In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: "Old Words into Something New":David Bowie and Enda Walsh's Lazarus Michael Jaros (bio) Introduction: Avant-garde jukebox musical? When it was announced that David Bowie was to be involved in the creation of a new musical called Lazarus, which would premiere at the New York Theatre Workshop in 2015, it became the most sold-out ticket in

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: "The world's a theatre of theft":Islamic Imposture in Tomkis' Albumazar Corinne Zeman (bio) The Goblins whom I now am coniuring vp . . . [are] thin-headed fellowes that liue upon the scraps of inuention and trauell with such vagrant soules, and so like Ghosts in white sheets of paper, that the Statute of Rogues may worthily be sued vpon

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: The Paracelsan Philosophy and Plot in Romeo and Juliet Jaecheol Kim (bio) Shakespeare, Paracelsus, and the Early Modern Medical Turn Disease is often communicated through language, and the trajectory of contagion is coterminous with its discursive orbit. Early modern dramatic works, especially the plays of Shakespeare, pay keen attention

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Shakespeare's Essays: Sampling Montaigne from Hamlet to The Tempest by Peter Platt Alan Farmer (bio) Peter Platt. Shakespeare's Essays: Sampling Montaigne from Hamlet to The Tempest. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020. Pp. x + 198. $110.00 cloth, $24.95 paper, $110.00 eBook. Peter Platt's compelling new book, Shakespeare's

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Cultures of Witnessing: Law and the York Plays by Emma Lipton Elisabeth Dutton (bio) Emma Lipton. Cultures of Witnessing: Law and the York Plays. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022. Pp. 248. $65. Records of the York plays are preserved in the York Memorandum Books, manuscripts that also contain administrative

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Staging America: The Artistic Legacy of the Provincetown Players by Jeffery Kennedy Beth Wynstra (bio) Jeffery Kennedy. Staging America: The Artistic Legacy of the Provincetown Players. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2023. Pp xii + 626. $49.95. Chapter 19 of Jeffery Kennedy's Staging America: The Artistic Legacy

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Bad Blood: Staging Race Between Early Modern England and Spain by Emily Weissbourd Dian Fox (bio) Emily Weissbourd. Bad Blood: Staging Race Between Early Modern England and Spain. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023. Pp. v + 218. $55.00. Following the Reconquest's end in 1492, Spain expelled the Jews and Muslims

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Vows, Veils, and Masks: The Performance of Marriage in the Plays of Eugene O'Neill by Beth Wynstra Alexander Pettit (bio) Beth Wynstra. Vows, Veils, and Masks: The Performance of Marriage in the Plays of Eugene O'Neill. Studies in Theatre History and Culture. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2023. Pp x + 214. $92.50. In

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Scripts of Blackness: Early Modern Performance Culture and the Making of Race by Noémie Ndiaye Baltasar Fra-Molinero (bio) Noémie Ndiaye. Scripts of Blackness: Early Modern Performance Culture and the Making of Race. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022. 358 pp. + 12 color plates. Hardcover and e-book $64.95

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Shaping Dance Canons: Criticism, Aesthetics, and Equity by Kate Mattingly Crystal U. Davis (bio) Kate Mattingly. Shaping Dance Canons: Criticism, Aesthetics, and Equity. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2023. Pp. ix + 244. $85.00. In Shaping Dance Canons: Criticism, Aesthetics, and Equity, Kate Mattingly offers an

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Law as Performance: Theatricality, Spectatorship and the Making of Law in Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Europe by Julie Stone Peters Subha Mukherji (bio) Julie Stone Peters. Law as Performance: Theatricality, Spectatorship and the Making of Law in Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Contributors Crystal U. Davis is Associate Professor of Dance at University of Maryland, College Park. Her research explores implicit bias and how privilege manifests in the body. Her research has been published in the Journal of Dance Education, in the Palgrave Handbook of Race and the Arts in Education, and in her book, Dance and Belonging:

This article investigates how French playwright Florian Zeller positions his writing with respect to realism in his play The Father (Le Père, 2012) and what his dramaturgy of porosity adds to the r...

Re-Readings is a space in which scholars use a review format to return to and reflect on a book that has influenced their thinking and scholarship; these books might be established or overlooked, a...

Published in Contemporary Theatre Review (Vol. 33, No. 3, 2023)

In February 2017, Sweden’s oldest and largest professional Sámi ensemble, Giron Sámi Teáhter, produced the politically outspoken production CO2lonialNATION – A Theatrical Truth and Reconciliation C...

This article uses netnographic research methods, as a form of olfactory sensory mining, to investigate the smell-based experiences of audience members at Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More (2011). In doing...

The relationship between theatre and the Anthropocene remains an understudied topic. First, there appears to be a tension between the Anthropocene as a concept that, by radically foregrounding a ho...

This article investigates the relationship between a marginalised community of essential workers and dominant models of participation. I focus on Agri-Care, The Royals, and Alien Species, projects ...

Backpages is an opportunity for the academy to engage with theatre and performance practice with immediacy and insight, and for theatre workers and performance artists to engage critically and refl...

In the wake of Brexit and COVID-19, this article looks back at resilience-building agendas in English publicly funded cultural production. The analysis examines the history of ‘resilience’ in arts ...

New plays set in the past continue to make up a significant proportion of theatre productions in England. This article argues that there is much to gain by recognising such works as ‘history plays’...

The focus of this article is the range of feminisms which circulate through Belfast-based Oona Doherty's choreographies for groups of women, namely the second episode of Hard to Be Soft: A Belfast Prayer (2017), which is titled ‘Sugar Army', and Lady Magma: The Birth of a Cult (2019). This analysis is motivated by the need to expand discussion of feminisms in tandem with examination of more complex

In the last twenty years, memory has gained broader attention in Turkey's social, cultural and political arena. In line with this movement, independent and subsidized theatres produced plays engaging with Armenian history through diverse political and aesthetic agendas. Among these works, public and state theatre productions remained mostly invisible in theatre scholarship due to their ambiguous position

This paper is an exploration of the most recent revival of Utpal Dutt's play Titu Mir in 2019 by the ensemble group Theatre Formation Paribartak in India. Islamic religious reformer Titu Mir led a peasant rebellion from 1827 to 1831 in the Barasat region of Bengal and the play focuses on a narrative of revolutionary resistance to colonialism. Titu Mir becomes an articulation of political theatre against

Abhilash Pillai's stage adaptation of Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (2005–6) introduced a new visual language to Indian theatre, conceiving performance between theatre and cinema. Pillai's work presents history as memory, amnesia and re-remembering within the framework of a multisensorial scenography that largely uses the vocabularies of the Bollywood film industry. The politics of the performance

How are theatre practitioners (re)defining the realist project, a form of theatre intrinsic to the ideological domestication of capitalism? This paper takes up this question through an examination of Simon Stone's production of The Wild Duck ‘after Ibsen’, staged at Belvoir Theatre in Sydney in 2011, and the late Mark Fisher's (2009) theorization of a market-dominated present as capitalist realism

Undoubtedly one of the most prominent and most important Russian directors of the past two decades, Yury Butusov here refers to several landmarks of his artistic trajectory, gradually revealing a sense of oeuvre, of a body of work connected by a distinctive worldview. Not all of his productions of exceptional significance are cited here, and Flight (2015), at the Vakhtangov Theatre in Moscow, not having

If all national identity is performative, the Northern Irish national identity offers a particularly pronounced model of this performative instability. Such precarity was emphasized when the 2016 UK EU ‘Brexit’ referendum raised contentious questions over Northern Irish citizenship. This article explores how two recent Northern Irish performance pieces, David Ireland’s Cyprus Avenue (2016) and Clare

This article examines the solo work Lovers (1994) by Teiji Furuhashi, a prominent member of the influential Dumb Type group in Japan’s theatre and dance scene from the 1980s onwards. Lovers was Furuhashi’s only solo work; he died shortly after its installation at a Tokyo art centre in 1994. The essay examines the work in the context of themes of mobility, migration, and shifting corporealities in Japan

The unprecedented suspension of cultural events across Europe in March 2020 had a profound impact on the performing arts. Alongside the proliferation of digital and hybrid modes of theatre-making, the Covid-19 pandemic has also precipitated a substantive shift in how theatres operate at both institutional and organizational levels in an attempt to respond to the volatile economic impact of the pandemic

The account here is in the spirit of the short pieces that periodically used to appear under the rubric ‘Reports and Announcements’ at the back of New Theatre Quarterly. Its purpose is to invite the journal’s readers from all over the world – and they are truly from across our whole planet – to be aware of the very existence of a major theatre event of socio-historical and artistic significance to

Published in Studies in Theatre and Performance (Vol. 43, No. 3, 2023)

This editorial reflects on an intervention at this year's International Federation of Theatre Research conference by Ghanaian trans artist and activist Va-Bene Elikem K. Fiatsi (aka crazinisT artis...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Editorial Comment:Archives and Afterlives Laura Edmondson Archives destabilize and proliferate in the context of performance. At the Mid-America Theatre Conference held in Minneapolis last March, I attended several presentations that expanded understandings of the archive through challenging distinctions between contexts and texts, texts

Abstracts: This essay is an examination of the llanto (wail) as political performance praxis through documenting and reflecting on the collective work of Cherríe Moraga, Celia Herrera Rodríguez and approximately twenty-five artists to stage a PerformaProtesta," Un llanto colectivo, at San Diego immigrant detention centers following the separation of migrant families during the summer of 2018. As such

Abstracts: From a theatre's protest against losing their space, to a themed restaurant, to a shabbat ceremony, Skrzypek na dachu (Fiddler on the Roof) appears in Poland in unexpected places. This essay explores the performance's many iterations from its prewar context as Tevye the Dairyman, to the postwar translation of the American musical in the turbulent early 1980s, to Anatewka Restaurant established

Abstracts: On April 16, 2014, the Sewol Ferry capsized off the southwestern coast of South Korea, killing 304 people, including 250 high school students. The incident traumatized Koreans, who helplessly watched the capsized ferry sink on live news. The Korean government's (mis)handling of the disaster and its aftermaths made the sinking of the Sewol Ferry the most galvanizing event in contemporary

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Afrovibes Foundation Festival 2022 Catherine M. Cole AFROVIBES FOUNDATION FESTIVAL 2022. Various venues in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht, The Netherlands. October 5–16, 2022. Jay Pather launched the 2022 Afrovibes Festival by framing "Rupture/Rapture" as its theme. A Cape Town-based curator who has served as the Artistic

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Aloha Las Vegasby Edward Sakamoto Stefani Overman-Tsai ALOHA LAS VEGAS. By Edward Sakamoto. Directed by Harry Wong III. Kumu Kahua Theatre, Honolulu. September 2, 2022. Gambling addiction, infertility, cancer, death, grief, second-chance romance, and mid-life crises crowd like spam in a can into a rolling comedy that makes

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Torched!dir. by Rosalba Rolón Briana Beeman TORCHED!Written and Directed by Rosalba Rolón. Compositions, Arrangements, and Musical Direction by Desmar Guevara. Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, Pregones Theater, New York. June 9, 2022. During the pre-show announcement for her new musical, TORCHED!, Rosalba Rolón, the

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Who Killed My Fatherby Édouard Lous Aubrey Gabel WHO KILLED MY FATHER. By Édouard Lous. Directed by Thomas Ostermeier. St. Ann's Warehouse, New York. May 26and June 4. When I saw Édouard Louis's Qui a tué mon père( Who Killed My Father) at Saint Ann's Warehouse on May 26 thand June 4 th, 2022, I did not expect to see a drag

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Social Justice in Spanish Golden Age Theater ed. by Erin Alice Cowling et al. Barbara Fuchs SOCIAL JUSTICE IN SPANISH GOLDEN AGE THEATER. Editors Erin Alice Cowling, Tania de Miguel Magro, Mina García Jordán and Glenda Y. Nieto-Cuebas. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021; pp. 294. This collection is part of a welcome

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: J. M. Synge by Seán Hewitt Bess Rowen J. M. SYNGE. By Seán Hewitt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021; pp. 241. John Millington Synge's (1871–1909) The Playboy of the Western World caused riots when it appeared at The Abbey Theatre in 1907, both for its mention of the word "shift" (an undergarment) and for its satirical

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: The Fruits of Empire: Art, Food, and The Politics of Race in The Age of American Expansion by Shana Klein Hazel Rickard THE FRUITS OF EMPIRE: ART, FOOD, AND THE POLITICS OF RACE IN THE AGE OF AMERICAN EXPANSION. By Shana Klein, California Studies in Food and Culture, Edited by Darra Goldstein. Oakland: University of California

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Cracking Up: Black Feminist Comedy in The Twentieth And Twentyfirst Century United States by Katelyn Hale Wood Jenny Henderson CRACKING UP: BLACK FEMINIST COMEDY IN THE TWENTIETH AND TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY UNITED STATES. By Katelyn Hale Wood. Studies in Theatre and Culture. Iowa City: University of Iowa press, 2021; pp. 191

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviewed by: Museums Inside Out: Artist Collaborations and New Exhibition Ecologies by Mark W. Rectanus Inga Meier MUSEUMS INSIDE OUT: ARTIST COLLABORATIONS AND NEW EXHIBITION ECOLOGIES. By Mark W. Rectanus. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020; pp. 321. Like so many cultural institutions, museums have, over the last couple

In part responding to our increasingly material world, this article presents scenographic strategies as a highly appropriate and effective means for cultivating an attentiveness towards everyday ob...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Introduction:Shakespeare and Contemporary Fiction Graley Herren (bio) and Niamh J. O'Leary (bio) "Every age creates its own Shakespeare," asserts Marjorie Garber at the beginning of Shakespeare After All. "What is often described as the timelessness of Shakespeare, the transcendent qualities for which his plays have been praised around

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Longing to Stay Tied:Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet as a Work of Creative Criticism Amy Muse (bio) I miss you, I miss you, I would give anything to have you back, anything at all. While Maggie O'Farrell's Hamnet (2020) is offered to us as a work of fiction, a historical novel, it might equally be understood and perhaps even more deeply appreciated

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Decommissioning the Bard:Chloe Gong's These Violent Delights as Anticolonial Edutainment Vanessa I. Corredera (bio) In an illustration of perfect cosmic timing, the week of November 27, 2022 saw two distinct public incidents involving the British Royal Family that worked serendipitously with one another to prompt necessary confrontations

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Paul Griffiths's let me tell you, Hamlet, and the Intertextual Mode of Literary Adaptation Hannibal Hamlin (bio) Paul Griffths's let me tell you (2008) is a novel written in the first person, in the voice of Ophelia, using only those words assigned to her in Shakespeare's Hamlet. This formal conceit qualifies the work as Oulipian, as most

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: "The world to me is but a ceaseless storm":Pericles, The Porpoise, and the Resistance of Exile Rebekah Bale (bio) The adaptation of Shakespeare's plays into fiction has a long history. Early on it was considered a useful way to introduce the stories of the plays to children, as in Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, and more

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Queering The Winter's Tale in Jeanette Winterson's The Gap of Time Niamh J. O'Leary (bio) In 2013, Hogarth Press, the imprint of Penguin Random House founded by Virginia and Leonard Woolf, announced an exciting new project: The Hogarth Shakespeare. Conceived as an ambitious effort to retell some portion of the Shakespeare canon, the series

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: "The Isle Is Full of Noises": the Many Tempests of Margaret Atwood's Hag-Seed Melissa Caldwell (bio) Hag-Seed, Meta-Adaptation, and Paratext Drama, as Julie Sanders has written, is "an inherently adaptive art," but the line between production and adaptation is not always clear.1 Differences between the interpretation of an original text

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: The Prospero of Wonderland; or, Miranda Carroll, Author of Station Eleven Graley Herren (bio) In Jorge Luis Borges's short story "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," the narrator marvels at Menard's rewriting—his literal word-for-word replication—of Don Quixote. The story works on one level as a lampoon of pretentious literary criticism

ABSTRACT Vocal expression beyond words, such as the excess of speech production found in coughs, rhythm, intonation, humming, offer a mode of being that does not require the endorsement of the world through language, but rather favours the act of dwelling in sonority. I make use of creative and critical writing to evidence how my body listens in the auditorium. I consider Ant Hampton and Britt Hatzius’

In 1901, the popular American actor and playwright, William Gillette, arrived in the United Kingdom to tour his new play, Sherlock Holmes. Born in Connecticut in 1853, Gillette was by this time a well-established actor and playwright in his native United States and not unknown to British audiences. Just a few years earlier, he had brought his play Secret Service to London, where his performance as

Abstract In Living a Feminist Life, Sara Ahmed explains that precarity is akin to a vase on the mantelpiece. If it were pushed even slightly, it would fall off the edge. Existence on that edge, Ahmed explains, is what we allude to when we discuss precarious populations. Patriarchy, racism, ableism, homophobia, and transphobia are violent forces. They threaten to push us over the edge. Queer performance

Published in Contemporary Theatre Review (Vol. 33, No. 1-2, 2023)