Edinburgh Critical Studies in Modernism, Drama and Performance – serie

Places the performative gesture at the point of intersection between literature, theatre and cinemaThis new study examines the representation of gesture in modernist writing, performance and cinema. Deploying a new theoretical term, ‘the speech-gesture complex’, Anthony Paraskeva identifies a relationship between speech and gesture which is neither exclusively literary nor performative and which, he argues, is fundamental to the aesthetics and politics of modernist authors. In discussions of works by Franz Kafka, James Joyce, Henry James, Wyndham Lewis, Vladimir Nabokov and Samuel Beckett, Paraskeva shows how this relationship is closely informed by their attention to the performed gestures of actors in theatre and cinema.Key Features*Provides new close readings of major and neglected work by Kafka, Joyce, James, Lewis, Nabokov and Beckett, revealing their complex relations with both theatre and cinema*Establishes a new critical-theoretical category, and highlights an unexplored dialogue between Ibsen, Benjamin, Adorno, Griffith, Eisenstein, Chaplin, Brecht, Artaud, Lang, Meyerhold, Duse and Garbo*Analyses central and neglected modernist texts alongside stage productions, styles of acting, film history and performance theory

Examines the centrality of Greek tragedy for modernist performanceExamines the centrality of Greek tragedy for modernist performanceAnalyses how Hellenism becomes a mode of theatricalityLooks at the interface between theatricality and performativityRevises the fraught relationships between tradition and innovation within modernism more generallyExamines modernist acting theories and the ways they engage with classical theories of actingExamines modernist theories of puppetry and how they re-write classical theories of puppetryReads the modernist encounter with Geek tragedy as a re-staging of the ancient quarrelProposes a modernist aesthetic of Greek tragedy based on Hellenism as theatricality, that radically revises the philosophical discourses of tragedy so central for the project modernity from German Idealism onwardsThis modernist approach to Greek tragedy is read as parallel to the development of Performance Studies and Reception Studies, contributing to a more experimental, open and democratic view of the classics and their contemporary relevanceThis book examines the ways the encounters between modernist theatre makers and Greek tragedy were constitutive in the modernist experiments in performance. Through a series of events / instances / poses that engage visual, literary and performing arts, the modernist love/hate relationship with classical Greek tragedy is read as contributing to a modernist notion of theatricality, one that follows a double motion, revising both our understanding of Greek tragedy and of modernism itself. Isadora Duncan, Edward Gordon Craig, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W. B. Yeats, H. D, and Bertolt Brecht and their various, sometimes successful sometimes failed experiments in creating a modernist aesthetic in performing, dancing, translating, designing Greek tragedies, sometimes for the stage and sometimes for the page, are presented as radical experiments in and gestures towards the autonomy of performance. In the process the artists of the theatre themselves the actor, the designer, the director, the playwright are reconfigured and given a lineage and genealogy, through this modernist revision of tragedy and the tragic not as as a philosophical or philological tradition, but as a performance practice.

A study of a key modernist form, its theory, practice and legacyWhat do we know today about the theatrical ferment caused by the scandalous group of Russian writers, artists, musicians and theatre makers who called themselves 'Futurists'? What can we learn from their iconoclastic and exciting theatre works?Underpinned by theoretical writings, manifestoes and demonstrations, 'Russian Futurist Theatre' explores one of the most brilliant but least documented theatre explosions of the last 100 years. It is the first book to comprehensively uncover the Russian futurist theatre in all its virtuosity and diversity. Revealing a wealth of extraordinary theatre work and a barely-known group of theatre practitioners the book finds new ways to explore the interface between literature, theory and performance.Key FeaturesExplores the development of post-Romantic epic theatre and the exploration of abstract and alogical performanceDiscusses major practitioners' working methods as well as obscure practitioners related to major figures like Vsevolod MeyerholdAnalyses how Futurist theatre was strangled by Stalinism and 'disappeared'Explores the influence of Russian Futurist theatre on significant contemporary theatre practice

This book examines the ways the encounters between modernist theatre makers and Greek tragedy were constitutive in the modernist experiments in performance. Through a series of events / instances / poses that engage visual, literary and performing arts, the modernist love/hate relationship with classical Greek tragedy is read as contributing to a modernist notion of theatricality, one that follows a double motion, revising both our understanding of Greek tragedy and of modernism itself. Isadora Duncan, Edward Gordon Craig, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, W. B. Yeats, H. D, and Bertolt Brecht and their various, sometimes successful sometimes failed experiments in creating a modernist aesthetic in performing, dancing, translating, designing Greek tragedies, sometimes for the stage and sometimes for the page, are presented as radical experiments in and gestures towards the autonomy of performance. In the process the artists of the theatre themselves – the actor, the designer, the director, the playwright – are reconfigured and given a lineage and genealogy, through this modernist revision of tragedy and the tragic not as as a philosophical or philological tradition, but as a performance practice.

Modernism and the Theatre of the Baroque fashions an independent aesthetic for modernist writers and texts that challenges many high modernist qualities promoted by James Joyce and T. S. Eliot.

Examines the intersection of Samuel Beckett's thirty-second playlet Breath with the visual artsSamuel Beckett, one of the most prominent playwrights of the twentieth century, wrote a thirty-second playlet for the stage that does not include actors, text, characters or drama but only stage directions. 'Breath' (1969) is the focus and the only theatrical text examined in this study, which demonstrates how the piece became emblematic of the interdisciplinary exchanges that occur in Beckett's later writings, and of the cross-fertilisation of the theatre with the visual arts. The book attends to fifty breath-related artworks (including sculpture, painting, new media, sound art, performance art) and contextualises Beckett's 'Breath' within the intermedial and high-modernist discourse thereby contributing to the expanding field of intermedial Beckett criticism.Key FeaturesExamines Beckett's ultimate venture to define the borders between a theatrical performance and purely visual representationJuxtaposes Beckett's 'Breath' with breath-related artworks by prominent visual artists who investigate the far-reaching potential of the representation of respiration by challenging modernist essentialismThe focus on this primary human physiological function and its relation to arts and culture is highly pertinent to studies of human performance, the nature of embodiment and its relation to cultural expressionFacilitates new intermedial discourses around the nature and aesthetic possibilities of breath, the minimum condition of existence, at the interface between the visual arts and performance practices and their relation to questions of spectacle, objecthood and materiality

Reveals the untold story of Irish drama’s engagement with modernity’s sexual and social revolutionsThe first modern Irish playwrights emerged in London in the 1890s, at the intersection of a rising international socialist movement and a new campaign for gender equality and sexual freedom. Irish Drama and the Other Revolutions shows how Irish playwrights mediated between the sexual and the socialist revolutions, and traces their impact on left theatre in Europe and America from the 1890s to the 1960s. Drawing on original archival research, the study reconstructs the engagement of Yeats, Shaw, Wilde, Synge, O’Casey, and Beckett with socialists and sexual radicals like Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Morris, Edward Carpenter, Florence Farr, Bertolt Brecht, and Lorraine Hansberry. Key FeaturesArgues for and models a way of reconciling Marxist politics with identity politics, instead of privileging one over the otherOffers the first sustained investigation of Irish drama’s engagement with left culture in Europe and North AmericaOffers fresh readings of canonical plays by major authors while elaborating a new and generative argument about Ireland’s contribution to modern drama and literary modernismUses hard-to-find archival sources to recover and reinterpret crucial but forgotten and/or misunderstood moments in theater history and in the history of the cultural leftBrings Marxist and feminist/queer theoretical concerns together to produce a nuanced and revealing account of the interaction between sexual and social politics in the first half of the twentieth century

Through both theoretical contributions and empirically-orientated analyses, this book provides insights into how theories and practices of multicultural citizenship and migrant integration are adapting and might adapt to the new, more dynamic but also more fluid patterns of international migration and mobility.

This collection of 11 essays form a new examination of Whitehead’s Barbour-Page lectures, which were published as the book Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect in 1927. Leading Whitehead scholars give you exciting insights into the contemporary implications of Whitehead's symbolism in an era of new scientific, cultural and technological developments. As a result, Whitehead's philosophy is reinvigorated in the context of contemporary discussions and debates. This volume also serves as a critical point of entry into Whitehead’s more lengthy and complex work such as Process and Reality, and to his body of work as a whole.

First full-scale thematic analysis of Pina Bausch's 'Tanztheater', critically evaluating the impact of modernist theatre on her choreographic methodThis book presents a new reading of Pina Bausch's dance theatre, orienting it within an international legacy of performance practice. The discussion considers not only the influence of German and American modern dance on Bausch's work but, crucially, interrogates parallels with modernist and postdramatic theatre (including Antonin Artaud, Samuel Beckett, Jerzy Grotowski, and Robert Wilson), the influence of which has been largely neglected in existing studies of her oeuvre.'Pina Bausch's Dance Theatre' provides a wide-ranging study of Bausch's aesthetic and methods of practice, with case studies ranging from the beginning of her career to her final choreographies.Key FeaturesThe first full-scale study interrogating the relationship between Bausch's 'Tanztheater' and modernist theatre practice, structured around a chronological framework of case study choreographiesA new theorisation of the development of Bausch's oeuvre, locating her approach in a broader context of intercultural artistic exchange in the post-WWII periodDraws on literary and theatre theory to form an interdisciplinary methodology for understanding and interrogating Bausch's oeuvreBased on extensive archival research and a specialised knowledge of the evolution of modern dance

First full-scale thematic analysis of Pina Bausch’s Tanztheater, critically evaluating the impact of modernist theatre on her choreographic methodThis book presents a new reading of Pina Bausch’s dance theatre, orienting it within an international legacy of performance practice. The discussion considers not only the influence of German and American modern dance on Bausch’s work but, crucially, interrogates parallels with modernist and postdramatic theatre (including Antonin Artaud, Samuel Beckett, Jerzy Grotowski, and Robert Wilson), the influence of which has been largely neglected in existing studies of her oeuvre. Pina Bausch’s Dance Theatre provides a wide-ranging study of Bausch’s aesthetic and methods of practice, with case studies ranging from the beginning of her career to her final choreographies.Key FeaturesThe first full-scale study interrogating the relationship between Bausch’s Tanztheater and modernist theatre practice, structured around a chronological framework of case study choreographiesA new theorisation of the development of Bausch’s oeuvre, locating her approach in a broader context of intercultural artistic exchange in the post-WWII periodDraws on literary and theatre theory to form an interdisciplinary methodology for understanding and interrogating Bausch’s oeuvreBased on extensive archival research and a specialised knowledge of the evolution of modern dance

Investigates the explosive phenomenon of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) from a transatlantic perspectiveOffers the first comparative study of the history, performances and politics of the FTP in a book form Contributes significantly to the study of Hallie Flanagan as the bridge between the FTP and the European avant-garde; it will also contribute to the study of Flanagan’s own playsDraws and exposes further links between American modernism and its European counterparts (Meyerhold, Brecht, European avant-garde)Concentrates on close reading of unpublished plays (excerpts from scripts included), on the actual performance events but also on archival material collected by the writer and not previously published in a consistent mannerOffers both a historical survey and theoretical analysis based on performance theoriesEngaging and informative, this book presents a comparative study of the history, performances and politics of the FTP by drawing and exposing further links between American modernism and its European counterparts. It concentrates predominantly on the New York division and its following units: the Living Newspaper, the Negro unit, the Children’s unit and the Dance unit. Exploring a range of performances, it suggests that the FTP is responsible for an array of theatrical and dramatic experimentations but that it is also indebted to and carries on from the tradition of the European avant-garde and the contemporary modernist theatrical explorations.

Engaging and informative, this book presents a comparative study of the history, performances and politics of the FTP by drawing and exposing further links between American modernism and its European counterparts. It concentrates predominantly on the New York division and its following units: the Living Newspaper, the Negro unit, the Children's unit and the Dance unit. Exploring a range of performances, it suggests that the FTP is responsible for an array of theatrical and dramatic experimentations but that it is also indebted to and carries on from the tradition of the European avant-garde and the contemporary modernist theatrical explorations.

Reveals the untold story of Irish drama’s engagement with modernity’s sexual and social revolutionsThe first modern Irish playwrights emerged in London in the 1890s, at the intersection of a rising international socialist movement and a new campaign for gender equality and sexual freedom. Irish Drama and the Other Revolutions shows how Irish playwrights mediated between the sexual and the socialist revolutions, and traces their impact on left theatre in Europe and America from the 1890s to the 1960s. Drawing on original archival research, the study reconstructs the engagement of Yeats, Shaw, Wilde, Synge, O’Casey, and Beckett with socialists and sexual radicals like Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Morris, Edward Carpenter, Florence Farr, Bertolt Brecht, and Lorraine Hansberry. Key FeaturesArgues for and models a way of reconciling Marxist politics with identity politics, instead of privileging one over the otherOffers the first sustained investigation of Irish drama’s engagement with left culture in Europe and North AmericaOffers fresh readings of canonical plays by major authors while elaborating a new and generative argument about Ireland’s contribution to modern drama and literary modernismUses hard-to-find archival sources to recover and reinterpret crucial but forgotten and/or misunderstood moments in theater history and in the history of the cultural leftBrings Marxist and feminist/queer theoretical concerns together to produce a nuanced and revealing account of the interaction between sexual and social politics in the first half of the twentieth century

First comparative study to address the rediscovery of baroque aesthetic in modernismDid you know that seventeenth-century philosophy influenced dance theory and evolutionary science during the modernist period? Or that in England, Italy and Germany the term ‘baroque’ was used almost exclusively as an insult until the 1900s? Modernism and the Theatre of the Baroque fashions an independent aesthetic for modernist writers and texts that challenges many high modernist qualities promoted by James Joyce and T. S. Eliot. Providing a fresh interpretation of the works of Djuna Barnes, Wyndham Lewis, Edward Gordon Craig and Isadora Duncan, the book broadens our understanding of modernist priorities and demonstrates how readily these ideas translate across genres. It shows that modernists are not passive recipients of baroque stereotypes but are instead painstaking in their research and innovative in their reworking of original sources. This is an introduction to key ideas, characters and techniques that will allow the baroque to be used as a conceptual and historical framework for analysing modernist achievements, thereby opening up new opportunities for further research.Key featuresFashions an independent aesthetic for modernist writers and texts that challenges many high modernist qualities promoted by James Joyce and T. S. EliotProvides new connections between philosophy/critical theory and modernist culture, links that are relevant to both popular and academic interestIntroduces key ideas, characters and techniques that allow the baroque to be used as both a conceptual and historical framework for analysing modernist achievements, thereby opening up new opportunities for research, and demonstrating how readily these ideas translate across genre

Examines the intersection of Samuel Beckett’s thirty-second playlet Breath with the visual artsSamuel Beckett, one of the most prominent playwrights of the twentieth century, wrote a thirty-second playlet for the stage that does not include actors, text, characters or drama but only stage directions. Breath (1969) is the focus and the only theatrical text examined in this study, which demonstrates how the piece became emblematic of the interdisciplinary exchanges that occur in Beckett's later writings, and of the cross-fertilisation of the theatre with the visual arts. The book attends to fifty breath-related artworks (including sculpture, painting, new media, sound art, performance art) and contextualises Beckett's Breath within the intermedial and high-modernist discourse thereby contributing to the expanding field of intermedial Beckett criticism. Key FeaturesExamines Beckett’s ultimate venture to define the borders between a theatrical performance and purely visual representationJuxtaposes Beckett’s Breath with breath-related artworks by prominent visual artists who investigate the far-reaching potential of the representation of respiration by challenging modernist essentialismThe focus on this primary human physiological function and its relation to arts and culture is highly pertinent to studies of human performance, the nature of embodiment and its relation to cultural expressionFacilitates new intermedial discourses around the nature and aesthetic possibilities of breath, the minimum condition of existence, at the interface between the visual arts and performance practices and their relation to questions of spectacle, objecthood and materiality

A study of a key modernist form, its theory, practice and legacyWhat do we know today about the theatrical ferment caused by the scandalous group of Russian writers, artists, musicians and theatre makers who called themselves ‘Futurists’? What can we learn from their iconoclastic and exciting theatre works?Underpinned by theoretical writings, manifestoes and demonstrations, Russian Futurist Theatre explores one of the most brilliant but least documented theatre explosions of the last 100 years. It is the first book to comprehensively uncover the Russian futurist theatre in all its virtuosity and diversity. Revealing a wealth of extraordinary theatre work and a barely-known group of theatre practitioners the book finds new ways to explore the interface between literature, theory and performance.Key Features Explores the development of post-Romantic epic theatre and the exploration of abstract and alogical performanceDiscusses major practitioners’ working methods as well as obscure practitioners related to major figures like Vsevolod MeyerholdAnalyses how Futurist theatre was strangled by Stalinism and ‘disappeared’Explores the influence of Russian Futurist theatre on significant contemporary theatre practice

Analyses the expansion of head and body masking from nineteenth-century Paris to its international maturity in contemporary cultureLooks at the presence and development of masquerade in the modernist era - via performance history - with parallel references to theatricality and performativity in visual arts and visual cultureComments upon masquerade’s foundation in popular performance throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, frequently alluding to significant images from the history of photographyTheorises masquerade within the context of European theatre and drama scholarship, as well as British and European conservatory arts and performance trainingEmploys critical thinking influenced by phenomenological and semiotic analyses of performanceThis book highlights that masquerade can be regarded as a distinct genre of performance activity that employs elements of the carnivalesque, circus, dance, gestural theatre and theatre of objects. Popenhagen traces artistic disguising from fin de siècle Pierrots in Paris, Marseille and Vienna to early twentieth--century masquerading in Moscow and Zürich. He explores identity play and display through the complementary lenses of image studies, cultural history and performance theory.

Analyses the expansion of head and body masking from nineteenth-century Paris to its international maturity in contemporary cultureLooks at the presence and development of masquerade in the modernist era - via performance history - with parallel references to theatricality and performativity in visual arts and visual cultureComments upon masquerade's foundation in popular performance throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, frequently alluding to significant images from the history of photographyTheorises masquerade within the context of European theatre and drama scholarship, as well as British and European conservatory arts and performance trainingEmploys critical thinking influenced by phenomenological and semiotic analyses of performanceThis book highlights that masquerade can be regarded as a distinct genre of performance activity that employs elements of the carnivalesque, circus, dance, gestural theatre and theatre of objects. Popenhagen traces artistic disguising from fin de si cle Pierrots in Paris, Marseille and Vienna to early twentieth-century masquerading in Moscow and Z rich. He explores identity play and display through the complementary lenses of image studies, cultural history and performance theory.

This book explores Salome’s quintessential veiled dance through readings of fictional and poetic texts, dramatic productions, dance performances and silent films, arguing for the central place of this dancer – and her many interpreters – to the wider formal and aesthetic contours of modernism.Loïe Fuller, Maud Allan, Oscar Wilde, Ida Rubinstein, Alla Nazimova, Djuna Barnes, Germaine Dulac, Edward Gordon Craig, W. B. Yeats, Ninette de Valois and Samuel Beckett are foregrounded for their innovative engagements with this paradigmatic fin-de-siècle myth, showing how the ephemeral stuff of dance became a constitutive element of the modernist imagination during this period.

An account of Salome's dance and its centrality within modernist performanceOffers a new account of the Salome myth that underlines its centrality to modernist performance across different genres and forms, including drama, dance, and silent filmDraws on interdisciplinary methodologies from literary and performance studies to illustrate the importance of dance to modernist writing about Salome, providing a set of both conceptual and historical co-ordinates within modernism more broadlyBuilds a conceptual framework drawing on the writings of Aby Warburg, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Jacques Ranci re in order to analyse key 'scenes' and sites of performance in the genealogy of this particular choreographic themeEngages in fresh readings of plays by canonical playwrights Wilde, Yeats, Beckett alongside the work of lesser-known performers and filmmakers in order to destabilise the gendered and aesthetic hierarchies often germane to literary histories of the periodThis book explores Salome's quintessential veiled dance through readings of fictional and poetic texts, dramatic productions, dance performances and silent films, arguing for the central place of this dancer and her many interpreters to the wider formal and aesthetic contours of modernism.Lo e Fuller, Maud Allan, Oscar Wilde, Ida Rubinstein, Alla Nazimova, Djuna Barnes, Germaine Dulac, Edward Gordon Craig, W. B. Yeats, Ninette de Valois and Samuel Beckett are foregrounded for their innovative engagements with this paradigmatic fin-de-si cle myth, showing how the ephemeral stuff of dance became a constitutive element of the modernist imagination during this period.