This book is a collection of chapters by playwrights, directors, devisers, scholars, and educators whose praxis involves representing, theorizing, and performing social trauma. Chapters explore how psychic catastrophes and ruptures are often embedded in social systems of oppression and forged in zones of conflict within and across national borders. Through multiple lenses and diverse approaches, the authors examine the connections between collective trauma, social identity, and personal struggle. We look at the generational transmission of trauma, socially induced pathologies, and societal re-inscriptions of trauma, from mass incarceration to war-induced psychoses, from gendered violence through racist practices. Collective trauma may shape, protect, and preserve group identity, promoting a sense of cohesion and meaning, even as it shakes individuals through pain. Engaging with communities under significant stress through artistic practice offers a path towards reconstructing the meaning(s) of social trauma, making sense of the past, understanding the present, and re-visioning the future. The chapters combine theoretical and practical work, exploring the conceptual foundations and the artists’ processes as they interrogate the intersections of personal grief and communal mourning, through drama, poetry, and embodied performance.

Trauma-tragedy investigates the extent to which performance can represent the ‘unrepresentable’ of trauma. Throughout, there is a focus on how such representations might be achieved and if they could help us to understand trauma on personal and social levels. In a world increasingly preoccupied with and exposed to traumas, this volume considers what performance offers as a means of commentary that other cultural products do not. The book’s clear and coherent navigation of complex relation between performance and trauma and its analysis of key practitioners and performances (from Sarah Kane to Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, Harold Pinter to Forced Entertainment, and Phillip Pullman to Franco B) make it accessible and useful to students of performance and trauma studies, yet rigorous and incisive for scholars and specialists. Duggan explores ideas around the phenomenological and socio-political efficacy and impact of performance in relation to trauma. Ultimately, the book advances a new performance theory or mode, ‘trauma-tragedy’, that suggests much contemporary performance can generate the sensation of being present in trauma through its structural embodiment in performance, or ‘presence-in-trauma effects’.

This insightful book explores the impact of traumatic experiences on the constitution of narrative identity. Editors Edmundo Balsem‹o Pires, Cl‡udio Alexandre S. Carvalho, and Joana Ricarte bring together multidisciplinary experts to examine the epistemic and ethical-political value of narrative memory, demonstrating its significance in forming essential aspects of the self and collective identity.

Without William Shakespeare, we wouldn’t have literary masterpieces like Romeo and Juliet. But without Henry Condell and John Heminges, we would have lost half of Shakespeare’s plays forever! After the death of their friend and mentor, the two actors are determined to compile the First Folio and preserve the words that shaped their lives. They’ll just have to borrow, beg, and band together to get it done. Amidst the noise and color of Elizabethan London, THE BOOK OF WILL finds an unforgettable true story of love, loss, and laughter, and sheds new light on a man you may think you know.

Despite its international influence, Polish theatre remains a mystery to many Westerners. This volume attempts to fill in current gaps in English-language scholarship by offering a historical and critical analysis of two of the most influential works of Polish theatre: Jerzy Grotowski’s ‘Akropolis’ and Tadeusz Kantor’s ‘Dead Class’. By examining each director’s representation of Auschwitz, this study provides a new understanding of how translating national trauma through the prism of performance can alter and deflect the meaning and reception of theatrical works, both inside and outside of their cultural and historical contexts.

"Psychodrama and Socio-drama are new concepts of therapy to resolve mental health issues in Bangladesh. Mental health professionals in Bangladesh who had been able to absorb the technique created by integrating socio-psychodrama have been greatly benefited from this intervention in the healing process... " --Mehtab Khanam, PhD Professor of Psychology Dhaka University Bangladesh When large groups of people become victims of political upheavals, social crises, and natural disasters, it is often challenging to allocate appropriate resources to deal with the stress that ensues. Of the methods employed to address post-traumatic stress syndrome and collective trauma, sociodrama and drama therapy have had a long-standing history of success. Group therapists and counselors will find this book to be an indispensable resource when counseling patients from trauma-stricken groups. This book travels across geographic and cultural boundaries, examining group crises and collective trauma in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the U.S. The contributing authors, many of whom are pioneers in the field, offer cost-effective, small- and large-group approaches for people suffering from PTSD, socio-political oppression, and other social problems. The book extends the principles and practices of psychodrama and sociodrama to include music, painting, dance, collage, and ritual. In essence, this innovative book illustrates the proven effectiveness of sociodrama and drama therapy. Key topics: The difficulties of developing trust in victimized or opposing groups Initiating warm-ups and therapeutic strategies with both groups and individuals "Narradrama" with marginalized groups Using anti-oppression models to inform psychodrama Re-reconciling culture-based conflicts using "culture-drama"

With 70% of the world’s population expected to live in urban environments by 2050, cities are poised to become the most significant spaces to shape personal and communal identity. As contemporary cities become “event destinations” a dialogue is emerging between the performing arts and the urban context and social fabric. Inspired by the principles of Psychogeography, this collection of essays highlights the performative aspects of cities as landscapes of creative inspiration where curiosity, imagination, playfulness, and the energy of the street combine with contemporary performance practices to create immersive public art experiences. Written by an international cohort of scholar-artists, these essays offer arts practitioners, urban specialists, and general readers a practical guide to experiencing the cityscape as the Artscape.

Over the past two decades, there has been a major increase in research into the effects of the arts on health and well-being, alongside developments in practice and policy activities in different countries across the WHO European Region and further afield. This report synthesizes the global evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being, with a specific focus on the WHO European Region. Results from over 3000 studies identified a major role for the arts in the prevention of ill health, promotion of health, and management and treatment of illness across the lifespan. The reviewed evidence included study designs such as uncontrolled pilot studies, case studies, small-scale cross-sectional surveys, nationally representative longitudinal cohort studies, community-wide ethnographies and randomized controlled trials from diverse disciplines. The beneficial impact of the arts could be furthered through acknowledging and acting on the growing evidence base; promoting arts engagement at the individual, local and national levels; and supporting cross-sectoral collaboration.

This book investigates contemporary British and Irish performances that stage traumatic narratives, histories, acts and encounters. It includes a range of case studies that consider the performative, cultural and political contexts for the staging and reception of sexual violence, terminal illness, environmental damage, institutionalisation and asylum. In particular, it focuses on 'bodies in shadow' in twenty-first century performance: those who are largely written out of or marginalised in dominant twentieth-century patriarchal canons of theatre and history. This volume speaks to students, scholars and artists working within contemporary theatre and performance, Irish and British studies, memory and trauma studies, feminisms, performance studies, affect and reception studies, as well as the medical humanities.

For years theater director Bryan Doerries has been producing ancient Greek tragedies for a wide range of at-risk people in society. His is the personal and deeply passionate story of a life devoted to reclaiming the timeless power of an ancient artistic tradition to comfort the afflicted. Doerries leads an innovative public health project—Theater of War—that produces ancient dramas for current and returned soldiers, people in recovery from alcohol and substance abuse, tornado and hurricane survivors, and more. Tracing a path that links the personal to the artistic to the social and back again, Doerries shows us how suffering and healing are part of a timeless process in which dialogue and empathy are inextricably linked. The originality and generosity of Doerries’s work is startling, and The Theater of War—wholly unsentimental, but intensely felt and emotionally engaging—is a humane, knowledgeable, and accessible book that will both inspire and enlighten.