Performance Exile And America

This collection investigates dramatic and performative renderings of 'America' as an exilic place particularly focusing on issues of language, space and identity. It looks at ways in which immigrants and outsiders are embodied in American theatre practice and explores ways in which 'America' is staged and dramatized by immigrants and foreigners.

Beginning with early Arab American playwright, poet and novelist Kahlil Gibran and concluding with contemporary playwright Yussef El Guindi, this book provides an historical overview and critical analysis of the plays, films and performances of self-identified Arab Americans. Playwrights, filmmakers and performers covered include Ameen Fares Rihani, Danny Thomas, Heather Raffo, Ahmed Ahmed, Mona Mansour and Cherien Dabis. These artists, traditionally underrepresented in entertainment, publishing and academia, have created works that exemplify the burgeoning Arab American arts movement. By addressing cinema, stand-up comedy and solo performance, the author introduces audiences to contemporary genres that are shaping Arab American culture in the United States.

In what ways does political trauma influence the art arising from it? Is there an aesthetic of war and exile in theatrical works that emerge from such experiences? Are there cultural markers defining such works from areas like Eastern Europe and Israel? This book considers these questions in an examination of plays, performances and theater artists that speak from a place of political violence and displacement. The author's critical inquiry covers a variety of theatrical experimentations, including Brechtian distancing, black humor, pastiche, surreal and hyper-real imagery, reversed chronologies and disrupted narratives. Drawing on postmodern theories and performance studies as well as interviews and personal statements from the artists discussed, this study explores the transformative power of the theater arts and their function as catalysts for social change, healing and remembrance.

This book examines the life and art of those contemporary artists who by force or by choice find themselves on other shores. It argues that the exilic challenge enables the émigré artist to (re)establish new artistic devices, new laws and a new language of communication in both his everyday life and his artistic work.

This book offers a unique and much-needed interrogation of the broader questions surrounding international performance research which are pertinent to the present and the future of Theatre and Performance studies. Marking the completion of eight years of the Erasmus Mundus MA Programme in International Performance Research (MAIPR) - a programme run jointly by the universities of Warwick (UK), Amsterdam (Netherlands), Helsinki/Tampere (Finland), Arts in Belgrade (Serbia), and Trinity College Dublin (Ireland) - the essays in this volume take stock of the achievements, insights and challenges of what international performance research is or ought to be about. By reflecting on the discipline of Performance Studies using the MAIPR programme as a case study in point, the volume addresses the broader question of the critical link between the discipline of Performance Studies and humanities education in general, examining their interactions in the contemporary university in the context of globalisation.

History, Memory, Performance is an interdisciplinary collection of essays exploring performances of the past in a wide range of trans-national and historical contexts. At its core are contributions from theatre scholars and public historians discussing how historical meaning is shaped through performance.

Over 20 years after the war in Yugoslavia, this book looks back at its two most iconic cities and the phenomenon of exile emerging as a consequence of living in them in the 1990s. It uses examples ranging from street interventions to theatre performances to explore the making of urban counter-sites through theatricality and utopian performatives.

This book ranges from refugee camps in Palestine to halting sites of the Irish Travellers and elsewhere in search of a new politics practiced through performance. Written through the intersection of performance and philosophy, the book refutes neoliberalism's depoliticizing and strategic uses of humanitarianism, human rights, and development.