David Roesner is a senior lecturer in drama at the University of Exeter.Matthias Rebstock is junior professor of scenic music at the University of Hildesheim in Germany.

'A significant, stimulating introduction to a strand of theatre that is bound to move more centre-field.'

• Introduction: Composed Theatre in Context – David RoesnerPART I: History and Methodology Chapter 1: Composed Theatre: Mapping the Field – Matthias RebstockChapter 2: Composition and Theatre – Roland QuittChapter 3: ‘Happy New Ears’: Creating Hearing and the Hearable – Petra Maria MeyerPART II: Processes and Practices: Work Reports and ReflectionsChapter 4: ‘It’s all part of one concern’: A ‘Keynote’ to Composition as Staging – Heiner GoebbelsChapter 5: ‘ Theatre in small quantities’: On Composition for Speech, Sounds and Objects – Michael HirschChapter 6: … To Gather Together What Exists in a Dispersed State … – Jörg LaueChapter 7: From Interdisciplinary Improvisation to Integrative Composition: Working Processes at the Theater der Klänge – Jörg U. LensingChapter 8: ‘ Let’s stop talking about it and just do it!’: Improvisation as the Beginning of the Compositional Process – George RodosthenousChapter 9: Hearing Voices – Transcriptions of the Phonogram of a Schizophrenic: Music-theatre for Performer and Audio-visual Media – Nicholas TillChapter 10: Composing Theatre on a Diagonal: Metaxi ALogon, a Music-centric Performance – Demetris ZavrosPART III: Processes and Practices: Portraits and Analyses Chapter 11: ‘Ça devient du théâtre, mais ça vient de la musique’: The Music Theatre of Georges Aperghis – Matthias RebstockChapter 12: Musical Conquest and Settlement: On Ruedi Häusermann’s Theatre Work(s) – Judith GerstenbergChapter 13: Composing with Raw Materials: Daniel Ott’s Music-theatre Portraits and Landscapes – Christa BrüstleChapter 14: Permanent Quest: The Processional Theatre of Manos Tsangaris – Jörn Peter HiekelPART IV: Discussion and DebateChapter 15: Composed Theatre – Discussion and Debate: On Terminology, Planning and Intuition, Concepts and Processes, Self-reflexivity and Communication – Edited by Matthias Rebstock and David RoesnerPART V: Discourse and AnalysisChapter 16: ‘ It is not about labelling, it’s about understanding what we do’: Composed Theatre as Discourse – David Roesner