The International Contest of Contemporary Drama (ICCD) was set up by Belarus Free Theatre to encourage new writing and to promote Belarusian cultural identity on an international stage with the participation of artists across Europe. The contest will be held underground in Belarus, hidden from the authorities, and simultaneously in London, and means that Belarusian playwrights, who remain isolated in their own country because of the state policy on internet censorship and media control, and are banned from performing can be recognized for their work internationally, and have the opportunity to show their work free from state oppression. This publication is dedicated to promoting the works of the winning playwrights. This collection contains: Herman, Franz and Gregor by Julia Tupikina DIPROSOPUS: A Story in Two Faces by Lyudmila Zaytseva ONYX by Maxim Dosko Same Thing BY OLGA PRUSAK The Time Wardrobe or The New Adventures of D’Artagnan by Yuri Leonidovich Harin The Women and the Sniper by Tatiana Kitsenko
The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre and Migration provides a wide survey of theatre and performance practices related to the experience of global movements, both in historical and contemporary contexts. Given the largest number of people ever (over one hundred million) suffering from forced displacement today, much of the book centres around the topic of refuge and exile and the role of theatre in addressing these issues. The book is structured in six sections, the first of which is dedicated to the major theoretical concepts related to the field of theatre and migration including exile, refuge, displacement, asylum seeking, colonialism, human rights, globalization, and nomadism. The subsequent sections are devoted to several dozen case studies across various geographies and time periods that highlight, describe and analyse different theatre practices related to migration. The volume serves as a prestigious reference work to help theatre practitioners, students, scholars, and educators navigate the complex field of theatre and migration.
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.
'[The book] shows that nationalist topoi inevitably have anti-transnational implications. [...] Vlad Strukov and Lara Ryazanova-Clarke look at Russian media ecology from the outside - from Latvia and the United Kingdom media ecology. Strukov's contribution conversely elaborates [...] the Russo-national centricity of the international media outlet of the Riga news portal Meduza, which he calls "transnational Russo-centrism".' Dirk Uffelmann, Zeitschrift für Slavische Philologie
Presenting a rigorous critical investigation of the reinvigoration of the political in contemporary British theatre, Ecologies of Precarity in Twenty-First Century Theatre provides a fresh understanding of how theatre has engaged with precarity, affect, risk, intimacy, care and relationality in recent times. The study makes a compelling case for reading precarity as a 'sticky' theatrical trope which carries the potential to re-animate our understanding of identity politics and responsibility for the lives of Others in an age of uncertainty. Approaching precarity as an ecology cutting across various practices, themes and aesthetics, the book features a comprehensive selection of theatre examples staged in the UK since the 1990s. Works by debbie tucker green, Alistair McDowall, Complicite, Simon Stephens, Stan's Cafe, Mike Bartlett, Caryl Churchill, The Paper Birds, and Belarus Free Theatre are put in dialogue with interdisciplinary feminist vocabularies developed by Judith Butler, Sara Ahmed, Lauren Berlant and Isabell Lorey. In focusing on areas such as children and youth at risk, human rights, environmental ethics and the politics of debt, the study makes a vital contribution to the burgeoning field of politics and theatre in the 21st century.
How and why does the stage, and those who perform upon it, play such a significant role in the social makeup of modern Russia, Ukraine and Belarus? In New Drama in Russian, Julie Curtis brings together an international team of leading scholars and practitioners to tackle this complex question. New Drama, which draws heavily on techniques of documentary and verbatim writing, is a key means of protest in the Russian-speaking world; since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, theatres, dramatists, and critics have collaborated in using the genre as a lens through which to explore a wide range of topics from human rights and state oppression to sexuality and racism. Yet surprisingly little has been written on this important theatrical movement. New Drama in Russian rectifies this. Through providing analytical surveys of this outspoken transnational genre alongside case-studies of plays and interviews with playwrights, this volume sheds much-needed light on the key issues of performance, politics, and protest in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Meticulously researched and elegantly argued, this book will be of immense value to scholars of Russian cultural history and post-Soviet literary studies.
From the makers of 2018 hit Queens of Sheba comes this powerful new play by Ryan Calais Cameron, following the events over one typical night out that is turned upside down by racism and police brutality. Typical uncovers the man and the humanity behind a real-life story: a Black ex-serviceman who spent his life fighting for his country and ends up fighting for his life in police custody.
VIE Festival inaugurated in 2005 as an attempt to experience contemporary times, discover new identities and individuals in the world of live performance. It is an annual event held in the month of October in some cities of Emilia Romagna Region. Organizer and founder is ERT Fondazione Teatro Nazionale based in Modena with the financial support of Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena. The project issued from the successful experience of Le vie dei festival which, during the decade 1994/2004, has welcomed in Modena from the mid October to the mid December, some of the most interesting protagonists of Italian and international summer festivals. Among them, Carmelo Bene, Thierry Salmon, Lev Dodin, Peter Brook, Maguy Marin, Joseph Chaikin, Philip Glass, Robert Wilson and Peter Stein are worth mentioning. VIE Festival focuses on contemporary creations, offering the responsibility of identifying, of searching for the power of new forces, of finding the artists able to explore the spaces where stage arts get into contact, of discovering the expressive possibilities of interaction between theatre, dance, music, cinema and visual arts. The concept of contemporary is immediately connected to complexity, something moving rapidly in its indeterminateness. Artistic research acts vertically, digging in depth. It does not indicate solutions, it rather raises some doubts. It is inclined to the “uncertain”. Mutual fecundation is a fertile space, a space for always new, original and surprising mixes. The research for new languages always originates from an urgent reflection on the contemporary world, from the need for new contents. The Festival will present a wide range of artists who will find themselves faced with a plurality of spaces, in the aim of showing different levels work, poetry and looks stimulating curiosity and urgencies, including the less codified ones. The number of languages will involve different audiences, in order to overcome the common prejudice, which sees the contemporary as a synonym for unintelligible and exclusive. The Festival also stands out as a place for production or co-production of original works that will be created specifically to access the international network later. In addition to the shows, VIE offers a well-structured program of collateral activities involving the community in readings, debates, meetings, video-installations and conferences.
Sarah Kane was one of the landmark playwrights of 1990s Britain, her influence being felt across UK and European theatre. This is the first book to focus exclusively on Kane's unique approach to mind and mental health. It offers an important re-evaluation of her oeuvre, revealing the relationship between theatre and mind which lies at the heart of her theatrical project. Drawing on performance theory, psychoanalysis and neuroscience, this book argues that Kane's innovations generate a 'dramaturgy of psychic life', which re-shapes the encounter between stage and audience. It uses previously unseen archival material and contemporary productions to uncover the mechanics of this innovative theatre practice. Through a radically open-ended approach to dramaturgy, Kane's works offer urgent insights into mental suffering that take us beyond traditional discourses of empathy and mental health and into a profound rethinking of theatre as a mode of thought. As such, her theatre can help us to understand debates about mental suffering today.
