Edinburgh Companion to Modernism in Contemporary Theatre

Adrian Curtin is Associate Professor in Drama at the University of Exeter. He is the author of Death in Modern Theatre: Stages of Mortality (2019) and Avant-Garde Theatre Sound: Staging Sonic Modernity (2014). He has co-edited special issues of Theatre and Performance Design and the Open Library of Humanities. He is a contributing editor for New Theatre Quarterly. Nicholas Johnson is Associate Professor of Drama at Trinity College Dublin, where he co-founded the Trinity Centre for Beckett Studies. His books include Experimental Beckett (with Jonathan Heron, 2020) and Bertolt Brecht’s David Fragments (1919–1921) (with David Shepherd, 2020), as well as several edited collections on Beckett. Directing credits include Virtual Play (2017–19), The David Fragments (2017) and Enemy of the Stars (2014–15). He works as dramaturg with Pan Pan, OT Platform and Dead Centre. Naomi Paxton is Knowledge Exchange Fellow at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama at the University of London. She received the TaPRA Early Career Research Prize in 2019 for her body of work on suffrage theatre, which includes events and curated exhibitions at the National Theatre and UK Parliament, a monograph with Manchester University Press (2020) and two edited collections of suffrage plays with Methuen Drama (2013 and 2018). Naomi is also a professional broadcaster, cabaret performer, comedian and magician Claire Warden is is Professor of Performance and Physical Culture at Loughborough University. Her research focuses on interdisciplinary modernism, performance practices and the intersection of sport and art. She is the author of three monographs, including the British Academy-funded Migrating Modernist Performance: British Theatrical Travels through Russia. She is also the founder and academic lead of the Arts Council-funded Wrestling Resurgence project and a past chair of the British Association for Modernist Studies.

The playful spirit of modernism is alive and well in this multi-faceted consideration of that movement's aftershocks on the contemporary stage. If modernism was a provocation and a rupture, this impressive assemblage makes it clear that it is one that is with us still, as theatre artists the world over continually strive to ‘make it new’.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgements(anti-)capitalsism: a manifesto Introduction: Sensing Modernism in Theatre Claire Warden, Nicholas Johnson, Adrian Curtin and Naomi PaxtonPart I: Remembrance and Reconfiguration1. Introduction: Playing with the Past, Attending to the ‘Lost’ Claire Warden2. ‘The Right to Revolution’: Ernst Toller’s Legacy on the British Stage Claire Warden3. Legacy, Embodiment, Activism: Pageant of Agitating Women Monica Prince and Anna Andes4. Modernist Nostalgia and Contemporary Irish Dance Chris Collins5. Reaching Out in Both Directions: Suffrage Theatre in the Twenty-First Century Naomi Paxton6. Shuffle Along (1921) and the Challenges of Black Modernist Performance on the Contemporary Stage Carrie J. Preston7. ‘Who Was This Woman?’ A Conversation about Remembering Modernist Figures through the Body Jessica Walker and Claire Warden8. An Ode to Black Women Modernists Adjoa OseiPart II: Restaging Drama9. Introduction: Acts of Translation, Reimagining and Creative DestructionAdrian Curtin10. Restaging Futurism and Joan Brossa: Provocation or Observation with a Glass of Champagne or a Cup of TeaJohn London11. Marguerite Duras’s Theatre and the Boundaries of Modernism Lib Taylor12. The (Dead) Centre Cannot Hold: Ontological Insecurity in Chekhov’s First Play Adrian Curtin13. En-Staging Nora: Unruly Modernisms in Theodoros Terzopoulos’s Nora Konstantinos Thomaidis and Maria Vogiatzi14. After and Against Strindberg: A Conversation about Missing Julie Kaite O’Reilly and Adrian Curtin15. ‘A Voice She Did Not Recognise At First’: Touretteshero’s NeurodiversePresentation of Samuel Beckett’s Not I Matthew Pountney16. Pushing the Boundaries: Staging Western Modern(ist) Drama in Contemporary China Shouhua QiPart III: Transmission17. Introduction: (Im)material Legacies, Living Traditions Claire Warden, Adrian Curtin, Nicholas Johnson and Naomi Paxton18. The Theatre of Tadashi Suzuki at the Crossroads of ModernismBurc İdem Dincel19. Stanislavski on Skype Mark Westbrook20. Raising Her Voice: Presenting the Lives and Writings of Virginia Woolf and Dame Ethel Smyth for a Contemporary Theatre Audience Lucy Stevens21. Embodied Knowledge: A Brechtian Approach to Making Theatre with Young People Kerry Frampton22. Appropriation, Abstraction and Appraisal: Modernist Legacies of Contemporary DanceHanna Jarvinen23. Shaw and the Early-Twentieth-Century British Regional Repertory Movement Soudabeh Ananisarab24. ‘Aqui no estamos en el teatro’: Impossible Plays, Queer Ghosts and Haunted Practices Jonathan HeronPart IV: Slippages25. Introduction: How Movements Might Move Nicholas Johnson26. Ages of ArousalPenny Farfan27. ‘Make the New Legible through Experimentation’: A Conversation on the (Ongoing) Avant-Garde Sascha Bru and Nicholas Johnson28. Brecht as Slippage: Interrobang’s Dialogues with Modernist Theatre MachinesRamona Mosse 29. ‘What Could Be the Theatre of Contemporary Life?’ A Conversation about the Work of Studio Oyuncuları Istanbul Şahika Tekand and Burc İdem Dincel30. ‘How Do We Make a Room in the Theatre?’ A Conversation about Design for Pan Pan Theatre, Dublin Aedin Cosgrove and Nicholas Johnson31. Samuel Beckett and Border Thinking Nicholas Johnson32. The Writing on the Wall Isn’t There to Be Read: Unworking the Theatrical in the Figures of Adrienne Kennedy Kevin BellAfterword Olga TaxidouEvent Scores (after fluxus)Notes on Contributors