The Theatre of War surveys more than two hundred plays about the First World War written, published and/or performed in Britain and Ireland between 1909 and 1998. Perspectives discussed include: subject matter, technique and evaluation. The result is an understanding of the First World War as a watershed in international history.

This original study explores a vital aspect of early modern cultural history: the way that warfare is represented in the theatre of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The book contrasts the Tudor and Stuart prose that called for the establishment of a standing army in the name of nation, discipline and subjectivity, and the drama of the period that invited critique of this imperative. Barker examines contemporary dramatic texts both for their radical position on war and, in the case of the later drama, for their subversive commentary on an emerging idealisation of Shakespeare and his work.The book argues that the early modern period saw the establishment of political, social and theological attitudes to war that were to become accepted as natural in succeeding centuries. Barker's reading of the drama of the period reveals the discontinuities in this project as a way of commenting on the use of the past within modern warfare. The book is also a survey and analysis of literary theory over the last tw

The period between 1585 (when Elizabeth formally committed her military support to the Dutch wars against Spain) and 1604 (when James at last brought it to an end) was one in which English life was preoccupied by the menace and actuality of war. The same period spans English drama’s coming of age, from Tamburlaine to Hamlet. In this thought-provoking book, Nick de Somogyi draws on a wide range of contemporary military literature (news-letters and war-treatises, maps and manuals), to demonstrate how deeply wartime experience influenced the production and reception of Elizabethan theatre. In a series of vivid parallels, the roles of soldier and actor, the setting of battlefield and stage, and the context of playhouse and muster are shown to have been rooted in the common experience of war. The local armoury served as a props department; the stage as a military lecture-hall. News from the front line has always been shrouded in the fog of war. Shakespeare’s Rumour is here seen as kindred to such equally dubious messengers as his Armado, Falstaff or Pistol; soldiers have always told tall tales, military ghost-stories that are here shown to have seeped into such narratives as The Spanish Tragedy and Henry V. This book concludes with a sustained account of Hamlet, a play which both dramatises the Elizabethan context of war-fever, and embodies in its three variant texts the war and peace that shaped its production. By affording scrutiny to each of its title’s components, Shakespeare’s Theatre of War provides a compelling argument for reassessing the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries within the enduring context of the military culture and wartime experience of his age.

The first comprehensive guide to British theatre's engagement with the First World War over the last century, providing accessible and lively coverage of theatre's role in the representation and remembrance of events, focusing on topics including regionality, politics, popular performance, Shakespeare, class, race and gender.

A lively study of the function of theatre entertainment in the First World War, 1914-18. The theatre's role as unofficial government aide in the form of recruiter, propagandist and fund raiser is examined; so too its use as morale booster and provider of a war-related role for the aristocracy, female and military over-aged male artists. The organization of theatre for and by the military and civilian concert parties for troops in training and at the Front is analysed.

On an April evening in 1934, on the River Arno in Florence, an air squadron, an infantry, a cavalry brigade, fifty trucks, four field and machine gun batteries, ten field radio stations, and six photoelectric units presented a piece of theatre. The mass spectacle, 18 BL involved over two thousand amateur actors and was performed before an audience of twenty thousand. 18 BL is one of eleven extraordinary essays collected together for the first time. The essays have been selected and edited from a wide range of publications dating from the 1940s to the 1990s. The authors are academics, cultural historians, and theatre practitioners - some with direct experience of the harsh conditions of Europe during the war. Each author critically assesses the function of theatre in times of world crisis, exploring themes of Fascist aesthetic propaganda in Italy and Germany, of theatre re-education programmes in the Gulags of Russia, of cultural "sustenance" for the troops at the front and interned German refugees in the UK, or cabaret shows as a currency for survival in Jewish concentration camps.

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. Perfect for students of English Literature, Theatre Studies and American Studies at college and university, The Theatre of Tennessee Williams provides a lucid and stimulating analysis of Willams' dramatic work by one of America's leading scholars. With the centennial of his birth celebrated amid a flurry of conferences devoted to his work in 2011, and his plays a central part of any literature and drama curriculum and uibiquitous in theatre repertoires, he remains a giant of twentieth century literature and drama. In Brenda Murphy's major study of his work she examines his life and career and provides an analysis of more than a score of his key plays, including in-depth studies of major works such as A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and others. She traces the artist figure who features in many of Williams' plays to broaden the discussion beyond the normal reference points. As with other volumes in Methuen Drama's Critical Companions series, this book features too essays by Bruce McConachie, John S. Bak, Felicia Hardison Londré and Annette Saddik, offering perspectives on different aspects of Williams' work that will assist students in their own critical thinking.

Theatre and war have long been bedfellows. This brief study looks beyond theatre that is about war, and instead focuses on the relationship between theatre and war: how they feed into and inform one another, from rehearsal to post-production analysis. The study builds on the premise that theatre and war share a deep kinship that finds its consummate expression in the very phrase 'theatre of war.' This critical look at the entangled history of theatre and war asks pressing questions that remain pertinent to our current moment: how have the tools of theatre been used in the waging of war? How have the tools of waging war been used in the making of performance? What are the 'shared interests' of theatre and war? And how has performance become a militarized paradigm?

Theatre has provided many words and meanings which we use - ignorant of their origins - in everyday writing and speech. This is the first book to explore 2,000 theatre terms in depth, in some cases tracing their history over two and a half millenia, in others exploring expressions less than a decade old. Terms are defined, shown in use and cross-referenced in ways which will fascinate theatre-goers, help theatre students and encourage those engaged in the theatre to examine the familiar from new angles.