The Twenty First Century Performance Reader

The Twenty-First Century Performance Reader combines extracts from over 70 international practitioners, companies, collectives and makers from the fields of Dance, Theatre, Music, Live and Performance Art, and Activism to form an essential sourcebook for students, researchers and practitioners. This is the follow-on text from The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader, which has been the key introductory text to all kinds of performance for over 20 years since it was first published in 1996. Contributions from new and emerging practitioners are placed alongside those of long-established individual artists and companies, representing the work of this century’s leading practitioners through the voices of over 140 individuals. The contributors in this volume reflect the diverse and eclectic culture of practices that now make up the expanded field of performance, and their stories, reflections and working processes collectively offer a snapshot of contemporary artistic concerns. Many of the pieces have been specially commissioned for this edition and comprise a range of written forms – scholarly, academic, creative, interviews, diary entries, autobiographical, polemical and visual. Ideal for university students and instructors, this volume’s structure and global span invites readers to compare and cross-reference significant approaches outside of the constraints and simplifications of genre, encouraging cross-disciplinary understandings. For those who engage with new, live and innovative approaches to performance and the interplay of radical ideas, The Twenty-First Century Performance Reader is invaluable.

The Twenty-First Century Performance Readercombines extracts from over 70 international practitioners, companies, collectives, and makers from the fields of Dance, Theatre, Music, Live and Performance Art, and Activism to form an essential sourcebook for students, researchers, and practitioners. This is the follow-on text from The Twentieth Century Performance Reader, which has been the key introductory text to all kinds of performance for over 20 years since it was first published in 1996. Contributions from new and emerging practitioners are placed alongside those of long-established individual artists and companies, representing the work of this century's leading practitioners through the voices of over 140 individuals. The contributors in this volume reflect the diverse and eclectic culture of practices that now make up the expanded field of performance, and their stories, reflections and working processes collectively offer a snapshot of contemporary artistic concerns. Many of the pieces have been specially commissioned for this edition and comprise a range of written forms - scholarly, academic, creative, interviews, diary entries, autobiographical, polemical, and visual. Ideal for university students and instructors, this volume's structure and global span invites readers to compare and cross-reference significant approaches outside of the constraints and simplifications of genre, encouraging cross-disciplinary understandings. For those who engage with new, live, and innovative approaches to performance and the interplay of radical ideas, The Twenty-First Century Performance Readeris invaluable. ectively offer a snapshot of contemporary artistic concerns. Many of the pieces have been specially commissioned for this edition and comprise a range of written forms - scholarly, academic, creative, interviews, diary entries, autobiographical, polemical, and visual. Ideal for university students and instructors, this volume's structure and global span invites readers to compare and cross-reference significant approaches outside of the constraints and simplifications of genre, encouraging cross-disciplinary understandings. For those who engage with new, live, and innovative approaches to performance and the interplay of radical ideas, The Twenty-First Century Performance Readeris invaluable.

The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader has been the key introductory text to all types of performance for over fifteen years. Extracts from over fifty practitioners, critics and theorists from the fields of dance, drama, music, theatre and live art form an essential sourcebook for students, researchers and practitioners. This carefully revised third edition offers focus on contributions from the world of music, and also privileges the voices of practitioners themselves ahead of more theoretical writing. A bestseller since its original publication in 1996, this new edition has been expanded to include contributions from: Bobby Baker; Joseph Beuys; Rustom Bharucha; Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker; Hanns Eisler; Karen Finley; Philip Glass; Guillermo Gómez-Peña; Matthew Goulish; Martha Graham; Wassily Kandinsky; Jacques Lecoq; Hans-Thies Lehmann; George Maciunas; Ariane Mnouchkine; Meredith Monk; Lloyd Newson; Carolee Schneemann; Gertrude Stein; Bill Viola. Each extract is fully supplemented by a contextual summary, a biography of the writer, and suggestions for further reading. The volume’s alphabetical structure invites the reader to compare and cross-reference major writings on all types of performance outside of the constraints and simplifications of genre, encouraging cross-disciplinary understandings. All who engage with live, innovative performance, and the interplay of radical ideas, will find this collection invaluable.

The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader has been the key introductory text to all types of performance for over fifteen years. Extracts from over fifty practitioners, critics and theorists from the fields of dance, drama, music, theatre and live art form an essential sourcebook for students, researchers and practitioners. This carefully revised third edition offers focus on contributions from the world of music, and also privileges the voices of practitioners themselves ahead of more theoretical writing. A bestseller since its original publication in 1996, this new edition has been expanded to include contributions from: Bobby Baker; Joseph Beuys; Rustom Bharucha; Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker; Hanns Eisler; Karen Finley; Philip Glass; Guillermo Gómez-Peña; Matthew Goulish; Martha Graham; Wassily Kandinsky; Jacques Lecoq; Hans-Thies Lehmann; George Maciunas; Ariane Mnouchkine; Meredith Monk; Lloyd Newson; Carolee Schneemann; Gertrude Stein; Bill Viola. Each extract is fully supplemented by a contextual summary, a biography of the writer, and suggestions for further reading. The volume’s alphabetical structure invites the reader to compare and cross-reference major writings on all types of performance outside of the constraints and simplifications of genre, encouraging cross-disciplinary understandings. All who engage with live, innovative performance, and the interplay of radical ideas, will find this collection invaluable.

Analyzing sport through the lens of performance and theorizing performance through the lens of sport, Sport and Performance in the Twenty-First Century offers a field intervention, a series of in-depth performance analyses, and an investigation of the intersection between sport performances and public life in the historical present in the global north. The objectives of this book are three-fold. First, the book advocates for the study of sport in the fields of Theatre and Performance Studies and, through in-depth performance analyses, demonstrates how the critical language and methods of performance studies help illuminate the manifold impacts of the practices, activities, and events of sport. Second, the book introduces new critical language that was originally developed in conjunction with sport but is also designed for cross-genre performance analysis. In introducing novel terminology, the book aims to simultaneously facilitate analysis of sport performances and to demonstrate how the study of sport can contribute to the fields of Theatre and Performance Studies. Finally, the book investigates the epistemological, affective, and socio-political effects of sport performances in order to illuminate how sport performances influence, and are influenced by, their historical conditions. This study will be of great interest to students and scholars in Theatre and Performance Studies, Physical Culture Studies, and Socio-Cultural Sports Studies.

Greek and Roman epic poetry has always provided creative artists with a rich storehouse of themes: this volume is the first systematic attempt to chart its afterlife across a range of diverse performance traditions, with analysis ranging widely across time, place, genre, and academic and creative disciplines.--Publisher description.

Inside The Performance Workshop: A Sourcebook for Rasaboxes and Other Exercises is the first full-length volume dedicated to the history, theory, practice, and application of a suite of performer training exercises developed by Richard Schechner and elaborated on by the editors and contributors of this book. This work began in the 1960s with The Performance Group and has continued to evolve. Rasaboxes—a featured set of exercises—is an interdisciplinary approach for training emotional expressivity through the use of breath, body, voice, movement, and sensation. It brings together: the concept of rasa from classical Indian performance theory and practice research on emotion from neuroscience and psychology experimental and experiential performance practices theories of ritual, play, and performance This book combines both practical “how-to” guidance and applications from diverse contexts including undergraduate and graduate actor training, television acting, K-12 education, devising, and drama therapy. The book serves as an introduction to the work as well as an essential resource for experienced practitioners.

"This magical book is a love letter to the artists whose imagination and cleverness transport us and unite us, and to the beauty and fragility of their performance. When I read it I feel like I am constantly on the joyful edge of falling in love, trying so hard to keep hold of the feelings evoked. A very precious book in our precarious times." Vicky Featherstone An anthology of critical essays that draw on a decade of the authors thinking, writing about and working within contemporary performance as critics, producers, dramaturgs, makers, archivists and more. Together, the 40 essays sketch a map of the contemporary performance landscape from avant-garde dance to live art to independent theatre, tracing the contours of its themes, aims, desires and relationship to the wider worlds of mainstream theatre, art and politics. Each essay focuses on a particular artist and these include Bryony Kimmings, Dickie Beau, Forced Entertainment, Scottee, Selina Thompson, Tania El Khoury and Uninvited Guests. Reflecting the radical nature of the work considered, the authors attempt to find a new vocabulary and a non-conventional way of considering live performance in these essays. As both a fresh survey of contemporary performance and an exploration of how to think and write about upstream and avant-garde work, this book should be an essential resource for students, artists and audiences, as well as an accessible entry point for anyone curious to know about the beautiful and strange things happening beyond the UK's theatrical mainstream.