The latest collection of Barker's philosophical musings on theatre, this volume includes speculations, deductions, prose poems & poetic apercus, which cast a unique light on the nature of tragedy, eroticism, love & theatre.

Director-dramatist Howard Barker is a restlessly prolific, compulsively controversial and provocative multi-media artist. Beyond his internationally performed and acclaimed theatrical productions, and his award-winning theatre company The Wrestling School, he is also a poet, a painter whose work has been exhibited internationally, and a philosophical essayist cognisant of the unique power of art to provoke moral speculation, and of the distinctive theatricality of the human being in times of crisis. This collection of essays provides international perspectives on the full range of Barker’s achievements, theatrical and otherwise, and argues for their unique importance and urgency at the forefront of several genres of provocative modern art. It includes an interview with the artist and an essay by Barker himself.

A practical guide to using theatre games for actor training which includes a DVD with original footage of the author putting the techniques into action.

Fifteen essays on the style, language and vision of one of Britain’s most influential and controversial playwrights. Focusing on different aspects of what Barker has called the Theatre of Catastrophe, an international range of academics offer illuminating interpretations of his work. Includes analyses of the political, moral and historical aspects of his writing, its poetry and eroticism, its depiction of the figure of the artist, and Barker’s writing in performance. Includes contributions from Elisabeth Angel-Perez, Mary Karen Dahl, Helen Iball, Christine Kiehl, Charles Lamb, Chris Megson, Roger Owen, Dan Rebellato, James Reynolds, Elizabeth Sakellaridou, Andy Smith, Liz Tomlin, Heiner Zimmerman.

Drama. Barker's recent work, now firmly part of the international repertoire, is characterized by an ever deepening investment in language and metaphor; a poet of the stage, his texts resonate at many levels of the European cultural past and illuminate its present. The plays in this volume review the roles of two legendary women in fiction--Gertrude, Hamlet's mother and Snow White's Wicked Stepmother--placing them at centre stage and offering a fresh interpretation of their attitudes and actions.

Howard Barker, author of over thirty plays, has long been an implacable foe of the liberal British establishment, and champion of radical theatre world-wide. His best-known plays include The Castle, Scenes from an Execution and The Possibilities. All of his plays are emotionally highly charged, intellectually stimulating and far removed from the theatrical conventions of what he terms 'the Establishment Theatre'. These fragments, essays, thoughts and poems on the nature of theatre likewise reject the constraints of 'objective' academic theatre criticism. They explore the collision (and collusion) of intellect and artistry in the creative act. This book is more than a collection of essays: it is a cultural manifesto for Barker's own 'Theatre of Catastrophe'.