'No other study looks so extensively at the embodiment of gendered emotion positioned between Chekhov as playwright and Stanislavsky as director. In the process, Tait pays new respect to Knipper's artistic work. Moreover, feminists tend to reject the Stanislavsky System in favor of Brecht's theatrical approach, and Peta Tait challenges this overly simplified view in her unique study about the performance of gendered emotion. While post-modernist scholarship often uses theatrical metaphors to describe "the performative", Tait infuses her valuable analysis with the complexities of actual theatrical performance. In the process, she raises essential questions about the differential performance of emotion by women and men.' Sharon Marie Carnicke, Professor of Theatre & Slavic Studies and Associate Dean of Theatre, University of Southern California '... this study provides a unique angle from which to view the plays of one of the most significant modern dramatists and his first two important interperters.' Journal of Comparative Drama

• Contents: Introducing Emotions: The politics of emotions in theatre; Discursive approaches; Defining emotions: Hope and Despair: Theatrical Emotions, Hysteria and Masculinity: Self-dramatisation and Chekhov's characters;The Seagull (1896); Reverberating fictions and love; The characterisation of hysteria; Uncle Vanya (1897); A crisis of masculine identity; A gendered economy of emotion; The social meaning of theatrical emotions ; Loss, Nostalgia and Yearning: Representations of a Feminine Self: Literary love; Three Sisters (1901); Representations of feminine emotions; Emotional spaces; The Cherry Orchard (1903); Emotional geographies; Embodied emotions and performative acts; Femininity as excess emotion; Happy to Sad: Stanislavski's Theatrical Logic Embodied: Acting emotions; Acting being, belief and truth; Controversy over the director's realist logic; Social bodies act inner emotions?; Training repetitions of bodies; Laughter and Tears: Interiority as Bodily Control Over Emotions: Olga Knipper, Stanislavski and acting naturally; Theoretical mastery over interiority; A modern theatre of private love; Staging natural and deep; Performing Emotional Bodies: Phenomenological bodies per/form; Brecht's separation of emotion; The social performance of emotion; Display rules and performative identities; Emotions and corporeal subjectivity; Transgressive emotional performances; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

'No other study looks so extensively at the embodiment of gendered emotion positioned between Chekhov as playwright and Stanislavsky as director. In the process, Tait pays new respect to Knipper's artistic work. Moreover, feminists tend to reject the Stanislavsky System in favor of Brecht's theatrical approach, and Peta Tait challenges this overly simplified view in her unique study about the performance of gendered emotion. While post-modernist scholarship often uses theatrical metaphors to describe "the performative", Tait infuses her valuable analysis with the complexities of actual theatrical performance. In the process, she raises essential questions about the differential performance of emotion by women and men.' Sharon Marie Carnicke, Professor of Theatre & Slavic Studies and Associate Dean of Theatre, University of Southern California '... this study provides a unique angle from which to view the plays of one of the most significant modern dramatists and his first two important interperters.' Journal of Comparative Drama

• Contents: Introducing Emotions: The politics of emotions in theatre; Discursive approaches; Defining emotions: Hope and Despair: Theatrical Emotions, Hysteria and Masculinity: Self-dramatisation and Chekhov's characters;The Seagull (1896); Reverberating fictions and love; The characterisation of hysteria; Uncle Vanya (1897); A crisis of masculine identity; A gendered economy of emotion; The social meaning of theatrical emotions ; Loss, Nostalgia and Yearning: Representations of a Feminine Self: Literary love; Three Sisters (1901); Representations of feminine emotions; Emotional spaces; The Cherry Orchard (1903); Emotional geographies; Embodied emotions and performative acts; Femininity as excess emotion; Happy to Sad: Stanislavski's Theatrical Logic Embodied: Acting emotions; Acting being, belief and truth; Controversy over the director's realist logic; Social bodies act inner emotions?; Training repetitions of bodies; Laughter and Tears: Interiority as Bodily Control Over Emotions: Olga Knipper, Stanislavski and acting naturally; Theoretical mastery over interiority; A modern theatre of private love; Staging natural and deep; Performing Emotional Bodies: Phenomenological bodies per/form; Brecht's separation of emotion; The social performance of emotion; Display rules and performative identities; Emotions and corporeal subjectivity; Transgressive emotional performances; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.