The author critiques contemporary American theater.

In this book, Wendy Arons examines how women writers used theater and performance to investigate the problem of female subjectivity and to intervene in the dominant discourse about ideal femininity. Arons shows how contemporary demands for sincerity and authenticity placed a peculiar burden on women in the public sphere, especially on actresses, who - like professional writers - overstepped the boundaries of what was considered proper behavior for women. Paradoxically, in their representations of ideal women engaged in performance, these writers expose ideal femininity as an impossible act, even as they attempt to perform it in their writing and in their lives.

Impossible is Nothing documents China as a rising power struggling to integrate capitalism into a Communist system.

Dale Wasserman had more trouble getting it on to a Broadway stage than Don Quixote ever had with those windmills.

In Theater as Data, Miguel Escobar Varela explores the use of computational methods and digital data in theater research. He considers the implications of these new approaches, and explains the roles that statistics and visualizations play. Reflecting on recent debates in the humanities, the author suggests that there are two ways of using data, both of which have a place in theater research. Data-driven methods are closer to the pursuit of verifiable results common in the sciences; and data-assisted methods are closer to the interpretive traditions of the humanities. The book surveys four major areas within theater scholarship: texts (not only playscripts but also theater reviews and program booklets); relationships (both the links between fictional characters and the collaborative networks of artists and producers); motion (the movement of performers and objects on stage); and locations (the coordinates of performance events, venues, and touring circuits). Theater as Data examines important contributions to theater studies from similar computational research, including in classical French drama, collaboration networks in Australian theater, contemporary Portuguese choreography, and global productions of Ibsen. This overview is complemented by short descriptions of the author’s own work in the computational analysis of theater practices in Singapore and Indonesia. The author ends by considering the future of computational theater research, underlining the importance of open data and digital sustainability practices, and encouraging readers to consider the benefits of learning to code. A web companion offers illustrative data, programming tutorials, and videos.

Imagined Theatres collects theoretical dramas written by some of the leading scholars and artists of the contemporary stage. These dialogues, prose poems, and microfictions describe imaginary performance events that explore what might be possible and impossible in the theatre. Each scenario is mirrored by a brief accompanying reflection, asking what they might mean for our thinking about the theatre. These many possible worlds circle around questions that include: In what way is writing itself a performance? How do we understand the relationship between real performances that engender imaginary reflections and imaginary conceptions that form the basis for real theatrical productions? Are we not always imagining theatres when we read or even when we sit in the theatre, watching whatever event we imagine we are seeing?

This volume brings together a collection of texts translated by Langston Hughes. It contains his translations of work by the Spanish poet/playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, Afro-Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen and Haitian writer Jacques Roumain.

Theatermachine: Tadeusz Kantor in Context is an in-depth, multidisciplinary compendium of essays that examine Kantor’s work through the prism of postmemory and trauma theory and in relation to Polish literature, Jewish culture, and Yiddish theater as well as the Japanese, German, French, Polish, and American avant-garde. Hans-Thies Lehmann’s theory of postdramatic theater and contemporary developments in critical theory—particularly Bill Brown’s thing theory, Bruno Latour’s actor network theory, and posthumanism—provide a previously unavailable vocabulary for discussion of Kantor’s theater.

This engrossing book presents the first collection in more than three decades of one of America’s finest drama critics. Richard Gilman chronicles a major period in American theater history, one that witnessed the birth or spread of Off-Broadway, regional theater, nonprofit companies, and avant-garde performance, as well as growing interest in plays by women and minorities and in world drama. His writing, however, is more than a revealing look at an era. It is criticism for the ages. Insightful, provocative, and impassioned, the articles represent the full range of Gilman’s interests. There are essays, profiles, and book reviews dealing with such topics as the “new naturalism” in theater, Brecht’s collected plays, and the legacy of Stanislavski. There is also a generous sampling of Gilman’s comments on plays by O’Neill, Miller, Chekhov, Albee, Ibsen, Anouilh, Beckett, Ionesco, Pinter, Fugard, and many others.

An Ideal Theater is a wide-ranging, inspiring documentary history of the American theatre movement as told by the visionaries who goaded it into being. This anthology collects over forty essays, manifestos, letters and speeches that are each introduced and placed in historical context by the noted writer and arts commentator, Todd London, who spent nearly a decade assembling this collection. This celebration of the artists who came before is an exhilarating look backward, as well as toward the future, and includes contributions from: Jane Addams • William Ball • Julian Beck • Herbert Blau • Angus Bowmer • Bernard Bragg • Maurice Browne • Robert Brustein • Alison Carey • Joseph Chaikin • Harold Clurman • Dudley Cocke • Alice Lewisohn Crowley • Gordon Davidson • R. G. Davis • Doris Derby • W. E. B. Du Bois • Zelda Fichandler • Hallie Flanagan • Eva Le Gallienne • Robert E. Gard • Susan Glaspell • André Gregory • Tyrone Guthrie • John Houseman • Jules Irving • Margo Jones • Frederick H. Koch • Lawrence Langner • W. McNeil Lowry • Charles Ludlam • Judith Malina • Theodore Mann • Gilbert Moses • Michaela O’Harra • John O’Neal • Joseph Papp • Robert Porterfield • José Quintero • Bill Rauch • Bernard Sahlins • Richard Schechner • Peter Schumann • Maurice Schwartz • Gary Sinise • Ellen Stewart • Lee Strasberg • Luis Miguel Valdez • Nina Vance • Douglas Turner Ward As well as the founding visions of theatres from across the country: The Actors Studio • The Actor's Workshop • Alley Theatre • American Conservatory Theater • American Repetory Theater • Arena Stage • Barter Theatre • Bread and Puppet Theater • The Carolina Playmakers • The Chicago Little Theater • Circle in the Square Theatre • The Civic Repertory Theatre • Cornerstone Theater Company • The Federal Theatre Project • Ford Foundation Program in Humanities and the Arts • The Free Southern Theater • The Group Theatre • The Hull-House Dramatic Association • KRIGWA Players • The Living Theatre • La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club • The Mark Taper Forum • The Mercury Theatre • Minnesota Theater Company (Guthrie Theater) • The National Theatre of the Deaf • The Negro Ensemble Company • The Negro Theatre Project, Federal Theatre Project • The Neighborhood Playhouse • New Dramatists • The New York Shakespeare Festival • The Open Theater • Oregon Shakespeare Festival • The Performance Group • The Provincetown Players • The Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center • The Ridiculous Theatrical Company • Roadside Theater • The San Francisco Mime Troupe • The Second City • Steppenwolf Theatre Company • El Teatro Campesino • Theater '47 • The Theatre Guild • The Theatre of the Living Arts • The Washington Square Players • The Wisconsin Idea Theater • Yale Repertory Theatre • The Yiddish Art Theatre Todd London is in his 18th season as artistic director of New Dramatists, the nation’s oldest center for the creative and professional development of American playwrights. In 2009 Todd became the first recipient of Theatre Communications Group’s (TCG) Visionary Leadership Award for “an individual who has gone above and beyond the call of duty to advance the theater field as a whole, nationally and/or internationally.” He’s the author of The Importance of Staying Earnest: Writings from Inside the American Theatre, 1988-2013 (NoPassport Press), Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play (with Ben Pesner, Theatre Development Fund), The Artistic Home (TCG), and The World’s Room, a novel (Steerforth Press), among others. His column, “A Lover’s Guide to American Playwrights,” tributes to contemporary