The plays in this volume, written by men (some of whom are the most celebrated playwrights) who were in their late twenties and early thirties, affirm adolescents as subjects active in same-sex relationships. Sexual identity is important to the young men in their plays, in great part because they must define themselves against the prejudice and sanctions of family and social institutions. In some cases, the experiences dramatized in these plays are examples of the "gay pathos." Some boys, like Benjy in A. Rey Pamatmat's Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them, were severely punished by their parents for expressing their sexuality. Others, like Chris in Daniel Talbott's Slipping, are terrified of anyone, particularly his peers, discovering his sexual relationship with another boy. Dennis, in Michael Perlman's From White Plains, has never recovered from the anti-gay bullying he and his best friend endured in high school. At the same time, most of the plays in this book depict joyful expressions of gayness. Much of Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them is the story of two teenage boys discovering sex and love on a remote Midwestern farm despite the interventions of parents. On his twelfth birthday, Ricardo Bracho's Sissy discovers and celebrates his inner queen. Yet not all adolescents can feel that joy. Eli, in Slipping, connects sex and desire with cruelty, first suffered at the hands of the conflicted lover Chris, then projected onto the sweet boy with whom he becomes involved in Iowa, and finally inflicted upon himself. The young men in these plays are all unique characters. Affirmation of their sexuality in a time and places where homophobia is still a reality is only one problem each faces. Like many works about adolescence, these plays depict the blurry no man's land between childhood and adulthood. All of these plays have received powerful productions at theatres across America and demonstrate the vitality and variety of contemporary American drama. This is an important book for all collections not only in LGBT studies and theater studies, but also education and sociology because of how it deals with adolescent homosexuality and homophobia, as well as bullying. See http://www.cambriapress.com/books/9781604979084.cfm for more information.

The plays in this volume, written by men (some of whom are the most celebrated playwrights) who were in their late twenties and early thirties, affirm adolescents as subjects active in same-sex relationships. Sexual identity is important to the young men in their plays, in great part because they must define themselves against the prejudice and sanctions of family and social institutions. In some cases, the experiences dramatized in these plays are examples of the "gay pathos." Some boys, like Benjy in A. Rey Pamatmat's Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them, were severely punished by their parents for expressing their sexuality. Others, like Chris in Daniel Talbott's Slipping, are terrified of anyone, particularly his peers, discovering his sexual relationship with another boy. Dennis, in Michael Perlman's From White Plains, has never recovered from the anti-gay bullying he and his best friend endured in high school. At the same time, most of the plays in this book depict joyful expressions of gayness. Much of Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them is the story of two teenage boys discovering sex and love on a remote Midwestern farm despite the interventions of parents. On his twelfth birthday, Ricardo Bracho's Sissy discovers and celebrates his inner queen. Yet not all adolescents can feel that joy. Eli, in Slipping, connects sex and desire with cruelty, first suffered at the hands of the conflicted lover Chris, then projected onto the sweet boy with whom he becomes involved in Iowa, and finally inflicted upon himself. The young men in these plays are all unique characters. Affirmation of their sexuality in a time and places where homophobia is still a reality is only one problem each faces. Like many works about adolescence, these plays depict the blurry no man's land between childhood and adulthood. All of these plays have received powerful productions at theatres across America and demonstrate the vitality and variety of contemporary American drama. This is an important book for all collections not only in LGBT studies and theater studies, but also education and sociology because of how it deals with adolescent homosexuality and homophobia, as well as bullying. See http: //www.cambriapress.com/books/9781604979084.cfm for more information.

Previous surveys of the gay theatrical repertoire have concentrated on plays produced on Broadway or in London's West End. This comprehensive guide goes well beyond these earlier studies by introducing productions from Off Broadway, from regional theaters in the U.S. and U.K., and from Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Also included are Puerto Rican, Indian and Filipino plays written in English, as well as translations from other languages. Well over half of the works discussed here appear for the first time in such a study.

This is a guide to contemporary debates and theatre practices at a time when gender paradigms are both in flux and at the centre of explosive political battlegrounds. The confluence of gender and theatre has long created intense debate about representation, identification, social conditioning, desire, embodiment, and lived experience. As this handbook demonstrates, from the conventions of early modern English, Chinese, Japanese and Hispanic theatres to the subversion of racialized binaries of masculinity and femininity in recent North American, African, Asian, Caribbean and European productions, the matter of gender has consistently taken centre stage. This handbook examines how critical discourses on gender intersect with key debates in the field of theatre studies, as a lens to illuminate the practices of gender and theatre as well as the societies they inform and represent across space and time. Of interest to scholars in the interrelated areas of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, theatre and performance studies, cultural studies, and globalization and diasporic studies, this book demonstrates how researchers are currently addressing theatre about gender issues and gendered theatre practices. While synthesizing and summarizing foundational and evolving debates from a contemporary perspective, this collection offers interpretations and analyses that do not simply look back at existing scholarship, but open up new possibilities and understandings. Featuring essential research tools, including a survey of keywords and an annotated play list, this is an indispensable scholarly handbook for anyone working in theatre and performance.

Sports Plays is a volume about sports in the theatre and what it means to stage sports. The chapters in this volume examine sports plays through a range of critical and theoretical approaches that highlight central concerns and questions both for sports and for theatre. The plays cut across boundaries and genres, from Broadway-style musicals to dramas to experimental and developmental work. The chapters examine and trouble the conventions of staging sports as they open possibilities for considering larger social and cultural issues and debates. This broad range of perspectives make the volume a compelling resource for students and scholars of sport, theatre, and performance studies whose interests span feminism, sexuality, politics, and race.

A History of Latinx Performing Arts in the U.S. provides a comprehensive overview of the development of the Latinx performing arts in what is now the U.S. since the sixteenth century. This book combines theories and philosophical thought developed in a wide spectrum of disciplines—such as anthropology, sociology, gender studies, feminism, and linguistics, among others—and productions’ reviews, historical context, and political implications. Split into two volumes, these books offer interpretations and representations of a wide range of Latinxs’ lived experiences in the U.S. Volume I provides a chronological overview of the evolution of the Latinx community within the U.S., spanning from the 1500s to today, with an emphasis on the Chicano artistic renaissance initiated by Luis Valdez and the Teatro Campesino in the 1960s. Volume II continues, looking more in depth at the experiences of Latinx individuals on theatre and performance, including Miguel Piñero, Lin-Manuel Miranda, María Irene Fornés, Nilo Cruz, and John Leguizamo, as well as the important role of transnational migration in Latinx communities and identities across the U.S. A History of Latinx Performing Arts in the U.S. offers an accessible and comprehensive understanding of the field and is ideal for students, researchers, and instructors of theatre studies with an interest in the diverse and complex history of Latinx theatre and performance.

Thinking Through Theatre and Performance presents a bold and innovative approach to the study of theatre and performance. Instead of topics, genres, histories or theories, the book starts with the questions that theatre and performance are uniquely capable of asking: How does theatre function as a place for seeing and hearing? How do not only bodies and voices but also objects and media perform? How do memories, emotions and ideas continue to do their work when the performance is over? And how can theatre and performance intervene in social, political and environmental structures and frameworks? Written by leading international scholars, each chapter of this volume is built around a key performance example, and detailed discussions introduce the methodologies and theories that help us understand how these performances are practices of enquiry into the world. Thinking through Theatre and Performance is essential for those involved in making, enjoying, critiquing and studying theatre, and will appeal to anyone who is interested in the questions that theatre and performance ask of themselves and of us.

In The Chinese Atlantic, Sean Metzger charts processes of global circulation across and beyond the Atlantic, exploring how seascapes generate new understandings of Chinese migration, financial networks and artistic production. Moving across film, painting, performance, and installation art, Metzger traces flows of money, culture, and aesthetics to reveal the ways in which routes of commerce stretching back to the Dutch Golden Age have molded and continue to influence the social reproduction of Chineseness. With a particular focus on the Caribbean, Metzger investigates the expressive culture of Chinese migrants and the communities that received these waves of people. He interrogates central issues in the study of similar case studies from South Africa and England to demonstrate how Chinese Atlantic seascapes frame globalization as we experience it today. Frequently focusing on art that interacts directly with the sites in which it is located, Metzger explores how Chinese migrant laborers and entrepreneurs did the same to shape—both physically and culturally—the new spaces in which they found themselves. In this manner, Metzger encourages us to see how artistic imagination and practice interact with migration to produce a new way of framing the global.

From comedian, storyteller, and The Moth host David Crabb, comes a music-filled, coming-of-age memoir about growing up gay and Goth in San Antonio, Texas. In the summer of 1989, three Goth kids crossed a street in San Antonio. They had no idea that a deeply confused fourteen-year-old boy was watching. Their dyed hair, fishnets, and eyeliner were his first evidence of another world—a place he desperately wanted to go. He just had no idea how to get there. Somehow David Crabb had convinced himself that every guy preferred French-braiding his girlfriend’s hair to making out, and that the funny feelings he got watching Silver Spoons and Growing Pains had nothing to do with Ricky Schroeder or Kirk Cameron. But discovering George Michael’s Faith confirmed for David what every bully already knew: he was gay. Surviving high school, with its gym classes, locker rooms, and naked, glistening senior guys, would require impossible feats of denial. What saved him was finding a group of outlandish friends who reveled in being outsiders. David found himself enmeshed with misfits: wearing black, cutting class, staying out all night, drinking, tripping, chain-smoking, idolizing The Smiths, Pet Shop Boys, and Joy Division—and learning lessons about life and love along the way. Richly detailed with 80s pop-culture, and including black and white photos throughout, BAD KID is as laugh-out-loud funny as it is poignant. Crabb’s journey through adolescence captures the essence of every person’s struggle to understand his or her true self.