Margherita Laera – författare

Contemporary theatrical productions as diverse in form as experimental performance, new writing, West End drama, musicals and live art demonstrate a recurring fascination with adapting existing works by other artists, writers, filmmakers and stage practitioners. Featuring seventeen interviews with internationally-renowned theatre and performance artists, Theatre and Adaptation provides an exceptionally rich study of the variety of work developed in recent years. First-hand accounts illuminate a diverse range of approaches to stage adaptation, ranging from playwriting to directing, Javanese puppetry to British children’s theatre, and feminist performance to Japanese Noh. The transition of an existing source to the stage is not a smooth one: this collection examines the practices and the complex set of negotiations each work of transition and appropriation involves. Including interviews with Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, Handspring Puppet Company, Katie Mitchell, Rimini Protokoll, Elevator Repair Service, Simon Stephens, Ong Keng Sen and Toneelgroep Amsterdam, the volume reveals performance’s enduring desire to return, rewrite and repeat.

What happens to politics when it takes the form of theatre? How has theatre both exploited and undermined politics both in society and on the stage?Theatre & Politics explores the complex relationship between theatre and politics, questioning some of the assumptions that often arise when they are brought together. Challenging ideas about 'entertainment' and 'communication', the book draws on a broad range of key writing from Plato to Rancière, and theatrical examples from Shakespeare and his adaptors through Peter Handke to debbie tucker green.

What do we mean when we talk about bodies in theatre? And how does theatre affect the way we think about the human body?Bodies are vital elements of theatre production and spectatorship. But the body is not just physical, it is also conceptual. Drawing on many examples from contemporary performance, Theatre & the Body is a provocative starting point for understanding the surprisingly complex relationship between theatre and the body. Concise and clear, this book explores the revealing tensions between the body, bodies, language, representation and movement in the theatre. Foreword by Marina Abramovic.

What is ethics and what has it got to do with theatre? Drawing on both theoretical material and practical examples, Ridout makes a clear and compelling critical intervention, raising fundamental questions about what theatre is for and how audiences interact with it.

What is globalization? What role is there for the theatre in a globalizing world?This original and provocative book explores the contribution that theatre has made to our slowly evolving consciousness of our world as a whole. Drawing on sources from Aeschylus to The Lion King, Chekhov to Complicite, tragedy to advertising, the book argues for theatre's importance as a site of resistance to the ruthless spread of the global market. Foreword by Mark Ravenhill.

How does a tragedy arouse pity and fear? How do music and lighting set a mood or convey an emotional tone for an audience? Why does theatre move us? Theatre & Feeling explores the idea that, for many people, theatre is a passion. It provides an intellectual framework for the range of emotional experience engendered by the theatre, establishing a base-line for further thinking and practice in this rich and emergent area of inquiry. Moving across western dramatic theory and theatre history, the book demonstrates the centrality of feeling to the theatre. Foreword by Anne Bogart.

What motivates theatre-makers who work in education? How can theatre respond to young people's experiences of living in a globalised world?Theatre & Education provides an insight into the energy, passion and values that have inspired the most inventive theatre-makers who work with young people in educational settings. It charts early debates that motivated twentieth-century radical theatre-makers to work with young people, and offers an analysis of contemporary practices. It argues that the aesthetic principles and educational ideals that inform theatre and education drive at the heart of why theatre matters. Foreword by Edward Bond.

How has theatre engaged with the nation-state and helped to formulate national identities? What impact have migration and globalisation had on the relationship between theatre and nation?Theatre & Nation explores how theatre institutions, playwrights, theatre-makers and performance artists engage with the nation, nationalism and national identity in their work.The book argues that theatrical representations of the nation are constantly in flux and that the way theatre engages with the nation changes according to different geographical, political, economic, social and cultural circumstances. Foreword by Nicholas Hytner.

Theatre and architecture are seeming opposites: one a time-based art-form experienced in space, the other a spatial art experienced over time. The book unpicks these assumptions, demonstrating ways in which theatre and architecture are essential to each other and contextualizing their dynamic relationship historically and culturally.

Theatre & Sexuality explains the critical validity of using sexuality as a lens for examining theatre's creation and reception. The book offers clear introductions to sexual identity politics, ways of 'reading' sexuality on stage and a select history of LGBTQ theatre, including a reading of Split Britches/Bloolips' production Belle Reprieve.

This provocative book meets the supposedly 'live' practices of performance and the 'no-longer-live' historical past at their own dangerous crossroads. Focussing on the 'and' of the title, it addresses the tangled relations between the terms, practices, ideas, and aims embedded in these compatriot - but often oppositional - arts and acts of time.

Theatre & the Visual argues that theatre studies' preoccupation with problems arising from textual analysis has compromised a fuller, political consideration of the visual. Johnson examines the spectator's role in the theatre, exploring pleasure, difficulty and spectacle, to consider the implications for visual experience in the theatre.

Theatre and Prison investigates how theatre-makers stage critical questions about the use of prison in society. Using examples from popular culture, dramatic texts and applied theatre it analyses how theatre and performance reveals economies of punishment, affects penal reform and both challenges and participates in narratives of reformation.

All performance depends upon our abilities to create, perceive, remember, imagine and empathize. This book provides an introduction to the evolutionary and cognitive foundations of theatrical performing and spectating and argues that this scientific perspective challenges some of the major assumptions about what takes place in the theatre.

Examining the relationship between theatre and photography, this book shows how the two intertwine and provide vantage points for understanding each other. Joel Anderson explores the theory and practice of photographing theatre and performance, as well as theatre and photography's mutual preoccupation with posing, staging, framing, and stillness.

Lourdes Orozco considers different representations of animals in performance; suggesting that all animals have the ability to make us question the human, and its relationship to the other. She examines ways in which animals challenge theatre's ability to make meaning, and considers the surrounding ethical, political and social issues.

What is the significance of theatre and performance within Irish culture and history? How do we understand the impact and political potential of Irish theatre? This innovative survey of theatre in Ireland covers a range of drama and performance, from the 17th century to the present. Expanding the field of Irish theatre to include mumming, wake games, prison protests and theatre riots, the book argues that Ireland's longstanding association with performance illuminates key aspects of its cultural history and politics.Foreword by Fiona Shaw.

How are hybrid and diasporic identities performed in increasingly diverse societies? How can we begin to think differently about theatrical flow across cultures?Interculturalism is an increasingly urgent topic in the 21st century. As human traffic between nations increases, it becomes imperative to critically re-examine the way cultural exchange is performed. Theatre & Interculturalism surveys established approaches and asks what it would mean to reconsider intercultural performance, not from the points of view of the colonizing cultures, but 'from below'- from the viewpoints of the historically colonized and marginalized.

Bennett explores the relationship between theatre and museums, looking particularly at the collaborative processes that intertwine these two cultural practices. She argues that discourses of performance studies can open up new avenues of inquiry about the production and reception of the museum experience and its place in contemporary culture.

This book maps contemporary playwriting and theatre translation practices and ecologies in the European continent.Whether you are a scholar researching contemporary drama and translation, or a theatre practitioner looking for ways to navigate theatrical conventions in other countries, this book is for you. Through questionnaires and one-to-one interviews with key stakeholders, Dr Laera collects qualitative and quantitative data about how each national theatre culture supports living dramatists, what conventions drive the production and translation (or lack thereof) of contemporary plays, and what perceptions are held by gatekeepers, theatre-makers and other cultural operators about the theatre system in which they work.Through country-by-country descriptions and analyses; interviews with playwrights, translators, directors and gatekeepers; a list of key facts and best practices; and a rigorous assessment of its methodologies, this volume is indispensable for those interested in contemporary European theatre practice.

This book maps contemporary playwriting and theatre translation practices and ecologies in the European continent.Whether you are a scholar researching contemporary drama and translation, or a theatre practitioner looking for ways to navigate theatrical conventions in other countries, this book is for you. Through questionnaires and one-to-one interviews with key stakeholders, Dr Laera collects qualitative and quantitative data about how each national theatre culture supports living dramatists, what conventions drive the production and translation (or lack thereof) of contemporary plays, and what perceptions are held by gatekeepers, theatre-makers and other cultural operators about the theatre system in which they work.Through country-by-country descriptions and analyses; interviews with playwrights, translators, directors and gatekeepers; a list of key facts and best practices; and a rigorous assessment of its methodologies, this volume is indispensable for those interested in contemporary European theatre practice.

A vibrant introduction to theatre that engages with stories, conditions and experiences of migration. Arguing that migration is crucially about encounters with foreignness, Emma Cox traces international histories of migration and considers key issues in contemporary performance - from Cape Town and Melbourne, to London and Toronto.

If violence is a terrible thing, why do we watch it? Nevitt explores the use of violence in theatre and its effect on spectators. Critically engaging with examples of stage combat, rape, terrorism, wrestling and historical re-enactments, she argues that studying violence through theatre can be part of a desire to create a more peaceful world.

What do we mean by entertainment? How does this concept relate to theatre? Should theatre be for pleasure or instruction? Can it not be both? In this stimulating book, Jim Davis examines the relationship between theatre and entertainment by assessing audience reception, political theatre and melodrama. He explores definitions of entertainment, arguing that it can be found embedded in all forms of theatre, not just the 'popular'. Davis concludes with a review of contemporary perspectives on the topic and questions the limits of entertainment in theatrical performance.

This fascinating account of the relationship between theatre and time explores how different concepts of time - including linear clock time, the cyclical time of the planets and seasons, the rhythms of the body and individual memories - have impacted on and been reinforced by theatre throughout history, from medieval times to the present day.

Why should the digital bring about ideas of progress in the theatre arts? This question opens up a rich seam of provocative and original thinking about the uses of new media in theatre, about new forms of cultural practice and artistic innovation, and about the widening purposes of the theatre's cultural project in a changing digital world. Through detailed case-studies on the work of key international theatre companies such as the Elevator Repair Service and The Mission Business, Bill Blake explores how the digital is providing new scope for how we think about the theatre, as well as how the theatre in turn is challenging how we might relate to the digital.

This stimulating introduction to laughter in theatre and performance examines laughter among actors, among audience, and the interaction between the two. Exploring the many uses and effects of laughter in theatre, Eric Weitz considers laughter as a tool of political resonance, as social commentary, and as one of the oldest rhetorical devices.

This succinct and engaging text rethinks the common wisdom that festivals, sites of collective celebration and play, provide a temporary reprieve from the grind of everyday, 'real' life. Keren Zaiontz explores the ways in which cultural performances of resistance that have their basis in festivals can migrate to other contexts, making festivals as much the domain of free markets and state power as that of vanguard artists and progressive social movements. Accessible and affordable, this is an ideal resource for theatre students and lovers everywhere.

The historical age of empires may be over, but empire, as an idea, continues to exercise a hold over our imaginations. This compelling examination of the relationship between theatre and empire begins with potential definitions and theories of empire, suggesting how we might think of these two notions together and how we might see empire itself as theatre. A variety of case studies are then used to explore theatre in light of both cultural and economic imperialism.