Offers a theory and methodology of performance analysis as an alternative to traditional play-analysis. This book carries an underlying theme that theatre performance is a descriptive text generated by the theatre medium and that the process of generating meaning takes place in the actual encounter between a theatre performance and the spectator.

For the professional and student here is a basic guide to raising money, obtaining rights and bringing a play to the stage. Appendices include actual examples of commonly used legal forms and contracts. .,."likely to remain for some time to come the authoritative reference in its field." -Variety

Drawing on insights from various disciplines (philology, archaeology, art) as well as from performance and reception studies, this volume shows how a heightened awareness of performance can enhance our appreciation of Greek and Roman theatre.

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.

This text compares theatre texts to apartments where tenants may make considerable changes. Translated texts should be seen in relation to the tenants, who respond to various codes in the surrounding societies in their effort to integrate the texts into a sociocultural discourse of their time.

In their introduction to this collection of essays, the editors argue that constraints can be seen as a source of literary creativity, and given that translation is even more constrained than 'original' literary production, it thus has the potential to be even more creative too. The ten essays that follow outline ways in which translators and translations are constrained by poetic form, personal histories, state control, public morality, and the non-availability of comparable target language subcodes, and how translator creativity may-or may not-overcome these constraints. Topics covered are: Baudelaire's translation practices; bowdlerism in translations of Voltaire, Boccaccio and Shakespeare, among others; Leyris's translations of Gerard Manley Hopkins; ideology in English-Arabic translation; the translation of censored Greek poet Rhea Galanaki; theatre translation; Nabokov and translation; gay translation; Moratín's translation of Hamlet; and state control of translation production in Nazi Germany. The essays are mostly highly readable, and often entertaining.

Traditional theatre semiotics promoted a scientific approach to theatre studies, albeit viewing semiotics as the unique discipline of research. Theatre Sciences: A Plea for a Multidisciplinary Approach to Theatre Studies suggests instead a multi-disciplinary approach, including the following theoretical disciplines: narratology, mythology, pragmatics, ethics, theatre irony, theory of genres, aesthetics, semiotics, theory of non-verbal figures of speech, rhetoric, psychoanalysis, reception theory, history, and sociology -- with semiotics being only one among equals. These disciplines are presented from the perspective of their possible contributions to a sound methodology of theatre-texts analysis. Traditional theatre semiotics, moreover, holds the view that the actual performance on stage is the genuine text of theatre, instead of the play-script. Despite this paradigmatic shift, however, this viewpoint has failed to produce commendable analyses of such texts. The alternative presupposition put forward in this volume entails a series of novel perceptions of the theatre-text and its possible impact on the experiencing spectator, whose role in reading, interpreting and experiencing the theatre-text is not less crucial than that of the text itself. This view presupposes that the theatre-text is a description of a fictional world generated by the theatre medium. The author also contests the age-old view that a theatre/fictional-text reflects a simple narrative structure, and suggests instead a complexity that consists of seven layers: personified, mythical, praxical, naive, ironic, modal and aesthetic -- with each one of them re-structuring the previous layer. Professor Rozik also presents and describes a semiotic layer that lends communicative capacity to the description of a fictional world, and two additional metaphoric and rhetoric layers, which structure the theatre experience. The underlying purpose is to illustrate the application of the aforementioned disciplines to these fictional layers, and eventually their joint application to entire theatre / fictional texts. Organisation of the book reflects the structure of a university course.

To mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Theatre History Studies journal, editor Rhona Justice-Malloy and the Mid-America Theatre Conference have collected a special-themed volume covering the past and present of African and African American theatre. Topics included range from modern theatrical trends and challenges in Zimbabwe and Kenya, and examining the history and long-range impact of Paul Robeson’s groundbreaking and troubled life and career, to gender issues in the work of Ghanaian playwright Efo Kodjo Mawugbe, and the ways that 19th-century American blackness was defined through Othello and Desdemona. This collection fills a vacancy in academic writing. Readers will enjoy it; academics can incorporate it into their curriculum; and students will find it helpful and illuminating.

How does a theatrical tradition emerge in the fields of dramatic writing and artistic performance? How can a culture in which theatre played no part in the past create a theatrical tradition in the modern world? How do political and social conditions affect the encounter between cultures, and what role do they play in creating a theatre with a distinctive identity? This volume attempts to answer these and other questions in the first in-depth study of the reception of ancient Greek drama in Israeli theatre over the last 70 years. Exploring how engagement with classical culture has shaped the evolution of Israel's theatrical identity, it draws on both dramatic and aesthetic issues - from mise en scène to 'post dramatic' performance - and offers ground-breaking analysis of a wide range of translations and adaptations of Greek drama, as well as new writing inspired by Greek antiquity. The detailed discussion of how the performances of these works were created and staged at key points in the development of Israeli culture not only sheds new light on the reception of ancient Greek drama in an important theatrical and cultural context, but also offers a new and illuminating perspective on artistic responses to the fateful political, social, and cultural events in Israel's recent history.

Jewish drama and theatre has followed a tortuous path from extreme rabbinical intolerance to eventual secular liberalism, with its openness to the heritages of both Judaism as a culture and prominent foreign cultures, to the extent of multicultural integration. No wonder, therefore, that since biblical times until the seventeenth century there are only examples of tangential theatre practices. This initial intolerance, shared by the Church, was rooted in pagan connotations of theatre rather than in the neutral nature of the theatre medium, capable of formulating and communicating contrasting thoughts. Whereas by the tenth century the Church understood that theatre could be harnessed to its own ends, Jewish theatre was only created seven centuries later through spontaneous and amateurish theatrical practices, such as the Yiddish purim-shpil and the purim-rabbi. Due to their carnivalesque and cathartic nature these practices were tolerated by the rabbinical establishment, albeit only during the Purim holiday. But as a result, Jewish drama and theatre were created and emerged despite rabbinical antagonism. Under the influence of the Jewish Enlightenment, Yiddish-speaking theatres were increasingly established, a trend that became central in the cultural enterprise of the Jews in Israel. This process involved a renewed use of Hebrew as a spoken language, and the transition from a profound religious identity to a secular Jewish one, characterised by a basic liberalism to the extent of openness to cultures traditionally perceived as archetypal enemies of Judaism. This book sets out to analyse play-scripts and performance-texts produced in the Israeli theatre in order to illustrate these trends, and concludes that only a liberal society can bring about the full realisation of theatre's potentialities.