In Performance - Böcker

This anthology of six contemporary plays from Turkey captures such global themes as questions of identity, poverty, class conflict, oppression, and displacement while shedding light on current cultural and political matters in Turkey, a country literally at the border of the West and the East that is recovering from military coups and still seeking to establish democracy and human rights. The title play, "Mustafa Kaplan's Solum", deals with questions of home and identity as explored through physical research on the performer's body. Other plays included are "Murathan Mungan's As on the Page", which utilizes traditional performing techniques of Asia Minor and reveals subtle cultural details about eastern Turkey; Tuncer Cucenoglu's Avalanche, which focuses on events in a village where people who live under fear and oppression take extreme measures to prevent an avalanche; Sahika Tekand's Eurydice's Cry, an adaption of Sophocles's Antigone; Ozen Yula's For Rent, which tells the stories of outcast characters; and Emre Koyuncuoglu's Home Sweet Home, which discusses displacement and the homeland."Solum and Other Plays" from Turkey includes a comprehensive introduction that contextualizes the plays within contemporary Turkey and examines the diverse aesthetic and stylistic characteristics of each playwright, making this an important resource for scholars of Turkey and theater and performance studies.

The seven plays that comprise Chiori Miyagawa's "Thousand Years Waiting and Other Plays" explore themes of memory and identity. Her plays combine poetic language with harsh reality, and time and space are fluid in the worlds she creates - they converge and separate while the characters inhabit many dimensions at once with ease. In one way or another, the heroes and heroines of these plays are outsiders - emotionally (as in "Awakening"), physically (as in "Comet Hunter") or socially (as in "Broken Morning"), and the line that separates life and death is thin. In the title play, a woman in New York City begins to live in the world of a thousand-year-old Japanese memoir that she is reading. The characters in "Leaving Eden" enter, exit, and re-enter Anton Chekhov's Russia from 1887 to 1904, only to end up at a wedding reception in 2005 in New York where Chekhov appears and takes a seat at a table. Inspired by the 1899 Kate Chopin novella of the same name, "Awakening" follows Edna in her journey toward death, through fragmented childhood memories and visions of freedom. "Red Again" begins after "Sophocles'" Antigone dies.She lands in Buddhist bardo, contemplating the history of human violence.

By turns astonishing, fierce, and tender, these seven plays by Latina-American dramatist Caridad Svich highlight more than two decades of boundary-breaking and genre-defying dramatic work. Populated by characters struggling to survive, these plays are joined by thematic threads of loss, remembrance, resurrection, grave wit, and heroic survival. The centerpiece of this collection, "Instructions for Breathing", is a lyrical, dreamlike meditation on responsibility and parenthood that asks an audience not only to suffer the unthinkable loss of a child as Svich's characters do, but also to laugh at the couple's flaws and at the hilarity of the suburban life they lead. This commingling of emotion happens in each of these dramatic portraits of homeless castaways (Fugitive Pieces), women in war (Thrush), and sex traffickers (Rift). And Svich's work is not without a nod to the classical: "Wreckage" reframes the story of Medea, and "Steal Back Light from the Virtual" depicts a labyrinthine society torn apart by a monstrous beast.In sum, "Instructions for Breathing and Other Plays" serves as an illuminating introduction to the work of a major playwright, and an inspiring example of the breadth of possibilities in North American drama.

An unprecedented anthology of contemporary Polish drama, Loose Screws brings together nine previously untranslated plays by prominent playwrights who have emerged in rapidly changing postcommunist landscapes. The plays expose ways in which individual and social violence impinge upon each other, disrupt notions of a monolithic Polish identity, and try to find meaning within the post-9/11 global context. This comprehensive collection offers an account of Polish history and politics though plays that range in subject from communism to mental illness, criminal and social violence, and working-class life and globalization. Serving as the cornerstone for the collection, Malgorzata Sikorska-Miszczuk's Loose Screws examines the ways in which various psychopathologies play themselves out in the private and public spheres in postcommunist Poland. The anthology includes a substantive introduction that situates each play within its historical, political, and theatrical context.

Theater in New Zealand began as a tool of the British Empire, imported along with Christianity, seeds, and other commodities as a way of acculturating the indigenous Maori population. In the decades since, it has been turned to different ends, and is now a crucial outlet for the voices of the ever more diverse population of New Zealanders. This collection gathers some of the most interesting recent plays that engage explicitly with social issues, which are organized so that, together, they present a vivid picture of what it means to be living in New Zealand in the first decades of the twenty-first century, as people grapple with lingering colonialism and the increasing globalization of everyday life.

The ten plays in this collection offer unprecedented grassroots perspectives on the jubilation, terror, hope, and heartbreak of mass uprising as seen during and in the wake of the Tahrir Square demonstrations. Collectively tracing events as they unfolded in Egypt from the last days of Hosni Mubarak’s regime through Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s ascendance to the presidency, the plays present a picture of Egypt in the midst of epochal change, with all the attendant fear, hope, and uncertainty. Ranging from naturalism to documentary to more avant-garde representations, the plays collected in Tahrir Tales represent contemporary Egyptian drama at its most interesting, and, not coincidentally, most politically, committed.

Since premiering his pioneering linguistic experiment I Love XXX in Beijing nearly twenty-five years ago, Meng Jinghui has been credited with revitalizing Chinese theater by popularizing the avant-garde. Mixing high culture with mass culture, his plays address China's enduring revolutionary nostalgia and current social problems, challenging the artistic status quo from the mainstream rather than the margins. His creations range from new interpretations of canonical Western masters like Shakespeare and Genet to improvisational collaborations with actors on original works. This anthology from China's most influential playwright makes his plays available to an international readership in English for the first time. The collection, chosen by Meng and renowned Chinese theater scholar and translator Claire Conceison, represents the breadth of Meng's work illuminates late twentieth- and twenty-first-century creative practices that transcend the conventional category of playwright. I Love XXX includes the title piece, Longing for Worldly Pleasures, The Bedbug, Head Without Tail, and Two Dogs' Opinions on Life, as well as a DVD featuring selected scenes from each of the plays.

At a time when Turkey is struggling for its secular identity, resisting the influence of ISIS, and finding itself at the heart of the European refugee crisis, accomplished Turkish playwright Ozen Yula offers a deep, artistic portrait of the country and its culture. Yula, whose work focuses on marginalized individuals within oppressive social systems, has a lot to say about the problems facing global democracies issues like failures in the social contract, human rights conflicts, territorial security, religious strife, and nationalism.Unofficial Roxelana is a collection of Yula's most significant work. It illustrates how problematic power structures emerge regardless of different governmental configurations, always resulting in the repression of marginalized members of society in this case, from renowned Turkish historical figures, like Roxelana and Rumi, to the pariahs of modern Turkey. With a contextualizing introduction by Marvin Carlson and a lengthy interview with Yula, this first-of-its-kind anthology is an invaluable glimpse into the tempestuous and deeply artistic modern Turkey.

Citizens of Tokyo is the first collection in English of plays by one of Japan’s most important contemporary playwrights, Oriza Hirata, whose works have been performed all over the world. The first part of Citizens of Tokyo, “At Home and Abroad,” presents two plays—Toyko Notes and Kings of the Road—that are exemplary of Hirata’s unique neorealist dramaturgy, which created one of the most important trends in Japanese theater since the 1990s: Quiet Theatre. The second part of the book presents two short comedies that satirize the politics of decision-making in Japan and abroad: “Loyal Rōnin: The Working Girls’ Version” and “The Yalta Conference.” The final part, “Robots and Androids are People Too,” presents two short plays created in collaboration with Ishiguro Hiroshi and the Osaka University Robot Theatre Project. The plays are accompanied by a context-setting introduction from editor and cotranslator M. Cody Poulton.

In Everything: And Other Performance Texts from Germany, Matt Cornish gathers texts drawn from performances by five of the most renowned theater collectives working today: andcompany&Co., Gob Squad, Rimini Protokoll, She She Pop, and Showcase Beat Le Mot. Drawn from theater events variously described as documentary, post-dramatic, and live art, the texts collected in Everything seldom look or read like plays-some comprise rules for improvisation; others could best be described as theatrical scenarios; a few are transcripts; one includes a soup recipe. Yet amid these dramaturgical tests and trials, one finds poetry: heartbreaking stories of disability and triumph as well as strange, disjointed fairy tales interrupted by communist songs.This volume is an extension of the original theatrical experiments. For the reader, the texts are calls to action. They ask one to do things: watch the news, listen to music, make soup, and dance. While the groups do not mean for actors to repeat the words printed here, they invite the reader to adapt their ideas and rules to make their own entirely new productions.

Palestinian theater today is drawing increasing interest throughout the Arab world and beyond, as theaters and universities in the English-speaking world are becoming familiar with companies like the Freedom Theatre, Al-Kasaba Theatre, Ashtar, Al-Rowwad, Yes Theatre, Al-Harah, and the Palestinian National Theatre. This volume for the first time presents contemporary plays from a number of Palestinian theatres in English. The collection offers a rare look into the dynamic life of contemporary Palestinian theater. The works gathered here arise directly from the physical and psychological realities of the occupation, combining activism and critical self-inquiry. The anthology represents both the micro-political geography and theatrical institutions of Palestine, covering the West Bank from the farthest north to the farthest south, the Galilee, Gaza, and Jerusalem. What emerges is the range of contemporary Palestinian national identity as expressed in the content, styles and institutions of its theater. As part of the In Performance series, the plays in this anthology will be of interest to those who want to produce new work, read diverse dramatic and performance literature, and understand the ways in which theater contributes to international discussions of culture, rights, history, and more.

The first anthology of Latin American drama to uniquely focus on the important Argentine dramatist, Santiago Loza.“Nothing to Do with Love:” And Other Plays brings together, for the first time in English, several of Argentine playwright Santiago Loza’s major works, along with visual documentation of the playwright’s productions and their historical and thematic contexts. For nearly twenty years, Loza has written scripts that document the experiences of marginalized individuals who live outside Buenos Aires or in its overlooked barrios, exploring how rural, working-class, and otherwise marginal individuals inhabit a reality different from many of the urban audiences who flock to the nation’s theater. Loza focuses his dramaturgy on individuals who lead lives as seamstresses, orphans, ranch hands, or disaffected adults talking about their problems without any expectation of resolution. His plays provide a sense of the richness of Argentina’s contemporary theater by giving voice to individuals whose lives are complicated by the economic fallout caused by Argentina’s adoption of neoliberal policies and the economic crash of 2001, as well as by the nation’s rapidly changing viewpoints on race, gender identity, and sexuality.  The first anthology of Latin American drama to uniquely focus on the important Argentine dramatist, Santiago Loza, this book will draw attention anew to the contemporary theaters of Argentina, Mexico, Panama, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

Showcases influential Iranian plays translated into English for the first time, offering a rich tapestry of Iran’s vibrant post-revolutionary theater scene.‘Oblivion’ and Other Plays from Post-Revolutionary Iran presents significant Iranian plays written between 1998 and 2019, a period during which the nation experienced a vibrant resurgence in its theatrical output. Featuring five plays from some of Iran’s most prominent and influential playwrights, collected here for the first time in English translation, this anthology illustrates a wide range of performance practices and theatrical modalities that are emblematic of Iran’s post-revolutionary theatrical scene. Highlighting themes of cultural identity, social issues, and women’s narratives, the plays are presented here alongside historical and cultural contexts to expand and inform their global audiences.This collection features an array of works that meld the past and present as well as the East and the West. Plays such as The Sacrifice of Senemar (Bahram Beyzaie) and Oblivion (Hamid Amjad) infuse Western dialogic theater with the Persian Indigenous performance practices of ta’ziyeh, shadow puppetry, and naqqali. The pieces Bird of Dawn (Sepideh Khosrowjah) and The Child (Naghmeh Samini) center women’s narratives and discussions of diasporic belonging and allyship, while The Dance of Mares (Mohammad Charmshir) reimagines Federico García Lorca’s Yerma through surrealism and an abstract episodic structure. Together, these plays showcase the diversity of Iranian contemporary theater, reflecting Persian cultural identity and a blend of indigenous traditions with European and global dramatic influences.

Exploring the ethics of historical narratives and national identities, this anthology of Polish plays delves into the trauma of war, anti-Semitism, the Holocaust, and Poland’s post-communist reality.The eleven pieces in this anthology of Polish plays dive deep into complex subjects such as Poland’s loss since the Holocaust, its difficult postwar relations with Germany, the social metamorphoses since the political upheaval of 1989, and the needs of Polish families and youth since the nation’s transition to a free-market economy. Krzysztof Warlikowski’s acclaimed production (A)pollonia, which calls upon excerpts from Greek tragedies, novels by Jonathan Littell and J. M. Coetzee, and reportage by Hanna Krall, provides the title for the anthology as it encapsulates the key subjects, conflicts, and dilemmas prominent in the Polish theater of the last decade.The plays in this anthology are accompanied by thirty-five black-and-white photographs of performances showcasing select scenes from their original Polish productions. An introduction provides the historical and political framework for the collected texts, and the foreword explains the scope of the international collaboration that produced the exceptional translations in this volume.

This is an anthology of seven contemporary Israeli plays, written by established and emerging Israeli playwrights and theatre creators. The collection offers a look into the variety of Israeli drama, theatre, and performance, reflecting central questions of identity in Israeli society. The anthology will include a substantive introduction discussing the theatrical contexts of the plays and some of the major issues that Israeli society deals with nowadays, an overview of the dramatic and theatrical work of the playwrights and an analysis of the plays.Joshua Sobol's "Wanderers" is a reconstruction of the life story of an Israeli double agent who goes through an identity crisis; Hanoch Levin's "Walking in the Dark" is an existentialist play about the Walking Man who takes a late-night walk in the city, unable to decide whether to visit his sick mother or not (the city and the night turn into the endless space of the mind; and, Yossefa Even-Shoshan's "The Maiden of Ludmir" examines the place of women within orthodox texts and social structures.Taher Najib's "In Spitting Distance" tells the story of an actor who lives in the West Bank but holds an Israeli passport and tries to fly from Paris to Tel Aviv one year after 9/11; Tamir Greenberg's "Hebron" depicts the mythic scale of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; Ruth Kanner's "Disgust" is a documentary performance and search into the personal and social concept of 'disgust' and is based on interviews with passersby; and Tamar Raban and Guy Gutman's "Old Wives' Tales" is a performance piece that takes place in a real yet fictional patisserie.Hanoch Levin (d.1999) is one of Israel's most worldly renown and influential playwrights, Joshua Sobol is one of Israel's world-acclaimed and senior playwrights, Tamir Greenberg is a well-known poet, Yossefa Even-Shoshan is an innovative feminist playwright, Taher Najib is an actor and a playwright, Ruth Kanner is one of Israel's leading experimental stage directors, Tamar Raban is leading performance artist and theatre creator, and Guy Gutman is a director and sound and stage designer.

As a phenomenon of history with social, political, cultural implications, the entire 'negotiated' experience makes the South African situation unique in both the African and global context. As this phenomenon unfolds, many fascinating new artistic influences are being explored to capture the diverse cultural depths and questions of identity unleashed by the demise of apartheid. This collection of plays reflects certain key trends in both subject matter and aesthetics prevalent in South Africa at this crucial moment in history. An introductory essay for the anthology will provide the reader with the artistic, cultural, and political background to the plays. Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom and Presley Chweneyagae's "Relativity: Township Stories" is about a serial killer on the loose and has been widely performed in South Africa and the UK. Martin Koboekae's "The Bush Tale" exposes the mistrust between two people from extremely different cultural backgrounds who meet through circumstance.Yael Farber's "Molora" explores the rage and pain of generations shattered by the Apartheid [A world tour of Molora will begin at the Barbican Theatre, London in April 2008]. Norman Mxosolisa's "Hallelujah!" is about the murderous, random violence engulfing the country.David Peimer's "Armed Response" is about a young German photographer who arrives to do her first assignment in Johannesburg. Presley Chweneyagae achieved international recognition for his title role in the Oscar-winning film "Tsotsi" and Mpumelelo Paul Grootboom received the National Standard Bank 'Young Artist Award' for theatre in 2005. Martin Koboekae is an award-winning playwright, novelist and director.Yael Farber is an acclaimed writer and director. Norman Mxosolisa is a playwright, composer, TV writer and director and teaches at Wits University, Johannesburg and won the Schreiner South African Young Artist Award in 2002 for "Hallelujah!". David Peimer is an award-winning playwright and director and a Professor of Theatre at New York University (Prague Division).