Marking the 50th anniversary of one of the world's leading theatre companies, this book collects six of its most impactful plays together in one volume for the first time.Druid Theatre is Ireland's leading theatre company. Since their origin in 1975 they have surprised, delighted, and inspired audiences worldwide, touring from their home city of Galway in the west of Ireland to countless other locations nationally and internationally. Under the leadership of Garry ...

This is the first full-length exploration of the work of Laura Wade, providing critical and performance perspectives on one of the UK's most frequently staged female playwrights.Laura Wade is one of the most exciting, challenging and commercially successful playwrights in the UK. Her work has been widely translated and performed across the globe, but despite the prolific appearance of her plays on professional stages, in university studios and school classrooms, sh...

This fully illustrated and authorised history marks fifty years of one of Ireland's most ground-breaking and successful theatrical ensembles. Founded in 1975, Druid is a touring theatre company, anchored in the West of Ireland and looking to the world.Druid began as a bold idea: to create Ireland's first professional theatre company outside of Dublin. There were few resources with which to achieve such an undertaking in the West of Ireland in 1975. Through sheer dedication, and wit...

Verse drama is not a dead form, but very much alive on the contemporary stage. Drawing on plays from throughout the English-speaking world, including the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, and the Caribbean, Staging the Lyric seeks to explain the 21st-century resurgence of Anglophone verse drama, tracing it back to an experimental impulse that is present in the modernist verse drama of a century ago.Covering major writers including Derek Walcott, Seam...

How does theatre, one of the most ancient and physical arts, relate to the modern, dynamic technology that is social media? How have changes in the use of social media affected the theatre? How does social media itself operate as a performance space?Used daily by many, social media has become one of the main mediums through which we present and perform our lives. In this concise study of the revealing relationship between theatre and social media, Patrick L...

In the first book-length study of Annie Baker, one of the most critically acclaimed playwrights in the United States today and winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a MacArthur “genius” grant, Amy Muse analyzes Baker's plays and other work. These include The Flick, John, The Antipodes, the Shirley Vermont plays, and her adaptation of Uncle Vanya. Muse illuminates their intellectual and ethical themes and issues by contextualizing them with the ot...

In this volume, Lee Brewer Jones examines Paula Vogel as both a playwright and renowned teacher, analyzing texts and early reviews of Vogel's major plays-including Indecent, Desdemona, How I Learned to Drive,and The Baltimore Waltz-before turning attention to her influence upon other major American playwrights, including Sarah Ruhl, Lynn Nottage, and Quiara Alegría Hudes. Chapters explore Vogel's plays in chronological order, consider her early ...

This Element argues that the climate emergency requires a new approach to the study of theatre history – a suggestion that is developed through an analysis of the practice of theatrical revival during the Anthropocene era. Staging old plays in new ways can make visible ecological or environmental features that might have previously gone unnoticed: features which, in some cases, might not have been consciously included by the original authors or makers of a work, but which will be detectabl...

Middle Eastern American Theatre explores the burgeoning Middle Eastern American theatre movement with a focus on Arab American, Jewish American, Armenian American, Iranian American, and Turkish American theatres, playwrights, directors, and actors. By exploring the rich religious and cultural heritage of this diverse group - which includes Arabs, Armenians, Iranians, Jews, and Turks - and religions that include the Baha'i faith, Christianity, Chaldean, Druze, Ishik Alevism, Judais...

Celebrating the work of one of Ireland's most daring theatre companies, this anthology gathers five plays by established and emerging playwrights. They include vibrant new adaptations of the world classics Peer Gynt and Phaedra alongside vital new dramas that explore issues of urgent contemporary concern, such as sex and sexuality, emigration and climate change. With contributions from Hilary Fannin and Ellen Cranitch, Arthur Riordan, Sonya Kelly, Morna Regan, and Shane M...

Obscured behind concrete and razor wire, the lives of the incarcerated remain hidden from public view. Inside the walls, imprisoned people all over the world stage theatrical productions that enable them to assert their humanity and capabilities. Prison Theatre and the Global Crisis of Incarceration offers a uniquely international account and exploration of prison theatre. By discussing a range of performance practices tied to incarceration, this book examines the ways in which arts practi...

The Theatre of Christopher Durang considers the works of one of the foremost comedic writers for the American stage. From Durang's early success with the controversial Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You (1974) to his recent Tony Award-winning play, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (2012), he has been an original theatrical voice in American theatre. Edith Oliver, long-time theatre critic for The New Yorker, described Durang as “one of the fu...