Irony and theatre share intimate kinships, not only regarding dramatic conflict, dialectic or wittiness, but also scenic structure and the verbal or situational ironies that typically mark theatrical speech and action. Yet irony today, in aesthetic, literary and philosophical contexts especially, is often regarded with skepticism - as ungraspable, or elusive to the point of confounding. Countering this tendency, William Storm advocates a wide-angle view of this master trope, exploring the ironic in major works by playwrights including Chekhov, Pirandello and Brecht, and in notable relation to well-known representative characters in drama from Ibsen's Halvard Solness to Stoppard's Septimus Hodge and Wasserstein's Heidi Holland. To the degree that irony is existential, its presence in the theatre relates directly to the circumstances and the expressiveness of the characters on stage. This study investigates how these key figures enact, embody, represent and personify the ironic in myriad situations in the modern and contemporary theatre.

In Collective Rage, the lives of five very different New York women named Betty collide at the intersection of anger, sex and “theat-ah.” As they meet, fall in love, rehearse, revel and rage, they realise that they've been stuck reading the same scripts for far too long. They all come from different backgrounds, and are bored or angry about different things, but the Betty's - each one numbered 1-5 - come together to rehearse a new version of Pyramus and Thisbe, the play within a play in A Midsummer Night's Dream. What follows are discoveries, transformations and raucous comedy. Hitting the ring with an electrifying soundtrack, looks to kill and spectacular routines, this outrageous comedy packs the punch to shatter lacquered femininity into a thousand glittering pieces. Strongly influenced by cabaret and female drag, this exquisite rejection of shame and stereotype will punch you in the gut, break your heart and then take you dancing. Collective Rage had its UK premiere at the Southwark Playhouse.

Tragic Play explores the deep philosophical significance of classic and modern tragedies in order to cast light on the tragic dimensions of contemporary experience. Romanticism, it has often been claimed, brought tragedy to an end, making modernity the age after tragedy. Christoph Menke opposes this modernist prejudice by arguing that tragedy remains alive in the present in the distinctively new form of the playful, ironic, and self-consciously performative. Through close readings of plays by William Shakespeare, Samuel Beckett, Heiner Müller, and Botho Strauss, Menke shows how tragedy re-emerges in modernity as "tragedy of play." In Hamlet, Endgame, Philoktet, and Ithaka, Menke integrates philosophical theory with critical readings to investigate shifting terms of judgment, curse, reversal, misfortune, and violence.

August Wilson's radical and provocative call to arms.

Early Modern Theatricality brings together some of the most innovative critics in the field to examine the many conventions that characterized early modern theatricality. It generates fresh possibilities for criticism, combining historical, formal, and philosophical questions, in order to provoke our rediscovery of early modern drama.

Reading the Material Theatre develops and demonstrates a method of theatrical performance analysis that takes into account the entire theatre experience, from production to reception. Beginning with semiotic and cultural materialist theory, Knowles quickly moves into detailed politicized analysis of the ways in which specific aspects of theatrical production, and specific contexts of reception, shape the audience's understanding of what they experience in the theatre. It concludes with five case studies of the cultural work performed by a major Shakespearean repertory theatre, a small nationalist theatre devoted to new play development, a major New York-based avant-garde touring theatre company, a British socialist company dedicated to the work of Shakespeare, and a range of international festivals. This accessible 2004 volume provides a first-step introduction to key terms and areas of performance theory, including reception history, performance analysis, and production analysis.