Elements in Contemporary Performance Texts – serie

Theatre has come back to text, but with perspectives shifted by the experimental practices of the twentieth century across performance forms. Contemporary playwriting brings its scenographic engagement to the foreground of the text, reflecting the spatial turn in theory and practice. In production, this spatiality has renewed and enlivened the status and impact of text-based theatre. Theatre studies needs to better describe the artfulness of contemporary text-based theatre, bringing to it the same sophisticated lenses scholars and critics have used for performance-based theatre and other experimental theatre practices. This Element does that by presenting the work of Caryl Churchill, Naomi Iizuka, and Sarah Ruhl as exemplary of the way text-based theatre, both its scripts and productions, now creates and expects a spatialized imaginary and demonstrates the potentials of text-based theatre in an increasingly visual and spatial field of cultural production.

This is an Element book about stand-up comedy and public speech. It focuses on the controversies generated when the distinction between the two breaks down, when stand-up enters - or is pushed - into the public sphere and is interpreted according to the scripts that govern popular political and media rhetoric rather than the traditional generic conventions of comic performance. These controversies raise a larger set of questions about the comedian's public role. They draw attention to the intention of jokes and their effects in the world. And they force us to consider how the limits of comic performance - what can be said, by whom, and why - respond to, and can reshape, public discourse across changing media contexts.

English Play Development under Neoliberalism, 2000-2022 is the first study of the institutionalising of English play development practices in the twenty-first century. It identifies the ways in which support for playwrights and text development increased beneficially during the 1990s and 2000s. It assesses bureaucratic institutional dynamics in key English producing houses as they were surveyed by two reports in 2009, and how these were experienced and transformed in the 2010s. The Element identifies in new play development innovations in the commodification and marketisation of new writing, the bureaucratisation of literary management, the structuring and restructuring of dramaturgy according to Fordist, then post-Fordist, conditions, and the necessity for commissioned artists to operate as neoliberal subjects. It concludes with attention to a liberatory horizon for play development in the English context. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This Element considers the concept of performance diagrams and shows their historical, epistemic and aesthetic functions in theatre and dance. In three sections, the author surveys the architectural model of theatre by Vitruvius, the woodcut of Marlow's Doctor Faustus, Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne-Atlas, the spells and drawings of Antonin Artaud, the performance Paradise Now (the Living Theatre) and the choreography I am 1984 (Barbara Matijević). Demonstrating that diagrams can be applied to multiply dramaturgical trajectories, the text reviews their relevance for performance-making, analysis and documentation. The author argues that diagrams provide new tools for theory, practice and archiving, while at the same time enabling reflection on the intersections between poetics and politics. Focusing on the potentiality of diagrams to cut through representation and dichotomies, this Element affirms the visual, corporeal and spatial dimensions of performance-making. In doing so, it elucidates the significance of diagrammatic thinking for performance studies.

This Element explores how theatre responded to the death and loss produced by the COVID-19 pandemic, by innovating forms and spaces designed to support us in grief. It considers how theatre grieved for itself, for the dead, for lost ways of living, while also imagining and enacting new modes of being together. Even as it reckoned with its own demise, theatre endeavoured to collectivise grief by performing a range of functions more commonly associated with funerary, health and social care services, which buckled under restrictions and neglect. These pandemic theatres show how grief cannot only be let mourn over individual losses in private, but how it must also seep into the public sphere to fight to save critical services, institutions, communities and art forms, including theatre itself.

This Element explores how theatre responded to the death and loss produced by the COVID-19 pandemic, by innovating forms and spaces designed to support us in grief. It considers how theatre grieved for itself, for the dead, for lost ways of living, while also imagining and enacting new modes of being together. Even as it reckoned with its own demise, theatre endeavoured to collectivise grief by performing a range of functions more commonly associated with funerary, health and social care services, which buckled under restrictions and neglect. These pandemic theatres show how grief cannot only be let mourn over individual losses in private, but how it must also seep into the public sphere to fight to save critical services, institutions, communities and art forms, including theatre itself.

Theatre has come back to text, but with perspectives shifted by the experimental practices of the twentieth century across performance forms. Contemporary playwriting brings its scenographic engagement to the foreground of the text, reflecting the spatial turn in theory and practice. In production, this spatiality has renewed and enlivened the status and impact of text-based theatre. Theatre studies needs to better describe the artfulness of contemporary text-based theatre, bringing to it the same sophisticated lenses scholars and critics have used for performance-based theatre and other experimental theatre practices. This Element does that by presenting the work of Caryl Churchill, Naomi Iizuka, and Sarah Ruhl as exemplary of the way text-based theatre, both its scripts and productions, now creates and expects a spatialized imaginary and demonstrates the potentials of text-based theatre in an increasingly visual and spatial field of cultural production.

This Element proposes a novel way of defining, understanding and approaching theatricality, a term that exists both in the theatre and, more broadly, in everyday life. It argues that four foundational, material processes of theatre-making manifest themselves in all playtexts in both overt and covert forms. Each of the four sections defines a different theatrical process, explores its functions in two chosen playtexts and examines its implications for the wider experience of the spectators outside the theatre. The Element concludes with a supplementary reflection on performance to show how even seemingly untheatrical playtexts can be analysed and staged to reveal their unspoken theatricality. It also argues that this new understanding of theatricality has a politics, that the artifice of any theatre and the constructedness of any society are analogous and that both, consequently, can be fundamentally changed. This Element is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This Element proposes a novel way of defining, understanding and approaching theatricality, a term that exists both in the theatre and, more broadly, in everyday life. It argues that four foundational, material processes of theatre-making manifest themselves in all playtexts in both overt and covert forms. Each of the four sections defines a different theatrical process, explores its functions in two chosen playtexts and examines its implications for the wider experience of the spectators outside the theatre. The Element concludes with a supplementary reflection on performance to show how even seemingly untheatrical playtexts can be analysed and staged to reveal their unspoken theatricality. It also argues that this new understanding of theatricality has a politics, that the artifice of any theatre and the constructedness of any society are analogous and that both, consequently, can be fundamentally changed. This Element is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This Element considers the concept of performance diagrams and shows their historical, epistemic and aesthetic functions in theatre and dance. In three sections, the author surveys the architectural model of theatre by Vitruvius, the woodcut of Marlow's Doctor Faustus, Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne-Atlas, the spells and drawings of Antonin Artaud, the performance Paradise Now (the Living Theatre) and the choreography I am 1984 (Barbara Matijević). Demonstrating that diagrams can be applied to multiply dramaturgical trajectories, the text reviews their relevance for performance-making, analysis and documentation. The author argues that diagrams provide new tools for theory, practice and archiving, while at the same time enabling reflection on the intersections between poetics and politics. Focusing on the potentiality of diagrams to cut through representation and dichotomies, this Element affirms the visual, corporeal and spatial dimensions of performance-making. In doing so, it elucidates the significance of diagrammatic thinking for performance studies.

This is an Element book about stand-up comedy and public speech. It focuses on the controversies generated when the distinction between the two breaks down, when stand-up enters - or is pushed - into the public sphere and is interpreted according to the scripts that govern popular political and media rhetoric rather than the traditional generic conventions of comic performance. These controversies raise a larger set of questions about the comedian's public role. They draw attention to the intention of jokes and their effects in the world. And they force us to consider how the limits of comic performance - what can be said, by whom, and why - respond to, and can reshape, public discourse across changing media contexts.

This Element investigates how playwrights can employ text-based strategies to facilitate audience participation in performance. It looks to contemporary discourse in the field of applied theatre to suggest principles the creator of a participatory work may employ to support the creation of a performance text which invites, and is responsive to, contributions from the audience. This Element offers analysis of works by playwrights Tim Crouch, Nassim Soleimanpour, Hannah Jane Walker and Chris Thorpe, all of whom experiment with text-based modalities to position the audience as co-creators in performance. It offers the insights gained from the author through their own experience of writing and staging a participatory performance. This Element draws upon ideas on care, relationality and affect to propose a care-centred model of playwriting which fosters an inclusive and accessible experience of co-creation in performance.

This Element investigates how playwrights can employ text-based strategies to facilitate audience participation in performance. It looks to contemporary discourse in the field of applied theatre to suggest principles the creator of a participatory work may employ to support the creation of a performance text which invites, and is responsive to, contributions from the audience. This Element offers analysis of works by playwrights Tim Crouch, Nassim Soleimanpour, Hannah Jane Walker and Chris Thorpe, all of whom experiment with text-based modalities to position the audience as co-creators in performance. It offers the insights gained from the author through their own experience of writing and staging a participatory performance. This Element draws upon ideas on care, relationality and affect to propose a care-centred model of playwriting which fosters an inclusive and accessible experience of co-creation in performance.

English Play Development under Neoliberalism, 2000-2022 is the first study of the institutionalising of English play development practices in the twenty-first century. It identifies the ways in which support for playwrights and text development increased beneficially during the 1990s and 2000s. It assesses bureaucratic institutional dynamics in key English producing houses as they were surveyed by two reports in 2009, and how these were experienced and transformed in the 2010s. The Element identifies in new play development innovations in the commodification and marketisation of new writing, the bureaucratisation of literary management, the structuring and restructuring of dramaturgy according to Fordist, then post-Fordist, conditions, and the necessity for commissioned artists to operate as neoliberal subjects. It concludes with attention to a liberatory horizon for play development in the English context. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Dialogue is often understood as the verbal interaction between different people or groups. This Element reconceptualises dialogue through dance and somatic practices, foregrounding sensory relationality and responsiveness to the environment. Rather than centring conflict between specific 'actors', it evolves a framework for dialogue as a holistic system of embodied exchange. This Element focuses on Amerta Movement - a free-form style of dance developed by Javanese dance artist Suprapto Suryodarmo (Prapto) through transcultural practice - to explore how movement facilitates dialogue with oneself, the environment, other people, and wider communities. Drawing on fieldwork and practice in Indonesia, the authors analyse the work of seven performing artists who engage with Amerta Movement in their workshops and performances. This Element considers how such movement practices cultivate conditions for interreligious and intercultural dialogue, while contributing to debates on social cohesion and social justice. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Dialogue is often understood as the verbal interaction between different people or groups. This Element reconceptualises dialogue through dance and somatic practices, foregrounding sensory relationality and responsiveness to the environment. Rather than centring conflict between specific 'actors', it evolves a framework for dialogue as a holistic system of embodied exchange. This Element focuses on Amerta Movement - a free-form style of dance developed by Javanese dance artist Suprapto Suryodarmo (Prapto) through transcultural practice - to explore how movement facilitates dialogue with oneself, the environment, other people, and wider communities. Drawing on fieldwork and practice in Indonesia, the authors analyse the work of seven performing artists who engage with Amerta Movement in their workshops and performances. This Element considers how such movement practices cultivate conditions for interreligious and intercultural dialogue, while contributing to debates on social cohesion and social justice. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This Element argues that movement, overseen by a movement director, is vital for theatre-making. It can support actors with characterisation and playing others responsibly and ethically, for scripted and non-scripted tasks: from dances to fights, from parades to murders, or other human behaviour. Movement directing is an increasingly common role as it helps forge an ensemble and build 'worlds' on stage, and plays a crucial part in shaping how actors work with and in space. The Element's autoethnographic approach draws on the author's movement direction for ten productions in the UK, most with director Katie Mitchell, based on his research into and experience with Gardzienice Theatre Association, Poland, from 1989. The Element offers a perspective that is missing in accounts of Mitchell's oeuvre and much British movement scholarship by examining the influence of the Grotowskian lineage on British theatre and by discussing voice work and text delivery, something often overlooked.