JARMAN (all this maddening beauty) and other plays is a collection of three radically poetic works for live performance by OBIE awardwinning playwright Caridad Svich. The playtexts include a lyrical meditation on the legacy of iconic queer artist Derek Jarman, a meditation on displacement and human suffering (Carthage/Cartagena), and an intimately operatic reflection on Penelope and Odysseus (The Orphan Sea). Accompanied by scholarly essays placing the plays in context, this book showcases the beautiful strangeness and profound resistance in Svichs work.

Always the focal point in modern times for momentous political, social and cultural upheaval, Berlin has continued, since the fall of the Wall in 1989, to be a city in transition. As the new capital of a reunified Germany it has embarked on a journey of rapid reconfiguration, involving issues of memory, nationhood and ownership.

While there are a number of books on specific aspects of European theatre during this period, this book goes further by relating theatre history to the development of the European Community as a whole. The volume covers 1957-1973, 1973-1986 and 1986-1995. The first two parts pay particular attention to those aspects of theatre that sought to shape, define, challenge of celebrate the ideals of a united Europe. The third part considers the implications for theatre of events before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

For the last ten to fifteen years, many disciplines of scholarship have been involved in the study of consciousness, often on an interdisciplinary basis. They include philosophy, neurosciences, psychology, physics and biology, and approaches focusing on human experience. The Centre for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson spearheaded this development with its bi-annual conferences since 1994, and a wide range of associations, journals and book publications bear witness to its importance. Over the same number of years, scholarly interest in the relationship of consciousness to theatre has equally grown.

The first comparative study on the history and practice of popular theatre in Britain and overseas. The fragmentation of social groups in the face of the global mass media has begun to threaten the survival of popular theatre companies. This study traces the development of various types of community theatre, from the '70s to the present day.

Women in European Theatre is both a study of women as writers and performers in Britain, France, Germany and Italy, and a study of conditions in the theatre as they affect women from the century to the 1970s. It also draws attention to a number of plays by women which have never appeared in print and some which have only just been republished after centuries of neglect.

Addressing issues of feminism and representation, this book provides a fresh and thorough consideration of the status and potential of Women's theatre today. The authors explore a range of different approaches to the languages of theatre, including translation and interpretation of the art form, along with languages, performance work, body language and gesture.

Numerous plays have professionals as major characters, but academia has ignored them to a large extent. The Professions in Contemporary British Drama fills this extraordinary gap with a series of nine papers discussing the educational professions (Bennett, Mangan), the medical profession (Shields, Buse, ), priests (Kurdi), archaeologists (Forsyth) and artists (Di Benedetto, Meyer-Dinkgrafe, Edwards). The book is of relevance to theatre academics and students at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. It is based on a conference organised in conjunction with the Centre for English Studies, School of Advanced Studies, University of London, 6 March 1998.

The Gateway Theatre Company between 1953 and 1965 was a major force in developing modern Scottish theatre, moving in 1965 to become the Royal Lyceum Theatre Company. The Gateway Theatre and its company were therefore highly influential in the development of theatre in Scotland. They encouraged new writing and young performers to establish a vibrant contemporary tradition of Scottish theatre in a manner complementary to, and at times more important than, that of its sister theatre, the Citizens in Glasgow. Both theatre building and company are regarded with enormous affection and respect.

This book acts as a forum for investigating how African Theatre works and what its place is in this postmodern society. It provides the subject with a degree of detail unmatched in previous books, reflecting a new approach to the study of the performing arts in this region.

From role-plays with street gangs in the USA to Beckett in Brixton; from opera productions with sex offenders to psychodrama with psychopaths, the book will discuss, analyse and reflect on theoretical notions and practical applications of theatre for and with the incarcerated. Theatre in Prison is a collection of thirteen international essays exploring the rich diversity of innovative drama works in prisons. The book includes an introduction that will present a contextualisation of the prison theatre field. Thereafter, leading practitioners and academics will explore key aspects of practice &endash; problemitising, theorising and describing specific approaches to working with offenders. The book also includes extracts from prison plays, poetry and prisoners writings that offer illustrations and insights into the experience of prison life.

New Directions in Drama and Performance Volume 1. This new series of cutting edge critical essays and articles in issues concerning Drama and Performance opens with Volume I, which will focus on issues of Interventionist Drama and related examples of Drama as Community.

Live performance continues to be created every time it is performed. This book explores the dynamic relationship between creative process, presentation and spectator response to provide students and scholars in Drama with new insights on performance from poetry to pantomime.

Bertolt Brecht, perhaps the most important dramatist/director/theorist of the twentieth century, is still widely studied and his plays and theories remain staples in the curricula of university theatre departments, literature departments, and theatre-artist training programs throughout the world. Additionally, productions of Brecht's dramas continue to be popular. The play Brecht in L.A. focuses on Brecht's life in America, where he resided from 1941 through 1947.

The Composition of Herman Melville utilizes performance strategies in an effort to embody the complex textuality of a writer who haunts the landscape of America, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. This book is believed to represent the only work of historical fiction &endash; albeit in dramatic form &endash; that focuses primarily on Herman Melville, considered by many to be America's greatest writer.

A first volume of plays by a startlingly ambitious and inventive dramatist. THE BACK OF BEYOND takes, as its starting point, the route of a sequel to KING LEAR, in which the surviving Shakespearean characters set out on an odyssey through a perilous, blasted landscape, and encounter new agents of cruelty, desire and magic. Wildly humorous and fiercely shocking, the play charts a series of remorseless exposures, interrogating the idealisms and brutal repressions that have informed Anglo-Welsh relations whilst subverting Shakespearean motifs; tragically humorous poetic language and nightmarish visual imagery contribute to the sense of a land where the signposts have been smashed.
Praise for THE BACK OF BEYOND: 'This is large-scale epic drama that sets out to subvert the grand literary tradition as a group of sort-of Shakespearean characters roam around discovering imperialism in a cruel land ... I found myself intrigued by the ambition of the project, mesmerised by the richness of the language and impressed by the energy ... Aberystwyth company Lurking Truth has taken on a mammoth task with evangelical enthusiasm.' - David Adams, THE WESTERN MAIL.
A sequel to THE BACK OF BEYOND, THE BATTLE OF THE CROWS extends and concludes the stories of three characters - a maverick witch, a renegade knight, and an abuse victim made empress - in a harrowing and humorous exploration of border warfare, witchcraft, massacre, bitchery, hilarity and heartbreak. THE BATTLE OF THE CROWS is partly a dramatic speculation about desire as magic, partly a sad reckless laugh at internecine hostilities and the passionate and disastrous transformations which spring up in the face of Death itself.

This anthology contains three plays (Ceremonial Kisses, Shading the Crime, and The Maternal Cloister) that feature a protagonist who is compelled to confront his or her particular oppressors. The critique of this oppression through theatre falls on particular social institutions and differs for each character. The main institutions under scrutiny are religion and the state. The plays are very different in style and include the use of physical theatre, naturalistic explorations of human rights abuses, and symbolic structures, puppets and poetry. The plays are supported by an analysis of their processes and themes. All have reached production and the text is supplemented by photographs of these performances.

Alisa, Alice' is a humanely cruel and deeply moving drama, full of passion and desire. The clash of two cultures  two worlds  is described with psychological accuracy and depth. Alisa, a young Muslim refugee scarred by the Balkan war finds shelter with Magda, a representative of the common so-called civilised but self-destructive and self-loving western world. Magda, through the sadism arising from her despair and loss of purpose, her psychological confusion, causes the suicide of Alisa. Their relationship permeated as much with love as with hatred, is decanted through the dictatorship of language into a miraculous, irrational and mysterious atmosphere. In places, the style of the play is reminiscent of Pinters comedy of menace. The realistically based dramatic events are firmly grounded in a recognisable and actual contemporaneity. Poetic ambiguity facilitates universal interpretation, and here and there extends to the magical and surreal.