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Actor and manager, Maurice E. Bandmann (1872-1922) toured theatre throughout the British Empire and beyond. His career represents a significant shift towards the globalization of theatre in the twentieth century. This book explores Bandmann's impact on global theatre history and provides a new approach to the theatrical study of this era.

The Theatre of Sa'dallah Wannous is the first book in English to provide a clear sense of the complexities of Wannous' life and work, offering new perspectives on his significance as a playwright and public intellectual in both the Arab world and in world theatre.

The Royal Court Theatre produced some of the most influential plays in modern theatre, including works of Brenton, Churchill, Bond and Osborne. In this account, from 1956 to 1998, Philip Roberts employs unpublished archives and interviews and includes a Foreword by the former Director of the Royal Court, Max Stafford-Clark.

Combining political philosophy and theatre studies, Reinelt and Hewitt approach David Edgar as a political writer and a public social critic. Twelve of Edgar's most important plays are analyzed in detail, alongside his political commentary and critical reception, to illustrate his contributions as a public figure in British cultural life.

This text was the first monograph to examine plays by Black and Asian women in Britain, including writers such as Tanika Gupta, Winsome Pinnock and Amrit Wilson. The volume analyses concerns such as reverse migration (in the form of tourism), arranged marriages and asylum seeking, as they emerge in the plays.

William Storm explores the significance of irony in the modern theatre, investigating major works by playwrights including Chekhov, Pirandello and Brecht. Focusing on well-known representative characters, from Ibsen's Halvard Solness to Stoppard's Septimus Hodge, he demonstrates how these key theatrical figures enact, embody and personify irony.

Dramaturgy: A Revolution in Theatre is a substantial history of the origins of dramaturgs and literary managers. Mary Luckhurst examines the major theorists and practitioners, arguing that Brecht, Granville Barker and Tynan have central places in this history, and questions whether dramaturgs are mentors or censors.

Post-Imperial Brecht challenges prevailing views of Brecht's theatre and politics. Loren Kruger focuses much of her analysis in regions of special resonance, including East Germany and South Africa. The book includes interpretations of Brecht in light of dramatists and writers, including Heiner Muller, Fugard, and Adorno.

Based on extensive archival research, this is a comprehensive study of theatre in the Third Reich. It explores the origins of Nazi theatre before 1933, the fate of German theatre under Nazi rule, and suggests theatre was regarded as a central pillar of German national identity.

Provides a theoretical framework for some of the most important play-writing in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century. Examining plays by Arnold Wesker, Edward Bond, David Hare, and Caryl Churchill, among others, the author analyses their respective strategies for persuading audiences of the need for restructuring society.

Using extensive and untapped archival material as well as a series of in-depth interviews with Fassbinder's main theatre associates, this book offers commentary on and insights into Fassbinder's plays, his dramaturgies and staging practice. David Barnett helps to unlock the much discussed theatricality of Fassbinder's films by showing its many concrete sources.

This is the first book to explore theatre in Russia after Stalin. Smeliansky chronicles developments from 1953, highlighting the social and political events which shaped Russian drama and performance. The book contains a chronology, glossary of names, and informative illustrations.

This work gives an 'inside' view of Chinese theatre and the actor in performance. It is based on personal observations of and dialogue with Chinese actors, experiences which were impossible before 1980. Riley's study is well illustrated with photographs and diagrams and is accessible to anyone interested in theatre.

Joan Littlewood was one of the most visionary and influential theatre directors of the twentieth century. Drawing on extensive archival research and performance histories, and paying close attention to wider political and cultural forces, this study presents an examination of Littlewood's theatre productions and her community-based projects and activism.

This book provides an introduction to post-colonial theatre by concentrating on the work of major dramatists from the third world and subordinated cultures in the first world.

This book examines one of the most influential modern theatre companies, 7:84 (Scotland), under the directorship of John McGrath. DiCenzo explores not only the development of this company but also the growth of popular theatre in general. DiCenzo also offers a methodology for analysing records and materials found in theatre company archives.

Imagine the patriotic camaraderie of national day parades. How does performance generate patriotic loyalty? How crucial is performance for the sustenance of the nation? This book offers a fresh analysis of nationalism from the perspective of performance and will appeal to those with an interest in history, culture or politics.

The Berliner Ensemble was founded by Bertolt Brecht and his wife Helene Weigel in 1949. The company soon gained international prominence, and its productions and philosophy influenced the work of theatre-makers around the world. David Barnett's book is the first study of the company in any language. Based on extensive archival research, it uncovers Brecht's working methods and those of the company's most important directors after his death. The book considers the boon and burden of Brecht's legacy, and provides new insights into battles waged behind the scenes for the preservation of the Brechtian tradition. The Berliner Ensemble was also the German Democratic Republic's most prestigious cultural export, attracting attention from the highest circles of government, and from the Stasi, before it privatised itself after German reunification in 1990. Barnett pieces together a complex history that sheds light on both the company's groundbreaking productions and their turbulent times.

The Holocaust - the systematic attempted destruction of European Jewry and other 'threats' to the Third Reich from 1933 to 1945 - has been portrayed in fiction, film, memoirs, and poetry. Gene Plunka's study will add to this chronicle with an examination of the theatre of the Holocaust. Including thorough critical analyses of more than thirty plays, this book explores the seminal twentieth-century Holocaust dramas from the United States, Europe, and Israel. Biographical information about the playwrights, production histories of the plays, and pertinent historical information are provided, placing the plays in their historical and cultural contexts.

Neil LaBute is one of the most exciting new talents in theatre and film to have emerged in the 1990s. Influenced and inspired by such writers as David Mamet, Edward Bond and Harold Pinter, he is equally at home writing for the screen as for the stage, and the list of films he has written and directed includes The Wicker Man (2006), Possession (2002) and In the Company of Men (1998). As a playwright, screenwriter, director, and author of short stories, he has staked out a distinctive, and disturbing, territory. In the first full-length study on LaBute, Christopher Bigsby examines his darkly funny work which explores the cruelties, self-concern and manipulative powers of individuals who inhabit a seemingly uncommunal world. Individual chapters are dedicated to particular works, and the book also includes an interview with LaBute, providing a fascinating insight into the life of this influential and often controversial figure.

After nearly five decades as one of Ireland's most celebrated playwrights, Brian Friel has been the subject of ten books and dozens of articles. This study expands Friel criticism into a sizeable body of material and into a fresher interpretative direction. Along with considering Friel's more recent plays, the book analyzes his interviews and essays to chart the author's ideological evolution throughout a career of more than forty years. Moreover, a chapter is devoted to his often ignored articles for The Irish Press (1962-1963), a series that reveals unsuspected insights into Friel's disposition towards the Irish Republic. Refining our understanding of Friel's relationship to Republicanism is central to the argument; rather than assuming that the author embraces nationalist ideology, the book relocates the conceptual concerns of his work away from Dublin and to 'The North', this bridge between Ireland and the British province of Northern Ireland.

Feminist Views on the English Stage, first published in 2003, is an exciting and insightful study on drama from a feminist perspective, one that challenges an idea of the 1990s as a 'post-feminist' decade and pays attention to women's playwriting marginalized by a 'renaissance' of angry young men. Working through a generational mix of writers, from Sarah Kane, the iconoclastic 'bad girl' of the stage, to the 'canonical' Caryl Churchill, Elaine Aston charts the significant political and aesthetic changes in women's playwriting at the century's end. Aston also explores writing for the 1990s in theatre by Sarah Daniels, Bryony Lavery, Phyllis Nagy, Winsome Pinnock, Rebecca Prichard, Judy Upton and Timberlake Wertenbaker.

In this book Nicholas Grene explores political contexts for some of the outstanding Irish plays from the nineteenth century to the contemporary period. The politics of Irish drama have previously been considered primarily the politics of national self-expression. Here it is argued that Irish plays, in their self-conscious representation of the otherness of Ireland, are outwardly directed towards audiences both at home and abroad. The political dynamics of such relations between plays and audiences is the book's multiple subject: the stage interpretation of Ireland from The Shaughraun to Translations; the contentious stage images of Yeats, Gregory and Synge; reactions to revolution from O'Casey to Behan; the post-colonial worlds of Purgatory and All that Fall; the imagined Irelands of Friel and Murphy, McGuinness and Barry. With its fundamental reconception of the politics of Irish drama, this book represents an alternative view of the phenomenon of Irish drama itself.

Theatre and Empowerment examines the ability of drama, theatre, dance and performance to empower communities of very different kinds. Working from a multi-cultural perspective, the book explores the value of performance as an agent of social change, asking how it can help disempowered communities find their own creative voices.

This book describes and analyses theatre productions performed in Israel, America, Poland, France, Italy and Germany which deal with the Holocaust. It traces the development of realistic/documentary stagings through to controversial avant-garde shows. It provides many rare drawings and documents, as well as an important descriptive bibliography.

This volume initiates a long overdue reassessment of mid-twentieth-century British theatre cultures. Combining the popular with the commercial, it includes accounts of the craze for thriller and detective plays and musical comedy and revue, alongside analyses of historical pageantry and the development of politicized productions of Shakespeare.

This book focuses on how theatre can make, and indeed has made, positive political and social interventions in a range of developing cultures. Essays examine particular plays, projects or movements from areas such as South America, Africa, the Caribbean and India. Contributors include Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka.

This volume initiates a long overdue reassessment of mid-twentieth-century British theatre cultures. Combining the popular with the commercial, it includes accounts of the craze for thriller and detective plays and musical comedy and revue, alongside analyses of historical pageantry and the development of politicized productions of Shakespeare.