European Theatre

The following theatre directing essay focuses on the analysis of the ensemble, according to the Russian and European tradition. The text is mainly based on the theatre directing études experienced during the triennial period of study at the International Theatre Academy of the Adriatic, an Italian institute of theatre arts for actors and directors.
The dissertation is fully written in Italian.

Questo articolo è stato commissionato dall'UTE (Union des Théatres de l'Europe) nell'ambito del progetto triennale Conflict Zones ed è stato pubblicato sul sito web http://conflict-zones.reviews/. Il file allegato contiene l'introduzione, l'indice e il primo capitolo. Il resto si può leggere gratuitamente sul sito http://conflict-zones.reviews/.

Questo articolo ha lo scopo di tracciare un panorama del sistema delle arti performative contemporanee in Italia. Una breve nota è necessaria per introdurre il lettore al funzionamento della sezione – che tenta di sfruttare al meglio le potenzialità del Web – ma soprattutto per spiegare come e perché una struttura ipertestuale sia più che mai adatta all'attuale situazione italiana. Anche se la natura di questo contributo (al quale è richiesto l'uso di un linguaggio agile e di facile leggibilità) non può certo dirsi in grado di comporre un esaustivo sommario dell'intero quadro, il punto di vista dell'autore è che una dinamica e composita raccolta di piccoli focus abbia modo di rispecchiare il sistema italiano in modo più fedele rispetto a un unico lungo saggio. Tale fiducia proviene da otto anni di esperienza giornalistica e critica, che hanno rivelato il panorama delle arti sceniche italiane come un organismo estremamente frammentato in cui la diversità territoriale, caratterizzata in gran parte da sensibili differenze di carattere economico, crea una pluralità di opportunità di produzione e circolazione che va di pari passo con lo stato delle realtà locali.
Come si vede nella mappa della sezione, un focus è a volte generato da un altro ed esso stesso dà origine a uno ulteriore, in una complessa rete di relazioni e interdipendenze, un sistema vitale che affronta di continuo uno slittamento evidente e tuttavia dimostra una fondamentale abilità nel preservare la propria verve creativa. Politica culturale e pratica teatrale, ad esempio, funzionano in stretta connessione; una determina necessariamente l'altra, e quest'ultima dà vita a estetiche particolari, con relative tendenze e uno specifico orizzonte di richiamo sul pubblico, che di fatto può a sua volta influenzare (o quanto meno interagire con) la politica culturale.
Un ultima questione necessita di attenzione. La situazione descritta in questa sezione è stata registrata tra febbraio e marzo 2015. Durante questi mesi l'intero sistema di finanziamento pubblico sta andando incontro a un profondo cambiamento (un breve sommario viene offerto nel paragrafo Struttura dei Teatri) che deve ancora essere verificato e esperito dagli agenti del sistema stesso. In altre parole, al momento la generale gestione del denaro pubblico destinato alla scena delle arti performative italiane si sta ridimensionando su un nuovo ordine che si prevede possa influenzare l'equilibrio tra strutture pubbliche e private nel più imprevedibile dei modi.
Motivo per cui abbiamo scelto di declinare al plurale la parola teatro, facendo riferimento ai Teatri Contemporanei in Italia.

With The Theatre of Thomas Ostermeier, the German director presents his directorial method for the first time. The book provides a toolkit for understanding and enacting the strategies of his advanced contemporary approach to staging dramatic texts. The book includes:
• Ostermeier’s seminal essays, lectures and manifestos translated into English for the first time.
• Over 140 photos from the archive of Arno Declair, who has documented Ostermeier’s work at the Schaubühne Berlin for many years, and by others.
• In-depth ‘casebook’ studies of two of his productions: Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People (2012) and Shakespeare’s Richard III (2015)
• Contributions from Ostermeier’s actors and his closest collaborators to show how his principles are put into practice.
An extraordinary, richly illustrated insight into Ostermeier’s working methods, this volume will be of interest to practitioners and scholars of contemporary European theatre alike.
‘Almost the only question we ask of any piece of theatre is: Is it alive? Thomas Ostermeier’s theatre absolutely is. Alongside his ‘social vision’ of the exterior world is also a profound musicality, which leaps past logic to another deeper human truth. The wordless, the un-sayable, the unreasonable and the instinctive and incidental is always there in his work. There is a poetic dimension which, by definition, cannot be defined by any book. So don’t look for answers. Here, perhaps, in this book is a description of a journey that is as much a kind of self-interrogation as the revelation of a “method” ’. (Simon McBurney OBE)

This publication was developed as part of the Make a Move – An Art Incubator for European non-institutionalised and independent theatre project and co-founded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. The Make a Move – An Art Incubator project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

The special issue of “Mise en Abyme” dedicated to the Make a Move project represents a complementary academic outcome to "Make a Move – An Art Incubator for Contemporary European Non-Institutionalised and Independent Theatre” (project co-funded by Creative Europe), with critical essays on excellence parameters and business model, case studies and specific focus, including a mapping section on festivals, markets, companies, training centres, and funding organization. The issue include contributions by Armando Rotondi, Valentina Temussi, Daria Lavrennikov, Eugen Păsăreanu, Raluca Blaga, Traian Penciuc, Freya Treutmann, Lyudmyla Honcharova.

The initiator and leader of the project is an arts organisation – Creative Laboratory of Contemporary Theatre KRILA from Rijeka, directed by Ivana Peranić. The main partners of the project are the Galway Theatre Festival (Ireland), the Institute of Arts Barcelona (Spain), the University of Arts Târgu-Mureș (Romania). The associate partners are ACTS (Oslo, Norway), MOVEO (Barcelona, Spain), Platform 88 (Montpellier, France), Poulpe Èlectrique (Arcueil, France), ToTum TeaTre (Barcelona, Spain) and Workinglifebalance Ltd. (Graz, Austria). The project has been co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, RIJEKA 2020 LLC, Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia, Kultura nova Foundation, City of Rijeka, Primorje-Gorski kotar County, Austrian Cultural Forum Zagreb, the European Capital of Culture Galway 2020, the Galway City Council, the Arts Council of Ireland, the Ajuntament de Sitges and the French Institute Barcelona. The Make a Move project has been developed under the European Capital of Culture programme – Rijeka 2020: Port of Diversity, project “Unreal Cities”.

In 2006 the premiere of Feridun Zaimoglu and Günter Senkel’s play Black Virgins (Schwarze Jungfrauen) became the first play by a Turkish-German writer to feature on the front cover of Germany’s influential theatre magazine, Theater heute (Theatre Today). Black Virgins consists of interview-based monologues of Muslim women reworked into Zaimoglu’s “artistic language” and has generally been received as “semi-documentary theatre.” However, the director of the premiere, Neco Çelik, claims that Black Virgins “should not be read in a documentary [...] manner.” This is reflected in the use of references to science fiction films, particularly Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of A Third Kind, in Çelik’s use of sound, costume and mise-en-scène.  Drawing on personal interviews with Çelik and Zaimoglu, as well as reviews, scripts and a video-recording of the premiere production, this article will explore the ways in which the intertextual, intermedial and transnational references to science fiction present in the premiere of Black Virgins provide a new mode of understanding this landmark production. It will argue that close attention to Çelik’s non-documentary articulation of Black Virgins can be used not only to shed new light on the play’s reception, but also to frame audiences’ “close encounter” with the Muslim woman in unexpected ways.

This article was commissioned by the UTE (Union des Théatres de l'Europe) in the frame of the three-year project Conflict Zones and has been published on the website http://conflict-zones.reviews/. The attached file contains the introduction, the index an excerpt of the first chapter. The complete article can be read on the free website http://conflict-zones.reviews/.

This work aims at drawing an overview of the contemporary performing arts system in Italy. A short note is necessary to introduce the reader to the functioning of the section – which tries to exploit the web potentiality at its best – but, most of all, to explain how and why a hyper-textual structure is more than ever cut out for the Italian present environment. Even though the nature of this issue (to which an agile and highly readable language is requested) cannot confide in creating a thorough and executive summary of the whole spectrum, the author's point of view is that a dynamic and compound collection of small focuses has the chance to mirror the Italian system more faithfully than a single long essay. Such belief stems from an eight-year journalistic/critical experience that revealed the Italian stage arts landscape as a very fragmented organism in which the territorial diversity, mostly characterized by sensible economical differences, creates a plurality of production/circulation opportunities that goes hand in hand with the local environment.
As can be seen in the map of the section, one focus is sometimes generated by another and the focus itself originates a further one in a complex net of relations and interdependence, a lively system that is currently facing an evident shift and, yes, shows a fundamental ability to preserve its creative attitude. Cultural Policy and Theatre Practice, for example, are tightly connected; one necessarily determines the other, and the latter gives birth to peculiar Aesthetics, with related trends and a specific appeal on the audience, which in fact can influence (or at least interacts with) the Cultural Policy.
A final point must be brought up. The situation described in the present section was written in February and March 2015. In those months the whole state support system was undergoing a deep change (a short account is offered in the Theatres Structure paragraph) which still needs to be tested and processed by the system actors. In other words, at the present time the global organization of public money for the Italian performing arts scene is reshaping in a new order which is going to affect the balance between the public and private structure in the most unpredictable way.
This is why we chose to add an "S" at the end of the word "Theatre".

A History of Collective Creation examines collective and devised theatre practices in Europe and North America, beginning in 1900. Long associated with U.S., British and French theatre collectives of the 1960s, collective creation in fact has its roots in the theatrical experiments of the early 20th century, emerging just after the rise of the modern director.  Tracing a lineage from explorations of collective creation in the work of Meyerhold, Stanislavsky, Copeau, St. Denis, Piscator, Reduta, Grotowski, and early documentary theatre, through mid-century manifestations as a theatrical expression of the New Left, A History of Collective Creation proposes that collective creation played a pivotal role in the evolution of the modern theatre.

This thesis is an analysis of the theatre work directed by Ramin Gray, Artistic Director of ATC (Actors Touring Company), from 2010 to 2015. It has been informed by my privileged position as ethnographer within the company as part of an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award project. In the thesis, I argue that Gray’s work explores questions of how we might negotiate living within contemporary, diverse communities, particularly in the light of recent scholarly critiques of community, and contemporary British debates about identity, migration, and community. The narratives and dramaturgies of ATC’s productions during this period draw attention to what Chantal Mouffe has called the ‘democratic paradox’, whereby liberal drives towards inclusivity and plurality are held in tension with democratic drives towards unity and consensus. Gray’s work for ATC stages this paradox as politically productive, exposing it in all its discomfort, rather than as something to be repressed or eliminated. I use theoretical frameworks by Theodor Adorno, Maurice Blanchot, Chantal Mouffe, Jean-Luc Nancy and Richard Sennett, particularly Mouffe’s ‘agonistic democracy’ and Sennett’s concept of the ‘dialogic’, to support my account of how ATC’s theatre has interrogated the concept of community.

I examine three major productions where the tension between multiple voices and consensus has emerged in different ways, as Gray’s relationship with the company has evolved. This evolution has been observed in rehearsal, in production, and through my access to company personnel, meetings and archives. The productions are: The Golden Dragon by Roland Schimmeplfennig; a double bill of Crave by Sarah Kane and Illusions by Ivan Viripaev; and The Events by David Greig. I describe how ATC’s dramaturgical structures make explicit a link between the paradox of the individual’s relationship to the larger community and tensions pertaining to the role of the spectator in the larger theatre audience. In seeking to create this tension affectively within the body of the spectator, often creating unease or embarrassment, Gray’s work foregrounds the paradox physically as well as intellectually, a practice which I argue is fundamental to his work for ATC.

This thesis suggests that contemporary debates around the term community are overlooked in much current scholarship on contemporary political theatre, and that theories of community can make a significant critical intervention in scholarship in this field. It offers a new exploration of the work that contemporary theatre and the theatre director can do to discuss, trouble and embody the concept of community.

https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.826514

Resumen: El propósito de este artículo es revisar Proteo de Monterde (1983) desde la alteridad. Esta obra es un cruce de caminos en diversos sentidos: es un acuerdo entre la búsqueda formal, que toma como modelo al teatro europeo, en la que incursionan los Contempo-ráneos y también el teatro de Bustillo Oro y Magdaleno. También lo hacemos porque representa los esfuerzos del grupo de la Comedia mexicana, que tiene, en cuanto al nú-mero de autores que participaron en ella-entre ellos Monterde-, una representatividad que aún espera una segunda revisión, luego de la manera rápida en que muchas de estas obras fueron descartadas por las corrientes más nacionalistas en la época.

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to revise, from the otherness, the work of Monteverde, Proteo (1983), because it is a crossroads in many ways: it is an agreement between the formal quest that takes the European theater as a model, in which the Contemporaries make incursion into, and also the Bustillo Oro and Magdaleno's theater. We also do it because it represents the efforts of the Comedia mexicana group, that has in the number of authors involved-Monteverde among them-a representativity still waiting for a second check, after the quick way in which many of these plays were rejected by the most nationalist trends of that time.

Die Schauspielmusik fristet seit jeher ein Schattendasein in der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung und in der Theater- und Musikwissenschaft. Dabei hat gerade die Digitalisierung der Produktionsmittel und die Erweiterung der Spiel- und Darstellungsformen und Dramaturgien im Zuge postdramatischen Theaters zu einer besonders großen Vielfalt an Erscheinungsformen von Schauspielmusik geführt. Der vorliegende Artikel versucht – trotz der Disparatheit der Arbeitsweisen, Funktionen und Ästhetiken von Schauspielmusik heute – eine Standortbestimmung und Charakterisierung einiger hervorstechender Tendenzen in dieser zumeist marginalisierten Kunstform.

This research investigates the practice of fencing by the actor in western theatre and performance, and explores whether fencing can be adapted for use as actor training. The interpretations of the techniques of the sword in the context of the theatre of the West will be discussed to contextualise the different ways fencing has been used in theatre. Attention is given to the pedagogy and training of fencing so that technical differences and similarities to the work of actors can be observed. A discussion of an exercise I designed from fencing supports the analysis. Accordingly, an important aspect of the research is practice-based involving various sessions. Three aspects characterise the research: (1) the elaboration of theoretical parameters which frame the analysis of the sword as actor training, (2) a way of practical work for the actor, and (3) a discussion on the application of this research to the field of performance.

Dans la littérature européenne, il y a toute une lignée de la «folie» ambigüe, parfois lucide, censée de révéler la vérité, de faire justice, de corriger le réel. C'est la «folie» de Hamlet, du pirandellien Enrico IV, d'Alonso Quijano auto-proclamé Don Quichotte. Sous le masque, de tels héros agissent afin d'améliorer l'ordre moral du monde, et d'en tirer au jour une vérité essentielle, jalousement cachée ou malheureusement oubliée. Motif littéraire aux origines beaucoup plus anciennes que le Baroque qui l'a consacré, el gran teatro del mundo croise ainsi l'auto-fiction du fou, le plus lucide y compris, tel qu'en témoignent l'oeuvre de Shakespeare, de Cervantes, de Pirandello, et jusqu'à un certain point, de I.L. Caragiale. Chez ce dernier, il y a  tout un monde à l’envers, qui, à quelques exceptions près, reste comme tel après la fin du texte; l'anarchie d'une fête des fous s'y installe à la longue. Les personnages de I.L. Caragiale défient, presque tous, soit moralement «le raisonnable», soit pathologiquement «la rationalité». Le comique y découle non seulement «du mécanique plaqué sur le vivant», mais aussi d'un soupçon de folie «plaquée» sur la raison. Notre approche est donc une relecture de la dramaturgie de I.L. Caragiale, dans la perspective d'une archéologie de l'imaginaire, plus précisément d'une (arché)typologie de la folie comme dérapage ou (prémisse de) réparation, telle que l'a déjà consacrée une longue histoire des mentalités européennes.
Mots-clés: «monde à l’envers», «nef des fous» (stultifera navis), (dé)raisonnable, el gran teatro del mundo, I.L. Caragiale, Michel Foucault, Năpasta [Le Malheur], D'ale carnavalului [Du carnaval], O scrisoare pierdută [Une lettre perdue].

This essay investigates the use of space in the Italian New Spectacularity of the early 1980s; in particular, it takes as its subject some of the early productions of two companies, La Gaia Scienza (Rome) and Falso Movimento (Naples). In these works the use of theatrical space creates an “inhabitable image”—an image invested in continuously illuminating and crossing between the properties of two- and three-dimensionality, between the properties of real and unreal space. In analyzing these works, the essay explores the resonances between the inhabitable image and the languages of site-specific, intermedial, and immersive practices. It then threads the concept of inhabitability through Fredric Jameson’s views on postmodern spatialization, and asks whether these performances could be seen as taking creative advantage of what he describes as a “bewilderment” of the spectator. It concludes with some hypotheses regarding the utopian impulse behind the inhabitable image: the transformed space of the theatre is likened to similar transformations in architecture to wonder whether, although in both fields certain experiments were regarded as fanciful, they were expressions of a kind of utopian thought which, however soft or weak, may still hold political potential.

Spiros S. Toulios

Patriotism and Narration in the Greek Shadow Theatre of Karagkiozis. The Case of Lambros Tzavellas

The paper discusses relations between two Karagkiozis plays in manuscripts, "The Tzavellians", written by Apostolos Karastergiopoulos in 1930, and "The Tzavellians and Ali Pasha", written by Vasilios Andrikopoulos in 1974. The chronological distance between the two manuscripts inhibits the research but, simultaneously, poses a challenge for the researcher. Their common element is the Ali Pasha’s deceit in order to subdue the Souliotes, a tribe in the area of Epiros. The juxtaposition of the texts leads to the conjecture of shifting of the level of the patriotism, arousing interest of understanding the core feature of a whole era; besides, their ideological viewpoints may not be considered as norms of heroic plays in this period. Nevertheless, they contain both the author’s estimation of the audience’s beliefs and his intention to conform with its expectations.
        The gradual modifications of the Karagkiozis shadow theatre play "The Tzavellians" fit into the contrast between the Great Idea’s ghost in the Interwar period and the post-War people’s need of laughter, a demand which was not less crucial in the economically and socially troubled Ιnterwar period. Furthermore, both versions incorporate signs of the so-called genius loci. The Tzavellians and the corresponding performances are not characterized by the intensity of a nationalistic Zeitgeist, but they depend on the artistically spontaneous expression of the tradition of a pure patriotism; although, it is not unlikely that nationalistic tendencies of the 20th century get this kind of patriotism as a chance of their enforcement in society.

This short article (part of an extensive Dossier) deals with the implicit, unrecognised but important relationship between “mainstream” theatre  (prose theatre) and “secondary” theatre (variety shows, cafés chantants, reviews, and even theatre in dialect) in Italy; the viewpoints of the spectators, and the thought spread during Fascism.

Questo breve articolo (parte di un ampio Dossier) riguarda l’implicita non riconosciuta ma importante relazione tra il teatro “maggiore” (cioè il teatro di prosa) e il teatro “minore” (varietà, café chantant, riviste, e perfino teatro dialettale), il punto di vista su di essi degli spettatori, del pensiero diffuso durante il fascismo.

Le théâtre d’histoire immédiate met en scène les guerres de religion et de conquêtes coloniales, les luttes politiques de succession, les faits divers liés à la captivité, la piraterie ou la sorcellerie. Il ne livre pas une simple imitation des faits et des chroniques, mais fournit une interprétation de l’écriture de l’histoire et une réflexion sur la fictionnalité du réel. Cette herméneutique de l’histoire se double d’enjeux anthropologiques : la construction de personnages forgeant leur destinée en marge de l’histoire collective, ou de figures minorées, tels les Indiens et les sorcières, met au jour de nouveaux processus d’individuation. Ce théâtre du réel se dégage du document pour problématiser les fractures de la première modernité.

Sommaire: https://classiques-garnier.com/le-theatre-de-l-interpretation-l-histoire-immediate-en-scene-table-des-matieres.html?displaymode=full

The paper focuses on how theatrical intermediality builds an in-between mediality by questioning the binary opposition of absence and presence in contemporary theatre. A recent production by the German-British collective Gob Squad, " Gob Squad's Kitchen " (" You've Never Had It So Good ") stages the medium of film and highlights the creation of various narratives by both the spectators and the performers. Inspired by the figure and work of Andy Warhol, Gob Squad's piece playfully reflects on the notions of role acting, presence and recreation. In addition , through the act of remediation, by integrating the techniques of film into theatre and diminishing its medial transparency, the production foregrounds the utopia of presentation and representation at the same time.

Original music for Reynolds' lyrics was written and produced by Michael Hooker.

Inspired by Georg Büchner’s famous 19th-century play Woyeck, and combining typically distinct theatrical styles, from satiric comedy to abstract expressionism to musical surrealism, Blue Shade is about a young mafioso from Brooklyn, Joey Mazzoni, who, as a distraction from trying to deal with his too-hot-to-handle wife and the inhumane demands of “the business,” overindulges in today’s freaky fast-track self-help ethos on which daytime talk shows and the pharmaceutical industry thrive. In Blue Shade civilization risks absolute explanation through the all-too sobering ingestion of a breakthrough drug that inspires a logic necessary to create order out of chaos in a warped economy where the means supersede the ends. Whereas making sense is privileged in this sexy, double-edged world on-the-loose, Joey’s enlightenment may not be just what the doctor ordered.

Director & Playwright, Blue Shade, Transversal Theater project:

• Severins-Burg-Theater, Köln, Germany, May 2010.
• HIGH FEST, International Performing Arts Festival, Yerevan, Armenia, October 2009.
• U-Theater Studio T, Utrecht University, Netherlands, September 2009.
• Amsterdam Fringe Festival (TF2), part of Dutch and Flemish National Theater Festival (TF1), Rozentheater, September 2009.

Playwright, Umbra albastră (Blue Shade), Dir. Răzvan Mureşan, The National Theatre, Lucian Blaga, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 2008 (in repertory).

Playwright, Umbra albastră (Blue Shade), Dir. Răzvan Mureşan, Romanian National Theater, Bucharest, 18th Annual National Theater Festival, November 2008.

Playwright, Umbra albastră (Blue Shade), Dir. Răzvan Mureşan, Teatrul Tineretului, 23rd Annual Festival of Theater at Piatra Neamţ, Romania, October 2008.

Playwright, Umbra albastră (Blue Shade), Dir. Răzvan Mureşan, Romanian language premiere, The National Theatre, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, April 2008.

Playwright, Blue Shade, Dir. Robert Cohen, Transversal Theater project:

• National Theatre Festival, Teatrul Mic, Bucharest, Romania, November 2007.
• Teatr Lalek, Wrocław, Poland, June 2007.
• Teatr Modjeska, Legnica, Poland, June 2007.
• Teatr 77, Łódź, Poland, May 2007.
• Divadlo DISK, Academy of Performing Arts (DAMU), Prague, Czech Republic, May 2007.
• Little Theatre, UC Irvine, May 2007.

Writing in 1853, Gábor Egressy, one of the leading actor-directors of the Hungarian-speaking National Theatre in Pest-Buda (Budapest), observed that representatives of different nations were appearing in increasing number on and off the stages of the major cities of Eastern Europe: Today not only ideas fly on lightning wings, but humankind as well. Quick and easy as well as cheap travel has mobilized humankind and created worldwide and constant migration. Now, we do not have to leave our place to see the people of the faraway world of whom, so far, we have had merely vague ideas through rumors and fairy tales: rather these people visit us in our home. From every part of the world, fantastically colorful groups proceed from time to time before our eyes. Whatever is pleasant, great, and fine on Earth, all visit us. Groups of Italians, French, Negroes, and English are coming here and offering the divine products of their homelands.Egressy shared this observation with readers when the b...

This article is concerned with the European public theatre system’s relationship with migration. Focusing on the Portuguese theatre landscape and especially Lisbon, the essay will map some of the major issues regarding theatre and migration today, identifying both systemic failures and structural and aesthetic shifts in the public theatres’ engagement with migrant communities. Contemporary performative approaches will be surveyed with a special emphasis on initiatives that go against crisis narratives and position migration as a structural component of society rather than a temporary challenge. The article proposes a shift from aesthesized theatre practices towards activist aesthetics, a politically responsive, participatory and durational practice that would not only introduce counter narratives on migration, but it would be instrumental in re-thinking our national cultural, literary and theatrical canons.

As European theatre directors become a familiar presence on international stages and a new generation of theatre makers absorbs their impulses, this study develops fresh perspectives on Regie, the Continental European tradition of staging playtexts. Leaving behind unhelpful clichés that pit, above all, the director against the playwright, Peter M. Boenisch stages playful encounters between Continental theatre and Continental philosophy.

The contemporary Regie work of Thomas Ostermeier, Frank Castorf, Ivo van Hove, Guy Cassiers, tg STAN, and others, here meets the works of Friedrich Schiller and Leopold Jessner, Hegelian speculative dialectics, and the critical philosophy of Jacques Rancière and Slavoj Žižek in order to explore the thinking of Regie – how to think Regie, and how Regie thinks. This partial and ‘sideways look’ invites a wider reconsideration of the potential of ‘playing’ theatre today, of its aesthetic possibilities, and its political stakes in the global neoliberal economy of the twenty-first century.

'We all have difficulty understanding the differences between directing, staging, devising, performing, or between performance and mise en scène. Peter Boenisch’s new book on Regie discusses how contemporary theatre-makers engage with plays, materials or events that they want to 'put on stage'. As theatre-goers are themselves more and more expected to 'stage' their own impressions and insights, this is a most timely and necessary book for anyone interested in contemporary European theatre.'
Patrice Pavis, Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Kent

Contents:
Preface. The dissensus of Regie: Re-thinking “directors’ theatre”I. Mise en scène to mise en sens: Towards an aesthetic politics of Regie
1. Regie beyond representation: Directing the ‘sensible’
2. The restless spirit of Regie: Hegel, theatrality, and the magic of speculative thinking
3. Theatre as dialectic institution: Friedrich Schiller and the liberty of play
4. The essence of the text and its actualisation: Leopold Jessner, the playwright’s radical servant
II. The theatral appearing of ideas: Regie in contemporary European theatre
5. The tremor of speculative negation: On Regie, truth, and ex-position
6. Seeing what is coming: On Regie, playing, and appearing
7. The intermedial parallax: On Regie, media, and spectating
8. Theatre in the age of semiocapitalism: On Regie, realism, and political critique
Afterthought: The future of Regie?

This chapter investigates the work of two Italian dramatists, actors and directors, Emma Dante and Fausto Paravidino. Since the early 2000s, when their careers began, Dante and Paravidino have both enjoyed considerable national and international acclaim, but the mode in which spectators have experienced their work abroad has been significantly different: while Paravidino’s plays have been translated into foreign languages and staged with local casts, Dante’s productions have toured untranslated, with their original Italian performers, mostly accompanied by surtitles. Both authors also routinely direct, and sometimes perform in, their own scripts, following that distinctively Italian tradition that has more often produced actor-authors than ‘pure’ playwrights. Paravidino is one of very few living Italian dramatists to be known in Britain, thanks to his work with London’s National and Royal Court Theatres. His plays have been seen throughout Europe and beyond and have been translated ...

An account of the genre of farce (physical comedy) and analysis of its typical structures and techniques.  This 2003 edition is twice as long as the original edition of 1978 (text included) with a substantial new Introduction updating both the approach and examples discussed, taking account of developments in western theatre during the intervening years. For access to part of the book, click on the link below, or contact the author for full-text.

"No major dramatist confronted with American culture - a genre in itself and a must for French artists and playwrights—has escaped Essif's precise but global, gentle but witty, generous but severe radar."  - Patrice Pavis (University of Kent, UK) in his Foreword

Description:
Representation of American characters and spaces in French plays have increased dramatically in number, nature and nuance since the 1960s, and this book explores the role that 'America' plays in the French imagination, as it translates on the French stage. The book begins with an introduction that brings together a rich variety of Western cultural scholarship, including Baudrillard's concepts of American 'unculture' and 'hyperreality,' Debray's 'homo americanus,' and Eagleton's distinction between a dialectical culture and an undialectical one. The following four chapters are organized according to the dominant theme of each of the plays: America as a hyperreal western frontier; homo americanus and war and violence; Americano-global business; and America as spectacle and counter-communal. The book examines how a range of prominent post-1960 French playwrights (such as Gatti, Benedetto, Cixous and Vinaver) represent an American 'unculture' - a mass US culture of capitalist consumerism, image, spectacle and international imperialism - and offers a valuable comparative study of American and French contemporary society and culture.

Contents:
Acknowledgments
List of Illustrations
Introduction: Part 1
Introduction: Part 2
1: The Hyperreality Of The Western Frontier
2: Homo Americanus War And Violence
3: The Totalitarian Non-Tragedy Of Americano-Global Business
4: The (Supra-)Global Spectacle Of American (Non-)Community
Conclusion: Blob, Screen, And Corn: Final Figures of the Homo Americanus Hyperreal
Notes
Works Cited
Index

Author: Les Essif is the author of 'Empty Figure on an Empty Stage', 'The French Play', and numerous essays on French theatre and theories of drama and performance. He is currently a professor of French Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA.