This is a full-length study of the renowned French theatre director Ariane Mnouchkine, and her company, the Théâtre du Soleil. Mnouchkine is recognized as one of the first women directors to achieve an international reputation and her productions, spanning from Shakespeare to contemporary drama, have been widely acclaimed as being in the forefront of twentieth-century theatre. Having worked with Mnouchkine's company in 1985, Adrian Kiernander was in a unique position to observe her directorial style and working methods. In this fascinating study, Kiernander analyses the elements which inform Mnouchkine's work as well as the input she has had on modern theatre. The book includes an interview with Mnouchkine, a chronology of her productions and theatre career, and is illustrated with photographs from productions.
Routledge Performance Practitioners is a series of introductory guides to the key theatre-makers of the last century. Each volume explains the background to and the work of one of the major influences on twentieth- and twenty-first-century performance. One of the most important directors of her generation, and one of the only women ever to have attained great director status in France, Ariane Mnouchkine's work is in revolt against declamation and text-based theatre. A utopian humanist, attracting actors from almost forty different countries to her company, Le Theatre du Soleil, Mnouchkine nurtures a passionate following. This is the first book to combine: an overview of Mnouchkine's life, work and theatrical influences an exploration of her key ideas on theatre and the creative process analysis of key productions, including 1789 and Richard II. As a first step towards critical understanding, and as an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners are unbeatable value for today's student.
Over the past thirty years Ariane Mnouchkine's 'Théâtre du Soleil' has become one of the most celebrated companies in Europe, and Mnouchkine one of its best-known directors. Collaborative Theatre is the first in-depth sourcebook in English on 'Théâtre du Soleil', providing English readers with first-hand accounts of the development of its collectivist practices and ideals. Collaborative Theatre presents critical and historical essays by theatre scholars from around the world as well as the writings of and interviews with members of le Théâtre du Soleil, past and present. Projects discussed include: 1789, L'Age d'Or, Richard II, L'Indiade and Les Atriades.
Le Théâtre du Soleil traces the company's history from a group of young, barely trained actors, directors, and designers struggling to match their political commitment to a creative strategy, to their grappling with the concerns of migration, separation and exile in the early decades of the twenty-first century. Béatrice Picon-Vallin recounts how, in the 55 years since its founding, the Théâtre du Soleil has established itself as one of the foremost names in modern theatre. Ariane Mnouchkine and her collaborators have developed a unique and ever-evolving style that combines a piercing richness of shape, color, and texture with precision choreography, innovative musical accompaniment, and multi-layered, metaphorical dreamscapes. This rich, storied history is illustrated by a wealth of spectacular rehearsal and production photos from the company's own archive and interviews with dozens of past and present members, including Mnouchkine herself. Judith G. Miller's timely translation of the first comprehensive history and analysis of a remarkable, award-winning company is a compelling read for both students and teachers of Drama and Theatre Studies.
Hélène Cixous is one of the most brilliant and radical of contemporary theorists. This is the first publication in any language of Cixous' own Notebooks, illustrating the concept of "écriture féminine" and offering new insights into Cixous' theoretical insistence on writing and her own practice as a writer. Cixous' Notebooks exemplify how writing creates unique possibilities for circumventing the mistruths that shape us as subjects and which organize our relations with the world. The Writing Notebooks opens with an introduction which outlines the central points of Cixous' notion of writing. The main body of the work is comprised of 60 photographic extracts from the Notebooks, each extract accompanied by editorial annotation and a translation into English. The book concludes with a new interview with Cixous on the value of the Notebooks, the process of writing and her own fiction. Cixous' Notebooks will be invaluable to students of literature, psychoanalysis, philosophy and feminism.
This expanded second edition of Contemporary European Theatre Directors is an ambitious and unprecedented overview of many of the key directors working in European theatre over the past 30 years. This book is a vivid account of the vast range of work undertaken in European theatre during the last three decades, situated lucidly in its artistic, cultural, and political context. Each chapter discusses a particular director, showing the influences on their work, how it has developed over time, its reception, and the complex relation it has with its social and cultural context. The volume includes directors living and working in Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Poland, Russia, Romania, the UK, Belgium, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, offering a broad and international picture of the directing landscape. Now revised and updated, Contemporary European Theatre Directors is an ideal text for both undergraduate and postgraduate directing students, as well as those researching contemporary theatre practices, providing a detailed guide to the generation of directors whose careers were forged and tempered in the changing Europe following the end of the Cold War.
In 1780, America's most successful General believed the War of Independence had lost its way. He decided to surrender his soldiers, hand over George Washington to the British and end the war. In America today, General Benedict Arnold is considered one of the most heinous men the world has ever known; in London, a plaque celebrates the house where he lived out his years in exile. Richard Nelson's haunting play presents a richly emotional portrait of a man searching for love and country, and finding only compromise and despair.
Community Performance: A Reader is the first book to provide comprehensive teaching materials for this significant part of the theatre studies curriculum. It brings together core writings and critical approaches to community performance work, presenting practices in the UK, USA, Australia and beyond. Offering a comprehensive anthology of key writings in the vibrant field of community performance, spanning dance, theatre and visual practices, this Reader uniquely combines classic writings from major theorists and practitioners such as Augusto Boal, Paolo Freire, Dwight Conquergood and Jan Cohen Cruz, with newly commissioned essays that bring the anthology right up to date with current practice. This book can be used as a stand-alone text, or together with its companion volume, Community Performance: An Introduction, to offer an accessible and classroom-friendly introduction to the field of community performance.
An inventive blend of memoir and family history that ponders those who didn’t flee their German town in time: “Powerfully reclaimed—and imagined—reality.” —The Jewish Chronicle Winner, French Voices Award for Excellence in Publication and Translation For about eighty years, the Jonas family of Osnabrück were part of a small but vibrant Jewish community in this mid-size city of Lower Saxony. After the war, Osnabrück counted not a single Jew. Most had been deported and murdered in the camps; others emigrated—if they could, and if they managed to overcome their own inertia. It is this inertia and failure to escape that Hélène Cixous seeks to account for in Osnabrück Station to Jerusalem. Vicious anti-Semitism hounded Osnabrück’s Jews long before the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933. So why did people wait to leave when the threat was so clear? Drawn from the stories told to Cixous by her mother, Ève, and grandmother, Rosalie (Rosi), this literary work reimagines fragments of Ève’s and Rosi’s stories, including the death of Ève’s uncle, Onkel André. Piecing together the story of Andreas Jonas from what she was told and from what she envisions, Cixous recounts the tragedy of the one she calls the King Lear of Osnabrück, who followed his daughter to Jerusalem only to be sent away by her, returning to Osnabrück in time to be deported to a death camp. Cixous wanders the streets of the city she’d heard about all her life, digs into its archives, meets city officials, all the while wondering if she should have come. These reflections in the present are woven with scenes from her childhood in Algeria and the half-remembered, half-invented stories of the Jonas family, making Osnabrück Station to Jerusalem one of the author’s most intensely engaging books. “An inventive literary account of Cixous’s remarkable journey to her mother’s birthplace and of the Jewish community of a German town that was wiped out in the Holocaust.” —Literary Hub, “The Best of the University Presses” This work received the French Voices Award for excellence in publication and translation. French Voices is a program created and funded by the French Embassy in the United States and FACE (French American Cultural Exchange).
