This book incorporates a wide theoretical, cultural, literary and historical engagement in exploring the tension between dramatic productions and the forms of censorship they encounter from creation to reception. The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre Censorship offers global new insights into censorship practices, examining attempts at repression motivated either by fears that audiences gathering together to watch live dramatic events will lead to sedition and mass uprisings, or by moral or religious squeamishness requiring the establishment of institutional systems of censorship to curb or suppress the stage. As such, the Handbook aims to initiate redefinitions of what we understand or experience as censorship. Who knew theatre could (still) carry so many threats, or be so widely provocative and dangerous? This is an extraordinary and often eye-opening set of thirty-six individually insightful, wide-ranging and oftentimes disturbing essays, each of which offers unique insights into theatre censorship practices and their impact within a specific political and moral culture. There is a particular emphasis on the recent and current, and the authors speak with first-hand knowledge and from direct experience not only about the restrictions but also how artists sometimes negotiate and evade these. What makes the book so especially fascinating and illuminating is seeing so many examples juxtaposed together. This enables the reader to hear the essays and the cultures talking to and alongside each other. The collection repeatedly breaks fresh ground, and the editors deserve enormous credit for gathering and effectively curating so many reports from the front-line. Steve Nicholson, Emeritus Professor, University of Sheffield, UK Anne Etienne and Graham Saunders’s book is a wide-ranging, incisive and compelling collection of reflections and case studies on the theatre industry’s relationship to censorship and self-censorship from a historical and contemporaneous perspective. An impressive array of authors have been assembled for this volume representing, among them, views on the subject from Spain, Denmark, Norway, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Germany, Italy, Indonesia, Iran, Portugal, Turkey, Brazil, Japan, Ireland, Australia, Russia, England and more. The book is by turns surprising in its curatorial and narrative design and wonderfully effective at delineating the complex and thorny paths that create socio-political cultures where the censorship and self-censorship of theatre artists thrives and/or is efficaciously contested and rebelled against. Of note is a through line of argument in the book around less overt modes of surveillance that police artists’ imaginations and thereby the work they create and produce. At a time in the world where many governments are increasingly seeking to limit artistic expression, this book is a necessary reminder of the many freedoms that have been fought for in theatres around the globe, and how the power of being unsilenced must never be taken for granted. – Caridad Svich. Playwright & Translator This is a truly excellent collection of incisive studies. It is wide-ranging, impressively global in scope, with an illuminating balance of the historical and the contemporary. In its impressive and well-realised ambition, demonstrated by the well-focused intelligence and academic flair of its many contributors, this collection is both magisterial and vital. It is an essential contribution to censorship studies, fascinating and inspiring, a must-read for anyone interested in the subject. – Aleks Sierz. Theatre critic and author of Rewriting the Nation: British Theatre Today (2011) & Good Nights Out: A History of British Theatre Since the Second World War (2021)

The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre and Migration provides a wide survey of theatre and performance practices related to the experience of global movements, both in historical and contemporary contexts. Given the largest number of people ever (over one hundred million) suffering from forced displacement today, much of the book centres around the topic of refuge and exile and the role of theatre in addressing these issues. The book is structured in six sections, the first of which is dedicated to the major theoretical concepts related to the field of theatre and migration including exile, refuge, displacement, asylum seeking, colonialism, human rights, globalization, and nomadism. The subsequent sections are devoted to several dozen case studies across various geographies and time periods that highlight, describe and analyse different theatre practices related to migration. The volume serves as a prestigious reference work to help theatre practitioners, students, scholars, and educators navigate the complex field of theatre and migration.

The first comprehensive publication on the subject, this book investigates interactions between racial thinking and the stage in the modern and contemporary world, with 25 essays on case studies that will shed light on areas previously neglected by criticism while providing fresh perspectives on already-investigated contexts. Examining performances from Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Africa, China, Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacifi c islands, this collection ultimately frames the history of racial narratives on stage in a global context, resetting understandings of race in public discourse.

This Handbook offers a multiform sweep of theoretical, historical, practical and personal glimpses into a landscape roughly characterised as contemporary Irish theatre and performance. Bringing together a spectrum of voices and sensibilities in each of its four sections — Histories, Close-ups, Interfaces, and Reflections — it casts its gaze back across the past sixty years or so to recall, analyse, and assess the recent legacy of theatre and performance on this island. While offering information, overviews and reflections of current thought across its chapters, this book will serve most handily as food for thought and a springboard for curiosity. Offering something different in its mix of themes and perspectives, so that previously unexamined surfaces might come to light individually and in conjunction with other essays, it is a wide-ranging and indispensable resource in Irish theatre studies.

This book offers a comprehensive guide to global literary engagement with the Cold War. Eschewing the common focus on national cultures, the collection defines Cold War literature as an international current focused on the military and ideological conflicts of the age and characterised by styles and approaches that transcended national borders. Drawing on specialists from across the world, the volume analyses the period’s fiction, poetry, drama and autobiographical writings in three sections: dominant concerns (socialism, decolonisation, nuclearism, propaganda, censorship, espionage), common genres (postmodernism, socialism realism, dystopianism, migrant poetry, science fiction, testimonial writing) and regional cultures (Asia, Africa, Oceania, Europe and the Americas). In doing so, the volume forms a landmark contribution to Cold War literary studies which will appeal to all those working on literature of the 1945-1989 period, including specialists in comparative literature, postcolonial literature, contemporary literature and regional literature.

This exploration of the wide variety of censorship that has shaped theatrical performance in twentieth and twenty-first century Britain examines the unpredictable outcomes of censorship, deep-seated anxieties about the performative influence of the stage, and the complex questions raised by acts of theatrical censorship.