If theatre is a way of seeing, an event onstage but also a fleeting series of moments; not a copy or double but more vitally metamorphosis, transformation, and change, how might we speak to – and of – it? How do we envision and frame a fluid reality that moves faster than we can write? Arranged over two parts, 'Figurations' and 'Translations', Essays on Theatre and Change reflects on the animal, history, doubling, translation, and the performative potential of writing itself. Each fictocritical essay weaves between voices, genres and contexts to consider what theatre might be, offering a 'partial object' rather than a complete theory. Leaving the page radically open to its reader, Essays on Theatre and Change is a dazzling, multi-lensed account of what it is to think and write on theatre.

PERSONAL STORIES IN PUBLIC SPACES gathers together some of the essays, articles, talks, and contributions to other anthologies that founders Fox and Salas have written since the earliest days of Playback Theatre, an original theatre form where audience members' stories are enacted on the spot. As well as previously published material, PSPS includes several essays written for this volume.

Solomon examines the relationship between gender and performance in a series of essays which combine the critique of specific live performances with an astute theoretical analysis.

Fresh perspectives on political theater and its essential contribution to contemporary culture. Focused studies of individual plays complement broad-based discussions of the place of theater in a radically democratic society. This consistently challenging collection describes the art of change confronting the actual processes of change. 17 photos.

Playwright Tony Kushner is a voice of intellectualism, neo-socialism, gay activism and political outrage in an era when the political pendulum has swayed to the right. Through scalding humor, thought, and compassion, he explores political dynamics and the human condition in the modern era, shedding light on and giving hope for the direst of circumstances. His best known work, Angels in America, delves beneath the anti-gay rhetoric and political superficiality of the AIDS pandemic to true suffering and transformation. His political epic Homebody/Kabul engages the issue of terrorism and conflicting fundamental beliefs. In this book 11 scholars explore the works of Tony Kushner across his career. Several address Angels: one explores the presentation of homosexuality by Kushner compared to that of Tennessee Williams, who wrote in a less tolerant era; another places Angels in the contexts of Hegel's concept of freedom and the gay revolution; a third discusses the play in terms of queer theory and politics. Homebody/Kabul is examined in two essays, one analyzing media reaction, the other exploring cultural and economic differences, religious fundamentalism and the "West's luxurious predominance in the world." Other studies address relationships in Kushner's works to William Inge's 1950 play Come Back, Little Sheba; the plays of experimentalist Adrienne Kennedy; and fascist creep in the era of playwrights W.H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood, among other topics.

Anne Bogart is an award-winning theatre maker, and a best-selling writer of books about theatre, art, and cultural politics. In this her latest collection of essays she explores the story-telling impulse, and asks how she, as a ‘product of postmodernism’, can reconnect to the primal act of making meaning and telling stories. She also asks how theatre practitioners can think of themselves not as stagers of plays but ‘orchestrators of social interactions’ and participants in an on-going dialogue about the future. We dream. And then occasionally we attempt to share our dreams with others. In recounting our dreams we try to construct a narrative... We also make stories out of our daytime existence. The human brain is a narrative creating machine that takes whatever happens and imposes chronology, meaning, cause and effect... We choose. We can choose to relate to our circumstances with bitterness or with openness. The stories that we tell determine nothing less than personal destiny. (From the introduction) This compelling new book is characteristically made up of chapters with one-word titles: Spaciousness, Narrative, Heat, Limits, Error, Politics, Arrest, Empathy, Opposition, Collaboration and Sustenance. In addition to dipping into neuroscience, performance theory and sociology, Bogart also recounts vivid stories from her own life. But as neuroscience indicates, the event of remembering what happened is in fact the creation of something new.

100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write is an incisive, idiosyncratic collection on life and theater from major American playwright Sarah Ruhl. This is a book in which chimpanzees, Chekhov, and child care are equally at home. A vibrant, provocative examination of the possibilities of the theater, it is also a map to a very particular artistic sensibility, and an unexpected guide for anyone who has chosen an artist's life. Sarah Ruhl is a mother of three and one of America's best-known playwrights. She has written a stunningly original book of essays whose concerns range from the most minimal and personal subjects to the most encompassing matters of art and culture. The titles themselves speak to the volume's uniqueness: "On lice," "On sleeping in the theater," "On motherhood and stools (the furniture kind)," "Greek masks and Bell's palsy."

"Mark Twain called the theatre for young audiences "one of the great inventions of the twentieth century." Moving into the twenty-first century, the field continues to grow in importance--as an educational force, certainly, but also as an art form, and maybe even as a political weapon for change in our complex society. Moses Goldberg has been a witness to, and an important leader of, much of that development. In this collection of essays, he reveals his personal insights and passions, drawing on his years of experience in the changing field--especially his twenty-five years as Producing Director of Louisville's Stage One. The essays divide into three sections, examining the politics, the art, and the business of TYA. Sample titles include such provocative concepts as: The Actor/Priest, The 60-Minute Myth, and The Stage by Stages. Altogether they represent a heady compilation of wisdom from one of the field's most visible leaders."--Publisher's description.

In setting foot on stage, every performer risks the possiblity of failure. Indeed, the very performance of any human action is inextricable from its potential not to succeed. This inherent potential has become a key critical trope in contemporary theatre, performance studies, and scholarship around visual cultures. Beyond Failure explores what it means for our understanding not just of theatrical practice but of human social and cultural activity more broadly. The essays in this volume tackle contemporary debates around the theory and poetics of failure, suggesting that in the absence of success can be found a defiance and hopefulness that points to new ways of knowing and being in the world. Beyond Failure offers a unique and engaging approach for students and practitioners interested not only in the impact of failure on the stage, but what it means for wider social and cultural debates.

"Representing the Past is required reading for any serious scholar of theatre and performance historiography: original in its conception, global in its reach, thought-provoking and transformative in its effects."---Gay Gibson Cima, author, Early American Women Crities: Performance, Religion, Race --