By Anna McMullan

The representation and experience of embodiment is a central preoccupation of Samuel Beckett’s drama, one that he explored through diverse media. McMullan investigates the full range of Beckett’s dramatic canon for stage, radio, television and film, including early drama, mimes and unpublished fragments. She examines how Beckett’s drama composes and recomposes the body in each medium, and provokes ways of perceiving, conceiving and experiencing embodiment that address wider preoccupations with corporeality, technology and systems of power. McMullan argues that the body in Beckett’s drama reveals a radical vulnerability of the flesh, questioning corporeal norms based on perfectible, autonomous or invulnerable bodies, but is also the site of a continual reworking of the self, and of the boundaries between self and other. Beckett’s re-imagining of the body presents embodiment as a collaborative performance between past and present, flesh and imagination, self and other, including the spectator / listener.

ISBN: 9780415385985

Published March 12 2010 by Routledge.

Edited by Maria M. Delgado, Dan Rebellato

'An invaluable book that we shall all be using for a long time to come' - Michael Billington

Contemporary European Theatre Directors is an ambitious and unprecedented overview of many of the key directors working in European theatre over the past fifty years. It is a vivid account of the vast range of work undertaken in European theatre during this period, situated lucidly in its artistic, cultural and political context. The resulting study is a detailed guide to the generation of directors whose careers were forged and tempered in the changing Europe of the 1980s and 1990s.

The featured directors are:
Calixto Bieito, Piotr Borowski, Romeo Castellucci, Frank Castorf, Patrice Chéreau, Lev Dodin, Declan Donnellan, Kristian Frédric, Rodrigo García, Jan Lauwers, Christoph Marthaler, Simon McBurney, Daniel Mesguich, Katie Mitchell, Ariane Mnouchkine, Thomas Ostermeier, Patrice Pavis, Silviu Purcarete and Peter Sellars.

Travelling from London and Craiova to St. Petersburg and Madrid, the book examines directors working with classics, new writing, and new collaborative theatre forms. Each chapter is written by a specialist in European theatre and provides a detail critique of production styles. The directors themselves provide contributions and interviews to this multi-authored work, which unites the many and varied voices of European theatre in one coherent volume.

ISBN: 9780415462501

Published March 03 2010 by Routledge.

Clinical Work and Research into Practice

Edited by Phil Jones

How is dramatherapy practised? What does research reveal about how dramatherapy offers therapeutic change? This book examines the many ways clients and therapists explore the therapeutic possibilities of drama. Whilst the first volume combined theory, practice and research in the field, this second volume concentrates on clinical material from a range of contexts, with thorough description and analysis of therapeutic work.

Bringing together international contributors, chapters explore work with various client groups in an array of contexts, including:

• work with clients with learning disabilities, dementia, HIV and cancer
• work with children, adults, older adults, families and women's groups
• contexts including the justice system, education, family therapy and neurorehabilitation.

Drama as Therapy Volume 2: Clinical Work and Research into Practice is not only a welcome companion to the first volume, but also is an important stand alone work which will be of great interest to all those studying, practicing or with an interest in dramatherapy.

ISBN: 9780415476072

Published March 03 2010 by Routledge.

Edited by Alexandra Carter, Janet O'Shea

The second edition of The Routledge Dance Studies Reader offers fresh critical perspectives on classic and modern dance forms, including ballroom, tango, Hip-hop, site-specific performance, and disability in dance.

Alexandra Carter and Janet O’Shea deliver a substantially revised and updated collection of key texts, featuring an enlightening new introduction, which tracks differing approaches to dance studies. Important articles from the first edition are accompanied by twenty new works by leading critical voices. The articles are presented in five thematic sections, each with a new editorial introduction and further reading. Sections cover:

• Making dance
• Performing dance
• Ways of looking
• Locating dance in history and society
• Debating the discipline

The Routledge Dance Studies Reader gives readers access to over thirty essential texts on dance and provides expert guidance on their critical context. It is a vital resource for anyone interested in understanding dance from a global and contemporary perspective.

ISBN: 9780415485982

Published January 28 2010 by Routledge.

By Alison Hodge

The practitioners included are:

Stella Adler; Eugenio Barba; Augusto Boal; Anne Bogart; Bertolt Brecht; Peter Brook; Michael Chekhov; Joseph Chaikin; Jacques Copeau; Philippe Gaulier; Jerzy Grotowski; Maria Knebel; Jacques Lecoq; Joan Littlewood; Sanford Meisner; Vsevolod Meyerhold; Ariane Mnouchkine; Monika Pagneux; Michel Saint-Denis; Wlodzimierz Staniewski; Konstantin Stanislavsky; Lee Strasberg

The historical, cultural and political context of each practitioner’s work is clearly set out by leading experts and accompanied by an incisive and enlightening analysis of the main principles of their training, practical exercises and key productions.

This book is an invaluable introduction to the principles and practice of actor training and its role in shaping modern theatre.

ISBN: 9780415471671

Published January 25 2010 by Routledge.

Edited by Lola Cohen

The Lee Strasberg Notes reproduces the original teachings of a unique voice in actor training, for the very first time. It is a stunning document in the history and ongoing practice of Strasberg’s Method.

Compiled and edited by Lola Cohen, the book is based on unpublished transcripts of Strasberg’s own classes on acting, directing and Shakespeare. It recreates his theoretical approach, as well as the practical exercises used by his students, and brilliantly conveys his approach and personality.

The book features Strasberg’s teachings on:

• Training and exercises

• Characters and scenes

• Directing and the Method

• Shakespeare and Stanislavski

• The theater, acting and actors.

Including a Preface by Anna Strasberg and a Foreword by Martin Sheen, this illuminating book brings the reader closer to Strasberg’s own methods than any other, making it a phenomenal resource for students, actors, and directors.

ISBN: 9780415551854

Published January 19 2010 by Routledge.

An Introduction

By Phillip Zarrilli, Bruce McConachie, Gary Williams, Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei

This new edition of the innovative and widely acclaimed Theatre Histories: An Introduction offers overviews of theatre and drama in many world cultures and periods together with case studies demonstrating the methods and interpretive approaches used by today's theatre historians.

Completely revised and renewed in color, enhancements and new material include:

• A full-color text design with added timelines to each opening section
• A wealth of new color illustrations to help convey the vitality of performances described
• New case studies on African, Asian, and Western subjects
• A new chapter on modernism, and updated and expanded chapters and part introductions
• Fuller definitions of terms and concepts throughout in a new glossary
• A re-designed support website offering links to new audio-visual resources, expanded bibliographies, approaches to teaching theatre and performance history, discussion questions relating to case studies and an online glossary.

ISBN: 9780415462235

Published January 04 2010 by Routledge.

Performing India on Local and Global Stages

Edited by Pallabi Chakravorty, Nilanjana Gupta

This volume presents a multidisciplinary perspective on dance scholarship and practice as they have evolved in India and its diaspora, outlining how dance histories have been written and re-written, how aesthetic and pedagogical conventions have changed and are changing, and how politico-economic shifts have shaped Indian dance and its negotiation with modernity.. Written by eminent and emergent scholars and practitioners of Indian dance, the articles make dance a foundational socio-cultural and aesthetic phenomena that reflects and impacts upon various cultural intercourses -- from art and architecture to popular culture, and social justice issues. They also highlight the interplay of various frameworks: global, national, and local/indigenous for studying these diverse performance contexts, using dance as a critical lens to analyse current debates on nationalism, transnationalism, gender and sexuality, and postcolonial politics. At the performace level, some articles question the accepted divisions of Indian dance (‘classical’, ‘folk’, and ‘popular’) and critique the dominant values associated with classical dance forms. Finally, the book brings together both experiential and objective dimensions of bodily knowledge through dance.

ISBN: 9780415553759

Published December 02 2009 by Routledge India.

By Konstantin Stanislavski

An Actor’s Work on a Role is Konstantin Stanislavsky’s classic exploration of the rehearsal process, applying the techniques of his seminal actor training system to the task of bringing life and truth to one’s role.

Originally published over half a century ago as Creating a Role, this book became the third in a trilogy – after An Actor Prepares and Building a Character, which are now combined in a newly translated volume called An Actor’s Work. In these books, now foundational texts for actors, Stanislavsky sets out his psychological, physical and practical vision of actor training.

This new translation from renowned writer and critic Jean Benedetti not only includes Stanislavski’s original teachings, but is also furnished with invaluable supplementary material in the shape of transcripts and notes from the rehearsals themselves, reconfirming The System as the cornerstone of actor training.

ISBN: 9780415461290

Published December 01 2009 by Routledge.

By Adrian Noble

'Adrian Noble vigorously highlights the extraordinary rhythmic, linguistic patterns Shakespeare gives the speaker. Any actor will find this book invaluable. For any student of Shakespeare it should be essential.' (From the Foreword by Ralph Fiennes)

'How can I bring the text alive, make it vivid, how do I make people hear it for the first time? How can I enter into that world and not feel a stranger. How can I not feel clumsy and inept? ... How can I speak it without sounding artificial or "actory"? In other words, how can I make it real ...?'

Adrian Noble has worked on Shakespeare with everyone from oscar-nominated actors to groups of schoolchildren. Here he draws on several decades of top-level directing experience to shed new light on how to bring some of theatre’s seminal texts to life.

He shows you how to approach the perennial issues of performing Shakespeare, including:

• wordplay – using colour and playing plain, wit and comedy, making language muscular
• building a character – different strategies, using the text, Stanislavski and Shakespeare
• shape and structure – headlining a speech, playing soliloquys, determining a speech’s purpose and letting the verse empower you
• dialogue – building tension, sharing responsibility and ’passing the ball’.

This guided tour of Shakespeare’s complex but unfailingly rewarding work stunningly combines instruction and inspiration.

ISBN: 9780415549264

Published November 27 2009 by Routledge.