The auto-ethnographic components and analyses in this book are shaped by projects that I have used a variety of terms to name: Community Theatre, Theatre for Social Change, Applied Theatre, Social Theatre, and Political Theatre. While I acknowledge that each of these terms comes with its own histories and complications, the issue of nomenclature is not one that I enga…
Exploring the legitimate scope and space for theatre in a conflict zone like Kashmir is an extremely uphill task. It involves many social, cultural, religious, political and economic challenges, and above all, the risk to one’s life, property and reputation. Jammu and Kashmir have been a bone of contention since 1947, when this Subcontinent was divided…
In his introduction to Irish Drama and Theatre since 1950 (2019), Patrick Lonergan outlines the genealogy of the #WakingTheFeminists movement, which began as a contestation of how the Abbey’s 2016 Waking the Nation programme marginalised female playwrights and directors, but quickly expanded to raise awareness about the precarious position of women in …
4|Kai Tuchmannartists are represented by a transcription of their opening lecture (together with a video link) and a script of a performance piece that is representative of their approach. It is essential to be aware that the latter are not classical drama texts and that they thus only acquire their actual function when performed. By making these lectures public, I wish to provide…
The arcades linking downtown Cairo’s boulevards were dotted with sidewalk cafés serving tea, coffee, and shisha, as well as air- conditioned bars where muthaqqafin (the cultured class) met to gossip about art and politics. The Grillon bar was a social institution among state television journalists and employees of the public arts sector, its bow- t…
Renaissance Fun is about the technology of Renaissance entertainments in stage machinery and theatrical special effects; in gardens and fountains; and in the automata and self-playing musical instruments that were installed in garden grottoes. How did the machines behind these shows work? How exactly were chariots filled with singers let down onto the stage? How were flaming dragons made to fly…