An interdisciplinary analysis of the cultural meanings of violence

The so-called "New Russian Drama" emerged at the end of the twentieth century, following a long period of decline in dramatic writing in the late Soviet and post-Soviet era. In Performing Violence, Birgit Beumers and Mark Lipovetsky examine the representation of violence in these new dramatic works by young Russian playwrights. Reflecting the disappointment in Yeltsin's democratic reforms and Putin's neoconservative politics, the plays focus on political and social representations of violence, its performances, and its justifications. As the first English-language study of Russian drama and theatre in the twenty-first century, Performing Violence seeks a vantage point for the analysis of brutality in post-Soviet culture. While previous generations had preferred poetry and prose, this new breed of authors--the Presnyakov brothers, Evgeni Grishkovets, and Vasili Sigarev among them--have garnered international recognition for their fierce plays. This book investigates the violent portrayal of the identity crisis of a generation as represented in their theatrical works, and will be a key text for students and scholars of drama, Russian studies, and literature.

Examining some of the most iconic texts in English theatre history, including Titus Andronicus and The Changeling, this book, now in paperback with a new Preface, reveals the pernicious erasure of rape and violence against women in the early modern era and the politics and ethics of rehearsing these negotiations on the 20th and 21st century stages.

This topical collection explores the relationship between violence and performance. The authors offer fresh theoretical perspectives and examine media as diverse as street theatre, performance art, photography and cinema in locations as diverse as Korea and South Africa to India and Israel.

This publication is part of the Constructions of Terrorism Research Project being carried out through a partnership between TRENDS Research & Advisory, Abu Dhabi, UAE, and the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Troubling Violence: A Performance Project follows the collaboration between performance studies professor M. Heather Carver and ethnographic folklorist Elaine J. Lawless. The book traces the creative development of a performance troupe in which women take the stage to narrate true, harrowing experiences of domestic violence and then invite audience members to discuss the tales. Similar to the performances, the book presents real-life narratives as a means of heightening social awareness and dialogue about intimate partner violence. "Troubling violence" refers not only to the cultures in our society that are "troubling," but also to the authors' intent to "trouble" perceptions that enforce social, cultural, legal, and religious attitudes that perpetuate abuse against women. Performance, this book argues, enhances ethnographic research and writing by allowing ethnographers to approach both their field studies and their ethnographic writing as performance. The book also demonstrates how ethnography enhances the study of performance. The authors discuss the development of the Troubling Violence Performance Project in conjunction with their own "performances" within the academy.

This book examines a series of contemporary plays where writers put theatre itself on stage. The texts examined variously dramatize how theatre falls short in response to the demands of violence, expose its implication in structures of violence—including racism and gender-based violence—and illustrate how it might effectively resist violence through reconfiguring representation. Case studies, which include Jackie Sibblies Drury’s We Are Proud to Present and Fairview, Ella Hickson’s The Writer and Tim Crouch’s The Author, provide a range of practice-based perspectives on the question of whether theatre is capable of accounting for and expressing the complexities of structural and interpersonal violence as both lived in the body and borne out in society. The book will appeal to scholars and artists working in the areas of violence, theatre and ethics, witnessing, memory and trauma, spectatorship and contemporary dramaturgy, as well as to those interested in both the doubts and dreams we have about the role of theatre in the twenty-first century.