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Criticism, Theory & History: New & Featured

See also: Canadian Theatre Studies and National Theatre Studies.

Performance, [Performance] and Performers Performance, [Performance] and Performers
Volume1: Conversations

Bruce Barber
Since the early 1960s, the field of performance studies has been fed by the thoery-building and historical writings of artist participants. As the first recognizable performmance scholar in Canada, Bruce Barber's published writings of the last three decades hace consistently displayed a convincing expertise and digestible fluency. This, the first of two volumes, contains a selection of Barber's interviews with some of the world's most influential performance artists. Softcover, 141 pp. $29.95.

Staging the Screen: The use of film and video in theatre Staging the Screen: The use of film and video in theatre
Greg Giesekam
Greg Giesekam raises critical and theoretical questions about the use of multimedia and intermedia, examining how the aesthetic strategies of key practitioners and changing approaches to cultural production have radically challenged dominant theatre practice. Extensively illustrated, this clear and accessible text provides detailed and evocative case studies of individual productions from a wide range of contemporary theatre companies. An invaluable resource for students wishing to navigate their way through an expanding and exciting area of theatre practice. Softcover, 280 pp. $27.95.


Multi-Media: Video Installation PerformanceMulti-Media: Video Installation Performance

Nick Kaye
Multi-Media charts the development of multi-media video, installation and performance in a unique dialogue between theoretical analysis and specially commmissioned documentations by some of the world's foremost artists. Nick Kaye explores the interdisciplinary history and character of experimental multi-media practice. Softcover, 249 pp. $35.95.


London Stage in the 20th CenturyLondon Stage in the 20th Century

Robert Tanitch
The London Stage is an encyclopedaeic view of the plays, players and performers of London's Wesr End throughout the last century. No other city came close to rivalling London in terms of the volume and quality of its theatrical productions between 1900 and 2000. No serious follower of the London theatre will be able to resist the temptation of this book and the compendium of knowledge and information it contains. Hardcover, 330 pp. $46.50.


The Theatre of Societas Raffaello SanzioThe Theatre of Societas Raffaello Sanzio
Claudia Castellucci, Romeo Castellucci, Chiara Guidi, Joe Keller & Nicholas Ridout
In the first English-language book to document their work, the company founders of Societas Raffaello Sanzio discuss their approach to theatre making with Joe Kelleher and Nicholas Ridout. This is a significant collection of theoretical and practical reflections on the subject of theatre in the twenty-first century and an indispensible written and visual document of the company's work. Softcover, 274 pp. $37.50.


Dramatis Personae: The Rise of Medieval and Renaissance Theatre Dramatis Personae: The Rise of Medieval and Renaissance Theatre

Phillip Freund
Dramatis Personae, the third volume in the Stage by Stage series, traces the return of religious theatre and ritual, with Passion Plays, Mysteries and Moralities taking over classical works, producing whimsical new dramatic forms, as well as exalted musical innovations. Dramatis Personae is a valuable resource for teachers, students, stagecraft professionals and all those who love the theatre. Hardcover, 930 pp. $121.50.


The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre, 1730-1830The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre, 1730-1830
Edited by Jane Moody & Daniel O'Quinn
Written by leading international scholars, chapters in this volume cover subjects such as actors and acting, playwrights and performers such as James Quin and Sarah Siddons, and the major theatrical forms of the period such as comedy, melodrama and pantomime. The Companion explains what made the theatre such an important political, social and cultural venue for spectators from all classes of British society during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. An essential guide to one of the most exciting and innovative periods in British theatrical history. Softcover, 285 pp. $30.95.


The Routledge Guide to BroadwayThe Routledge Guide to Broadway

Ken Bloom
This is an A-to-Z reference guide aimed at students of performance, theatre history, direction and production, as well as anyone with an interest in Broadway. Includes a comprehensive history of Broadway theatre, focusing on key performers, writers, directors, plays, musicals, and the folklore of Broadway. Softcover, 288 pp. $23.95.


Broadway Babylon: Glamour, Glitz, and Gossip on the Great White WayBroadway Babylon: Glamour, Glitz, and Gossip on the Great White Way
Boze Hadleigh
Discerning fact from fiction, quoting hundreds of players, and revealing the stories behind over a century of major headlines, this hilarious and poignant volume raises the curtain on a legacy of top-of-the-line talent, outsized and clashing personalities, unprecedented greed, embarrassing disasters, and barely masked discrimination. Written with affection and audacity its subject demands, Broadway Babylon celebrates life on the Great White Way--warts and all. Hardcover, 342 pp. $31.00.


Applied Drama: The Gift of TheatreApplied Drama: The Gift of Theatre

Helen Nicholson
Applied Theatre offers an insight into theatre-making that takes place in communities across the world. It celebrates the gift of practice that takes place in different - and sometimes unglamorous - settings: prisons, schools, hostels for the homeless, care homes for the elderly, and on the street. Ideal for students and practitioners, Helen Nicholson's lively study poses critical questions about the efficacy of applied drama, prompting debate about the significance of theatre in society as a whole. Softcover, 196 pp. $33.95.


The Playbill Broadway Yearbook June 2006 - May 2007 The Playbill Broadway Yearbook June 2006 - May 2007

Robert Viagas
Taking the form of a school yearbook, this third edition is packed with photos, facts and memorabilia fro the 2006-2007 Broadway Season. Crammed with backstage stories on all 67 Broadway production of the season gathered from excellent sources including dressers, stage doormen, stage managers and cast members, this is the definitive “ go-to” for Broadway fans everywhere. Hardcover. $37.95. Coming in September.


Jerzy GrotowskiJerzy Grotowski

James Slowiak & Jairo Cuesta
Jerzy Grotowski was a master director, teacher and theorist whose work extends beyond the conventional limits of performance. This book combines an overview of Grotowski's life and the distinct phases of his work; an analysis of his key ideas; a consideration of his role as director of the renowned Polish Laboratory Theatre, and a series of practical exercises offering an introduction to the principles underlying Grotowski's working methods. Softcover, 182 pp. $24.95.


Ibsen and Hitler Ibsen and Hitler: The Playwright, the Plagiarist, and the Plot for the Third Reich

Steven F. Sage
Steven F. Sage reveals that long before the Final Solution, three dramas by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen powerfully influenced Hitler's vision. Swayed by German cultists hailing him mas a reborn Ibsen hero come to found the "Third Reich" foretold in Ibsen's play, Hitler cribbed phrases, metaphors, themes, and plots from the playwright's work. This astonishing piece of detection work not only shows a new method in the Fuhrer's madness, but reveals an essential missing link in the history of the twentieth century. Softcover, 370 pp. $20.95.


Community Performance: An IntroductionCommunity Performance: An Introduction

Petra Kuppers
Community Performance: An Introduction is a comprehensive and accessible practice-based primer for students and practitioners of community arts, dance and theatre. This book is both a classroom-friendly textbook and a handbook for the practitioner, perfectly answering the needs of a field where teaching is oriented around practice. Softcover, 238 pp. $36.50.


The Community Performance ReaderThe Community Performance Reader
Petra Kuppers & Gwen Robertson
The Community Performance Reader brings together core writings and critical approaches to community performance work, presenting practices in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and beyond. This volume offers a complex and comprehensive anthology of key writings in the vibrant field of community performance, spanning dance, theatre and visual practices. Softcover, 283 pp. $41.50.


The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman TheatreThe Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Theatre

Marianne McDonald & J. Michael Walton
This Companion offers a wide-ranging picture of the performance conditions and background of theatre in the classical world from Homer to the end of the Roman Empire. The essays by prominent practitioners and historians investigate the broad socio-cultural frammework that underpinned classical theatre and the various entertainment forms. Softcover, 365 pp. $34.95.


When Blanche Met BrandoWhen Blanche Met Brando: The Scandalous Story of A Streetcar Named Desire

Sam Stagg
When Tennessee Williams's ground-breaking play opened on Broadway, audiences were scandalized by its raw sexuality and taboo subject matter. The outrage in London was even fiercer, and Elia Kazan's movie version incensed the nation and provoked censorship by religious and political pressure groups. Yet in spite of its notoriety, A Streetcar Named Desire became both a classic and a pop-culture phenomenon. When Blanche Met Brando combines suberb research, including interviews with every living cast member of the first three revolutionary productions, in New York, London, and Hollywood, with a close reading of the play text and screenplay. Hardcover, 394 pp. $35.95.


Robert WilsonRobert Wilson
Maria Shevtsova
Routledge Performance Practitioners is a series of introductory guides to the key theatre-makers of the last century. Robert Wilson is an American-European director who is also a performer, installation artist, writer, designer of light and much more besides - a crossover polymath who dissolves both generic and geographical boundaries and is a precursor of globalization in the arts. Softcover, 172 pp. $29.99.


Ibsen's Drama: Right Action and Tragic JoyIbsen's Drama: Right Action and Tragic Joy

Theoharis C. Theoharis
Ibsen's Drama: Right Action and Tragic Joy is a masterful new work of criticism that situates Henrik Ibsen and his plays within the entire sweep of Western culture. Theoharis argues that in his late plays Ibsen struggled with, and finally repudiated, the Aristotelian ideas of reality and change that held sway over the earlier part of his career, and more generally, over nineteenth-century drama and culture. Softcover, 310 pp. $36.95.


Etienne DecrouxEtienne Decroux

Thomas Leabhart
Etienne Decroux is a book that combines an overview of Decroux's life and work; an analysis of Decroux's Words on Mime - the first book to be written about this art - and a series of practical exercises offering an introduction to corporeal mime technique. Softcover, 144 pp. $29.95.


Environmental and Site-Specific TheatreEnvironmental and Site-Specific Theatre

Edited by Andrew Houston
"In every site-specific or environmental theatre project, the artist must spend a lot of time walking around experiencing the site; trying to gain some insight into its inhabitants, its workings, its reality, but also trying to imagine how it might possess a life not yet realized."- from the introduction by Andrew Houston. Softcover, 196 pp. $25.00.


Electoral Guerilla Theatre Electoral Guerilla Theatre: Radical Ridicule and Social Movements

L.M. Bogad
Drawing on extensive archival and ethnographic research, L.M. Bogad explores the recent phenomenon of satirical election campaigns. Electoral Guerrilla Theatre offers an entertaining and enlightening read for students working across a variety of disciplines, including performance studies, social science, cultural studies and politics. Softcover, 235 pp. $47.95.


The Cambridge Introduction to TragedyThe Cambridge Introduction to Tragedy

Jennifer Wallace
Tragedy is the art-form created to confront the most difficult experience we face: death, loss, injustice, thrwarted passion, despair. This introduction provides an overview of the tragic theatre canon and brings a wide spectrum of examples, from both literature and life, into the discussion of this emotional and frequently controversial subject. Softcover, 243 pp. $26.95.


Ariane MnouchkineAriane Mnouchkine

Judith G. Miller
Ariane Mnouchkine, the most significant living French theatre director, has devised over the last forty years a form of research and creation with her theatre collective, Le Theatre du Soleil, that is both engaged with contemporary history and committed to reinvigorating theatre by foregrounding the centrality of the actor. Softcover, 157 pp. $36.50.


Twenty-Eight Artists and Two SaintsTwenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints

Joan Acocella
From one of our most admired cultural critics, thirty-one essays on some of the most influencial artists of our time - writers, dancers, choreographers, sculptors - and two saints of all time, Joan of Arc and Mary Magdalene. What unites the book is Acocella's interest in the making of art and in the courage, perseverance, and, sometimes, dumb luck that it requires. Softcover, 524 pp. $18.95.

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Theatre Criticism, Theory & History titles are listed alphabetically by author's last name.
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Theatre Studies
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Drama in Education


An Introduction to: The Art of TheatreAn Introduction to: The Art of Theatre
Marsh Cassady
A comprehensive text--past, present, and future - The Art of Theatre explains the classic definition of theatre and drama; their structure; style and genre; architecture and space in Part I. Part II analyzes the production; the playwright; the actor; the director; the designers and supporting artists; the business side of theatre, and the audience and the critic. Part III contains theatre's history, explaining its beginnings; medieval, Renaissance, seventeenth to eighteenth-century theatre, and nineteenth to twenty-first-century theatre. Softcover, 355 pp. $29.95.


The Comic Mask in the Comedia dell'ArteThe Comic Mask in the Comedia dell'Arte

Antonio Fava
The mask--as object, symbol, character, theatrical practice, even spectacle--is the central metaphor around which Antonio Fava builds his discussion of structure, themes, characters, and methods. His book combines historical fact, personal experience, philosophical speculation, and passionate opinion. Including period drawings, prints, and color photographs of leather masks made by Fava himself, The Comic Mask in the Commedia dell'Arte is a work of singular insight into one of the world's most venerable forms of theater. Softcover, 182 pp. $50.95.

The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel BeckettThe Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Beckett
Ronan McDonald
This is an accessible introduction to one of the most important writers of the twentieth century, explaining how we might interpret famously difficult and experimental works such as Waiting for Godot, Endgame, and Happy Days, and providing an overview of Beckett and his time. Softcover, 140 pp. $23.95.


The Cambridge Companion to The ActressThe Cambridge Companion to The Actress
Maggie B. Gale & John Stokes
This is a collection of original essays on the cultural role of performing women on stage and on screen, throughout history and across continents - from Nell Gwyn to Lily Langtry, from Bernhardt to Peggy Ashcroft, from Joyce Grenfell to Vanessa Redgrave, from Ellen Terry to Halle Berry. Topics covered include cross-dressing, solo performance, racial constraints, recent Shakespeare, and the actress in early photography and on film. Softcover, 348 pp. $34.95.


The Cambridge Companion to BrechtThe Cambridge Companion to Brecht
Peter Thomson & Glendyr Sacks
This updated edition properly retains much that was in the original Companion, but also introduces new voices and themes. It brings together the contrasting views of major critics and active practitioners and contains new essays on Brecht's early experience of cabaret, his significance in the development of film theory and his unique approach to dramaturgy. A detailed calendar of Brecht's life and work and a selective bibliography of English criticism complete this overview of a writer who constantly aimed to provoke. Softcover, 333 pp. $28.95.


Samuel Beckett: Anatomy of a Literary RevolutionSamuel Beckett: Anatomy of a Literary Revolution
Pascale Casanova
In this fascinating new exploration of Samuel Beckett's work, Pascale Casanova argues that Beckett's reputation rests on a pervasive misreading of his oeuvre, which neglects entirely the literary revolution he instigated. Reintroducing the historical into the heart of this body of work, Casanova provides an arresting portrait of Beckett as radically subversive and, in the process, presents the key to some of the most profound enigmas of Beckett's writing. Hardcover, 119 pp. $30.00.


Theatre of Catastrophe: New Essays on Howard BarkerTheatre of Catastrophe: New Essays on Howard Barker
Karoline Gritzner & David Ian Rabey
This collection of essays is the first to consider the full range of Barker's theatrical objectives and achievements, and reflects his international status as an artistic thinker and practitioner. Contributors from around the world consider key events and themes in Barker's plays such as death, sexuality, performance, blindness, politics, eroticism and cruelty. Overviews of Barker's career explore his rejection of standard dramatic and theatrical techniques and his pursuit of a new tragic form. Softcover, 240 pp. $37.95.

Living Justice: Love, Freedom, and the Making of The Exonerated Living Justice: Love, Freedom, and the Making of The Exonerated
Jessica Blank & Erik Jensen
In 2000, Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen embarked on a tour across America. They were a pair of young actors from New York who wanted to learn more about the country's exonerated -- men and women who had been sentenced to die for crimes they didn't commit, and who were freed amidst overwhelming evidence of their innocence. The result of their journey was The Exonerated. Living Justice is Jessica and Erik's fascinating account of the creation of their play. Softcover, 310 pp. $19.00.


Stage Fright, Animals, and Other Theatrical ProblemsStage Fright, Animals, and Other Theatrical Problems

Nicholas Ridout
Why do actors get stage fright? What is so embarassing about joining in? Why not work with animals and children, and why is it so hard to collapse into helpless laughter when things go wrong? In trying to answer these questions -- usually ignored by theatre scholarship but of enduring interest to theatre professionals and audiences alike -- Nicholas Ridout attempts to explain the relationship between these apparently unwanted and anomalous phenomena and the wider social and political meanings of the modern theatre. Softcover, 197 pp. $38.95.


Outsider: John Rockwell on the Arts, 1967-2006Outsider: John Rockwell on the Arts, 1967-2006

John Rockwell
This compliation by longtime New York Times music, dance and arts critic John Rockwell features the renowned journalist's own seleciton of his finest, most pungent criticism and commentary from 1967 to the present. These writings epitomize Rockwell's unique vision of the arts scene over the last 40 years. Any literate reader, any lover of culture in its full range and scope, from genre to genre, high to low, will relish Rockwell's trenchant, witty, frank analysis. Hardcover, 544 pp. $45.95.


Stretching My MindStretching My Mind
Edward Albee
All throughout his playwriting career, Edward Albee also managed to bring his singular critical force to a large body of nontheatrical prose. Stretching My Mind collects for the first time the author's writings about theatre, literature, the visual arts, and the political and cultural battlegrounds that have defined our times. Here he discusses artistic figures as varied as Samuel Beckett, Carson McCullers, Noel Coward, Lee Krasner, Eugene Ionesco, Louise Nevelson, James Purdy, Lillian Ross, Milton Avery, and Uta Hagen, among others. Hardcover, 294 pp. $33.95.


Millenial Stages: Essays and Reviews: 2001-2005Millenial Stages: Essays and Reviews: 2001-2005

Robert Brunstein
In this wise, witty, and wide-ranging collection of recent writings, Robert Brustein examines critical issues relating to theatre in the post-9/11 years, analyzing specific plays, emerging and established performers, and theatrical production throughout the world. Brustein relates our theatre to our society in a manner that reminds us why the performing arts matter. Hardcover, 282 pp. $49.00.


All Theater Is Revolutionary TheaterAll Theater Is Revolutionary Theater

Benjamin Bennett
All Theater Is Revolutionary Theater is the first book to consider why, in the Western tradition (and only in the Western tradition), theatrical drama is regarded as its own literary or poetic type, when the criteria needed to differentiate drama from other forms of writing do not resemble the criteria by which types of prose or verse are ordinarily distinguised. Bennett's historical investigations into theoretical works ranging from Aristotle to Artaud, Brecht, and Diderot suggest that the attempt to include drama in the system of Western literature causes certain specific incongruities that, in his view, have the salutary effect of preserving the otherwise endangered possibility of a truly liberal, progressive or revolutionary literature. Hardcover, 241 pp. $51.95.


Friedrich Durrenmatt: Selected Writings, Volume 3: Essays

Friedrich Durrenmatt: Selected Writings, Volume 3: Essays
Joel Agee, Kenneth J. Northcott & Brian Evenson
Though virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, Durrenmatt's essays are among his most impressive achievements. Their range alone is astonishing: he wrote with authority and charm about art, literature, philosophy, politics, and the theater. Most of the essays appear here for the first time in English, and all have been expertly translated by Joel Agee. Durrenmatt has long been considered a great writer, but one unfairly neglected in the modern world of letters. With the three-volume Selected Writings (the other volumes gather the best of Durrenmatt's plays and fictions), a new generation of readers will rediscover his greatest works. Hardcover, 201 pp. $37.95.

The Cambridge Companion to MoliereThe Cambridge Companion to Moliere
David Bradby & Andrew Calder
A broad and detailed introduction to Moliere and his plays, this Companion evokes his own theatrical career, his theatres and patrons, the performers and theatre staff with whom he worked, and the various publics he and his troups entertained with such success. It looks at his particular brand of comedy and satire. L'Ecole des femmes, Le Tartuffe, Dom Juan, Le Misanthrope, L'Avare and Les Femmes savantes are examined from various different viewpoints. The comedies-ballet are reinstated to the central position which they held in his oeuvre in Moliere's own lifetime. The Companion looks at looks at modern directors' theatre, exploring the central role played by productions of his work in successive 'revolutions' in the dramatic arts in France. Softcover, 242 pp. $34.95.


Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of ModernismHenrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism

Toril Moi
Henrik Ibsen's standing as a founder of modern theatre is unquestioned; yet to many he is seen as a dull realist, with little significance to the nineteenth-century's larger cultural trajectory. One hundred years after his death, Toril Moi presents a radical new appraisal. Ibsen is here an astonishing innovator; a powerful influence on a generation of European writers; a painter and philosopher whose clear-eyed chronicling of relationships overturned idealism, the dominant aesthetic of his age. Henrik Ibsen and the Birth of Modernism rewrites nineteenth-century literary history, placing Ibsen in his rightful place alongside Baudelaire, Flaubert, and Manet as a founder of European modernism. Hardcover, 382 pp. $48.95.


The Cambridge Introduction to Early English TheatreThe Cambridge Introduction to Early English Theatre

Janette Dillon
Covering early English theatre from the earliest recorded vernacular texts in the late medieval period to the closing of the theatres in 1642, this introduction gives an accessible overview of the historical development of theatre. The five chapters focus on: Place of performance, Actors and audiences, Writers and the place of the theatre, Genre and tradition, and Instruction and spectacle. Softcover, 296 pp. $28.95.


Chekhov: The Cherry OrchardChekhov: The Cherry Orchard
James N. Loehlin
Chekhov's masterpiece, about a Russian family losing its ancestral home, combines a lament for a vanishing past with a hopeful dream of the future. In the century since its first performance, The Cherry Orchard has undergone a wide range of conflicting interpretations: tragic and comic, naturalistic and symbolic, reactionary and radical. This study traces the performance history of one of the landmark plays of the modern theatre. Considering the work of such directors as Anatoly Efros, Giorgio Strehler, Peter Brook, and Peter Stein, Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard explores the way different artists, periods, and cultures have reinvented Chekhov's poignant comedy of failure and hope. Softcover, 245 pp. $28.95.

Women in American TheatreWomen in American Theatre
Third Edition
Helen Chinoy & Linda Walsh Jenkins
This new edition of Women in American Theatre, the first full-scale revision since 1987, collects interviews and essays that explore and celebrate the complete spectrum of women's contributions to the theatre field, beginning with female rites, such as beauty pageants and Native American performance; through in-depth coverage of actresses, playwrights, and feminist theatres. A new chapter, "Voices at the Millenium," profiles cutting edge women working in the field today. Softcover, 560 pp. $27.95.


Stop the Show!Stop the Show!
Brad Schreiber
In Stop the Show! Brad Schreiber has compiled the funniest, most frightening, and most truly bizarre stories of top directors, actors, playwrights, and technicians from the nineteenth century to today: stories about missed entrances and exits; onstage, unscripted fights between performers; improvised lines; accidental pratfalls; falling scenery; and so much more. Softcover, 262 pp. $19.95.

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Last modified May 8, 2008 .
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