With its impressive variety of theater, Finland is a superpower of performing arts. Finnish theater, however, is presently a hotbed of cultural debate regarding the artistic quality of its performances. This comprehensive overview of contemporary theater explores many of the most contentious questions concerning applied theater, its devised methods, and the corresponding challenges presented to traditional definitions of theater and related arts. Through interviews with new writers and directors, and first-hand accounts of recent performances, this study attempts to define what it means today to say "Finnish theater." It also addresses issues concerning Finland's emergence as a cultural player within the European Union and implications for its evolving national identity.

This study analyses the Finnish National Theatre’s activities throughout the decades during which the post-war generation with its new societal and theatrical views was rising to power, and during which Europe, divided by the Iron Curtain, was maturing to break the boundaries dividing it. Pirkko Koski summarizes the activities of the Finnish National Theatre as a cultural factor and as a part of the Finnish theatre field during 1970s and 1980s. Alongside this he examines the general requirements, resources and structures for activity, including artists, places, geographical position, performances and the analysis on the societal conditions. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of European theatre and history.

A wide-ranging set of essays that explain what theatre history is and why we need to engage with it.

Examining the ways in which national theatres have formed and evolved over time, this new collection highlights the difficulties these institutions encounter today, in an environment where nationalism and national identity are increasingly contested by global, transnational and local agendas, and where economic forces create conflicting demands.

This text investigates the relationships between what happened the last 20 years on the world stage and how theater life developed on the local level in Western European countries.

This collection of articles is devoted to the relationship between text and performance in contemporary theatre. In this volume, nineteen theatre and drama researchers from the Baltic countries, Sweden, Finland, Ireland, Hungary, Russia and China discuss the results of their research into these issues in academic articles and essays. The book mainly focuses on the experience of the Baltics in the creation of theatrical texts, but it also provides a wider insight into the changing processes of world drama and theatre. Three sections of the volume provide numerous examples of the functionality of traditional texts in today’s theatre, as well as introducing the reader to new names in contemporary drama and the different models of practice in theatre companies. This book, with its rich collection of material and detailed analysis of different methods and experiences of contemporary theatre, is recommended for both theatre and drama theoreticians and practitioners.

This anthology explores the ways in which theatre and performance functions at the interstices of contemporary local and global networks. Theatre and performance occurs in time and space and exists between the audience and performer as a communicative event. This local world of experience and human interactivity is not easily subsumed by global networks or commercial systems and remains a potent force of expression and, at times, resistance. The volume offers a range of critical viewpoints from which to evaluate the interrelationality of the local and the global, such as philosophical cosmopolitanism, post-colonialism, feminism, class, ethnicity, gender and the experience of the diasporic or exilic artist. The anthology concludes with a reflection between Janelle Reinelt and Marvin Carlson upon the ideas put forth in the book and the broader connectivities of the local and the global. Reinelt and Carlson reveal that these concepts should not be regarded in opposition but, rather, as entangled, something which is reflected in this volume as a whole. A number of international productions and performance practices are discussed from diverse geographical and cultural perspectives, illuminating the complexity of the local and the global. As Reinelt suggests: “The global-local category as a hyphenated concept has become a slogan now, a cliché even. It first arose because the local was supposed to save the global from totalisation, but in fact the global-local concept became, in reality, so complex that this opposition was not useful anymore.” Carlson’s and Reinelt’s engagement with the essays, and with the broader issues of the global and the local, marks an important intervention into how we process experience through theatre and performance in the world today. Contributors include: Marvin Carlson, Shams Eldin, Lynette Hunter, Pirkko Koski, Yana Meerzon, Yasushi Nagata, Janelle Reinelt, Heike Roms, Nehad Selaiha, Melissa Sihra, Juha Sihvola, Joanne Tompkins, Denise Varney and Farah Yeganeh.

This is a comprehensive overview of contemporary European theatre and performance as it enters the third decade of the twenty-first century. It combines critical discussions of key concepts, practitioners, and trends within theatre-making, both in particular countries and across borders, that are shaping European stage practice. With the geography, geopolitics, and cultural politics of Europe more unsettled than at any point in recent memory, this book’s combination of national and thematic coverage offers a balanced understanding of the continent’s theatre and performance cultures. Employing a range of methodologies and critical approaches across its three parts and ninety-four chapters, this book’s first part contains a comprehensive listing of European nations, the second part charts responses to thematic complexes that define current European performance, and the third section gathers a series of case studies that explore the contribution of some of Europe’s foremost theatre makers. Rather than rehearsing rote knowledge, this is a collection of carefully curated, interpretive accounts from an international roster of scholars and practitioners. The Routledge Companion to Contemporary European Theatre and Performance gives undergraduate and graduate students as well as researchers and practitioners an indispensable reference resource that can be used broadly across curricula.

Native performance is a multifaceted and changing art form as well as a swiftly growing field of research. Native American Performance and Representation provides a wider and more comprehensive study of Native performance, not only its past but also its present and future. Contributors use multiple perspectives to look at the varying nature of Native performance strategies. They consider the combination and balance of the traditional and modern techniques of performers in a multicultural world. This collection presents diverse viewpoints from both scholars and performers in this field, both Natives and non-Natives. Important and well-respected researchers and performers such as Bruce McConachie, Jorge Huerta, and Daystar/Rosalie Jones offer much-needed insight into this quickly expanding field of study. This volume examines Native performance using a variety of lenses, such as feminism, literary and film theory, and postcolonial discourse. Through the many unique voices of the contributors, major themes are explored, such as indigenous self-representations in performance, representations by nonindigenous people, cultural authenticity in performance and representation, and cross-fertilization between cultures. Authors introduce important, though sometimes controversial, issues as they consider the effects of miscegenation on traditional customs, racial discrimination, Native women’s position in a multicultural society, and the relationship between authenticity and hybridity in Native performance. An important addition to the new and growing field of Native performance, Wilmer’s book cuts across disciplines and areas of study in a way no other book in the field does. It will appeal not only to those interested in Native American studies but also to those concerned with women’s and gender studies, literary and film studies, and cultural studies.