Text and Performance in Contemporary British Theatre

Text and Performance in Contemporary British Theatre

Author: Catherine Love

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-02-27

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 1000839788

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Text and Performance in Contemporary British Theatre interrogates the paradoxical nature of theatre texts, which have been understood both as separate literary objects in their own right and as material for performance. Drawing on analysis of contemporary practitioners who are working creatively with text, the book re-examines the relationship between text and performance within the specific context of British theatre. The chapters discuss a wide range of theatre-makers creating work in the UK from the 1990s onwards, from playwrights like Tim Crouch and Jasmine Lee-Jones to companies including Action Hero and RashDash. In doing so, the book addresses issues such as theatrical authorship, artistic intention, and the apparent incompleteness of plays as both written and performed phenomena. Text and Performance in Contemporary British Theatre also explores the implications of changing technologies of page and stage, analysing the impact of recent developments in theatre-making, editing, and publishing on the status of the theatre text. Written for scholars, students, and practitioners alike, Text and Performance in Contemporary British Theatre provides an original perspective on one of the most enduring problems to occupy theatre practice and scholarship.


Madness in Contemporary British Theatre

Madness in Contemporary British Theatre

Author: Jon Venn

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-08-30

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 3030797821

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This book considers the representation of madness in contemporary British theatre, examining the rich relationship between performance and mental health, and questioning how theatre can potentially challenge dominant understandings of mental health. Carefully, it suggests what it means to represent madness in theatre, and the avenues through which such representations can become radical, whereby theatre can act as a site of resistance. Engaging with the heterogeneity of madness, each chapter covers different attributes and logics, including: the constitution and institutional structures of the contemporary asylum; the cultural idioms behind hallucination; the means by which suicide is apprehended and approached; how testimony of the mad person is interpreted and encountered. As a study that interrogates a wide range of British theatre across the past 30 years, and includes a theoretical interrogation of the politics of madness, this is a crucial work for any student or researcher, across disciplines, considering the politics of madness and its relationship to performance.


After Brecht

After Brecht

Author: Janelle G. Reinelt

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 9780472084081

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How contemporary British political theater has evolved and expanded from the legacy of Bertolt Brecht


Affects in 21st-Century British Theatre

Affects in 21st-Century British Theatre

Author: Mireia Aragay

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-04-09

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 3030584860

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This book explores the various manifestations of affects in British theatre of the 21st century. The introduction gives a concise survey of existing and emerging theoretical and research trends and argues in favour of a capacious understanding of affects that mediates between more autonomous and more social approaches. The twelve chapters in the collection investigate major works in Britain by playwrights and theatre makers including Mojisola Adebayo, Mike Bartlett, Alice Birch, Caryl Churchill, Tim Crouch and Andy Smith, Rachel De-lahay, Reginald Edmund, James Fritz, David Greig, Idris Goodwin, Zinnie Harris, Kieran Hurley, Lucy Kirkwood, Anders Lustgarten, Yolanda Mercy, Anthony Neilson, Lucy Prebble, Sh!t Theatre, Penelope Skinner, Stef Smith, Kae Tempest and debbie tucker green. The interpretations identify significant areas of tension as they relate affects to the fields of cognition, politics and hope. In this, the chapters uncover interrelations of thought, intention and empathy; they reveal the nexus between identities, institutions and ideology; and, finally, they explore how theatre can accomplish the transition from a sense of crisis to utopian visions.


British Pantomime Performance

British Pantomime Performance

Author: Millie Taylor

Publisher: Intellect Books

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13:

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"This original anlaysis of contemporary British pantomime addresses the question of how pantomime creates a unique interactive relationship with, and potentially transformative experience for, its audiences." --book cover.


The Community Performance Reader

The Community Performance Reader

Author: Petra Kuppers

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-07-24

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 1000155366

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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.


Contemporary British Queer Performance

Contemporary British Queer Performance

Author: S. Greer

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-02-02

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 1137027339

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This book examines queer performance in Britain since the early 1990s, arguing for the significance of emerging collaborative modes of practice. Using queer theory and the history of early lesbian and gay theatre to examine claims to representation among other things, it interrogates the relationships through which recent works have been presented.


Metamodernism in Contemporary British Theatre

Metamodernism in Contemporary British Theatre

Author: Tom Drayton

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2024-10-03

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1350286443

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Postmodern theatre is dead. A new theatre is rising – one that combines the well-worn postmodern aesthetics of irony, detachment, and deconstruction with a paradoxical interest in authenticity, engagement, and re-construction. Whilst recent scholarship has treated these evolving interests as unrelated shifts in performance aesthetics, this volume proposes a new understanding: that these are part of a wider emerging cultural paradigm – metamodernism. Metamodernism in Contemporary British Theatre is the first book to focus on metamodernism and performance, offering a pioneering framework by which to identify and understand metamodern theatre. By drawing critical links between the works of performance theorists such as Anne Bogart and Andy Lavender and the metamodern as defined by Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker, this book makes a clear, vital, and urgent case for the use of the term metamodernism within mainstream theatre scholarship. Focussing on small-scale theatre companies across the UK – including Poltergeist, YESYESNONO, Middle Child and The Gramophones, many of whom have not been documented in academia before – this book also provides a unique analysis of the theatre made by British millennials, a generation who have been distinctly affected by specific structures of contemporary precarity coinciding with this wider cultural shift. Through this, Metamodernism in Contemporary British Theatre makes a crucial contribution towards understanding emergent developments in post-millennial theatre practice across Britain and beyond.


Reverberations Across Small-scale British Theatre

Reverberations Across Small-scale British Theatre

Author: Patrick Duggan

Publisher: Intellect (UK)

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781783202973

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Between 1960 and 2010, a new generation of British avant-garde theater companies, directors, designers, and performers emerged. Some of these companies and individuals have endured to become part of theater history while others have disappeared from the scene, mutated into new forms, or become part of the establishment. Reverberations across Small-Scale British Theatre at long last puts these small-scale British theater companies and personalities in the scholarly spotlight. By questioning what "Britishness" meant in relation to the small-scale work of these practitioners, contributors articulate how it is reflected in the goals, manifestos, and aesthetics of these companies.


Innovation in Five Acts

Innovation in Five Acts

Author: Caridad Svich

Publisher: Theatre Communications Group

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 1559365110

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An inspirational sourcebook of innovative techniques for creating theatre, with contributions from experienced playwrights, directors, performers, teachers, dramaturgs, artistic directors and founders. Editor Caridad Svich has gathered forty-one essays from admired theatre professionals in response to a call to write about 'artistic innovation'. Each of them shares the creative challenges and triumphs of developing original works for today's stages. 'With intelligence, thoughtfulness, rigor and wit, author after author offer their considered take on the subject, unlocking new perspectives, unearthing old ones, and in general, doing what artists do best when they are walking on ground they trust and among colleagues who are not sitting before them in continual and sometimes stultifying judgment--and that is, open our eyes, hearts and minds again.' Caridad Svich, from the Introduction Contributors include: Ayad Akhtar; Deborah Asiimwe; Elaine Avila; Arthur Bartow; Gary D. Beckman; John Biguenet; Daniel Brunet; Leila Buck; Maddy Costa; Dominic D'Andrea; Pedro de Senna; Julie Felise Dubiner; Daniel Gallant; Michael John Garces; Anne Garcia-Romero; Jim Hart; David Herskovits; Rachel Jendrzejewski; John Jesurun; Mariana Carreno King; Zac Kline; Aaron Landsman; E.M. Lewis; Catherine Love; Oliver Mayer; Jeff McMahon; Emily Mendelsohn; John Moletress; Kali Quinn; Katie Pearl; Jeremy Pickard; Duska Radosavljevic; Ian Rowlands; Lisa Schlesinger; Howard Shalwitz; August Schulenburg; Mark Schultz; Andy Smith; Octavio Solis; Saviana Stanescu; Caridad Svich; Chris Wells; Heather Woodbury; Stephen Wrentmore