The Edinburgh companion to Modernism in contemporary theatre / edited by Adrian Curtin [and three others].

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Curtin, Adrian, 1980- editor.

Series:

Edinburgh companions to literature and the humanities.

Edinburgh companions to literature and the humanities

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Drama--20th century--History and criticism.

Drama.

Drama--21st century--History and criticism.

Modernism (Literature).

Theater.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 462 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, 2023.

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Instead of treating modernism principally as a thing of the past, this volume highlights modernism as an impulse that can be carried forward to the present, re-embodied and re-encountered in theatrical performance. It demonstrates how modernist impulses spark contemporary theatre in electric and dynamic ways, continuing the modernist imperative to 'make it new' and to engage meaningfully with the complicated situation of living in the contemporary world. Through a diverse set of contributions from scholars and theatre practitioners, this book examines the legacy of modernism on the world stage in acts of remembrance, restaging, transmission and slippage. It investigates both well-known and less familiar aspects of modernist theatre history, engaging topics such as the revival of the first Black American musical, feminist and disability-led reinterpretations of canonical modernist plays, the use of modernist-inspired performance practice in contemporary university arts education and the continually contested meaning and importance of the avant-garde.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

(anti-)capitalsism: a manifesto

Introduction: Sensing Modernism in Theatre

Part I: Remembrance and Reconfiguration

1. Introduction: Playing with the Past, Attending to the 'Lost'

2. 'The Right to Revolution': Ernst Toller's Legacy on the British Stage

3. Legacy, Embodiment, Activism: Pageant of Agitating Women

4. Modernist Nostalgia and Contemporary Irish Dance

5. Reaching Out in Both Directions: Suffrage Theatre in the Twenty-First Century

6. Shuffle Along (1921) and the Challenges of Black Modernist Performance on the Contemporary Stage

7. 'Who Was This Woman?' A Conversation about Remembering Modernist Figures through the Body

8. An Ode to Black Women Modernists

Part II: Restaging Drama

9. Introduction: Acts of Translation, Reimagining and Creative Destruction

10. Restaging Futurism and Joan Brossa: Provocation or Observation with a Glass of Champagne or a Cup of Tea

11. Marguerite Duras's Theatre and the Boundaries of Modernism

12. The (Dead) Centre Cannot Hold: Ontological Insecurity in Chekhov's First Play

13. En-Staging Nora: Unruly Modernisms in Theodoros Terzopoulos's Nora

14. After and Against Strindberg: A Conversation about Missing Julie

15. 'A Voice She Did Not Recognise At First': Touretteshero's Neurodiverse Presentation of Samuel Beckett's Not I

16. Pushing the Boundaries: Staging Western Modern(ist) Drama in Contemporary China

Part III: Transmission

17. Introduction: (Im)material Legacies, Living Traditions

18. The Theatre of Tadashi Suzuki at the Crossroads of Modernism

19. Stanislavski on Skype

20. Raising Her Voice: Presenting the Lives and Writings of Virginia Woolf and Dame Ethel Smyth for a Contemporary Theatre Audience

21. Embodied Knowledge: A Brechtian Approach to Making Theatre with Young People

22. Appropriation, Abstraction and Appraisal: Modernist Legacies of Contemporary Dance

23. Shaw and the Early-Twentieth-Century British Regional Repertory Movement

24. 'Aquí no estamos en el teatro': Impossible Plays, Queer Ghosts and Haunted Practices

Part IV: Slippages

25. Introduction: How Movements Might Move

26. Ages of Arousal

27. 'Make the New Legible through Experimentation': A Conversation on the (Ongoing) Avant-Garde

28. Brecht as Slippage: Interrobang's Dialogues with Modernist Theatre Machines

29. 'What Could Be the Theatre of Contemporary Life?' A Conversation about the Work of Studio Oyuncuları, Istanbul

30. 'How Do We Make a Room in the Theatre?' A Conversation about Design for Pan Pan Theatre, Dublin

31. Samuel Beckett and Border Thinking

32. The Writing on the Wall Isn't There to Be Read: Unworking the Theatrical in the Figures of Adrienne Kennedy

Afterword

Event Scores (after fluxus)

Notes on Contributors

Index

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 14 Mar 2025).

ISBN:

1-4744-9505-2

OCLC:

1391443187