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50 books match the query 'Theatre' and 26 start with t

cover of The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine

The Haunted Stage

The Theatre as Memory Machine

Marvin Carlson

University of Michigan Press, 2003

Throughout theatrical history, almost every element in stage production has been recycled. Indeed any regular theatergoer is familiar with the experience of a performance that conjures the ghosts of previous productions. The Haunted Stage explores this theatrical déjà vu, and examines how it stimulates the spectator's memory. Relating the dynamics of reception to the interaction between theater and memory, The Haunted Stage uncovers the ways in which the memory of the spectator informs the process of theatrical reception.
Marvin Carlson is Sidney E. Cohn Distinguished Professor of Theatre and Comparative Literature at the City University of New York.
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cover of The Mystic in the Theatre: Eleonora Duse

The Mystic in the Theatre

Eleonora Duse

Eva Le Gallienne

Southern Illinois University Press, 1973

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cover of The National Stage: Theatre and Cultural Legitimation in England, France, and America

The National Stage

Theatre and Cultural Legitimation in England, France, and America

Loren Kruger

University of Chicago Press, 1992

The idea of staging a nation dates from the Enlightenment, but the full force of the idea emerges only with the rise of mass politics. Comparing English, French, and American attempts to establish national theatres at moments of political crisis—from the challenge of socialism in late nineteenth-century Europe to the struggle to "salvage democracy" in Depression America—Kruger poses a fundamental question: in the formation of nationhood, is the citizen-audience spectator or participant?

The National Stage answers this question by tracing the relation between theatre institution and public sphere in the discourses of national identity in Britain, France, and the United States. Exploring the boundaries between history and theory, text and performance, this book speaks to theatre and social historians as well as those interested in the theoretical range of cultural studies.
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cover of The Recurrence of Fate: Theatre and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia

The Recurrence of Fate

Theatre and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia

Spencer Jay Golub

University of Iowa Press, 1994

How, why, and according to whose definitions and requirements does a culture self-consciously create memory and project its fate? In this remarkable book—the first in English to treat Russian history as theatre and cultural performance—Spencer Golub reveals the performative nature of Russian history in the twentieth century and the romantic imprisonment/self-imprisonment of the creative intelligentsia within this scenario.

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cover of The Roots of Theatre: Rethinking Ritual and Other Theories of Origin

The Roots of Theatre

Rethinking Ritual and Other Theories of Origin

Eli Rozik

University of Iowa Press, 2002

The topic of the origins of theatre is one of the most controversial in theatre studies, with a long history of heated discussions and strongly held positions. In The Roots of Theatre, Eli Rozik enters the debate in a feisty way, offering not just another challenge to those who place theatre’s origins in ritual and religion but also an alternative theory of roots based on the cultural and psychological conditions that made the advent of theatre possible.
Rozik grounds his study in a comprehensive review and criticism of each of the leading historical and anthropological theories. He believes that the quest for origins is essentially misleading because it does not provide any significant insight for our understanding of theatre. Instead, he argues that theatre, like music or dance, is a sui generis kind of human creativity—a form of thinking and communication whose roots lie in the spontaneous image-making faculty of the human psyche.
Rozik’s broad approach to research lies within the boundaries of structuralism and semiotics, but he also utilizes additional disciplines such as psychoanalysis, neurology, sociology, play and game theory, science of religion, mythology, poetics, philosophy of language, and linguistics. In seeking the roots of theatre, what he ultimately defines is something substantial about the nature of creative thought—a rudimentary system of imagistic thinking and communication that lies in the set of biological, primitive, and infantile phenomena such as daydreaming, imaginative play, children’s drawing, imitation, mockery (caricature, parody), storytelling, and mythmaking.
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cover of The Theatre of Death: Rituals of Justice from the English Civil Wars to the Restoration

The Theatre of Death

Rituals of Justice from the English Civil Wars to the Restoration

P J Klemp

University of Delaware Press, 2017

This book discusses some rituals of justice—such as public executions, printed responses to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s execution speech, and King Charles I’s treason trial—in early modern England. Focusing on the ways in which genres shape these events’ multiple voices, I analyze the rituals’ genres and the diverse perspectives from which we must understand them.

The execution ritual, like such cultural forms as plays and films, is a collaborative production that can be understood only, and only incompletely, by being alert to the presence of its many participants and their contributions. Each of these participants brings a voice to the execution ritual, whether it is the judge and jury or the victim, executioner, sheriff and other authorities, spiritual counselors, printer, or spectators and readers. And each has at least one role to play. No matter how powerful some institutions and individuals may appear, none has a monopoly over authority and how the events take shape on and beyond the scaffold. The centerpiece of the mid-seventeenth-century’s theatre of death was the condemned man’s last dying utterance. This study focuses on the words and contexts of many of those final speeches, including King Charles I’s (1649), Archbishop William Laud’s (1645), and the Earl of Strafford’s (1641), as well as those of less well known royalists and regicides. Where we situate ourselves to view, hear, and comprehend a public execution—through specific participants’ eyes, ears, and minds or accounts—shapes our interpretation of the ritual. It is impossible to achieve a singular, carefully indoctrinated meaning of an event as complex as a state-sponsored public execution.

Along with the variety of voices and meanings, the nature and purpose of the rituals of justice maintain a significant amount of consistency in a number of eras and cultural contexts. Whether the focus is on the trial and execution of the Marian martyrs, English royalists in the 1640s and 1650s, or the Restoration’s regicides, the events draw on a set of cultural expectations or conventions. Because rituals of justice are shaped by diverse voices and agendas, with the participants’ scripts and counterscripts converging and colliding, they are dramatic moments conveying profound meanings.

Published by University of Delaware Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.
 

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cover of The Theatre of Genocide: Four Plays about Mass Murder in Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia, and Armenia

The Theatre of Genocide

Four Plays about Mass Murder in Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia, and Armenia

Edited and with an introduction by Robert Skloot

University of Wisconsin Press, 2008

In this pioneering volume, Robert Skloot brings together four plays—three of which are published here for the first time—that fearlessly explore the face of modern genocide. The scripts deal with the destruction of four targeted populations: Armenians in Lorne Shirinian’s Exile in the Cradle, Cambodians in Catherine Filloux’s Silence of God, Bosnian Muslims in Kitty Felde’s A Patch of Earth, and Rwandan Tutsis in Erik Ehn’s Maria Kizito. Taken together, these four plays erase the boundaries of theatrical realism to present stories that probe the actions of the perpetrators and the suffering of their victims. A major artistic contribution to the study of the history and effects of genocide, this collection carries on the important journey toward understanding the terror and trauma to which the modern world has so often been witness.
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cover of The Theatre of Sabina Berman: The Agony of Ecstasy and Other Plays

The Theatre of Sabina Berman

The Agony of Ecstasy and Other Plays

Sabina Berman. Translated by Adam Versenyi. Essay by Jacqueline E. Bixler

Southern Illinois University Press, 2003

The Theatre of Sabina Berman: The Agony of Ecstasy and Other Plays introduces and makes accessible to an English-speaking audience the work of the contemporary Mexican playwright Sabina Berman. The book contains translations of the four plays that established Berman’s career: The Agony of Ecstasy, Yankee, Puzzle, and Heresy. An introduction by Adam Versényi provides a critical assessment of each play, a discussion of the specific problems of translation involved, and placement of Berman’s work in the larger Mexican and Latin American context.

It is evident that Sabina Berman’s theatrical acumen matches the depth of her dramatic design whether it is the sheer variety of techniques from song to staged tableau that appear in The Agony of Ecstasy; the physicalization of what it means to be interrogated and to interrogate in Yankee; the final enigmatic image of a soldier alone on stage, silently aiming his firearm at an undefined threat that potentially emanates from the audience in Puzzle; or the manner in which the family narrates its own “heretical” actions in Heresy. It is the combination of theatrical technique with universal themes of self-definition that cuts across cultures and ultimately makes these plays translatable.

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cover of The Theatre of the Holocaust, Volume 1: Four Plays

The Theatre of the Holocaust, Volume 1

Four Plays

Edited and with and introduction by Robert Skloot

University of Wisconsin Press, 1982

This volume contains these four plays:

Resort 76 by Shimon Wincelberg
Will the relentless oppression of the starving workers in a ghetto factory destroy their faith in God? Their love of life? Their ability to resist? If a cat is more valuable than a human being, have hope and goodness been eliminated from the world? A moving and terrifying melodrama.

Throne of Straw by Harold and Edith Lieberman
Through the career of Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski, head of the Lodz, Poland Judenrat, we come to understand the horror of “choiceless choice,” of how giving up some to save others was the worst nightmare for those who sought the responsibilities of ghetto leadership. An epic play with music and song.

The Cannibals by George Tabori
The children of murder victims assemble to enact ritually the destruction of their fathers in the presence of two survivors. As the sons become their fathers, the most profound ethical questions of the Holocaust are raised concerning the limits of humanity in a world of absolute evil. A daring tragicomedy.

Who Will Carry the Word? by Charlotte Delbo (translated by Cynthia Haft)
In the austere, degraded setting of a concentration camp, twenty-two French women attempt to keep their sanity and hope as, one by one, they fall victim to the Nazi terror. Will anyone believe the story of the survivors? A poetic drama of resistance and witness.

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cover of The Theatre of the Holocaust, Volume 2: Six Plays

The Theatre of the Holocaust, Volume 2

Six Plays

Edited and with and introduction by Robert Skloot

University of Wisconsin Press, 1999

This second volume of The Theatre of the Holocaust, when combined with the first, represents the most significant and comprehensive international collection of plays on the Holocaust. Since the appearance of Volume 1 in 1982, theatre and Holocaust studies have undergone astonishing transformations. In Volume 2, Skloot presents six plays acknowleding the most recent theatrical forms in our post-modern age.
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cover of The World of Elizabeth Inchbald: Essays on Literature, Culture, and Theatre in the Long Eighteenth Century

The World of Elizabeth Inchbald

Essays on Literature, Culture, and Theatre in the Long Eighteenth Century

Daniel J. Ennis

University of Delaware Press, 2022

This collection centers on the remarkable life and career of the writer and actor Elizabeth Inchbald (1753–1821), active in Great Britain in the late eighteenth century. Inspired by the example of Inchbald’s biographer, Annibel Jenkins (1918–2013), the contributors explore the broad historical and cultural context around Inchbald’s life and work, with essays ranging from the Restoration to the nineteenth century. Ranging from visual culture, theater history, literary analyses and to historical investigations, the essays not only present a fuller picture of cultural life in Great Britain in the long eighteenth century, but also reflect a range of disciplinary perspectives. The collection concludes with the final scholarly presentation of the late Professor Jenkins, a study of the eighteenth-century English newspaper The World (1753-1756). 
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cover of The Writing Life of Hugh Kelly: Politics, Journalism, and Theatre in Late-Eighteenth-Century London

The Writing Life of Hugh Kelly

Politics, Journalism, and Theatre in Late-Eighteenth-Century London

Robert R. Bataille

Southern Illinois University Press, 2000

Robert R. Bataille demonstrates convincingly that between 1767 and 1777, Anglo-Irish writer Hugh Kelly made major contributions in three areas of British culture: politics, journalism, and theater. Bataille shows how all three activities were integrated in Kelly’s life, suggesting that such interrelationships often existed in the rough and ready London culture during the early reign of King George III.

           

When he discovered several newspaper campaigns that Kelly orchestrated as a paid political propagandist for George III and his ministers, Bataille understood in part how important Kelly was to his era. In his capacity as propagandist, Kelly defended Hanoverian colonial policies on the eve of the American Revolution, served as a key opponent of the radical Wilkites, and promoted the acceptance of the 1774 Quebec Bill, which established, among other things, the right of the recently defeated French citizens of Quebec to maintain the French language.

           

A belletristic journalist, Kelly published theater reviews and essays that played a major role in shaping the taste of his era. He wrote in defense of the controversial sentimental drama, and whenever he could, he promoted the major theatrical figure of the age, David Garrick. Under his editorship, the newspaper Public Ledger became a leading source of theater information. Seeking to raise the status of the profession of journalism, he wrote essays and articles that provided his middle-class readers with an insider’s view of the operations of the journalist.

           

Assessing Kelly’s contributions to the novel and drama, Bataille argues that this powerful journalist stands in the vanguard in the larger struggle against traditional attitudes supporting male superiority and aristocratic privilege. Kelly wrote in favor of gender equality and middle-class respectability, striving to inculcate what modern scholars refer to as the values of sensibility. Bataille also argues, however, that Kelly knew his audience. Instrumental in the rise of professional writing and popular culture, he understood that he had to observe the needs of his audience, detecting cultural trends and using the skills of the rhetorician.      

           

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cover of Theatre and Cartographies of Power: Repositioning the Latina/o Americas

Theatre and Cartographies of Power

Repositioning the Latina/o Americas

Edited by Jimmy A. Noriega and Analola Santana

Southern Illinois University Press, 2018

From the colonial period to independence and into the twenty-first century, Latin American culture has been mapped as a subordinate “other” to Europe and the United States. This collection reconsiders geographical space and power and the ways in which theatrical and performance histories have been constructed throughout the Americas. Essays bridge political, racial, gender, class, and national divides that have traditionally restricted and distorted our understanding of Latin American theatre and performance. Contributors—scholars and artists from throughout the Americas, including well-known playwrights, directors, and performers—imagine how to reposition the Latina/o Americas in ways that offer agency to its multiple peoples, cultures, and histories. In addition, they explore the ways artists can create new maps and methods for their creative visions.
 
Building on hemispheric and transnational models, this book demonstrates the capacity of theatre studies to challenge the up-down/North-South approach that dominates scholarship in the United States and presents a strong case for a repositioning of the Latina/o Americas in theatrical histories and practices.
 
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cover of Theatre and Consciousness: Explanatory Scope and Future Potential

Theatre and Consciousness

Explanatory Scope and Future Potential

Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe

Intellect Books, 1995

For the last ten to fifteen years, many disciplines of scholarship have been involved in the study of consciousness, often on an interdisciplinary basis. They include philosophy, neurosciences, psychology, physics and biology, and approaches focusing on human experience. The Centre for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson spearheaded this development with its bi-annual conferences since 1994, and a wide range of associations, journals and book publications bear witness to its importance. Over the same number of years, scholarly interest in the relationship of consciousness to theatre has equally grown.
 
The book discusses a range of questions relevant to understanding the phenomenon of theatre against a consciousness studies background. Those questions include:

• What inspires the dramatist to write a play? This question addresses the nature of the creative process.
• How do different plays reflect human consciousness?
• What kinds of new ideas did major directors or theatre makers, such as Artaud, Grotowski, Barba, and Brook introduce?
• Should actors be personally involved with the emotions they have to portray?
• Are puppets or marionettes superior to actors?
• How to account for the designer’s combination of creativity and practical skill? What part does mental imagination play in the design process? How do designers get their own spatial awareness across to their spectators?
• How does theatre affect the spectator? Why do spectators react as they do? How do distance and suspension of disbelief ‘work’?
An improved and expanded understanding of theatre, resulting from answering the questions above in the context of consciousness studies, should inspire new developments in theatre practice.
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cover of Theatre and Identity in Imperial Russia

Theatre and Identity in Imperial Russia

Catherine A. Schuler

University of Iowa Press, 2009

What role did the theatre—both institutionally and literally—play in Russia’s modernization? How did the comparatively harmonious relationship that developed among the state, the nobility, and the theatre in the eighteenth century transform into ideological warfare between the state and the intelligentsia in the nineteenth? How were the identities of the Russian people and the Russian soul configured and altered by actors in St. Petersburg and Moscow? Using the dramatic events of nineteenth-century Russian history as a backdrop, Catherine Schuler answers these questions by revealing the intricate links among national modernization, identity, and theatre.

Schuler draws upon contemporary journals written and published by the educated nobility and the intelligentsia—who represented the intellectual, aesthetic, and cultural groups of the day—as well as upon the laws of the Russian empire and upon theatrical memoirs. With fascinating detail, she spotlights the ideologically charged binaries ascribed to prominent actors—authentic/performed, primitive/civilized, Russian/Western—that mirrored the volatility of national identity from the Napoleonic Wars through the reign of Alexander II.

If the path traveled by Russian artists and audiences from the turn of the nineteenth century to the era of the Great Reforms reveals anything about Russian culture and society, it may be that there is nothing more difficult than being Russian in Russia. By exploring the ways in which theatrical administrators, playwrights, and actors responded to three tsars, two wars, and a major revolt, this carefully crafted book demonstrates the battle for the hearts and minds of the Russian people.
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cover of Theatre and Performance in Small Nations

Theatre and Performance in Small Nations

Edited by Steve Blandford

Intellect Books, 2013

Arguing that the cultures of small nations offer vital insights into the way people relate to national identity in a globalized world, Theatre and Performance in Small Nations features an array of case studies that examine the relationships between theater, performance, identity, and the nation. These contributions cover a wide range of national contexts, including small “stateless” nations such as Catalonia, Scotland, and Wales; First Nations such as indigenous Australia and the Latino United States; and geographically enormous nations whose relationships to powerful neighbors radically affect their sense of cultural autonomy
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cover of Theatre in Passing 2: Searching for New Amsterdam

Theatre in Passing 2

Searching for New Amsterdam

(E)lena K. Siemens

Intellect Books, 2015

This book discusses spaces of performance from formal opera houses to parks and graffiti around the world and is a companion to Theatre in Passing: A Moscow Photo-Diary. Drawing once again on Michel de Certeau’s notion of a “second poetic geography,” this new volume examines prominent theatrical destinations —New York, London, and Paris—along with others that are often overlooked, including Canada, Mexico, and Turkey. In addition to indoor theaters, the book covers a variety of outdoor theatrical spaces, as well as street theater. Like its predecessor, Theatre in Passing 2 is richly illustrated with photographs by the author and provides fascinating insights on the intersection of performing arts, visual culture, and photography.

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cover of Theatre in Passing: A Moscow Photo-Diary

Theatre in Passing

A Moscow Photo-Diary

(E)lena K. Siemens

Intellect Books, 2011

Theatre in Passing explores spaces of performance in contemporary Moscow. Inspired by French philosopher Michel de Certeau’s model of a "second, poetic geography" in which the walker—the everyday practitioner—invents the space observed by the voyeur, this book takes the reader on a tour of spaces of performance in contemporary Moscow. Through text and photography, the city’s "theatrical geography" is uncovered, from the Bolshoi Theater in Theater Square to hidden gems like the recently restored Kuskovo estate.  With additional sections on street theater and other public gatherings, Theatre in Passing is a must-read book for anyone curious about the theatrical architecture and geography of Russia’s capital.

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cover of Theatre in Prison: Theory and Practice

Theatre in Prison

Theory and Practice

Edited by Michael Balfour

Intellect Books, 1995

From role-plays with street gangs in the USA to Beckett in Brixton; from opera productions with sex offenders to psychodrama with psychopaths, the book will discuss, analyse and reflect on theoretical notions and practical applications of theatre for and with the incarcerated.

Theatre in Prison is a collection of thirteen international essays exploring the rich diversity of innovative drama works in prisons. The book includes an introduction that will present a contextualisation of the prison theatre field. Thereafter, leading practitioners and academics will explore key aspects of practice &endash; problemitising, theorising and describing specific approaches to working with offenders. The book also includes extracts from prison plays, poetry and prisoners writings that offer illustrations and insights into the experience of prison life.
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cover of Theatre of Iraq Under Occupation, 2003-2011: Lamentation, Homeland, Identity

Theatre of Iraq Under Occupation, 2003-2011

Lamentation, Homeland, Identity

James Al-Shamma

University of Iowa Press, 2025

From its inception in the northern city of Mosul in the late nineteenth century, Iraqi theatre leaned toward the utopian. Iraqis saw themselves as inheritors of the ancient culture of Mesopotamia, and dramatists frequently referred to the region’s rich history as they imagined the future.

However, in 2003, the United States invasion of Iraq propelled Iraqi theatre in an altogether different direction. Global media published photographs documenting the torture of Iraqi detainees by American soldiers and sectarian violence broke out, as Shiʿa and Sunni militias struggled for power. Theatre of Iraq Under Occupation examines the occupation’s impact on Iraqi theatre as eliciting lamentation over loss of homeland and identity, and as an assault on the Iraqi character itself. The first volume in English dedicated solely to theatre in Iraq, James Al-Shamma and Amir Al-Azraki’s insights don’t just offer a significant contribution to cultural studies, they bridge foreign policy and art in real time.
 
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cover of Theatre of the Oppressed

Theatre of the Oppressed

Pluto Press, 2019

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cover of Theatre of the Real: Yeats, Beckett, and Sondheim

Theatre of the Real

Yeats, Beckett, and Sondheim

Gina Masucci MacKenzie

The Ohio State University Press, 2008

The Theatre of the Real: Yeats, Beckett, and Sondheim traces the thread of jouissance (the simultaneous experience of radical pleasure and pain) through three major theatre figures of the twentieth century. Gina Masucci MacKenzie’s work engages theatrical text and performance in dialogue with the Lacanian Real, so as to re-envision modern theatre as the cultural site where author, actor, and audience come into direct contact with personal and collective traumas. By showing how a transgressively free subject may be formed through theatrical experience, MacKenzie concludes that modern theatre can liberate the individual from the socially constructed self.
 
The Theatre of the Real revises views of modern theatre by demonstrating how it can lead to a collaborative effort required for innovative theatrical work. By foregrounding Yeats’s “dancer” plays, the author shows how these intimate pieces contribute to the historical development of musical as well as modern theatre. Beckett’s universal dramas then pave the way for Sondheim’s postmodern cacophonies of idea and spirit as they introduce comic abjection into modernism’s tragic mode. This exciting work from a new author will leave readers with fresh insight to theatrical performance and its necessity in our lives.
 
 
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cover of Theatre, Community, and Civic Engagement in Jacobean London

Theatre, Community, and Civic Engagement in Jacobean London

Mark Bayer

University of Iowa Press, 2011

 Taking to heart Thomas Heywood’s claim that plays “persuade men to humanity and good life, instruct them in civility and good manners, showing them the fruits of honesty, and the end of villainy,” Mark Bayer’s captivating new study argues that the early modern London theatre was an important community institution whose influence extended far beyond its economic, religious, educational, and entertainment contributions. Bayer concentrates not on the theatres where Shakespeare’s plays were performed but on two important amphitheatres, the Fortune and the Red Bull, that offer a more nuanced picture of the Jacobean playgoing industry. By looking at these playhouses, the plays they staged, their audiences, and the communities they served, he explores the local dimensions of playgoing. 

 
Focusing primarily on plays and theatres from 1599 to 1625, Bayer suggests that playhouses became intimately engaged with those living and working in their surrounding neighborhoods. They contributed to local commerce and charitable endeavors, offered a convivial gathering place where current social and political issues were sifted, and helped to define and articulate the shared values of their audiences. Bayer uses the concept of social capital, inherent in the connections formed among individuals in various communities, to construct a sociology of the theatre from below—from the particular communities it served—rather than from the broader perspectives imposed from above by church and state. By transacting social capital, whether progressive or hostile, the large public amphitheatres created new and unique groups that, over the course of millions of visits to the playhouses in the Jacobean era, contributed to a broad range of social practices integral to the daily lives of playgoers.
 
In lively and convincing prose that illuminates the significant reciprocal relationships between different playhouses and their playgoers, Bayer shows that theatres could inform and benefit London society and the communities geographically closest to them.
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cover of Theatre, Globalization and the Heteroglobal Method

Theatre, Globalization and the Heteroglobal Method

Glenn Odom

Intellect Books, 2026

A bold new framework for global theatre rooted in local philosophies and connected through a heteroglobal vision.

Theatre, Globalization and the Heteroglobal Method offers a groundbreaking framework for rethinking global theatre studies. Drawing on philosophy and scholarship from major theatre traditions—South Africa, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Japan, and Nigeria—the volume reimagines how performance circulates and transforms in a global context.

Challenging the dominance of Eurocentric models in postcolonial studies, comparative literature, and world theatre, the book introduces the “heteroglobal” method: an adaptable, equitable approach that begins with local theoretical and philosophical frameworks before bringing them into dialogue. These imagined centers, each with its own rich discursive heritage, become sites of knowledge exchange where fresh understandings of art and globalization emerge.

Through a theoretically pluralistic matrix of comparison and interculturalism, Theatre, Globalization and the Heteroglobal Method documents contemporary scholarly and artistic practices across diverse cultural landscapes, offering a new model for teaching, research, and performance in an interconnected world.
 
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cover of Theatre, Time and Temporality: Melting Clocks and Snapped Elastics

Theatre, Time and Temporality

Melting Clocks and Snapped Elastics

David Ian Rabey

Intellect Books, 2016

Theatre, Time and Temporality is the first book-length exploration of the subject of temporality within theater and performance. David Ian Rabey brings in sources ranging from medieval and Renaissance theater to contemporary performances—in addition to recent writings from physics, philosophy, and psychology—to analyze ways that time can be presented, communicated, and transformed in the theater. How do we experience time in theater, and how can that experience be altered or manipulated? Rabey’s analysis and exploration will spark discussion among students and scholars of drama, as well as among practicing performers and dramatic writers.
 
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cover of Traveler, There Is No Road: Theatre, the Spanish Civil War, and the Decolonial Imagination in the Americas

Traveler, There Is No Road

Theatre, the Spanish Civil War, and the Decolonial Imagination in the Americas

Lisa Jackson-Schebetta

University of Iowa Press, 2017

Traveler, There Is No Road offers a compelling and complex vision of the decolonial imagination in the United States from 1931 to 1943 and beyond. By examining the ways in which the war of interpretation that accompanied the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) circulated through Spanish and English language theatre and performance in the United States, Lisa Jackson-Schebetta demonstrates that these works offered alternative histories that challenged the racial, gender, and national orthodoxies of modernity and coloniality. Jackson-Schebetta shows how performance in the US used histories of American empires, Islamic legacies, and African and Atlantic trades to fight against not only fascism and imperialism in the 1930s and 1940s, but modernity and coloniality itself.

This book offers a unique perspective on 1930s theatre and performance, encompassing the theatrical work of the Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Spanish diasporas in the United States, as well as the better-known Anglophone communities. Jackson-Schebetta situates well-known figures, such as Langston Hughes and Clifford Odets, alongside lesser-known ones, such as Erasmo Vando, Franca de Armiño, and Manuel Aparicio. The milicianas, female soldiers of the Spanish Republic, stride on stage alongside the male fighters of the Lincoln Brigade. They and many others used the multiple visions of Spain forged during the civil war to foment decolonial practices across the pasts, presents, and futures of the Americas. Traveler conclusively demonstrates that theatre and performance scholars must position US performances within the Americas writ broadly, and in doing so they must recognize the centrality of the hemisphere’s longest-lived colonial power, Spain. 
 
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