In this book Brian Crow and Chris Banfield provide an introduction to post-colonial theater by concentrating on the work of major dramatists from the third world and subordinated cultures in the first world. Crow and Banfield consider the plays of such writers as Wole Soyinka and Athol Fugard and his collaborators, Derek Walcott, August Wilson and Jack Davis, and Badal Sircar and Girish Karnad. Each chapter contains an informative list of primary source material and further reading about the dramatists. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of theater and cultural history.

This work gives an "inside" view of Chinese theater and the actor in performance for the first time. It challenges Western theater artists such as Brecht, Grotowski, Barba and Schechner, who have extracted from Chinese theater elements that might enrich their own theaters. It is based on personal observations of and dialogue with Chinese actors, experiences that were impossible before 1980. Riley's study is well illustrated with photographs and diagrams and is accessible to anyone interested in theater, even those with no knowledge of Chinese or Chinese theater.

This is the first book to explore theater in Russia after Stalin. Through his work at the Moscow Art Theatre, Anatoly Smeliansky is in a key position to analyze contemporary events on the Russian stage and he combines this first-hand knowledge with valuable archival material. Smeliansky chronicles developments from 1953 and the rise of a new Soviet theater, highlighting the social and political events that shaped Russian drama and performance. The book also focuses on major directors and practitioners and contains a chronology, glossary of names, and informative illustrations.

This volume reveals a theater culture more complex and contradictory than previous histories have allowed for. Combining the popular with the commercial, the book includes accounts of the craze for thriller and detective plays and musical comedy and revue, alongside analyses of historical pageantry and the development of politicized productions of Shakespeare. It initiates a long overdue reassessment of mid-twentieth century British theater cultures. The book will appeal to advanced undergraduates and postgraduates as well as scholars interested in twentieth-century British theater.

This book describes and analyzes theater productions performed in Israel, America, Poland, France, Italy and Germany that deal with the Holocaust. The collected essays trace the development of the realistic/documentary stagings of the 1950s-1970s through to today's very controversial avant-garde shows. This is the first book that deals with Holocaust plays "in performance," and provides many previously unpublished drawings and documents, as well as an important descriptive bibliography.

Theater, in a variety of forms and contexts, can make, and indeed has made, positive political and social interventions in a range of developing cultures around the world. In this book a distinguished team of theater historians and dramatists explore how theater has a dynamic and often difficult relationship with societies and states, arguing positively that theatrical activity can make a difference. The collection begins with a foreword by Wole Soyinka and, throughout the volume, specially chosen plays, projects and movements are examined in countries such as Brazil and Argentina, Nigeria,...

The Politics of Irish Drama analyzes some twenty-five of the best-known Irish plays from those of Dion Boucicault to Sebastian Barry, including works by Shaw, Yeats, Lady Gregory and Beckett. The book looks at political contexts for these plays and, in arguing for the outward-directed nature of dramatic representation of Ireland, shows Irish drama to be an international as much as national phenomenon.

The Politics of Irish Drama analyzes some twenty-five of the best-known Irish plays from those of Dion Boucicault to Sebastian Barry, including works by Shaw, Yeats, Lady Gregory and Beckett. The book looks at political contexts for these plays and, in arguing for the outward-directed nature of dramatic representation of Ireland, shows Irish drama to be an international as much as national phenomenon.

Working through a generational mix of writers, from Sarah Kane, the iconoclastic "bad girl" of the stage, to the "canonical" Caryl Churchill, Elaine Aston charts the significant political and aesthetic changes in women's playwriting at the end of the twentieth century. Aston also explores "new" writing for the 1990s in theater by Sarah Daniels, Bryony Lavery, Phyllis Nagy, Winsome Pinnock, Rebecca Prichard, Judy Upton and Timberlake Wertenbaker.

Challenging prevailing views of Brecht's theater and politics, Loren Kruger focuses much of her analysis on regions where Brecht has had special resonance, including East Germany and South Africa. She also analyzes political interpretations of Brecht in light of other key dramatists, including Heiner MUller and Athol Fugard, as well as Brechtian influence on writers and philosophers such as Adorno, Benjamin, and Barthes.