Bücher der Reihe Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History

In Sex, Class and the Theatrical Archive: Erotic Economies, Alan Sikes explores the intersection of struggles over sex and class identities in politicized performances during key revolutionary moments in modern European history.

In the first book-length study of the work and legacy of West End actor-manager George Alexander since the 1930s, George Alexander and the Work of the Actor Manager examines the key part this figure played in presenting new drama by authors including Oscar Wilde and Henry James.

This book argues that African American theatre in the twentieth century represented a cultural front of the civil rights movement.

Examining twenty-five years of theatre history, this book covers the major plays that feature representations of the Industrial Workers of the World. American class movement and class divisions have long been reflected on the Broadway stage and here Michael Schwartz presents a fresh look at the conflict between labor and capital.

Through an examination of plays, actors, reviews, and audience response of the period, this study traces the development of Broadway as a source of 'mature' American drama, and the simultaneous development of Professional-Managerial Class consciousness and habitus.

This book investigates how the British theatrical community offered an alternative and oppositional historical narrative to the heritage culture promulgated by the Thatcher and Major Governments in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Focusing on Glasgow's earliest surviving music hall, the Britannia, later the Panopticon, this book explores the role of one of the city's most iconic cultural venues within the cosmopolitan entertainment market that emerged in British cities in the nineteenth century.

This book recounts the personal and professional life of Thomas Souness Hamblin (1800-1853), Shakespearean actor and Bowery Theatre manager.

This book is the first study of popular theatre in France from left to right, exploring how theatre shapes political acts, ideals, and communities in the modern world.

2017 Freedley Award Finalist, Theatre Library Association2016 Best Circus Book of the Year, Stuart Thayer Prize, Circus Historical SocietyThe 1960s American hippie-clown boom fostered many creative impulses, including neo-vaudeville and Ringling's Clown College.

In this book, Shannon Rose Riley provides a critically rich investigation of representations of Cuba and Haiti in US culture in order to analyze their significance not only to the emergence of empire but especially to the reconfiguration of US racial structures along increasingly biracial lines.

The book reveals how the fantastic is used in modern theatre as a manipulative device to encode the unspeakable and control audience response, challenging conventional readings of all authors who use the fantastic.

Rogue Performances recovers eighteenth and nineteenth-century American culture s fascination with outcast and rebellious characters. Through analysis of both well known and lesser known plays and extensive archival research, this book challenges scholars to re-think their assumptions about the role of class in antebellum American drama.

Twenty years after Tony Kushner's influential Angels in America seemed to declare a revitalized potency for the popular political play, there is a "No Politics" prejudice undermining US production and writing. This book explores the largely unrecognized cultural patterns that discourage political playwriting on the contemporary American stage.

The Cleveland Play House has mirrored the achievements and struggles of both the city of Cleveland and the American theatre over the past one hundred years. This book challenges the established history (often put forward by the theatre itself) and long-held assumptions concerning the creation of the institution and its legacy.

By tracing the effects of unprecedented immigration, the advent of the new woman, and the little-known vaudeville careers of performers like the Elinore Sisters, Buster Keaton, and the Marx Brothers, DesRochers examines the relation between comedic vaudeville acts and progressive reformers as they fought over the new definition of "Americanness."

Theatre and Religion on Krishna s Stage examines the history and form of India's ras lila folk theatre, and discusses how this theatre functions as a mechanism of worship and spirituality among Krishna devotees in India.

The Group Theatre , a groundbreaking ensemble collective, started the careers of many top American theatre artists of the twentieth century and founded what became known as Method Acting. This book is the definitive history, based on over thirty years of research and interviews by the foremost theatre scholar of the time period, Helen Chinoy.

Mendel's Theatre offers a new way of thinking about early twentieth-century American drama by uncovering the rich convergence of heredity theory, the American eugenics movement, and innovative modern drama from the 1890s to 1930.

As outdoor entertainment venues in American cities, pleasure gardens were public spaces where people could explore what it meant to be American. Stubbs examines how these venues helped form American identity and argues the gardens allowed for the exploration of what it meant to be American through performance, both on and off the stage.

There is a complex relationship between performance, youth, and the shifting material circumstances (social, cultural, economic, ideological, and political) under which theatre for children and youth is generated and perceived. This book explores different aspect of theatre for young audiences using examples from theatrical events globally.

Danjuro ' s Girls is a fascinating history of Japan's female kabuki troupes, offering a penetrating investigation into three generations of kabuki actresses associated with the renowned Ichikawa Danjuro acting dynasty.

Plunka argues that drama is the ideal art form to revitalize the collective memory of Holocaust resistance. This comparative drama study examines a variety of international plays - some quite well-known, others more obscure - that focus on collective or individual defiance of the Nazis.

In studying performances of marriage in modern and contemporary British and American drama, Clum highlights the fact that - paradoxically - at a time when theatre was both popular entertainment and high culture, many of the most commercially and artistically successful plays about marriage were written by homosexual men.

Hijikata Tatsumi's explosive 1959 debut Forbidden Colors sparked a new genre of performance in Japan - butoh: an art form of contrasts, by turns shocking and serene.

The first book-length study in any language of the presence and influence of Mei Lanfang, the internationally known Chinese actor who specialized in female roles on the twentieth-century international stage. Tian investigates Mei Lanfang's presence and influence and the transnational and intercultural appropriations of his art.