This is a love story but not as you know it. Should an academic study be framed in this way? Love seems an unlikely bedfellow for critical thinking. Watching an Emma Rice production and being in her rehearsal room you feel the love: a warm and generous welcoming in; a joyful celebration of the theatrical exchange. What produces this pleasurable affect and how might we consider its political potential? This Element positions Emma's theatre-making, a body of work spanning three decades, as feminist acts of love. Drawing on fieldwork research her practice is viewed through the critical lenses of feminisms and affect to consider its contextual tensions, its ethics of affirmation, staging of femininities and contribution to queer worldmaking. Mapping her work from this perspective brings to light her important contribution to UK feminist theatre; its love activism offering an emergent strategy for change.

Critical Acting Pedagogy: Intersectional Approaches invites readers to think about pedagogy in actor training as a research field in its own right: to sit with the complex challenges, risks, and rewards of the acting studio; to recognise the shared vulnerability, courage, and love that defines our field and underpins our practices. This collection of chapters, from a diverse group of acting teachers at different points in their careers, working in conservatoires and universities, illuminates current developments in decolonising studios to foreground multiple and intersecting identities in the pedagogic exchange. In acknowledging how their positionality affects their practices and materials, 20 acting teachers from the United Kingdom, the United States, Europe, and Oceania offer practical tools for the social justice acting classroom, with rich insights for developing critical acting pedagogies. Authors test and develop research approaches, drawn from social sciences, to tackle dominant ideologies in organisation, curriculum, and methodologies of actor training. This collection frames current efforts to promote equality, diversity, and inclusivity in the studio. It contributes to the collective movement to improve current educational practice in acting, prioritising well-being, and centering the student experience.

This is a love story but not as you know it. Should an academic study be framed in this way? Love seems an unlikely bedfellow for critical thinking. Watching an Emma Rice production and being in her rehearsal room you feel the love: a warm and generous welcoming in; a joyful celebration of the theatrical exchange. What produces this pleasurable affect and how might we consider its political potential? This Element positions Emma's theatre-making, a body of work spanning three decades, as feminist acts of love. Drawing on fieldwork research her practice is viewed through the critical lenses of feminisms and affect to consider its contextual tensions, its ethics of affirmation, staging of femininities and contribution to queer worldmaking. Mapping her work from this perspective brings to light her important contribution to UK feminist theatre; its love activism offering an emergent strategy for change.

The Oxford Handbooks to Shakespeare are designed to record past and present investigations and renewed and revised judgments by both familiar and younger Shakespeare specialists. Each of these volumes is edited by one or more internationally distinguished Shakespeareans; together, they comprehensively survey the entire field. Shakespearean performance criticism has firmly established itself as a discipline accessible to scholars and general readers alike. And just as performances of the plays expand audiences' understanding of how Shakespeare speaks to them, so performance criticism is continually shifting the contours of the discipline. The 36 contributions in this volume represent the most current approaches to Shakespeare in performance. They are divided into four parts. Part I explores how experimental modes of performance ensure Shakespeare's contemporaneity. Part II tackles the burgeoning field of reception: how and why audiences respond to performances as they do. Part III addresses the ways in which technology has revolutionized our access to Shakespeare, both through the mediums of film and sound recording and through digitalization. Part IV grapples with 'global' Shakespeare, considering matters of cultural appropriation in productions played for international audiences. Together, these ground-breaking essays attest to the richness and diversity of Shakespearean performance criticism as it is practiced today

“Emma Gray’s smart guide came at the perfect time. Told through a series of interviews, first-person anecdots, calls to action, and how to’s, this is an important, inspiring book, but it’s also really f**king fun to read.” — Jennifer Romolini, Chief Content Officer at Shondaland.com

What happens when the writer loses the plot? Emma Watson is nineteen and new in town. She's been cut off by her rich aunt and dumped back in the family home. Emma and her sisters must marry, fast. If not, they face poverty, spinsterhood, or worse: an eternity with their boorish brother and his awful wife. Luckily there are plenty of potential suitors to dance with, from flirtatious Tom Musgrave to castle-owning Lord Osborne, who's as awkward as he is rich. So far so familiar. But there's a problem: Jane Austen didn't finish the story. Who will write Emma's happy ending now? Based on her incomplete novel, this sparklingly witty play looks under the bonnet of Jane Austen and asks: what can characters do when their author abandons them?

I'm about to welcome you into my world. Show you what works for me and share openly what hasn't. I hope that what you find in the pages of this book inspires you to dream up new ways to be kind to people and to think about how the game you're currently playing might be worthy of a bigger court. I hope it stretches your thinking about what's possible, and shows you that when you take giant leaps of faith, the only challenging thing will be some temporary discomfort. Are you ready to wing it? CEO and entrepreneur Emma Isaacs forgot to draw up her life plan, and she doesn't have a list of five-year goals. She doesn't believe in work/life balance - after all she has five children and heads up Business Chicks, Australia's largest community for women. Like Sheryl Sandberg, who told us to 'lean in' to find success, Emma wants to show us that you can't plan every detail and wait for the confidence to kick in before you begin; instead, take action now, do what feels right and figure the rest out as you go along. In other words, you've got to learn how to 'wing it' rather than wait. Drawing on her own life and the stories of the many men and women she has met and interviewed - from Sir Richard Branson to Bill Gates to Girlboss Sophia Amoruso - Emma tells us how to: * Turn a dream into a job * Turn a job into a business * Network like a champion * Protect your time for the things that matter * Get fired up not ground down by the kids/career juggle, and * Understand that sometimes failure is part of the brief. Emma shows us that often the only thing holding us back is ourselves; that you can follow your dreams; and that there's no reason not to start doing so right now. PRAISE FOR EMMA ISAACS "Emma Isaacs is a true force of nature and a role model all women can learn from" Diane von Furstenberg "Emma's energy and enthusiasm for business shine brightly" Sir Richard Branson "Winging It will show you how to map out what's important to you, stay focussed on achieving your goals and thrive" Arianna Huffington