Beginning with a reassessment of the 1920s and 30s, this text looks beyond a consideration of just the most successful Spanish playwrights of the time, and discusses also the work of directors, theorists, actors and designers.

Beginning with a reassessment of the 1920s and 30s, this text looks beyond a consideration of just the most successful Spanish playwrights of the time, and discusses also the work of directors, theorists, actors and designers.

'Other' Spanish Theatres challenges established opinions on modern Iberian theatre through a consideration of the roles of contrasting figures and companies who have impacted upon both the practice and the perception of Spanish and European stages. In this broad and detailed study, Delgado selects six subjects which map out alternative readings of a nation's theatrical innovation through the last century. These six subjects include Margarita Xirgu, Enrique Rambal, María Casarest and Nuria Espert.

This is a comprehensive study of the impact of censorship on theatre in twentieth-century Spain. It draws on extensive archival evidence, vivid personal testimonies and in-depth analysis of legislation to document the different kinds of theatre censorship practised during the Second Republic (1931–6), the civil war (1936–9), the Franco dictatorship (1939–75) and the transition to democracy (1975–85). Changes in criteria, administrative structures and personnel from these periods are traced in relation to wider political, social and cultural developments, and the responses of playwrights, directors and companies are explored. With a focus on censorship, new light is cast on particular theatremakers and their work, the conditions in which all kinds of theatre were produced, the construction of genres and canons, as well as on broader cultural history and changing ideological climate – all of which are linked to reflections on the nature of censorship and the relationship between culture and the state.

This book offers a comprehensive account of modern Spanish culture, tracing its dramatic and often unexpected development from its beginnings after the Revolution of 1868 to the present day. Specially-commissioned essays by leading experts provide analyses of the historical and political background of modern Spain, the culture of the major autonomous regions (notably Castile, Catalonia, and the Basque Country), and the country's literature: narrative, poetry, theatre and the essay. Spain's recent development is divided into three main phases: from 1868 to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War; the period of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco; and the post-Franco arrival of democracy. The concept of 'Spanish culture' is investigated, and there are studies of Spanish painting and sculpture, architecture, cinema, dance, music, and the modern media. A chronology and guides to further reading are provided, making the volume an invaluable introduction to the politics, literature and culture of modern Spain.

"Barcelona, the cultural epicenter of Catalunya, is presently experiencing the most dynamic and polemical period in its modern theater history. It is the commanding hub of an energetic theater scene that in recent years has witnessed an exuberant outpouring of new dramatists, a steady crescendo in theater attendance, and a continual increase in the international presence of Catalan directors, playwrights, and companies. Barcelona's post-Olympian cultural landscape, moreover, comprises several architecturally striking theater projects. The diversity of opportunities to stage plays in Catalan at an assortment of city spaces is unprecedented, ranging in variety from commercial locales to publicly funded stages to experimental "alternative" venues. Since its origins in the nineteenth century, modem Catalan drama has frequently exhibited a cosmopolitan and even transnational impulse, engaging in an artistic dialogue with international theater traditions of both past and present and forging its identity vis-a-vis its intercultural associations. The path along which the contemporary Catalan theater scene has struggled to recover and reconstitute the professional legitimacy and visibility that it lost during the Franco dictatorship has been a complex process, never lacking in melodramatic excess, witnessed both on and off the stage. The Barcelona stage, throughout its contemporary evolution, has been immersed in a stormy climate, whose relentlessly frenetic atmospheric activity at times may impede one from acquiring the distance necessary to see beyond the hurricane." --Book Jacket.

Eros and Death are the two central drives and compulsions of the human psyche, and their dynamic interconnectedness has been pervasive in the formation of Western thought and culture. The essays brought together in this collection offer new perspectives on the eros/death relation in a wide selection of dramatic texts, theatrical practices and cultural performances. Topics explored range from Greek tragedy, Shakespearean theatre, the work of Georg Büchner, Bertolt Brecht, the kiss of death in opera, the theatricality of Parisian culture, to the performance of conjuring, contemporary Britis.

This volume presents studies of some of the key artistic manifestations in Catalonia in recent times, a period of innovation and experimentation, and addresses issues concerning literature, film, theatre and performance art. From the creation of a new popular theatre in the work of the Valencian playwright Rodolf Sirera, or the conception of landscape, myth and memory in the late work of the novelist Mercè Rodoreda and the urgency of memory and remembrance in the writings of Jordi Coca, the effects of censorship in Catalonia appear to have proved a spur and a challenge to writers. Desiring to occupy illegal spaces, performance groups have manifested both literally and metaphorically the international dimension of Catalan culture in the modern period, posed in the present volume by the instances of La Cubana and Els Joglars, and further evidenced in the cross-fertilization in the work of contemporary Catalan playwrights and filmmakers to foreground issues of national plurality and tensions arising between the periphery (Catalonia) and the centre (Spain and Castile).

In The Aesthetics of the Ephemeral, Jennifer Duprey examines five contemporary plays from Barcelona: Olors and Testament by Josep Maria Benet i Jornet, Antígona by Jordi Coca, Forasters by Sergi Belbel, and Temptació by Carles Batlle. She argues that in both the theatrical text and its performance an aesthetics of the ephemeral materializes that is related to specific manifestations of cultural and historical memory in Spain and Catalonia. These manifestations of memory include historical concerns such as the possibility of another form of justice in predicaments of violence after the Civil War, and they also include contemporary issues such as the production of ruins by the processes of gentrification in Barcelona, the complexity of immigration in Spain, and the destruction or preservation of Catalan cultural legacies. In her analysis of these topics, Duprey engages and expands on theories related to questions of subjectivity and identity in late modernity. This book will be of interest to those concerned with Iberian cultural studies and with how theater reflects on and contributes to contemporary political dialogue.