Criticism, Theory & History

T to Z by author

See also: Canadian Theatre Studies and National Theatre Studies.

London 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.

Greek Tragedy in Action
Oliver Taplin
When it was first published, Greek Tragedy in Action championed new trends in the study of Greek drama and extended the analysis of plays, purely as texts, to include the significance of the performance. Now firmly established as a classic text, this reissue of Oliver Taplin's seminal study is a must for anyone who is serious about theatre and performance. Softcover, 203 pp. $40.95.

The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas
Diana Taylor
In The Archive and the Repertoire preeminent performance studies scholar Diana Taylor provides a new understanding of performance in the Americas. Examining a variety of styles and concepts of performance, this book elaborates the vital role of performance in making political claims, transmitting traumatic memory, and forging cultural identity. Softcover, 326 pp. $34.95.

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot
Juliette Taylor-Batty & Mark Taylor-Batty
This guide provides students with a comprehensive critical introduction to Waiting for Godot from the controversial first performances to recent productions, including its structure, style and characters, performance history and key production issues and choices. Softcover, $20.95.

A Terry Teachout Reader
Terry Teachout
Terry Teachout, one of today's most distinguished cultural commentators, here turns his sharp eye to every corner of the arts world -- music, dance, literature, theater, film, TV, and the visual arts. With highly informed opinions, an inimitable wit and style, and a genuine devotion to all things cultural, Teachout offers his readers much to delight in and much to ponder. This collection gathers the best of his writings from the past fifteen years. Hardcover, 438 pp. $52.50.

Ibsen'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.

Performance in Place of War
James Thompson, Jenny Hughes & Michael Balfour
From the Greeks and Shakespeare to the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, war has always been a major theme for theatre artists. However, the most extraordinary performance projects in recent years have not only been about war but have also come from conflict zones themselves. This fascinating volume is concerned with these initiatives -- theatre in refugee camps, in war-affected villages, in towns under curfew, in cities under occupation. This books presents theatre and performance that occurs, literally, at the moment bombs are falling, as well as during times of ceasefire and in the aftermath of war. Hardcover, 351 pp. $34.95.

The 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.

The Open Circle: Peter Brook's Theatre Environments
Andrew Todd and Jean-Guy Lecat
The eminently qualified authors have had the full participation of Peter Brook and many of his creative collaborators in producing what is destined to be one of the most widely read and most respected books on the creation of theatre in the last fifty years. It is a book for anyone who has seen a Brook production, read a book by Brook, or has had a memorable experience in a theatre anywhere.
The reader is given a detailed account of the collaboration which established Brook's Centre International de Creations Theatrales and the discovery of the long abandoned music hall theatre Les Bouffes du Nord in the not so chic 10th Arr. north of the Gare du Nord in Paris. Following is a discussion of theatrical space and volume and how Brook's creative work has been achieved and presented at the bouffes and in many other theatres around the world. Brook shares his ideas and inspirations to take the reader on a thrilling ride in theatre space. 262 pp colour photos, drawings. $60.00.

The Faber Pocket Guide to Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama
Simon Trussler
This essential guide provides clear and lively information on thirty-four great Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. The book is for anyone wishing to understand this fertile period in British drama, and will be invaluable for students of Shakespeare seeking a fuller understanding of the exciting theatrical times in which he wrote. Softcover, 269 pp. $12.99.

Shakespeare and Chekhov in Production and Reception
John Tulloch
With a focus on the canonical institutions of Shakespeare and Chekhov, John Tulloch brings together for the first time new concepts of "the theatrical event" with live audience analysis. Using successful mainstream theatre productions, from across the globe, this book of case studies offers a combined cultural and media studies approach to analyzing theatre history, production, and audience. Hardcover, 310 pp. $65.95.

Eugenio Barba
Jane Turner
This compact and well-illustrated book provides an overview of Barba's work and that of his company, Odin Teatret. Furthermore, Eugenio Barba explores his writings and ideas on theatre, and includes a practical guide to training exercises developed by Barba and the actors in his company. Softcover, 174 pp. $25.95.

Caryl Churchill's Top Girls
Alicia Tycer
Top Girls is one of Caryl Churchill's most well-known and often studied works, using an all female cast to critique bourgeois feminism during the Thatcher era. This guide provides a comprehensive critical introduction to Top Girls including new interpretations of the text in the light of Churchill's recent playwriting and the intervening shifts in the political landscape. Softcover, 134 pp. $20.95.

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.

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The Buried Astrolabe: Canadian Dramatic Imagination and Western Tradition
Craig Stewart Walker
The Buried Astrolabe offers a critical introduction to Canadian drama by way of six of the country's most important contemporary playwrights: James Reaney, Michael Cook, Sharon Pollock, Michel Tremblay, Judith Thompson and George F. Walker. Each chapter constitutes a study of the poetics particular to one of the playwrights, showing how a personal vision has been explored and dramatized over the course of the writer's career to date. Hardcover, $70.00; Paperback $29.95.

The 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.

Radical Gestures: Feminism and Performance Art in North America
Jayne Wark
Performance art was finally recognized as an art form in the 1970s. In Radical Gestures, the first comprehensive history of feminist performance art in North America within the social context of the feminist movement and avant-garde art from the 1970s to 2000, Jayne Wark shows that artists drew from feminist politics to create works that, following a long period of modernist aesthetic detatchment, made a unique contribution to the re-politicization of art. Softcover, 285 pp. $32.95.

Upstaged: Making Theatre in the Media Age
Anne Nicholson Weber
Ever since the introduction of the "talkies" in the 1920s and television in the 1950s, live theatre has struggled for its place in a culture increasingly dominated by the screen. In interviews with Julie Taymor, Tony Kushner, Anna Deavere Smith, Peter Hall, Wallace Shawn, Frank Rich, Simon Callow, Maggie Gyllenhaal, David Leveaux, Adrian Lester, Nicholas Hytner, Paul Scofield, and Robert Brustein, this issue is exhaustively discussed. Softcover, 177 pp. $30.95.

Staging the War: American Drama and World War II
Albert Wertheim
What happened in American drama in the years between the Depression and the conclusion of World War II? How did the war make its impact on the theatre? More important, how was the drama used during the war years to shape American beliefs and actions. Albert Wertheim's Staging the War brings to light the important role played by the drama during what might arguably be called the most important decade in American history. Hardcover, 328 pp. $52.95.

A Short History of Western Performance Space
David Wiles
This innovative book provides a historical account of performance space within the theatrical traditions of western Europe. David Wiles takes a broad-based view of theatrical activity as something that occurs in churches, streets, pubs, and galleries as much as in buildings explicitly designed to be theatres. Spanning from the Greeks to the present, this book has been written with the theatre studies student in mind. Softcover, 316 pp. $36.00.


Collaborative Theatre: The Theatre du Soleil Sourcebook
David Williams, ed.
Theatre du Soleil is one of the most celebrated theater companies in Europe. This sourcebook will be of compelling interest to students of theater and performance studies, French cultural studies, as well as academics and theatre practitioners. $52.95.

Modern Tragedy
Raymond Williams
Modern Tragedy, first published in 1966, is a study of the ideas and ideologies which have influenced the production and analysis of tragedy. Raymond Williams sees tragedy both in terms of literary tradition and in relation to the tragedies of modern society, of revolution and disorder, and of individual experience. Softcover, 256 pp. $24.95.

Theatre World,
Volume 60, 2003 - 2004
John Willis & Ben Hodges
Celebrating it's 60th year, here is the authoritative statistical and pictoral record of the Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway seasons, touring companies, and professional regional companies throughout the United States with hundreds of dramatic colour and black & white photographs.. Complete cast listings, replacements, producers, directors, authors, composers, opening and closing dates, song titles, and much more are included. Special sections include biographical data, obituaries, longest-runs listings for Broadway and Off-Broadway, and a theatrical awards section with photos of the season's 13 Theatre World Award winners. Hardcover, 375 pp. $64.95.

Theatre World
Volume 59, 2002-2003
John Willis
This is the authoritative, statistical, and pictorial record of the Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway seasons, touring companies, and professional regional companies throughout the United States; a classic in its field. Complete with cast listings, replacements, producers, directors, authors, composers, opening and closing dates, song titles, and much more, including special sections with biographical data, obituaries, longest runs listings, an expanded theatrical awards section, and photos of the season's 14 Theatre World Award winners. Softcover, 372 pp. $33.95.

The Broadview Anthology of Drama
Plays from the Western Theatre: Volumes 1 and 2
Jennifer Wise and Craig S. Walker
Here is a chronological presentation of 43 plays in two volumes, ranging from the ancient theatre world to the present day. Historical and theatrical contextualization is provided for each significant era. In addition, the editors have provided a glossary of terms used in the anthology, making this a vital set of books for anyone serious about theatre. Softcover. Volume 1, 850 pp. Volume 2, 674 pp. $29.95.

The Necessity of Theater
Paul Woodruff
The Necessity of Theater analyzes the unique power of theater by separating it into the twin arts of watching and being watched. Characteristically thoughtful, probing, and original, Paul Woodruff makes a case for theater as a unique form of expression connected to our most human instincts. The Necessity of Theater should appeal to anyone seriously interested or involved in theater or performance. Hardcover, 251 pp. $29.95.

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Last modified December 28, 2009.
Please note that all prices are in Canadian dollars. All prices are subject to change without notice.