LibGuides UFV: Theatre & Musical Theatre: Histories of Theatre

Avant-Garde

American Avant-Garde Theatre
Call Number: PN 2193 E86 A88 2000

This stunning contribution to the field of theatre history is the first in-depth look at avant-garde theatre in the United States from the early 1950s to the 1990s. [From Publisher]
Performing Opposition: modern theater and the scandalized audience
Call Number: PN 1851 B59 2003

Modern theater history is punctuated by instances of scandalized audience members disrupting and in some cases suspending the first production of a new play. Such incidents are usually dismissed as riots, as self-evident displays of philistinism. Neil Blackadder's intriguing new study reveals them in fact to be multifaceted conflicts, showing the ways in which these protesters-acting against plays by such notables as Jarry, Synge, and Brecht-creatively devised and enacted resistance through verbal rejoinders, physical gestures, and organized group demonstrations. [From Publisher]
Avant-Garde Performance and the Limits of Criticism
Call Number: PN 2297 L5 S45 2005

Avant-Garde Performance and the Limits of Criticism looks at the American avant-garde during the Cold War period, focusing on the interrelated questions of performance practices, cultural resistance, and the politics of criticism and scholarship in the U.S. counterculture. This groundbreaking book examines the role of the scholar and critic in the cultural struggles of radical artists and reveals how avant-garde performance identifies the very limits of critical consideration. It also explores the popularization of the avant-garde: how formerly subversive art is eventually discovered by the mass media, is gobbled up by the marketplace, and finds its way onto the syllabi of college and university courses. [From Publisher]
Avant-Garde Theatre: 1892-1992
Call Number: E-book

Examining the development of avant garde theatre from its inception in the 1890s right up to the present day, Christopher Innes exposes a central paradox of modern theatre; that the motivating force of theatrical experimentation is primitivism. What links the work of Strindberg, Artaud, Brook and Mnouchkine is an idealisation of the elemental and a desire to find ritual in archaic traditions. This widespread primitivism is the key to understanding both the political and aesthetic aspects of modern theatre and provides fresh insights into contemporary social trends. [From Publisher]
Theater of the Avant-Garde, 1890-1950
Call Number: E-book

Examining the development of avant garde theatre from its inception in the 1890s right up to the present day, Christopher Innes exposes a central paradox of modern theatre; that the motivating force of theatrical experimentation is primitivism. What links the work of Strindberg, Artaud, Brook and Mnouchkine is an idealisation of the elemental and a desire to find ritual in archaic traditions. [From Publisher]

The Human Voice
Ingrid Bergman plays a middle-aged woman going through a psychological crisis as a love affair ends. French playwright Jean Cocteau's one-character drama unfolds in a one-sided telephone conversation in which the woman tries to win back her lover amidst growing suspicion. [From Website]

Modern French Theatre: the avant-garde, Dada, and surrealism ; an anthology of plays
Call Number: PQ 1240 E5 M64

King Ubu (1896) / Alfred Jarry -- The breasts of Tiresias (1917) / Guillaume Apollinaire -- The wedding on the Eifel Tower (1921) / Jean Cocteau -- The pelicans (1921) / Raymond Radiguet -- The gas heart (1920) / Tristan Tzara -- If you please (1920) / Andre Breton and Philippe Soupault -- The mirror-wardrobe one fine evening (1923) / Louis Aragon -- A circus story (1922) / Armand Salacrou -- En gggarrrde! (1924) / Rene Daumal -- The odyssey of Ulysses the Palmiped (1924) / Roger Gilbert-Lecomte -- Jet of blood (1925) / Antonin Artaud -- The mysteries of love (1924) / Roger Vitrac -- Humulus the mute (1929) / Jean Anouilh and Jean Aurenche -- La place de letoile (1944) / Robert Desnos -- One war for another (1951) / Jean Tardieu -- Architruc (1961) / Robert Pinget -- The painting (1954) / Euge`ne Ionesco
Routledge Drama Anthology and Sourcebook:from modernism to contemporary performance
Call Number: PN 6112 R68 2010

This textbook provides an unprecedented collection of comprehensive resource materials that will facilitate in-depth critical analysis. It enables a dialogue between playwrights and performance practitioners on one hand, and on the other, critics and theorists such as Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, Walter Benjamin, André Breton, Martin Esslin, Michael Kirby, Hans Thies Lehmann, Jacques Rancière and Theodor Adorno. [From Publisher]
Theatre in Theory 1900-2000: an anthology
Call Number: PN 2189 T515 2008

Theatre in Theory is the most complete anthology documenting 20th-century dramatic and performance theory to date, offering a rich variety of perspectives from the century’s most prominent playwrights, directors, scholars, and philosophers. [From Publisher]

Avant-Garde Searches in the Library Catalogue

Tip: You may search by topic, by playwright, or by the title of a play. Also notice the difference of results if you search for avantgarde and avant-garde.

Examples of searches in the library catalogue:

Experimental Theater	Drama-- 20th century-- History and criticism
Drama--19th century-- History and criticism.	Theater and Society

Constructivism/Biomechanics

Physical Theatre
Referring to any form of storytelling where movement is the driving force - rather than an adornment - of the narrative, physical theatre incorporates mime, dance and gesture. Ideas may be choreographed through movement or the text may be added after a devising process. [From Website]

Constructivism: origins and evolution by George Rickey
Call Number: N 6490 R54 1995

Rickey traces the development of Constructivism through the thoughts of its founders, from its origins in Russia in 1913 to its dispersion throughout Europe and its later manifestations in the United States. Rickey's historical survey provides the background for a discussion of the heirs - those artists who have given the movement its international status. Photo essays illustrate the work of painters and sculptors who have transformed the inherited concepts into fresh interpretations. [From Publisher]
Meyerhold : A Revolution in Theatre by Edward Braun
Call Number: E-book

Edward Braun's acclaimed work on Meyerhold available for the first time in paperback. Vsevolod Meyerhold began his career in theatre as an actor with the Moscow Art Theatre, and after a spell in the remote provinces, he returned to Moscow at Stanislavski's invitation and founded a new, experimental studio for the Art Theatre. This book takes us through Meyerhold's extraordinary life of experiment and discovery, describing his rehearsal techniques and exercises and provides an acute assessment of his continuing influence on contemporary theatre. [From Publisher]
The Russian Avant-Garde and Radical Modernism by Dennis G. Ioffe (Editor); Frederick White (Editor)
Call Number: E-book

The Russian avant-garde was a composite of antagonistic groups who wished to overthrow the basic aesthetics of classical realism. Modernism was the totality of these numerous aesthetic theories, which achieved a measure of coherence immediately after the First World War. This collection of essays by leading scholars examines the major figures, movements, and manifestos of the period. Scholarly attention is given to literature, visual arts, cinema, and theatre in an attempt to capture the complex nature of the modernist movement in Russia. [From Publisher]
The Longman Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Drama
Call Number: PN 6112 L55 2004

Part One examines the roots of theater and the theoretical and critical foundations of theater and drama. Part Two, an anthology of Western Theater, and Part Three, an anthology of non-western theater, are divided into historical and geographical sections, each preceded by a brief overview of the cultural and historical context that shaped the plays. A map and timeline of key historical, cultural, and artistic events precedes each section in Parts II and III.
Meyerhold's theater and biomechanics
Call Number: PN 2728 M4 M49 1997 DVD

Russian actor and pedagogue, Gennadi Bogdanov, presents the most important etudes and principles of Meyerhold's Biomechanics. Includes archival photographs and film of Meyerhold's original work and also recent scenic work from Europe and the U.S. developed on the principles of biomechanics. [From Publisher]
Meyerhold on Theatre by Vsevolod Meyerhold
Call Number: PN 2728 M4 A253 1998

'A major reissue of a book which is used by students of Meyerhold across the world. This was the first collection of Meyerhold''s writings and utterances to appear in English and covers his entire career as a director from 1902 to 1939. These are supplemented by a critical commentary, relating Meyerhold to his period and containing descriptions, based on eye-witness accounts, of all his major productions.' [From Publisher]
The Director's Prism: E. T. A. Hoffmann and the Russian Theatrical Avant-Garde by Dassia N. Posner
Call Number: E-book

The Director's Prism investigates how and why three of Russia's most innovative directors-- Vsevolod Meyerhold, Alexander Tairov, and Sergei Eisenstein--used the fantastical tales of German Romantic writer E. T. A. Hoffmann to reinvent the rules of theatrical practice. Because the rise of the director and the Russian cult of Hoffmann closely coincided, Posner argues, many characteristics we associate with avant-garde theater--subjective perspective, breaking through the fourth wall, activating the spectator as a co-creator--become uniquely legible in the context of this engagement. [From Publisher]

Pina
A tribute to choreographer Pina Bausch.
If you don't have time to watch the whole film go to 41:06 mins and watch the man and his hands.

The Energetic Performer: An Integrated Approach to Acting for Stage and Screen
Call Number: E-book

This illustrated manual shows how to use the body to produce rich, varied and truthful performances. The approach, rooted in the Michael Chekhov Technique, integrates ancient Qigong knowledge with somatic psychology and western actor training methods to identify the links between physical shape, emotion and feeling in performance. Supporting and illustrating the text, extensive practical exercises developed through actor training classes provide techniques to tune and adapt the body in preparation for creative work. [From Publisher]

Constructivism Searches in the Library Catalogue

Tip: You may search by topic, by playwright, or by the title of a play. Also notice the difference of results if you search for Meyerhold or Meierkhol'd

Examples of searches in the library catalogue:

Constructivism (Art)	Meierkhol’d, V. ·E. (Vsevolod ·Emil’evich), 1874-1940.
Movement (Acting)

Dadaism

Dada Culture: Critical Texts on the Avant-Garde
Call Number: E-book

How Dada is to break its cultural accommodation and containment today necessitates thinking the historical instances through revised application of critical and theoretical models. The volume Dada Culture: Critical Texts on the Avant-Garde moves precisely by this motive, bringing together writings which insist upon the continuity of the early twentieth-century moment now at the start of the twenty-first. Engaging the complex and contradictory nature of Dada strategies, instanced in the linguistic gaming and performativity of the movement's initial formation, and subsequently isolating the specific from the general with essays focusing on Ball, Tzara, Serner, Hausmann, Dix, Heartfield, Schwitters, Baader, Cravan and the exemplary Duchamp, the political philosophy of the avant-garde is brought to bear upon our own contemporary struggle through critical theory to comprehend the cultural usefulness, relevance, validity and effective (or otherwise) oppositionality of Dada's infamous anti-stance. [From Publisher]
Dada and Surrealist Performance
Call Number: PN 2189 M37 1994
Mama Dada: Gertrude Stein's avant-garde theater
Call Number: E-book

Mama Dada is the first book to examine Gertrude Stein's drama within the history of the theatrical and cinematic avant-gardes. Since the publication of Stein's major writings by the Library of America in 1998, interest in her dramatic writing has escalated, particularly in American avant-garde theaters. This book addresses the growing interest in Stein's theater by offering the first detailed analyses of her major plays, and by considering them within a larger history of avant-garde performance. In addition to comparing Stein's plays and theories to those generated by Dadaists, Surrealists, and Futurists, this study further explores the uniqueness of Stein via these theatrical movements, including discussions of her interest in American life and drama, which argues that a significant and heretofore unrecognized relationship exists among the histories of avant-garde drama, cinema, and homosexuality. By examining and explaining the relationship among these three histories, the dramatic writings of Stein can best be understood, not only as examples of literary modernism, but also as influential dramatic works that have had a lasting effect on the American theatrical avant-garde. [From Publisher]
Dada and Surrealism: a Very Short Introduction by David Hopkins
Call Number: E-book

The avant-garde movements of Dada and Surrealism continue to have a huge influence on cultural practice, especially in contemporary art, with its obsession with sexuality, fetishism, and shock tactics. In this new treatment of the subject, Hopkins focuses on the many debates surrounding these movements: the Marquis de Sade's Surrealist deification, issues of quality (How good is Dali?), the idea of the 'readymade', attitudes towards the city, the impact of Freud, attitudes to women, fetishism, and primitivism. [From Publisher]

Dadaism Searches in the Library Catalogue

Tip: You may search by topic, by playwright, or by the title of a play.

Examples of searches in the library catalogue:

Dadaism	Drama-- 20th century-- History and criticism
Theater--History--20th century

Expressionism

Expressionism
An early 20th century movement of German Modernism in origin, Expressionism sought non-naturalistic, anti-bourgeois ways of provoking revolutionary change, tempered by empathy for suffering. Notable writers include Frank Wedekind and August Strindberg and its legacy can be seen in the dance of Pina Bausch and Butoh. [From Publisher]

German Expressionist Theatre by David F. Kuhns
Call Number: PN 2654 K85 1997 and e-book

German Expressionist Theatre: The Actor and the Stage considers the powerfully stylized, anti-realistic styles of acting on the German Expressionist stage from 1916 to 1921. It relates this striking departure from the dominant European acting tradition of realism to the specific cultural crises that enveloped the German nation during the course of its involvement in World War I. [From Publisher]
German expressionism and the Messianism of a generation
Call Number: E-book

This book reads messianic expectation as the defining characteristic of German culture in the first decades of the twentieth century. It has long been accepted that the Expressionist movement in Germany was infused with a thoroughly messianic strain. Here, with unprecedented detail and focus, that strain is traced through the work of four important Expressionist playwrights: Ernst Barlach, Georg Kaiser, Ernst Toller and Franz Werfel. [From Publisher]
A History of German Theatre by Maik Hamburger (Editor); Simon Williams (Editor)
Call Number: PN 2641 H57 2008

Covering German-language theatre from the Middle Ages to the present day, this study demonstrates how and why theatre became so important in German-speaking countries. Written by leading international scholars of German theatre, chapters cover all aspects of theatrical performance, including acting, directing, play-writing, scenic design and theatre architecture. [From Publisher]
Expressionism and Modernism in the American Theatre by Julia A. Walker; Don B. Wilmeth (Contribution by)
Call Number: E-book

At a time when mute bodies gesticulated on the silver screen, ghostly voices emanated from tin horns, and inked words stamped out the personality of the hand that composed them, expressionist playwrights began to represent these new cultural experiences by disarticulating the theatrical languages of bodies, voices and words. In doing so, they not only innovated a new dramatic form, but redefined playwriting from a theatrical craft to a literary art form, heralding the birth of American dramatic modernism. [From Publisher]
Expressionism in the Cinema by Olaf Brill (Editor); Gary D. Rhodes (Editor)
Call Number: E-book

One of the most visually striking traditions in cinema, for too long Expressionism has been a neglected critical category of research in film history and aesthetics. The fifteen essays in this anthology remedies this by revisiting key German films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922), and also provide original critical research into more obscure titles like Nerven (1919) and The Phantom Carriage (1921), films that were produced in the silent and early sound era in countries ranging from France, Sweden and Hungary, to the United States and Mexico. [From Publisher]

Expressionism Searches in the Library Catalogue

Tip: You may search by topic, by playwright, or by the title of a play. Also notice the difference of results if you search for expressionism AND Germany versus expression$ AND germany

Examples of searches in the library catalogue:

Expressionism in literature

Theater - Germany - History

Futurism

Variety Theater by Marinetti, F. T.
Call Number: E-book

In "Futurism: An Anthology"
We are deeply disgusted with the contemporary theatre (verse, prose, and musical) because it vacillates stupidly between historical reconstruction (pastiche or plagiarism) and photographic reproduction of our daily life; a finicking, slow, analytic, and diluted theatre worthy, all in all, of the age of the oil lamp. [From Author]
The Other Futurism: futurist activity in Venice, Padua and Verona
Call Number: E-book

The Other Futurism looks at particular examples of literature, visual arts, and the performing arts and, using a series of rare documents, sheds new light on the complex cultural and political issues at the heart of this neglected chapter in Italy's history. [From Publisher]
Digital Performance: A History of New Media in Theater, Dance, Performance Art, and Installation
Call Number: E-book

In Digital Performance, Steve Dixon traces the evolution of these practices, presents detailed accounts of key practitioners and performances, and analyzes the theoretical, artistic, and technological contexts of this form of new media art. Dixon finds precursors to today's digital performances in past forms of theatrical technology that range from the deus ex machina of classical Greek drama to Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk (concept of the total artwork), and draws parallels between contemporary work and the theories and practices of Constructivism, Dada, Surrealism, Expressionism, Futurism, and multimedia pioneers of the twentieth century. For a theoretical perspective on digital performance, Dixon draws on the work of Philip Auslander, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, and others. [From Publisher]
The Bedbug and Selected Poetry by Vladimir Mayakovsky
Call Number: PG 3476 M3 A24 1975

This selection of Mayakovsky's work covers his entire career -- from the earliest pre-revolutionary lyrics to a poem found in a notebook after his suicide. Splendid translations of the poems, with the Russian on a facing page, and a fresh, colloquial version of Mayakovsky's dramatic masterpiece, The Bedbug. [From Publisher]
Eight Twentieth-Century Russian Plays by Timothy Langen (Editor); Justin Weir (Editor)
Call Number: PG 3245 E38 2000

Russia produced more notable dramas in the twentieth century than at any other time in its history, yet many of the plays from this period have been only sporadically available in English, and others have never been translated before. For each of these eight works, Timothy Langen and Justin Weir provide an insightful introduction to the literary, cultural, and political contexts in which the plays first appeared, considering the influence that various literary movements had on the development of Russian drama and exploring the effect of the increasingly politicized climate of the new Soviet state. Included in this volume: Sacred Blood, by Zinaida Gippius; The Unknown Woman, by Alexander Blok; Vladimir Mayakovsky, by Vladimir Mayakosky; The Case of the Entry Room, by Victor Ardov; Squaring the Circle, by Valentin Kataev; Elizaveta Bam, by Daniil Kharms; Grain, by Vladimir Kirshon; and The Guests, by Leonid Zorin. [From Publisher]
Cubism and Futurism: Spiritual Machines and the Cinematic Effect by R. Bruce Elder
Call Number: E-book

Cubism and futurism were closely related movements that vied with each other in the economy of renown. Perception, dynamism, and the dynamism of perception--these were the issues that passed back and forth between the two. Cubism, Futurism, and Technologies of the Spirit: Spiritual Machines and the Cinematic Effect shows how movement became, in the traditional visual arts, a central factor with the advent of the cinema: gone were the days when an artwork strived merely to lift experience out the realm of change and flow. [From Publisher]

Futurism Searches in the Library Catalogue

Tip: You may search by topic, by playwright, or by the title of a play.

Examples of searches in the library catalogue:

Futurism (Literary Movement)	Futurism (Art)
Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 1893-1930.

Naturalism

Naturalism
Naturalism is a philosophical belief that only natural (not spiritual or supernatural) laws govern the universe. Naturalist theatre is a subset of Realism and shows the way social, economic or personal environments affect the individual, as exemplified in the work of Émile Zola in the mid-19th century. [From Website]

The Theatre of Naturalism: disappearing act
Call Number: PN 1650 N38 B45 2011

The impact of naturalism, a literary approach invented by Zola and especially significant in the field of the novel through his American «disciples» Crane, Norris, and Dreiser, is well acknowledged and recognized. Not so well recognized, but equally important, is naturalistic theatre; this was a style that also originated with Zola, but its progeny was more international and its significance more radical and insurrectionary than in the less «spectacular» genre of fiction. [From Publisher]
The Vast and Terrible Drama
Call Number: PS 217 N42 L56 2004 and e-book

This volume broadens our understanding of literary naturalism as a response to these and other aesthetic concerns of the 19th century. Themes addressed include the traditionally close connection between French naturalism and American literary naturalism; relationships between the movement and the romance tradition in American literature, as well as with utopian fictions of the 19th century; narrative strategies employed by the key writers; the dominant naturalist theme of determinism; and textual readings that provide broad examples of the role of the reader. By examining these and other aspects of American literary naturalism, Link counters a century of criticism that has perhaps viewed literary naturalism too narrowly, as a subset of realism, bound by the conventions of realistic narration. [From Publisher]
A Sourcebook on Naturalist Theatre
Call Number: E-book

A Sourcebook on Naturalist Theatre provides essential primary sources which document one of the key movements in modern theatre. Christopher Innes has selected three writers to exemplify the movement, and six plays in particular: • Henrik Ibsen - A Dolls House and Hedda Gabler • Anton Chekhov - The Seagull and The Cherry Orchard • George Bernard Shaw - Mrs Warren's Profession and Heartbreak House. Innes'introduction provides an overview of naturalist theatre. Key themes include: the representation of women, significant contemporary issues and the links between theory, play writing and stage practice. The primary sources explore many aspects of naturalism, giving information on: • the playwrights'intentions when writing plays • contemporary reviews • literary criticism • political and social background • production notes from early performances of the plays. [From Publisher]
Performing Opposition: modern theater and the scandalized audience
Call Number: PN 1851 B59 2003

Modern theater history is punctuated by instances of scandalized audience members disrupting and in some cases suspending the first production of a new play. Such incidents are usually dismissed as riots, as self-evident displays of philistinism. Neil Blackadder's intriguing new study reveals them in fact to be multifaceted conflicts, showing the ways in which these protesters-acting against plays by such notables as Jarry, Synge, and Brecht-creatively devised and enacted resistance through verbal rejoinders, physical gestures, and organized group demonstrations. [From Publisher]
Gerhard Hauptmann and the Naturalist Drama
Call Number: E-book

What was German Naturalism? What were its achievements? How does it compare with its counterparts in other European countries? These are some of the difficult questions addressed by John Osborne in Gerhart Hauptmann and the Naturalist Drama, a revised and updated version of his The Naturalist Drama in Germany, now widely acknowledged as the standard introduction to the subject. The debates to which he contributed, and in some cases initiated, on Naturalism in the German theatre, Naturalist theory in Germany, and the development of the Naturalist movement to the contemporary Social Democrat movement, have remained central issues. [From Publisher]
Three Plays by August Strindberg
Call Number: PT 9811 A3 W38

Three of Strindberg's most famous plays, including Miss Julia, the basis for the major motion picture Miss Julie, starring Jessica Chastain and Colin Farrell The plays in this volume focus on the tumultuous relationships between men and women, whether they are father and daughter, brother and sister, or lovers. Miss Julia is a ruthlessly realistic depiction of an upper-class woman's seduction of a servant, emphasizing the differences and the antagonism between them. [From Publisher]
Physiologies of the Modern: Zola, Experimental Medicine, and the Naturalist Stage by Garner, Stanton
Call Number: E-book Chapter

In Modern Drama: Defining the Field
Theatre, like other subjects in the humanities, has recently undergone quintessential changes in theory, approach, and research. Modern Drama – a collection of twelve essays from leading theatre and drama scholars – investigates the contemporary meanings and the cultural and political resonances of the terms inherent in the concepts of'modern'and'drama,'delving into a range of theoretical questions on the history of modernism, modernity, postmodernism, and postmodernity as they have intersected with the shifting histories of drama, theatre, and performance. Using incisive analyses of both modern and postmodern plays, the contributors examine varied topics such as the analysis of periodicity; the articulation of social, political, and cultural production in theatre; the re-evaluation of texts, performances, and canons; and demonstrations of how interdisciplinarity inflects theatre and its practice. Including work by Sue-Ellen Case, Elin Diamond, Harry J. Elam Jr, Alan Filewod, Erika Fischer-Lichte, Stanton B. Garner Jr, Shannon Jackson, Loren Kruger, Josephine Lee, David Savran, Michael Sidnell, and Ann Wilson, the collection highlights the importance of continuing to investigate not only critical texts but also the terms of the debate themselves. Incorporating both drama history and modern studies, this compilation will be an invaluable work to all scholars of theatre and drama, and as well as those students of the humanities and modernism. [From Publisher]

Naturalism Searches in the Library Catalogue

Tip: You may search by topic, by playwright, or by the title of a play.

Examples of searches in the library catalogue:

Naturalism in Literature	Drama-- 20th century-- History and criticism
Zola, Emile, 1840 - 1902.	Strindberg, August, 1849-1912

Realism

New Canadian Realisms by Roberta Barker (Editor); Kim Solga (Editor)
Call Number: PS 8169 R42 N49 2012

Essay topics range from Hollywood's influence on the look of the contemporary Canadian "real," to the power and the pitfalls of a "realism of redress" in intercultural Canadian theatre, to the apparently oxymoronic notion of "devised" realism, to the complexities of Indigenous realism(s). Together, this book's writers suggest that Canada's theatrical realisms are fractious, multiple, difficult, yet rife with potential. [From Publisher]
Shadows of Realism: dramaturgy and the theories and practices of modernism
Call Number: PN 2053 K534 1996

This insightful work fills a gap in theatre studies, illuminating how modernism influences theatrical interpretations and productions. Kindelan focuses on how contemporary practitioners evoke new renderings of classical playscripts, incorporating interviews with over 20 prominent professional actors, directors, designers, and dramaturgs who discuss the way they work with a playscript in preparation for production. The book includes a case study illustrating how imagistic readings of Chekhov's The Seagull produce metaphorical productions. Kindelan addresses such controversial issues as subjectivity, imagistic theatre, reconceiving, and the artist as auteur. This work will be a valuable resource for theatre artists interested in developing their interpretive skills.[From Publisher]
Realisms in East Asian Performance by Jessica Nakamura (Editor); Katherine Saltzman-Li (Editor)
Call Number: E-book

Existing scholarly discussions of theatrical realism have been predominantly limited to 19th-century European and Russian theater, with little attention paid to wider explorations and alternative definitions of the practice. Examining theater forms and artists from China, Japan, and Korea, Realisms in East Asian Performance brings together a group of theater historians to reconsider realism through the performing arts of East Asia. The book's contributors emphasize trans-regional conversations and activate inter-Asian dialogues on theatrical production. Tracing historical trajectories, starting from premodern periods through today, the book seeks to understand realisms' multiple origins, forms, and cultural significances, and examines their continuities, disruptions, and divergences. In its diversity of topics, geographic locations, and time periods, Realisms in East Asian Performance aims to globalize and de-center the dominant narratives surrounding realism in theater, and revise assumptions about the spectacular and theatrical forms of Asian performance. Understanding realism as a powerful representational style, chapters collectively reevaluate acts of representation on stage not just for East Asia, but for theater and performance studies more broadly. [From Publisher]
Ibsen, Scandinavia and the Making of a World Drama by Narve Fulsås; Tore Rem
Call Number: E-book

This volume traces how Ibsen's works first travelled outside Scandinavia and studies the mechanisms of his appropriation in Germany, Britain and France. Engaging with theories of book dissemination and world literature, and re-assessing the emergence of 'peripheral' literary nations, this book provides new perspectives on the work of this major figure of European literature and theatre. [From Publisher]
British realist theatre: the new wave in its context 1956-1965
Call Number: E-book

The British `New Wave' of dramatists, actors and directors in the late 1950s and 1960s created a defining moment in post-war theatre. British Realist Theatre is an accessible introduction to the New Wave, providing the historical and cultural background which is essential for a true understanding of this influential and dynamic era. Drawing upon contemporary sources as well as the plays themselves, Stephen Lacey considers the plays' influences, their impact and their critical receptions. The playwrights discussed include: * Edward Bond * John Osborne * Shelagh Delaney * Harold Pinter. [From Publisher]
Kitchen Sink Realisms: domestic labor, dining, and drama in American theatre by Dorothy Chansky
Call Number: E-book

In analyzing kitchen sink realisms, Dorothy Chansky reveals the ways that food preparation, domestic labor, dining, serving, entertaining, and cleanup saturate the lives of dramatic characters and situations even when they do not take center stage. Offering resistant readings that rely on close attention to the particular cultural and semiotic environments in which plays and their audiences operated, she sheds compelling light on the changing debates about women's roles and the importance of their household labor across lines of class and race in the twentieth century. [From Publisher]

Realism Searches in the Library Catalogue

Tip: You may search by topic, by playwright, or by the title of a play. Also notice the difference of results if you search for Chekhov as author versus Chekhov as subject

Examples of searches in the library catalogue:

Modernism (Literature)	Realism in literature
Ibsen, Henrik, 1828-1906.	Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860-1904.

Surrealism

Dada and Surrealism: a very short introduction
Call Number: E-book

The avant-garde movements of Dada and Surrealism continue to have a huge influence on cultural practice, especially in contemporary art, with its obsession with sexuality, fetishism, and shock tactics. In this new treatment of the subject, Hopkins focuses on the many debates surrounding these movements: the Marquis de Sade's Surrealist deification, issues of quality (How good is Dali?), the idea of the 'readymade', attitudes towards the city, the impact of Freud, attitudes to women, fetishism, and primitivism. The international nature of these movements is examined, covering the cities of Zurich, New York, Berlin, Cologne, Barcelona, Paris, London, and recenlty discovered examples in Eastern Europe. Hopkins explores the huge range of media employed by both Dada and Surrealism (collage, painting, found objects, performance art, photography, film) , whilst at the same time establishing the aesthetic differences between the movements. He also examines the Dadaist obsession with the body-as-mechanism in relation to the Surrealists' return to the fetishized/eroticized body. [From Publisher]
Dada and Surrealist Performance
Call Number: PN 2189 M37 1994
Ludics in Surrealist Theatre and Beyond
Call Number: E-book

Taking as its point of departure the complex question about whether Surrealist theatre exists, this book re-examines the much misunderstood artistic medium of theatre within Surrealism, especially when compared to poetry and painting. This study reconsiders Surrealist theatre specifically from the perspective of ludics-a poetics of play and games-an ideal approach to the Surrealists, whose games blur the boundaries between the 'playful' and the 'serious.' Vassiliki Rapti's aims are threefold: first, to demystify André Breton's controversial attitude toward theatre; second, to do justice to Surrealist theatre, by highlighting the unique character that derives from its inherent element of play; and finally, to trace the impact of Surrealist theatre in areas far beyond its generally acknowledged influence on the Theatre of the Absurd-an impact being felt even on the contemporary world stage. Beginning with the Surrealists' 'one-into-another' game and its illustration of Breton's ludic dramatic theory, Rapti then examines the traces of this kind of game in the works of a wide variety of Surrealist and Post-Surrealist playwrights and stage directors, from several different countries, and from the 1920s to the present: Roger Vitrac, Antonin Artaud, Gunter Berghaus, Nanos Valaoritis, Robert Wilson, and Megan Terry. [From Publisher]
Gertrude Stein's Surrealist Years
Call Number: E-book

Examines how surrealism enriches our understanding of Stein's writing through its poetics of oppositions "Gertrude Stein's Surrealist Years" brings to life Stein's surrealist sensibilities and personal values borne from her WWII anxieties, not least of which originated in a dread of anti-Semitism. Stein's earlier works such as Tender Buttons and Lucy Church Amiably tend to prioritize formal innovations over narrative-building and overt political motifs. [From Publisher]

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Theatre of Cruelty

Theater and Its Double by Antonin Artaud
Call Number: PN 2021 A78 1958

In The Theatre and Its Double, first published in 1938, Antonin Artaud puts forward his radical theories on drama and theatre, which he saw as being stifled by conservatism and a lack of experimentation. Containing the famous manifestos of the 'Theatre of Cruelty', this collection of essays analyses the underlying impulses of performance, provides suggestions on a physical-training method for actors, and features a long appreciation of the expressive values of Eastern dance drama. [From Publisher]
Antonin Artaud's Writing Bodies
Call Number: E-book

This book studies the development of Artaud's thinking throughout his career on such issues as the body, theology, language, and identity. His late poetry is discussed in depth and new attention is paid to the verbal details of his writing and to the way he builds up his ideas. Artaud emerges as a man of ideas performing disturbing conceptual work, but needs to be considered not as a contestatory psychotic but as a writer of the first order. -;Antonin Artaud (1896-1948), perhaps best known as a dramatic theorist, is an important but extremely difficult writer. [From Publisher]
Artaud and His Doubles
Call Number: E-book

Artaud and His Doubles is a radical re-thinking of one of the most influential theater figures of the twentieth century. Placing Artaud's writing within the specific context of European political, theatrical, and intellectual history, the book reveals Artaud's affinities with a disturbing array of anti-intellectual and reactionary writers and artists whose ranks swelled catastrophically between the wars in Western Europe. [From Publisher]
The Art of Cruelty
Call Number: N 8217 C792 N45 2011

Writing in the tradition of Susan Sontag and Elaine Scarry, Maggie Nelson has emerged as one of our foremost cultural critics with this landmark work about representations of cruelty and violence in art. From Sylvia Plath’s poetry to Francis Bacon’s paintings, from the Saw franchise to Yoko Ono’s performance art, Nelson’s nuanced exploration across the artistic landscape ultimately offers a model of how one might balance strong ethical convictions with an equally strong appreciation for work that tests the limits of taste, taboo, and permissibility. [From Publisher]
Cruelty and Desire in the Modern Theater
Call Number: E-book

Departing from a refreshing look at the ideas of Antonin Artaud, this book provides a thorough analysis of how both Sarah Kane and Samuel Beckett are indebted to his legacy. In juxtaposing these playwrights, De Vos minutely points out how both in their own way struggle with coming to terms with Artaud. A key concept in Lacanian psychoanalytic theories, desire lies at the root of the Theatre of Cruelty; Kane and Beckett prove that desire and cruelty are inextricably linked to one another, but that they appear in radically different disguises. [From Publisher]