Drawing on the writer’s experience of three and a half decades of performing, teaching and writing theatre, this book explores the performance practice of a theatre group (pandies’ theatre, Delhi) by placing this practice in a frame of international activist theatre movements. The teaching aspect provides a historical backdrop and the writing of plays adds depth and sharpens the political position. It identifies theatre as a force for changing society across the centuries and beyond national borders. The book examines a large variety of theatrical experiences, including well-known forms of proscenium, workshop and street theatre.

"The Teaching Writing series publishes user-friendly writing guides penned by authors with publishing records in their subject matter. Harris and Holman Jones offer readers a practical and concise guide to writing a variety of dynamic texts for performance ranging from playscripts to ensemble and multimedia/hybrid works. Writing for Performance is structured around the ‘tools’ of performance writing—words, bodies, spaces, and things. These tools serve as pivots for understanding how writing for performance must be conducted in relation to other people, places, objects, histories, and practices. This book can be used as a primary text in undergraduate and graduate classes in playwriting, theatre, performance studies, and creative writing. It can also be read by ethnographic, arts-based, collaborative and community performance makers who wish to learn the how-to of writing for performance. Teachers and facilitators can use each chapter to take their students through the conceptualizing, writing, and performing/creating process, supported by exemplars and writing exercises and/or prompts so readers can try the form themselves. “What a welcome, insightful and much-needed book. Harris and Holman Jones bring us to an integrated notion of writing that is embodied, felt, breathed and flung from stage to page and back again. Writing for Performance will become a crucial text for the creation of the performance and theater that the 21st Century will need.” – Tim Miller, artist and author of Body Blows: Six Performances and 1001 Beds: Performances, Essays and Travels “No prescriptions here. In the hands of this creative duo we find a deep and abiding respect for the many creative processes that might fuel writing and performance that matters. From the deep wells of their own experiences, Harris and Holman Jones offer exercises that are not meant to mold the would-be writer, but spur them on to recognize their latent writing/performative selves.” – Kathleen Gallagher, Distinguished Professor of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning, University of Toronto Anne Harris, PhD, is a senior lecturer at Monash University (Melbourne), and researches in the areas of arts, creativity, performance, and diversity. Stacy Holman Jones, PhD, is Professor in the Centre for Theatre and Performance at Monash University (Melbourne) specializing in performance studies, gender and critical theory and critical qualitative methods."

How dull plays are killing theatre and what we can do about it. Had I become disenchanted with the form I had once fallen so madly in love with as a pubescent, pimple-faced suburban homo with braces? Maybe theatre was like an all-consuming high school infatuation that now, ten years later, I saw as the closeted balding guy with a beer gut he’d become. There were of course those rare moments of transcendencethat kept me coming back. But why did they come so few and far between? A lot of plays are dull. And one dull play, it seems, can turn us off theatre for good. Playwright and theatre director Jordan Tannahill takes in the spectrum of English-language drama – from the flashiest of Broadway spectacles to productions mounted in scrappy storefront theatres – to consider where lifeless plays come from and why they persist. Having travelled the globe talking to theatre artists, critics, passionate patrons and the theatrically disillusioned, Tannahill addresses what he considers the culture of ‘risk aversion’ paralyzing the form. Theatre of the Unimpressed is Tannahill’s wry and revelatory personal reckoning with the discipline he’s dedicated his life to, and a roadmap for a vital twenty-first-century theatre – one that apprehends the value of ‘liveness’ in our mediated age and the necessity for artistic risk and its attendant failures. In considering dramaturgy, programming and alternative models for producing, Tannahill aims to turn theatre from an obligation to a destination. ‘[Tannahill is] the poster child of a new generation of (theatre? film? dance?) artists for whom "interdisciplinary" is not a buzzword, but a way of life.’ —J. Kelly Nestruck, Globe and Mail ‘Jordan is one of the most talented and exciting playwrights in the country, and he will be a force to be reckoned with for years to come.’ —Nicolas Billon, Governor General's Award–winning playwright (Fault Lines)

The Teaching Writing series publishes user-friendly writing guides penned by authors with publishing records in their subject matter. Harris and Holman Jones offer readers a practical and concise guide to writing a variety of dynamic texts for performance ranging from playscripts to ensemble and multimedia/hybrid works. Writing for Performance is structured around the 'tools' of performance writing-words, bodies, spaces, and things. These tools serve as pivots for understanding how writing for performance must be conducted in relation to other people, places, objects, histories, and practices. This book can be used as a primary text in undergraduate and graduate classes in playwriting, theatre, performance studies, and creative writing. It can also be read by ethnographic, arts-based, collaborative and community performance makers who wish to learn the how-to of writing for performance. Teachers and facilitators can use each chapter to take their students through the conceptualizing, writing, and performing/creating process, supported by exemplars and writing exercises and/or prompts so readers can try the form themselves. "What a welcome, insightful and much-needed book. Harris and Holman Jones bring us to an integrated notion of writing that is embodied, felt, breathed and flung from stage to page and back again. Writing for Performance will become a crucial text for the creation of the performance and theater that the 21st Century will need." - Tim Miller, artist and author of Body Blows: Six Performances and 1001 Beds: Performances, Essays and Travels "No prescriptions here. In the hands of this creative duo we find a deep and abiding respect for the many creative processes that might fuel writing and performance that matters. From the deep wells of their own experiences, Harris and Holman Jones offer exercises that are not meant to mold the would-be writer, but spur them on to recognize their latent writing/performative selves." - Kathleen Gallagher, Distinguished Professor of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning, University of Toronto

Edited by Nathan Stucky and Cynthia Wimmer, Teaching Performance Studies is the first organized treatment of performance studies theory, practice, and pedagogy. This collection of eighteen essays by leading scholars and educators reflects the emergent and contested nature of performance studies, a field that looks at the broad range of human performance from everyday conversation to formal theatre and cultural ritual. The cross-disciplinary freedom enacted by the writers suggests a new vision of performance studies--a deliberate commerce between field and classroom.

Teaching Critical Performance Theory offers teaching strategies for professors and artist-scholars across performance, design and technology, and theatre studies disciplines. The book’s seventeen chapters collectively ask: What use is theory to an emerging theatre artist or scholar? Which theories should be taught, and to whom? How can theory pedagogies shape and respond to the evolving needs of the academy, the field, and the community? This broad field of enquiry is divided into four sections covering course design, classroom teaching, the studio space, and applied theatre contexts. Through a range of intriguing case studies that encourage thoughtful theatre practice, this book explores themes surrounding situated learning, dramaturgy and technology, disability and inclusivity, feminist approaches, race and performance, ethics, and critical theory in theatre history. Written as an invaluable resource for professionals and postgraduates engaged in performance theory, this collection of informative essays will also provide critical reading for those interested in drama and theatre studies more broadly.