Twentieth Century Theatre: A Sourcebook is an inspired handbook of ideas and arguments on theatre. Richard Drain gathers together a uniquely wide-ranging selection of original writings on theatre by its most creative practitioners - directors, playwrights, performers and designers, from Jarry to Grotowski and Craig. These key texts span the twentieth century, from the onset of modernism to the present, providing direct access to the thinking behind much of the most stimulating theatre the century has had to offer, as well as guidelines to its present most adventurous developments. Setting theory beside practice, these writings bring alive a number of vital and continuing concerns, each of which is given full scope in five sections which explore the Modernist, Political, Inner and Global dimensions of twentieth century theatre. Twentieth Century Theatre: A Sourcebook provides illuminationg perspectives on past history, and throws fresh light on the sources and development of theatre today. This sourcebook is not only an essential and versatile collection for students at all levels, but also directed numerous devised shows which have toured to theatres, schools, community centres and prisons.

Engaging essays by an internationally prominent historian and theorist of theater set design

The codes of conduct imposed on females by Spain's dictator Francisco Franco after the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) created a stifling environment for women until his death in 1975. Beginning with Carmen Laforet's 1944 Nadal Prize-winning novel Nada, novels by women - many of which explore female identity - began to proliferate in Spain. The works examined in this study - Nada, Primera memoria (1960) by Ana Maria Matute, La placa del Diamant (1962) by Merce Rodoreda, Julia (1969) by Ana Maria Moix, El cuarto de atras (1978) by Carmen Martin Gaite, El amor es un juego solitario (1979) by Esther Tusquets, and Questio d'amor propi (1987) by Carme Riera - feature female protagonists struggling for self-realization and, by extension, for change in a restrictive Spanish society. Schumm's analysis of the seven novels demonstrates how examination of metaphoric tropes and mirror images provides insight into the protagonists' development.

Richard Foreman has been writing, directing and designing avant-garde theatre in New York since he first founded his Ontological-Hysteric company there in 1968. In all that time, few directors have taken up the challenge of staging his problematic, rewarding texts, and Foreman's work remains under-explored by other practitioners. Richard Foreman: An American (Partly) in Paris argues that Foreman can productively be viewed as a (partly) European artist, whose thinking and theatre-making have been radically shaped by contact with Europe. Through a detailed account of his European productions, interviews with Foreman himself, a set of practical strategies for staging the plays and the full text of Foreman's previously unpublished play Georges Bataille’s Bathrobe (1983), Neal Swettenham introduces the director’s work to a new generation of readers and theatre-makers.