial human exhibits in London to open-air concerts in Kolkata, from heritage Bengali bazaar art to cheap matchbox labels and frayed scrapbooks, and from the late nineteenth century to our world today. Combining historiography and archival research, close reading of dancing bodies in visual culture, analysis of gestures absent and present, and performative writing, Prarthana Purkayastha brings to light rare materials on nautch women, real and fictional outlawed dancers, courtesans and sex-workers from India. Simultaneously, she decolonises existing ontologies of dance and performance as disappearance and advocates for the restless remains of nautch in animating urgent debates on race, caste, gender and sexuality today.

The Cambridge Companion to Modernist Theatre

María Irene Fornés In Context
  • Edited by Brian Eugenio Herrera, Anne García-Romero
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    July 2025
    Print publication:
    31 July 2025
  • María Irene Fornés is both one of the most influential and one of the least well-known US theatermakers of the late twentieth century, with former students including leading US playwrights, directors and scholars. This is the first major scholarly collection to elucidate Fornés' rich life, work, and legacy. Providing concise and wide-ranging contributions from notable scholars, practitioners and advocates drawn from the academic and artistic communities most informed and inspired by her work, this engaging volume provides diverse points of entry to specialists and students alike.

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Stage Directors
  • Edited by Maria M. Delgado, Simon Williams
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    May 2025
    Print publication:
    31 May 2025
  • With a broader range of entries than any other reference book on stage directors, this Encyclopaedia showcases the extraordinary diversity of theatre as a national and international artistic medium. Since the mid nineteenth century, stage directors have been simultaneously acclaimed as prime artists of the theatre and vilified as impediments to effective performance. Their role may be contentious but they continue to exert powerful influence over how contemporary theatre is made and engaged with. Each of the entries – numbering over 1,000 – summarises a stage director's career and comments on the distinctive characteristics of their work, alluding to broader traditions where relevant. With an introduction discussing the evolution of the director's role across the globe and bibliographic references guiding further reading, this volume will be an invaluable reference work for stage directors, actors, designers, choreographers, researchers, and students of theatre seeking to better understand how directors work across different cultural traditions.

The Edinburgh Companion to Modernism in Contemporary Theatre
  • Edited by Adrian Curtin, Nicholas Johnson, Naomi Paxton, Claire Warden
  • Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    14 March 2025
    Print publication:
    01 June 2023
  • Instead of treating modernism principally as a thing of the past, this volume highlights modernism as an impulse that can be carried forward to the present, re-embodied and re-encountered in theatrical performance. It demonstrates how modernist impulses spark contemporary theatre in electric and dynamic ways, continuing the modernist imperative to 'make it new' and to engage meaningfully with the complicated situation of living in the contemporary world. Through a diverse set of contributions from scholars and theatre practitioners, this book examines the legacy of modernism on the world stage in acts of remembrance, restaging, transmission and slippage. It investigates both well-known and less familiar aspects of modernist theatre history, engaging topics such as the revival of the first Black American musical, feminist and disability-led reinterpretations of canonical modernist plays, the use of modernist-inspired performance practice in contemporary university arts education and the continually contested meaning and importance of the avant-garde.

Performative Opacity in the Work of Isabelle Huppert
  • Edited by Iggy Cortez, Ian Fleishman
  • Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    06 March 2025
    Print publication:
    19 May 2023
  • Performative Opacity in the Work of Isabelle Huppert argues that the career of this singular French actor - constituting a corpus of well over a hundred films - offers a unique testing ground for current approaches in film studies and affect studies.

    Attention to Huppert's performances can reframe recent discussions on the social and cultural dimensions of emotion and normativity through a compelling paradox: her roles tend to express grandiose and overwhelming conditions central to debates in the humanities - negativity, dispossession, trauma - but through elusive and at times resistant or diminutive forms of expression: what J. Hoberman once called her 'genius to distinguish 47 varieties of blankness'. Including diverse contributions from an international line-up of established scholars, this volume examines Huppert's flat affect and other registers with an eye to their significance for cinema and media studies, queer and gender studies, star studies and world cinema.

Ricardo Darín and the Construction of Latin American Film Stardom
  • Clara Garavelli
  • Published by:
    Edinburgh University Press
    Published online:
    28 February 2025
    Print publication:
    30 September 2023
  • This monograph examines the figure of Ricardo Darín, the leading actor that drives Argentine cinema's box office success. It aims to fill a lacuna both in Hispanic and Anglophone academia regarding the study of how Ricardo Darín's rise to stardom took place, and what that stardom means for the Latin American film industry. Accordingly, it examines whether or not Ricardo Darín embodies the epitome of the contemporary Latin American or Hispanic star, and, importantly, whether or not the characteristics of the Hollywood star system are actually applicable in the case of Argentine cinema - where the dividing lines between so-called 'industrial' and 'independent' cinemas are very difficult to discern. Thus, whilst taking the study of this key figure from contemporary Argentine cinema as its focal point, this study will also facilitate an opening up towards broader but equally vital questions that continue to require full examination: How are Argentine, Latin American and Hispanic stars constructed? Does the leading actor of contemporary Argentine cinema embody a wider social group and historical moment in the region? Is his performative approach redefining a particular cinematic style?

Staging Asia
  • The Dutch East India Company and the Amsterdam Theatre
  • Manjusha Kuruppath
  • Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    04 January 2025
    Print publication:
    01 October 2017
  • In the early modern Dutch Republic, three playwrights wrote dramas based on political revolutions that were occurring at that same time in Asia. Reflecting on this remarkable phenomenon, Staging Asia traces the transmission of the stories surrounding the seventeenth-century Asian events and their ultimate appearance in Europe as Dutch dramas. Manjusha Kuruppath explores the nature of the representation of the Orient in these works and evaluates how this characterization was influenced by the channels, including some connected to the Dutch East India Company, that the dramatists relied on to gather information for their plays.

Contemporary Performance Translation
  • Challenges and Opportunities for the Global Stage
  • Jean Graham-Jones
  • Published online:
    19 December 2024
    Print publication:
    12 December 2024
  • Radically rethinking translation for the contemporary international stage, Jean Graham-Jones interrogates standard linguistic and cultural categories and proposes an overhaul of the translation process itself, incorporating dramaturgical logic and staging, actor training and performance styles, gesture and embodiment, and performance aesthetics and reception. She demonstrates how a theory of translationality – in which translations do not erase the original but rather stand in relation to it and to other texts and performances – encapsulates the collaborative process between contemporary translators and theatre artists. Presenting multiple experiential cases and drawing on Graham-Jones's own career as a translator, actor, director and scholar working in Argentina, the US, and the UK, this richly interdisciplinary work extends a traditional understanding of contemporary performance translation and its potential in theatrical practice.

Encounters in Theatre and Liberature
  • B. S. Johnson and Zenkasi
  • Katarzyna Biela
  • Published by:
    Jagiellonian University Press
    Published online:
    18 December 2024
    Print publication:
    30 November 2023
  • In his essay-manifesto of 1999, Zenon Fajfer defined liberature - a literary genre encompassing works whose authors intentionally design the shape of the book, so that it matches their textual message. Extending beyond the growing literary research on liberature, this book presents the theatrical contexts of the genre. Grounded in original archival research, it discusses the theatre practice of Zenon Fajfer and Katarzyna Bazarnik (Zenkasi), as well as the post-war British avant-garde author, B. S. Johnson, whom they see as a liberatic author avant la lettre. Tracking the connections between their work in different media, the monograph considers how their theatrical experience may be related to the invention of unconventional aesthetic solutions in literature.

Belarusian Theatre and the 2020 Pro-Democracy Protests
  • Documenting the Resistance
  • Valleri J. Robinson
  • Published by:
    Anthem Press
    Published online:
    18 December 2024
    Print publication:
    02 April 2024
  • This book highlights the important creative work of Belarusian theatre and filmmakers seeking to raise awareness of the Pro-democracy movement and human rights abuses in Belarus and to build communities of care and mourning following the fraudulent 2020 presidential elections in Belarus. Examining the work of the Belarus Free Theatre, Andrei Kureichik, and the Kupalautsy Theatre, it demonstrates how documentary theatre, adaptation, and digital theatre have enabled displaced, dissident artists to form international communities to support Belarusian dissidents in these fraught times.

Film Stardom in South East Asia

The Year that Made the Musical
  • 1924 and the Glamour of Musical Theatre
  • William A. Everett
  • Published online:
    26 September 2024
    Print publication:
    11 July 2024
  • Whether they appeared on Broadway or the Strand, the shows appearing in 1924 epitomized the glamor of popular musical theatre. What made this particular year so distinctive – so special – was the way it brought together the old and the new, the venerated and the innovative, and the traditional and the chic. William Everett, in his compelling new book, reveals this remarkable mid-Roaring Twenties stagecraft to have been truly transnational, with a stellar cast of producers, performers and creators boldly experimenting worldwide. Revues, musical comedies, zarzuelas and operettas formed part of a thriving theatrical ecosystem, with many works – and their leading artists – now unpredictably defying genres. The author demonstrates how fresh approaches became highly successful, with established leads like Marie Tempest and Fred Stone appearing in new productions even as youthful talents such as Florence Mills, Fred and Adele Astaire, Gertrude Lawrence and George Gershwin now started to make their mark.

Democracy, Theatre and Performance
  • From the Greeks to Gandhi
  • David Wiles
  • Published online:
    17 May 2024
    Print publication:
    27 June 2024
  • Democracy, argues David Wiles, is actually a form of theatre. In making his case, the author deftly investigates orators at the foundational moments of ancient and modern democracy, demonstrating how their performative skills were used to try to create a better world. People often complain about demagogues, or wish that politicians might be more sincere. But to do good, politicians (paradoxically) must be hypocrites - or actors. Moving from Athens to Indian independence via three great revolutions – in Puritan England, republican France and liberal America – the book opens up larger questions about the nature of democracy. When in the classical past Plato condemned rhetoric, the only alternative he could offer was authoritarianism. Wiles' bold historical study has profound implications for our present: calls for personal authenticity, he suggests, are not an effective way to counter the rise of populism.

Oxoniensia
  • Volume 88
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    15 May 2024
  • A refereed journal dealing with the archaeology, history and architecture of Oxford and Oxfordshire.

The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre since 1945
  • Edited by Jen Harvie, Dan Rebellato
  • Published online:
    14 March 2024
    Print publication:
    21 March 2024
  • British theatre underwent a vast transformation and expansion in the decades after World War II. This Companion explores the historical, political, and social contexts and conditions that not only allowed it to expand but, crucially, shaped it. Resisting a critical tendency to focus on plays alone, the collection expands understanding of British theatre by illuminating contexts such as funding, unionisation, devolution, immigration, and changes to legislation. Divided into four parts, it guides readers through changing attitudes to theatre-making (acting, directing, writing), theatre sectors (West End, subsidised, Fringe), theatre communities (audiences, Black theatre, queer theatre), and theatre's relationship to the state (government, infrastructure, nationhood). Supplemented by a valuable Chronology and Guide to Further Reading, it presents up-to-date approaches informed by critical race theory, queer studies, audience studies, and archival research to demonstrate important new ways of conceptualising post-war British theatre's history, practices and potential futures.

American Horror Story and Cult Television
  • Narratives, Histories and Discourses
  • Edited by Richard J. Hand, Mark O'Thomas
  • Published by:
    Anthem Press
    Published online:
    01 March 2024
    Print publication:
    14 November 2023
  • Over the course of ten seasons since 2011, the television series American Horror Story (AHS), created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, has continued to push the boundaries of the televisual form in new and exciting ways. Emerging in a context which has seen a boom in popularity for horror series on television, AHS has distinguished itself from its 'rivals' such as The Walking Dead, Bates Motel or Penny Dreadful through its diverse strategies and storylines, which have seen it explore archetypal narratives of horror culture as well as engage with real historical events. Utilising a repertory company model for its casting, the show has challenged issues around contemporary politics, heteronormativity, violence on the screen and disability, to name but a few. This new collection of essays approaches the AHS anthology series from a variety of critical perspectives within the broader field of television studies and its transections with other disciplines.

Dramatic Movement of African American Women
  • The Intersections of Race, Gender and Class
  • Yuvraj Nimbaji Herode
  • Published by:
    Anthem Press
    Published online:
    28 February 2024
    Print publication:
    11 July 2023
  • The book demonstrates the experiences of Alice Childress, Lorraine Hansberry, and Suzan-Lori Parks in comparison with the dramas of each other and those of other African American women. These women playwrights created a militant theatre and a theatre of experience that applied to both the African American community in general and African and African American women in particular. They have been encompassed within African American woman's aesthetics that shares the militancy and experience characterized by a triple factor: race, gender, and class.

The Brecht Yearbook / Das Brecht-Jahrbuch 48
  • Edited by Markus Wessendorf
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    22 February 2024
    Print publication:
    14 November 2023
  • The Brecht Yearbook 48 is the central scholarly forum for discussion of the life and work of Bertolt Brecht and of aspects of theater and literature that were of particular interest to him

Late Medieval Lodging Ranges
  • The Architecture of Identity, Power and Space
  • Sarah Kerr
  • Published by:
    Boydell & Brewer
    Published online:
    21 February 2024
    Print publication:
    03 October 2023
  • This book draws on architectural and archaeological analysis to consider the form, function, use and meaning of late medieval lodging ranges.

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