Eli Rozik explores the principles that generated the theatre medium, and its possible roots in the preverbal imagistic mode of thinking. This mode characterises the remnants of preverbal thinking, such as unconscious thinking (dreaming), the embryonic speech of toddlers, and their imaginative play and drawings prior to mastering verbal thinking. The book is a recapitulation of major findings regarding the nature of the theatre, its medium, fictional creativity and origin, and includes new unpublished studies. It address the principles of imagistic, metaphoric, symbolic and fictional thinking, which characterise the theatre, as well as reception and acting. The work has been designed to fit the structure of a university course, and will appeal to people interested in broadening their knowledge and understanding of theatre art.

Anthropology has a critical, practical role to play in contemporary debates about futures. This game-changing new book presents new ways of conceptualising how to engage with a future-oriented research agenda, demonstrating how anthropologists can approach futures both theoretically and practically, and introducing a set of innovative research methods to tackle this field of research.Anthropology and Futures brings together a group of leading scholars from across the world, including Sarah Pink, Rayna Rapp, Faye Ginsburg and Paul Stoller. Firmly grounded in ethnographic fieldwork experience, the book’s fifteen chapters traverse ethnographies with people living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda, disability activists in the U.S., young Muslim women in Copenhagen, refugees in Milan, future-makers in Barcelona, planning and land futures in the UK, the design of workspaces in Melbourne, rewilding in the French Pyrenees, and speculative ethnographies among emerging communities in Antarctica. Taking a strong interdisciplinary approach, the authors respond to growing interest in the topic of futures in anthropology and beyond. This ground-breaking text is a call for more engaged, interventional and applied anthropologies. It is essential reading for students and researchers in anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, design and research methods.

This book is an original study of the youth organizations in London, Toronto, and Vancouver that offer creative and arts programs mainly to youth from diverse and socially marginalized backgrounds. It describes a sector that is often not recognized, organizations that don't like being institutionalized, forms of education that exist outside the mainstream, types of aesthetic expression that often go unrecognized, and unusual learning and cultural opportunities for socially marginalized young people. Rooted in the history of community arts movements from the 1970s, Youthsites, or the non-formal youth arts learning sector, is now part of cities around the world. Technological change, shifts in educational discourses, changes in policy rhetorics, including a turn away from traditional public institutions and a decline in funding of formal public schooling have all impacted the growth of youth arts organizations. Yet there are to date no systematic studies of the history, structure, and development of this sector. Youthsites: Histories of Creativity, Care, and Learning in the City fills this gap and is the first book to develop an internationally comparative, evidence-based, structural analysis of the development of the youth arts sector. Based on an original 4-year study examining the history, priorities, and tensions within this sector between 1995 and 2015, Youthsites explores the organizations and people who are helping young people to become creators, citizens, or just themselves in times of austerity, crisis, and change. This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

This volume offers rare insights into the connection between young audiences and the performing arts. Based on studies of adolescent and post-adolescent audiences, ages 14 to 25, the book examines to what extent they are part of our society’s cultural conversation. It studies how these young people read and understand theatrical performance. It looks at what the educational components in their theatre literacy are, and what they make of the whole social event of theatre. It studies their views on the relationship between what they themselves decide and what others decide for them. The book uses qualitative and quantitative data collected in a six-year study carried out in the three largest Australian States, thirteen major performing arts companies, including the Sydney Opera House, three state theatre companies and three funding organisations. The book’s perspectives are derived from world-wide literature and company practices and its significance and ramifications are international. The book is written to be engaging and accessible to theatre professionals and lay readers interested in theatre, as well as scholars and researchers. “This extraordinary book thoroughly explains why young people (ages 14-25+) do and do not attend theatre into adulthood by delineating how three inter-linked factors (literacy, confidence, and etiquette) influence their decisions. Given that theatre happens inside spectators’ minds, the authors balance the theatre equation by focusing upon young spectators and thereby dispel numerous beliefs held by theatre artists and educators. Each clearly written chapter engages readers with astute insights and compelling examples of pertinent responses from young people, teachers, and theatre professionals. To stem the tide of decreasing theatre attendance, this highly useful book offers pragmatic strategies for artistic, educational, and marketing directors, as well as national theatre organizations and arts councils around the world. I have no doubt that its brilliantly conceived research, conducted across multiple contexts in Australia, will make a significant and original contribution to the profession of theatre on an international scale.” Jeanne Klein, University of Kansas, USA “Young Audiences, Theatre and the Cultural Conversation is a compelling and comprehensive study on attitudes and habits of youth theatre audiences by leading international scholars in the field. This benchmark study offers unique insights by and for theatre makers and administrators, theatre educators and researchers, schools, parents, teachers, students, audience members of all ages. A key strength within the book centers on the emphasis of the participant voices, particularly the voices of the youth. Youth voices, along with those of teachers and theatre artists, position the extensive field research front and center.” George Belliveau, The University of British Columbia, Canada

This book explores a range of contemporary performance practices that engage spectators physically and emotionally through active engagement and critical involvement. It considers how risk has been re-configured, re-presented and re-packaged for new audiences with a thirst for performances that promote, encourage and embrace risky encounters in a variety of forms. The collection brings together established voices on performance and risk research and draws them into conversation with next generation academic-practitioners in a dynamic reappraisal of what it means to risk oneself through the act of making and participating in performance practice. It takes into account the work of other performance scholars for whom risk and precarity are central concerns, but seeks to move the debate forwards in response to a rapidly changing world where risk is higher on the political, economic and cultural agenda than ever before.

Discussing crises through diverse examples, including the UK's National Theatre, public art installations, Occupy LSX, repatriation ceremonies and performances of the everyday, this book asks how performance captures and resists what is considered (politically, ideologically, culturally or socially) 'inside' or 'outside' Europe.

A pathbreaking exploration of the international and intercultural connections within Oceanian performance

Applied Theatre: Research is the first book to consolidate thinking about applied theatre as research through a thorough investigation of ATAR as a research methodology. It will be an indispensable resource for teachers and researchers in the area. The first section of the book details the history of the relationship between applied theatre and research, especially in the area of evaluation and impact assessment, and offering an examination of the literature surrounding applied theatre and research. The book then explores how applied theatre as research (ATAR) works as a democratic and pro-social adjunct to community based research and explains its complex relationship to arts informed inquiry, Indigenous research methods and other research epistemologies. The book provides a rationale for this approach focusing on its capacity for reciprocity within communities. The second part of the book provides a series of international case studies of effective practice which detail some of the key approaches in the method and based on work conducted in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and the South Pacific. The case studies provide a range of cultural contexts for the playing out of various forms of ATAR, and a concluding chapter considers the tensions and the possibilities inherent in ATAR. This is a groundbreaking book for all researchers who are working with communities who require a method that moves beyond current research practice.

This new edition of Physical Theatres: A Critical Introduction continues to provide an unparalleled overview of non-text-based theatre, from experimental dance to traditional mime. It synthesizes the history, theory and practice of physical theatres for students and performers in what is both a core area of study and a dynamic and innovative aspect of theatrical practice. This comprehensive book: traces the roots of physical performance in classical and popular theatrical traditions looks at the Dance Theatre of DV8, Pina Bausch, Liz Aggiss and Jérôme Bel examines the contemporary practice of companies such as Théatre du Soleil, Complicite and Goat Island focuses on principles and practices in actor training, with reference to figures such as Jacques Lecoq, Lev Dodin, Philippe Gaulier, Monika Pagneux, Etienne Decroux, Anne Bogart and Joan Littlewood. Extensive cross references ensure that Physical Theatres: A Critical Introduction can be used as a standalone text or together with its companion volume, Physical Theatres: A Critical Reader, to provide an invaluable introduction to the physical in theatre and performance. New to this edition: a chapter on The Body and Technology, exploring the impact of digital technologies on the portrayal, perception and reading of the theatre body, spanning from onstage technology to virtual realities and motion capture; additional profiles of Jerzy Grotowski, Wrights and Sites, Punchdrunk and Mike Pearson; focus on circus and aerial performance, new training practices, immersive and site-specific theatres, and the latest developments in neuroscience, especially as these impact on the place and role of the spectator.