Rainbow of Desire is a handbook of exercises with a difference. It is Augusto Boal's bold and brilliant statement about the therapeutic ability of theatre to liberate individuals and change lives. Now translated into English and comprehensively updated from the French, Rainbow of Desire sets out the techniques which help us `see' for the first time the oppressions we have internalised. Boal, a Brazilian theatre director, writer and politician, has been confronting oppression in various forms for over thirty years. His belief that theatre is a means to create the future has inspired hundreds of groups all over the world to use his techniques in a multitude of settings. This, his latest work, includes such exercises as: * The Cops in the Head and their anti-bodies * The screen image * The image of the future we are afraid of * Image and counter-image ....and many more. Rainbow of Desire will make fascinating reading for those already familiar with Boal's work and is also completely accessible to anyone new to Theatre of the Oppressed techniques.
Winner of the 2008 American Alliance for Theatre and Education "Book of Distinction" Award. Theatre is a primal language that used to be spoken by everyone; everyone included the "living community". Weaving together Systems Theory and the groundbreaking work of Fritjof Capra , Theatre of the Oppressed and the revolutionary work of Augusto Boal , and his own 25 years of practical experience in community-based popular theatre, David Diamond creates a silo-busting book that embraces the complexity of real life. Some of the questions Theatre for Living asks and attempts to answer: From a perspective of biology and sociology, how is a community a living thing? How do we design a theatre practice to consciously work with living communities to help them tell their stories? How do we accomplish this without demonizing those characters with whom we disagree? Must we constantly do battle to defeat an endless stream of oppressors, or can we imagine a world in which we stop creating them? Why is this important? What should we be on the look-out for (both positive and negative) when doing this work? What practical games and exercises can we use to awaken group consciousness? Who will be interested in Theatre for Living? Artists; community development workers; educators; activists; people working in social services, mediation and conflict resolution; health care professionals; anyone with an interest in finding new ways to approach the intersection of culture and social justice. "I greatly admire the achievements of David Diamond and his Headlines Theatre. He is following his own path, doing extraordinary and groundbreaking work in several fields, like his work with many First Nations communities in Canada and the US, and his adaptation of Forum Theatre on TV and on the Internet. This book relates the experiences of his life in theatre. For what he has already done, is doing, and certainly will do, David Diamond deserves all our support." Augusto Boal, founder of Theatre of the Oppressed, author of Theatre of the Oppressed, Rainbow of Desire, and Legislative Theatre David Diamonds work has been an inspiration to performers, artists, community leaders throughout Canada and beyond. The ideas in Theatre for Living are large, daring, challenging; but the steps by which Diamond follows and implements the ideas are precise and accessible. As I read I found myself being taken further and further into the life that is both theatre and the making of theatre, which is to say I was led into how life can be given its meaning. Hugh Brody, anthropologist and film-maker, author of Maps And Dreams, Living Arctic and The Other Side of Eden
Written soon before and in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, when theatre ground to a halt and spectatorship was suspended, this book takes stock of spectatorship as theatre’s living archive and affirms its value in the midst of the present crisis. Drawing from a manifold affective archive of performances and installations (by Marina Abramović, Ron Athey, Forced Entertainment, Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, Blast Theory, LIGNA, Doris Salcedo, Graeme Miller, Lenz Rifrazioni, Cristina Rizzo, etc.), and expanding on the work of many theorists and scholars, such as Roland Barthes and Jacques Rancière, Giorgio Agamben and Alain Badiou, Nicholas Ridout and Alan Read, among others, the book focuses on the spectator as the subject, rather than the object, of investigation. This is the right time to remember their secret power and theorise their collective time in the theatre. This book is an archive of their adventure and a manifesto rooted in their potentiality. It boldly posits the spectator as the inaugurator of theatre, the surplus that survives it. The book will be of great interest to spectators all and sundry, to scholars and students of theatre and performance studies, of spectatorship and politics.
Drama as Therapydescribes and defines dramatherapy, providing in one volume a definition of the core processes at work in dramatherapy, a clear description of how to structure sessions, a thorough review of techniques and a wide range of examples from clinical practice. At the heart of the book is a definition of the nine core processes which define how and why dramatherapy can offer the opportunity for change. Also included are step-by-step breakdowns of the ways of working with a broad range of clients. Dramatherapy's approach to role, play, mask, ritual, performance and script are all described. The book includes extensive historical material from the 1920s to the present day, covering work in the US, the UK, Russia and the Netherlands. It challenges previous accounts of dramatherapy's history with details of Evreinov's Theatrotherapy, Iljine's work in Russia and interviews with innovators in the field, including Peter Slade, Sue Jennings and Marion Lindquvist.
The Enormous Despair is a record, in diary form, of the year 1968, when, after an extended tour of Europe, The Living Theatre returned to tour the United States.
Part of Pluto's 21st birthday series Get Political, which brings essential political writing in a range of fields to a new audience.'One of the most revered figures in world theatre ... the liberation theologian of theatre.' Guardian'Should be read by everyone in the world of theatre who has any pretensions at all to political commitment.' John Arden'So remarkable, so original and so ground-breaking that I have no hesitation in describing the book as the most important theoretical work on the theatre in modern times.' George Wellwarth"Theatre is a weapon. ... A weapon for liberation."This new edition of Theatre of the Oppressed brings a classic work on radical drama fully up to date and includes a new foreword by the author Augusto Boal. Boal restores theatre to its proper place as a popular form of communication and expression. He demonstrates the ways in which theatre has come to reflect ruling-class control, drawing on the theories of Aristotle and Machiavelli. He then shows the process reversed in Brechtian/Marxist poetics to the revolutionary potential of transforming the spectator into the actor. Throughout, Boal draws on his own experience in Latin America and illustrates his theory with practical examples.
"Lorca's theatre, like that of Strindberg and Tennessee Williams, voices his personal dilemmas, not least his homosexuality. This study of all his plays examines the way in which the dramatist's life was transformed into high art through influences as varied as Surrealism and Greek tragedy. In an attempt to cover as many aspects of Lorca's theatre and the time in which he lived as possible, Gwynne Edwards deals not only with the plays themselves but includes material on the social and political character of the 1920s and 1930s, on the cultural background, on Lorca's friendships with Dalí and Buñuel and on the performances of the plays in his lifetime and afterwards. Lorca is by far the best-known and most popular Spanish dramatist in the English-speaking world, not to mention Continental Europe. Anyone who wishes to know more about him will find it in this volume."--Publisher description.
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Delicious' Nigella Lawson 'Clever and beguiling' Guardian 'Sublime and immersive' Jojo Moyes Erica is eighteen and ready for freedom. It's the summer of 1960 when she lands on the sun-baked Greek island of Hydra where she is swept up in a circle of bohemian poets, painters, musicians, writers and artists, living tangled lives. Life on their island paradise is heady, dream-like, a string of seemingly endless summer days. But nothing can last forever. 'A surefire summer hit ... At once a blissful piece of escapism and a powerful meditation on art and sexuality' Observer 'Heady armchair escapism ... An impressionistic, intoxicating rush of sensory experience' Sunday Times 'If summer was suddenly like a novel, it would be like this one. Immaculate' Andrew O'Hagan
