Elements in Theatre, Performance and the Political – serie

This Element examines practices that occurred since the beginning of the Greek crisis and revisits the mnemonic canon of the Greek War of Independence. By focusing on the institution of the mnemonic canon of independence, and subsequently on its contemporary re-imaginings, this Element interrogates performance work vis-...-vis Greece's histories of colonial dependencies - histories that are integral to the institution of modern Greece. As such, the examples discussed here rehearse independence against and beyond national(ist) fantasies and, in so doing, attest to an emerging desire for decolonisation.

Among the most significant playwrights and theatre-makers of postcolonial India, Utpal Dutt (1929-1993), was an early exponent of rethinking colonial history through political theatre. Dutt envisaged political theatre as part of the larger Marxist project, and his incorporation of new developments in Marxist thinking, including the contributions of Antonio Gramsci, makes it possible to conceptualise his protagonists as insurgent subalterns. A decolonial approach to staging history remained a significant element in Dutt's artistic project. This Element examines Dutt's passionate engagement with Marxism and explores how this sense of urgency was actioned through the writing and producing of plays about the peasant revolts and armed anti-colonial movements which took place during the period of British rule. Drawing on contemporary debates in political theatre regarding the autonomy of the spectator and the performance of history, the author locates Dutt's political theatre in a historical frame.

Decolonisation can be pursued in different ways. After many years of developing a critical language to engage coloniality, the most urgent need in African theatre is to develop new theories and methods in our manufactories. This Element uses Afroscenology as a theory to read and comment on African theatre. The Element particularly focuses on the history of laboratories in which it was tested and emerged, the historicization of rombic theatre and the crafting of a theory of the playtext which has been named theatric theory to distinguish it from the Aristotelian dramatic theory. The second dimension of the theory is the performatic technique. This Element also explain Afrosonic mime through examples drawn from the workshops conducted in training performers.

This Element argues that the climate emergency requires a new approach to the study of theatre history - a suggestion that is developed through an analysis of the practice of theatrical revival during the Anthropocene era. Staging old plays in new ways can make visible ecological or environmental features that might have previously gone unnoticed: features which, in some cases, might not have been consciously included by the original authors or makers of a work, but which will be detectable to audiences nevertheless. These links are explored through case studies from the contemporary Irish theatre - including revivals of plays by Shakespeare, Lady Gregory, and Samuel Beckett, as performed by such major Irish companies as Rough Magic, Druid Theatre, and Company SJ. The Element ultimately shows how theatre can contribute to debates about the Anthropocene, and offers new pathways for theatre practice and criticism.

An in-depth study of the Festival of India (1985-1986) in the United States, one of the biggest events ever mounted to promote goodwill between two countries. Comprising more than seven hundred programs of music, dance, drama, film shows, art exhibitions, and workshops sponsored by over two hundred cultural institutions across over a hundred cities, the festival constituted a prismatic event that refracted the complex forces at play on the global stage during the 1980s. The Element delineates how this multi-sited spectacle of unprecedented size and near unfathomable political, economic, and cultural influence impacted theatre and performance studies. Simultaneously, it traces how two complex historical shifts were communicated to the global public at the end of the Cold War: India's desire to transition from planned Nehruvian socialism to laissez faire capitalism and the efflorescence of the model of 'cultural development' that centred the arts in development.

This Element focuses on the frequent staging of the most precarious fraction of the working class in the context of a theatre industry, academy and audiences that are dominated by the cultural fraction of the middle class. It interrogates the staging of an abjectified figure as a means of challenging the stigmatisation of the poor in political discourse, defined here as an ideological imaginary of moral and cultural deficit. The Element argues that in seeking to subvert such an imaginary, theatre that stages the abjectified subject may risk consolidating two further imaginaries of working class deficit that have been confected in political discourse from the 1990s to the 2020s. In conclusion, the Element reflects on the political potential of theatre that rather seeks to eradicate class descriptors, conflicts and hierarchies altogether. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This Element is the first monograph to focus on the presence and popularity of autofiction in contemporary theatre, a mode characterised by its mixture of autobiographical and fictional materials and generally associated with the cutting edge of literary fiction. To do so, it brings frameworks from literary and theatre studies to bear on a recent upsurge in plays that explicitly mobilise lived experience and its fictionalisation to political ends. Considering a comparative corpus of state-subsidised productions in Britain and Europe since the mid 2010s - both adaptations of literary works and plays written for the stage - this Element attends to autofiction's aesthetics and politics through its negotiation on stage of three conceptual binaries, each the focus of a section: fact/fiction, self/other, and inclusion/exclusion. By probing the mode's critical potential and pitfalls, it sheds light on the stakes of self-fictionalising practices in today's cultural markets and on the role of theatre therein.

With the majority of the global population living in cities, urbanisation and climate crisis have become urgent planetary issues. This Element examines 'urban eco-performance', exploring how theatre and performance intersect with urbanisation and ecological crises to reimagine equitable urban futures. Through rigorous ecodramaturgical analyses, this Element critiques the colonial and capitalist systems shaping cities and highlights performance's role in addressing climate justice. Performances from Canada, Mexico, Nigeria, Taiwan, UK and USA, as well as Indigenous performances, are brought together for the first time to examine how they challenge the human/nature divide, revealing cities as vibrant ecological spaces. These performances foreground underrepresented voices and reframe cities as 'bio-urban' spaces. This Element integrates decolonial and intersectional ecological frameworks over three thematic sections: Living Cities, Petro-Cities and Urban Futures Against the Apocalypse. It argues for justice for marginalised communities while envisioning cities as interconnected ecosystems that can foster collective action and ecological resilience.

Following Homi Bhabha's prompt on reading nationalism as a set of discursive and performative practices, this Element focuses on the cultural geography of today's Russia and examines a range of performative strategies used by the Russian state to uphold its nationalist project. Simultaneously, it maps artistic strategies of resistance to the ideology of nationalism as employed by both state-funded and independent theatre companies, via new dramaturgies, performance practices and strategies of storytelling.

Following Homi Bhabha's prompt on reading nationalism as a set of discursive and performative practices, this Element focuses on the cultural geography of today's Russia and examines a range of performative strategies used by the Russian state to uphold its nationalist project. Simultaneously, it maps artistic strategies of resistance to the ideology of nationalism as employed by both state-funded and independent theatre companies, via new dramaturgies, performance practices and strategies of storytelling.

This Element compares the 1951 Festival of Britain with the 2022 Unboxed Festival to explore both continuities and shifts in the British state's relationship to empire, power and extraction as expressed in celebrations of national culture. The ideological projects underpinning these governments, distanced by more than seventy years, might be seen as fundamentally opposed. Yet approaching this comparative study through a conjunctural analysis focusing on the narrations of British identity and both events' wilful intertwining of technology and art reveals the continuities between both periods, especially as they pertain to historical practices of the imperial state and its far-reaching consequences.

This Element compares the 1951 Festival of Britain with the 2022 Unboxed Festival to explore both continuities and shifts in the British state's relationship to empire, power and extraction as expressed in celebrations of national culture. The ideological projects underpinning these governments, distanced by more than seventy years, might be seen as fundamentally opposed. Yet approaching this comparative study through a conjunctural analysis focusing on the narrations of British identity and both events' wilful intertwining of technology and art reveals the continuities between both periods, especially as they pertain to historical practices of the imperial state and its far-reaching consequences.

This Element examines practices that occurred since the beginning of the Greek crisis and revisits the mnemonic canon of the Greek War of Independence. By focusing on the institution of the mnemonic canon of independence, and subsequently on its contemporary re-imaginings, this Element interrogates performance work vis-...-vis Greece's histories of colonial dependencies - histories that are integral to the institution of modern Greece. As such, the examples discussed here rehearse independence against and beyond national(ist) fantasies and, in so doing, attest to an emerging desire for decolonisation.

An in-depth study of the Festival of India (1985-1986) in the United States, one of the biggest events ever mounted to promote goodwill between two countries. Comprising more than seven hundred programs of music, dance, drama, film shows, art exhibitions, and workshops sponsored by over two hundred cultural institutions across over a hundred cities, the festival constituted a prismatic event that refracted the complex forces at play on the global stage during the 1980s. The Element delineates how this multi-sited spectacle of unprecedented size and near unfathomable political, economic, and cultural influence impacted theatre and performance studies. Simultaneously, it traces how two complex historical shifts were communicated to the global public at the end of the Cold War: India's desire to transition from planned Nehruvian socialism to laissez faire capitalism and the efflorescence of the model of 'cultural development' that centred the arts in development.

Among the most significant playwrights and theatre-makers of postcolonial India, Utpal Dutt (1929-1993), was an early exponent of rethinking colonial history through political theatre. Dutt envisaged political theatre as part of the larger Marxist project, and his incorporation of new developments in Marxist thinking, including the contributions of Antonio Gramsci, makes it possible to conceptualise his protagonists as insurgent subalterns. A decolonial approach to staging history remained a significant element in Dutt's artistic project. This Element examines Dutt's passionate engagement with Marxism and explores how this sense of urgency was actioned through the writing and producing of plays about the peasant revolts and armed anti-colonial movements which took place during the period of British rule. Drawing on contemporary debates in political theatre regarding the autonomy of the spectator and the performance of history, the author locates Dutt's political theatre in a historical frame.

Decolonisation can be pursued in different ways. After many years of developing a critical language to engage coloniality, the most urgent need in African theatre is to develop new theories and methods in our manufactories. This Element uses Afroscenology as a theory to read and comment on African theatre. The Element particularly focuses on the history of laboratories in which it was tested and emerged, the historicization of rombic theatre and the crafting of a theory of the playtext which has been named theatric theory to distinguish it from the Aristotelian dramatic theory. The second dimension of the theory is the performatic technique. This Element also explain Afrosonic mime through examples drawn from the workshops conducted in training performers.

This Element examines performance in postmillennial China through the lens of postsocialism. The fragmented ontology of Chinese postsocialism captures the structural contradictions of a political system that supports a neoliberal economy while continuing to promote socialist values. This study explores how the ideological ambivalence and cultural paradoxes that characterise the postsocialist condition are embodied and represented in performance. Focusing on independent practitioners and postdramatic practices, it builds on theorisations of postsocialism as a state of temporal disjunction to propose a tripartite taxonomy structured around past, present, and future temporal regimes. The categories of postsocialist hauntologies, postsocialist realisms, and postsocialist futurities are introduced to investigate performance works that respectively revisit the socialist past, document present realities, and envision future imaginations. The intersection of competing temporalities and their performative manifestations reflects the disjunctive constitution of contemporary China, where past socialist legacies and futurological ambitions coexist within a fractured postsocialist present.

This Element examines performance in postmillennial China through the lens of postsocialism. The fragmented ontology of Chinese postsocialism captures the structural contradictions of a political system that supports a neoliberal economy while continuing to promote socialist values. This study explores how the ideological ambivalence and cultural paradoxes that characterise the postsocialist condition are embodied and represented in performance. Focusing on independent practitioners and postdramatic practices, it builds on theorisations of postsocialism as a state of temporal disjunction to propose a tripartite taxonomy structured around past, present, and future temporal regimes. The categories of postsocialist hauntologies, postsocialist realisms, and postsocialist futurities are introduced to investigate performance works that respectively revisit the socialist past, document present realities, and envision future imaginations. The intersection of competing temporalities and their performative manifestations reflects the disjunctive constitution of contemporary China, where past socialist legacies and futurological ambitions coexist within a fractured postsocialist present.

Crisis Theatre and The Living Newspapers traces a history of the living newspaper as a theatre of crisis from Soviet Russia (1910s), through the Federal Theatre Project of the Great Depression in America (1930s), to Augusto Boal's teatro jornal in Brazil (1970s), and its resonance with documentary forms deployed in the final years of apartheid in South Africa (1990s), up until the present day in the UK (2020s). Across this Element, the author is interested in what a transnational and transhistorical examination of the living newspaper through the lens of crisis reveals about the ways in which theatre can intervene in our collective social, economic and political life. By holding these diverse examples together, the author asserts the Living Newspaper as a form of Crisis Theatre.

Crisis Theatre and The Living Newspapers traces a history of the living newspaper as a theatre of crisis from Soviet Russia (1910s), through the Federal Theatre Project of the Great Depression in America (1930s), to Augusto Boal's teatro jornal in Brazil (1970s), and its resonance with documentary forms deployed in the final years of apartheid in South Africa (1990s), up until the present day in the UK (2020s). Across this Element, the author is interested in what a transnational and transhistorical examination of the living newspaper through the lens of crisis reveals about the ways in which theatre can intervene in our collective social, economic and political life. By holding these diverse examples together, the author asserts the Living Newspaper as a form of Crisis Theatre.

Within French subsidised performing arts institutions, productions involving non-professional contributors have been gaining traction over the last decade. The trend is spearheaded both by artists, seeking to increase their interactions with society, and by public authorities, preoccupied with people-participation. The recent acceleration of this trend notwithstanding, participatory productions have long been a peripheral phenomenon in French institutions, keen to differentiate their work from socio-cultural approaches. This Element investigates the current rise in participatory creation, examining the motivations underpinning it and charting the artistic processes and forms it produces. The aim is to explore the realities of the presumed democratic reinforcement attached to participation, placing particular emphasis on the nature and scope of the democratising modes in play both on and off stage, and discussing how they interact with the prevailing conventions and value systems of French public theatre.

Within French subsidised performing arts institutions, productions involving non-professional contributors have been gaining traction over the last decade. The trend is spearheaded both by artists, seeking to increase their interactions with society, and by public authorities, preoccupied with people-participation. The recent acceleration of this trend notwithstanding, participatory productions have long been a peripheral phenomenon in French institutions, keen to differentiate their work from socio-cultural approaches. This Element investigates the current rise in participatory creation, examining the motivations underpinning it and charting the artistic processes and forms it produces. The aim is to explore the realities of the presumed democratic reinforcement attached to participation, placing particular emphasis on the nature and scope of the democratising modes in play both on and off stage, and discussing how they interact with the prevailing conventions and value systems of French public theatre.

This Element is the first monograph to focus on the presence and popularity of autofiction in contemporary theatre, a mode characterised by its mixture of autobiographical and fictional materials and generally associated with the cutting edge of literary fiction. To do so, it brings frameworks from literary and theatre studies to bear on a recent upsurge in plays that explicitly mobilise lived experience and its fictionalisation to political ends. Considering a comparative corpus of state-subsidised productions in Britain and Europe since the mid 2010s - both adaptations of literary works and plays written for the stage - this Element attends to autofiction's aesthetics and politics through its negotiation on stage of three conceptual binaries, each the focus of a section: fact/fiction, self/other, and inclusion/exclusion. By probing the mode's critical potential and pitfalls, it sheds light on the stakes of self-fictionalising practices in today's cultural markets and on the role of theatre therein.

With the majority of the global population living in cities, urbanisation and climate crisis have become urgent planetary issues. This Element examines 'urban eco-performance', exploring how theatre and performance intersect with urbanisation and ecological crises to reimagine equitable urban futures. Through rigorous ecodramaturgical analyses, this Element critiques the colonial and capitalist systems shaping cities and highlights performance's role in addressing climate justice. Performances from Canada, Mexico, Nigeria, Taiwan, UK and USA, as well as Indigenous performances, are brought together for the first time to examine how they challenge the human/nature divide, revealing cities as vibrant ecological spaces. These performances foreground underrepresented voices and reframe cities as 'bio-urban' spaces. This Element integrates decolonial and intersectional ecological frameworks over three thematic sections: Living Cities, Petro-Cities and Urban Futures Against the Apocalypse. It argues for justice for marginalised communities while envisioning cities as interconnected ecosystems that can foster collective action and ecological resilience.