Tracy C. Davis is Barber Professor of the Performing Arts at Northwestern University. She is author of Actresses as Working Women: Their Social Identity in Victorian Culture, George Bernard Shaw and the Socialist Theatre, and The Economics of the British Stage, 1800–1914 and general editor of the Cambridge series Theatre and Performance Theory. Thomas Postlewait is Professor of theatre history at Ohio State University. He contributed to the Cambridge History of American Theatre, vol. two, and is the editor of the book series Studies in Theatre History and Culture with University of Iowa Press.

'… 'unified' yet multidimensional perspective on an ever-expanding subject …'. Journal of Theatre Research International

• Acknowledgements; Notes on contributors; List of illustrations; 1. Theatricality: an introduction Thomas Postlewait and Tracy C. Davis; 2. Performing miracles: the mysterious mimesis of Valenciennes (1547) Jody Enders; 3. Theatricality in classical Chinese drama Haiping Yan; 4. Theatricality and antitheatricality in Renaissance London Thomas Postlewait; 5. Theatricality and civil society Tracy C. Davis; 6. Defining political performance with Foucault and Habermas: strategic and communicative action Jon Erickson; 7. Theatricality's proper objects: genealogies of performance and gender theory Shannon Jackson; Works cited; Index.