Women writers from the peripheries and semiperipheries of Europe who participated in the metropolitan melting pots of new ideas at the fin de siècle are often marginalized or excluded in historiographical accounts, making their contributions to a European cultural heritage invisible.1 This marginalization, shared by numerous women playwrights and artists, prompts the need to explore ways of providing

On 24 December 1871, Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Aida premiered in Cairo’s Khedivial Opera House. The Khedive of Egypt, Ismail, had commissioned Verdi to compose the opera as part of a larger program of urban renewal that had peaked with the Suez Canal’s inauguration in November 1869. Wide boulevards, landscaped gardens, and luxury hotels of iron, steel, and the improved glass of the nineteenth century

The Lenin Memorial mass meeting, organized by the newly formed National Council of American–Soviet Friendship (NCASF) and featuring scenes from the Soviet play adapted and directed for the Theatre Guild, followed quickly on the heels of a similar mass meeting and rally, “Salute to Our Russian Ally,” staged at Madison Square Garden on 1 November 1942 and attended by twenty thousand supporters. Both

The provocative work of German artist Christoph Schlingensief may seem to be not possible today. However, it developed an afterlife of its own. Against the backdrop of current discourse shifts and political developments my article historicizes this work from the early stage productions at the Berlin Volksbühne after the fall of the Wall to taking to the streets of Vienna at the turn of the millennium

My examination of game play, ludic activity and being playful in immersive Gatsby shows that Gatsby is a typical example of the playification of theatre in the contemporary art scene. In using the term ‘playification’, I refer to the method of incorporating diverse play categories in theatre to motivate audience activity. While much critical attention has been devoted to the controversial nature of

Anne Charlotte Leffler's play Sanna kvinnor (True Women) (1883), together with other late nineteenth-century plays by women playwrights, is considered a significant historical event in Swedish theatre histories, regarded as a successful feminist intervention. This study examines the cultural-specific conditions and agendas that governed the interpretations of Sanna kvinnor at the theatres. Theoretically

This article argues that an understanding of male same-sex practices in ancient Greece point towards a queer desirous spectatorship – a male ‘gayze’. Ancient tragic scholarship has often omitted discussion of male same-sex practices, despite using marriage and heterosexual social norms to elucidate meaning in text and performance. This article seeks to redress the exclusion of queer histories and perspectives

This article explores the 2017 performance of Harrison David Rivers's play, And She Would Stand Like This, and its dramatization of the intersectional marginalization and discrimination endured by a queer family of colour facing AIDS, through the framework of Euripides’ Trojan Women. It does so via three main perspectives: chosen family, normative discriminations and tragic disidentifications. In its

Abstract: In 1955, Mamie Till Bradley spoke throughout the country on behalf of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to bring justice to her recently murdered son, Emmett Till. While most scholarship focuses on Bradley's choice to publicize her son's mutilated body, I analyze her understudied NAACP-sponsored grief tour and her ensuing public fallout with the organization

Abstract: Drawing on Indigenous feminist theories of futurity and care, interviews with Indigenous theatre artists, and a case study on decolonial acts of relational care refused, this article explores how carework in theatre production contracts reveals the labor of Indigenous artists to sustain and expand their communities. It explores the informal challenges Larissa FastHorse issues to producing

Abstract: On December 15, 2019, a group of elderly women from a Muslim ghetto on the outskirts of New Delhi came out in protest of the police brutalities against minority students who were resisting the recently passed Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Despite the widespread attention it received, the protest eluded attempts to understand it fully within both popular and academic discursive frameworks

Abstract: This essay theorizes Latine maneras de ser (ways of being) as care through an analysis of si|embra, a 2021 collaborative performance and dance event cultivated between various Latine artists and the residents who live and own businesses on West Jefferson Boulevard in Los Angeles. I examine the gossip, partying, and dancing of folx on the block during the planning and presentation of si|embra

Abstract: This essay tends to the continued lives and potential futures of Operation Babylift refugees as subjects born from "militarized care,' a framework that resists the binary between violence and care to instead denote the affective and sensorial manifestation of both violence and care. By pairing Heidi Bub's story of reunion in the documentary Daughter from Danang with a reparative reading of

Abstract: This article examines the peace advocacy of Women Cross DMZ, a Korean diasporicled collective of feminist activists who are calling for a formal end to the Korean War and the centering of women in peacebuilding processes. During peace symposia in North Korea and South Korea and walks in 2015, Women Cross DMZ utilized objects—scarves, banners, and quilts—inspired by jogakbo, a Korean patchwork-style

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: How To Defend Yourselfby Liliana Padilla Dan Venning HOW TO DEFEND YOURSELF. By Liliana Padilla. Codirected by Rachel Chavkin, Liliana Padilla, and Steph Paul. New York Theatre Workshop, New York. 03 21, 2023. Sexual assault continues to plague college campuses despite the #MeToo movement, consent workshops, and protective

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Ibsen's Ghost: An Irresponsible Biographical Fantasyby Charles Busch Benjamin Gillespie IBSEN'S GHOST: AN IRRESPONSIBLE BIO-GRAPHICAL FANTASY. By Charles Busch. Directed by Carl Andress. Primary Stages, 59E59 Theaters, New York. 03 3, 2024. Not to be confused with Ibsen's Ghosts, Ibsen's Ghost—sardonically advertised as "the

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Making Broadway Dance by Liza Gennaro, and: Embodied Nostalgia: Early Twentieth Century Social Dance and The Choreographing of Broadway Musical Theatre by Phoebe Rumsey Ray Miller MAKING BROADWAY DANCE. By Liza Gennaro. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022; pp. 239. EMBODIED NOSTALGIA: EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY SOCIAL DANCE

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: The Spectacular Theatre of Frank Joseph Galati: Reshaping American Theatre in Chicago, Illinois by Julie Jackson Stuart J. Hecht THE SPECTACULAR THEATRE OF FRANK JOSEPH GALATI: RESHAPING AMERICAN THEATRE IN CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. By Julie Jackson. London: Methuen Drama, 2024; pp. 215. Frank Galati died in early 2023 at age 79

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Active Analysis by Maria Knebel, and: Analysis Through Action For Actors And Directors: From Stan-Islavsky To Contemporary Performance by David Chambers David Krasner ACTIVE ANALYSIS. By Maria Knebel. Compiled and edited by Anatoli Vassiliev. Translated by Irina Brown. London: Routledge, 2021; pp. 260. ANALYSIS THROUGH ACTION

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Starring Women: Celebrity, Patriarchy, And American Theater, 1790-1850 by Sara E. Lampert J. K. Curry STARRING WOMEN: CELEBRITY, PATRIARCHY, AND AMERICAN THEATER, 1790-1850. By Sara E. Lampert. Women, Gender and Sexuality in American History Series. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2020; pp. 276. The development of the

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Broadway Goes To War: American Theater During World War II by Robert L. McLaughlin and Sally E. Parry Fonzie D. Geary II BROADWAY GOES TO WAR: AMERICAN THEATER DURING WORLD WAR II. By Robert L. McLaughlin and Sally E. Parry. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2021; pp. x, 290. In Broadway Goes to War, Robert L. McLaughlin

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Fixing The Musical: How Technologies Shaped The Broadway Repertory by Douglas L. Reside Bradley Rogers FIXING THE MUSICAL: HOW TECHNOLOGIES SHAPED THE BROADWAY REPERTORY. By Douglas L. Reside. New York: Oxford University Press, 2023; pp. 165. Douglas L. Reside's Fixing the Musical: How Technologies Shaped the Broadway Repertory

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Hamlet's Hereditary Queen: Performing Shakespeare's Silent Female Power by Kerrie Roberts, and: Performing Restoration Shakespeare ed. by Amanda Eubanks Winkler Hugh K. Long HAMLET'S HEREDITARY QUEEN: PERFORMING SHAKESPEARE'S SILENT FEMALE POWER. By Kerrie Roberts. Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies Series

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Ron Vawter's Life In Performance by Theresa Smalec Sean F. Edgecomb RON VAWTER'S LIFE IN PERFORMANCE. By Theresa Smalec. London: Seagull Books, 2020; pp. 222. Relying on impressive archival research and original interviews to present "a social history—and ensemble biography" (3), author Theresa Smalec provides a dynamic new

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Choreographing Dirt: Movement, Performance, And Ecology In The Anthropocene by Angenette Spalink Diana Looser CHOREOGRAPHING DIRT: MOVEMENT, PERFORMANCE, AND ECOLOGY IN THE ANTHROPOCENE. By Angenette Spalink. Studies in Theatre, Ecology, and Performance, no. 3. London: Routledge, 2024; pp. 104. In her original and engaging

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: “I want a bath!”: On the Depth and Limits of Universalist Liquefaction in Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice Michel Büch (bio) Sarah Ruhl’s early play Eurydice (2003) is a liquefied version of the well-known myth. Set in an underwaterworld, her adaptation overflows with affect and undulates our understanding of sexuality, family bonds, and agency.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: “The Bible say”: August Wilson’s Scriptural Improvisation Patrick Maley (bio) Very early in August Wilson’s career—in the opening scene direction to Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom—the playwright puts his work in dialogue with the Bible: Chicago in 1927 is a rough city, a bruising city, a city of millionaires and derelicts, gangsters and roughhouse

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Gender and Pilgrimage in The Digby Mary Magdalene Jiamiao Chen (bio) The Digby Mary Magdalene, one of the most theatrically and theologically ambitious plays in the corpus of early English drama, is also one of the most complex in terms of its textual and performance history.1 Based on linguistic evidence, scholars generally suggest that

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699: The Imagined Empire by Chloë Houston Bernadette Andrea (bio) Chloë Houston. Persia in Early Modern English Drama, 1530–1699: The Imagined Empire Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. Pp. xii + 295 + 1 b/w illus. $129.99 hardback, $109.99 eBook. With increasing attention

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: The Theatre Couple in Early Modern Italy: Self-Fashioning and Mutual Marketing by Serena Laiena Erith Jaffe-Berg (bio) Serena Laiena. The Theatre Couple in Early Modern Italy: Self-Fashioning and Mutual Marketing. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2023. 264 Pp. 264 + 4 color and 4 b/w figures + 2 tables. $163.00 hardback

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Staging Haiti in Nineteenth-Century America: Revolution, Race, and Popular Performance by Peter P. Reed John Saillant (bio) Peter P. Reed. Staging Haiti in Nineteenth-Century America: Revolution, Race, and Popular Performance. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022. Pp xii + 216. $99.99 hardback. Peter P. Reed’s Staging

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Pragmatic Liberation and the Politics of Puerto Rican Diasporic Drama by Jon D Rossini Camilla Stevens (bio) Jon D Rossini. Pragmatic Liberation and the Politics of Puerto Rican Diasporic Drama. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2024. Pp. 254. $75.00 hardback, $29.95 paperback, eBook open access. Pragmatic Liberation

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Cue Tears: On the Act of Crying by Daniel Sack Peta Tait (bio) Daniel Sack. Cue Tears: On the Act of Crying. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2024. Pp. 214 pages + 13 photos. $80.00 hardback, $29.95 paperback, $29.95 eBook. Cue Tears poses fundamental questions about human expression and communication through a discussion

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Contributors Bernadette Andrea is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she is also affiliated with the Center for Middle East Studies and the Department of Feminist Studies. She is the author of The Lives of Girls and Women from the Islamic World in Early Modern British Literature

Gwendolen Bishop is a name that appears in the margins of my recent account of the English avant-garde theatre. Prior to that she barely made it even into the margins, and then often with some rather significant indecision as to how actually to spell her name. The aim of this essay is to retrieve her from the margins and bring her more centrally into view. In doing so I consciously weave together her

Reading the news about theatre in Germany during the past few years, it is hard to avoid the impression that something new is happening: a theatre culture that long emphasized politics now just as often emphasizes ethics. There were the 2022 protests in Munich over claimed anti-Semitism in the play Vögel (Birds of a Kind) by Wajdi Mouawad, which led the Metropoltheater to cancel its planned production

How much is enough? The relevance of this question comes from individual expectations regarding value. What is value and how does it manifest through our daily interactions? There is a qualitative difference between the concept of value and individual and collective values. Is there such a thing as a common good when it comes to either? Values are a social construct formed through a process of analysis

Emanating beyond the confines of academia, the poignant narrative of the renowned Turkish thespian Afife Jale has garnered widespread recognition within Türkiye. Amid a pantheon of successors, her tale stands as the most profoundly heartrending. It has been immortalized through theatrical productions and cinematic adaptations. Despite the widespread familiarity with her story, the enigmatic underpinnings

One of the world's most enduring and successful cultural diplomacy organizations, the British Council (BC) has played a prominent role in promoting and exporting British theatre, literature, and language across the globe since its founding in 1934. A key component of the BC's self-proclaimed remit of “forging links between Britain and other countries through cultural exchange,” the organization's Drama

Mexican theatre company Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes are world-renowned for their intensive laboratory processes leading up to unique, interdisciplinary performances that defy expected theatrical conventions. Their piece El Gallo (2009) is a poignant example of this company's capacity for innovation and social action. Here, actors are transformed into opera singers in a piece that is sung – in an entirely

This article considers the Okinawan aesthetic of Kumiodori and the role of absence in making a performance. There are two case studies of Kumiodori performances selected for this article, both written by the maker of this theatre style – Tamagusuku Chōkun. I watched both performances of Kōkō no Maki and Nidō Tekiuchi in the National Theatre in Okinawa. I discuss the concept of absence, described as

Censorship in Iranian theatre sometimes prevents artists from staging some of the scenes in their plays. Among these are scenes involving embracing, kissing, raping and so on, or scenes containing ideological or political themes. Occasionally, after omitting such scenes, theatre directors try to find suitable alternatives and create a similar effect. The present research, with an analytical–descriptive

The two related notions of honour and reputation are closely associated with the social status of individuals (male or female), particularly in a society governed by traditional, patriarchal moral values. However, writing about honour and reputation in Iraq (and in the Middle East in general) means talking about women's chastity and their sexual morality specifically. Eclipsing honour and societal

This essay seeks to lay out the process that went into the making of Dark Things, which I co-directed with Deepan Sivaraman based on Ari Sitas's oratorio on the Silk Road, by repurposing the production notes of the performance, which opened in Delhi on 18 April 2018 at the Ambedkar University Delhi and later played at the International Festival of Kerala in January 2019. Both the method and the form

World-renowned New Theatre Quarterly celebrates its fifty years of publication and its 200th issue, this being the last under the editorship of Maria Shevtsova. Simon Trussler, founder of Theatre Quarterly in 1971 (which closed for lack of funding in 1981) always considered New Theatre Quarterly, established with Cambridge University Press in 1985 – and with Clive Barker as co-editor – to be simply

This is the third in a trilogy of articles for NTQ addressed to the ‘noises off’ supplied by Shakespeare’s earliest co-stars: the baited bears that competed for trade, fame, and patronage for the duration of his career as an actor-playwright. ‘Shakespeare and the Three Bears’ (NTQ 106, May 2011) sketched this context, exposing as a canard, via a mistakenly omitted comma, that there ever was a bear

Edward Gordon Craig was a controversial and iconoclastic figure in the early twentieth-century British theatre. Underpinning his work as a director, designer, and essayist was a desire to secure obedience and loyalty from the people with whom he worked and to ensure that he was the unquestioned authority. Nowhere was this ambition clearer than in his School for the Art of the Theatre, which he ran

Whereas the earliest farces deal with human appetites on the most basic level, by the mid-nineteenth century these had been sublimated and incorporated into a newly mechanical format. Inaugurated by Eugène Labiche, and perfected by Alfred Hennequin and Georges Feydeau, these masterpieces of clockwork ingenuity would appear to be the inspiration for Henri Bergson’s theory of comedy. This article explores

This overview presents kunqu’s historical journey, suggesting its future trends on European stages. Over the decades, kunqu has grown from traditional performances to avant-garde adaptations, including notable versions of The Peony Pavilion by Peter Sellars and also Chen Shizheng, which fostered intercultural dialogue. Key performances by troupes and artists have modernized kunqu, as exemplified by

This article analyzes three contemporary plays by trans and gender-non-conforming artists from the United States that engage with forest fires and queer ecology. These three plays – MJ Kaufman’s Sagittarius Ponderosa, Agnes Borinsky’s The Trees, and Kari Barclay’s How to Live in a House on Fire – tie wildfire to colonial histories of fire suppression and imagine a just climate transition as linked

Laween is among several Palestinian theatre cooperatives established over the last decade, which have not received sufficient attention from theatre scholars. Born out of the struggle of living under Israeli apartheid, the repression of the Palestinian Authority, and alienation from NGO theatres, whose work has been depoliticized by reliance on foreign funding, the emergence of these theatre cooperatives

The Hi PerformanCZ visitor programmes, hosted regularly by the Czech Arts and Theatre Institute since 2018, have invited international theatre professionals, from directors and promoters to critics, to immerse themselves in the variety of theatre on the contemporary Czech stage. Showcased performances, themed in programmes dedicated to theatre for children and young people, puppet theatre, and text-based

Emil Boroghină founded the Shakespeare Festival in Craiova in 1994 with the longer-term intention of making it an international festival of significant, indeed world, standing. This article, written in honour of Boroghină and dedicated to him, offers an overview of the Festival’s programming and related details from its triennial period to its present biennial existence. It draws particular attention

Your time has come to flyYou have no borders—El Vez, “Órale,” sung to the tune of “Bridge over Troubled Waters”With brightly colored papel picado (cut paper banners), tissue flowers, and Latin American flags festooning the performance area at San Francisco's Z Space, David Herrera Performance Company's September 2023 event, ÓRALE!, promised fun and festivity. On its surface, the performance resembled

In 2010 film and theatre historian David Mayer urged researchers to look to early film for evidence of continuing traditions of Victorian pantomime, arguing its “audiences tolerated, even enjoyed, the same sight-gags and hackneyed routines that amused their Victorian ancestors.” This article is a response to his challenge and in the process explores wider interconnections. The harlequinade was the

In the summer of 1944, Black modern dancer Pearl Primus searched for authenticity. Over the past year, she had achieved critical success for her modern dance choreography that protested racial injustice in the South, informed by a leftist political mission. However, she thought something was missing. She explained to Dance Magazine, “I had done dances about sharecroppers and lynchings without ever

Since its publication in 2005, Anne Bogart and Tina Landau's The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition has provided the received narrative not only for the ways that Viewpoints training is practiced, but also for its history. In their opening chapter, the authors crucially acknowledge that they did not invent this method of training: In 1979, Anne met choreographer Mary Overlie

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Editorial Comment:Abolition and Performance Ariel Nereson [A]bolition has to be the way to relate to one another. So, not a tool to implement, but a posture and a way of life. —Ashon Crawley1 Theatre, dance, and performance studies offer many methodological tools for understanding practice and interpreting theories embedded in and arising

Abstract: John Brown is a figure so intensely contested as to embody diametrically opposed meanings according to the varied contexts in which his image has been activated. At times hailed as the man who started the US Civil War, Brown has been variously described as a righteous abolitionist, a religious zealot, a gifted orator, a formidable military strategist, a self-appointed white savior, and a

Abstract: Taking the popular podcast series Violation as its point of departure, this article examines the dramaturgy within the parole system, its affective politics, and its performative speech acts to consider its role in the perpetuation of mass incarceration in the United States. By training an eye on the affective economy of parole hearings, this article explores the retributive turn in the criminal