Routledge Performance Practitioners is an innovative series of introductory handbooks on key figures in twentieth-century performance practice.
Each volume focuses on a theatre-maker who has transformed the way we understand theatre and performance. The books are carefully structured to enable the reader to gain a good grasp of the fundamental elements underpinning each practitioner's work. They provide an inspiring springboard for students on twentieth century, contemporary theatre and theatre history courses.
These compact, well-illustrated and clearly written books unravel the contribution of modern theatre's most charismatic innovators, through:
As a first step towards critical understanding, and as an initial exploration before going on to further, primary research, Routledge Performance Practitioners are unbeatable value for today's student.
By Kevin Crawford, Bernadette Sweeney
March 11, 2022
Roy Hart’s revolutionary work on the human voice through extended vocal technique and the Wolfsohn-Hart tradition has influenced several generations of practitioners. Hart’s outstanding contribution to vocal research, practice and performance stretched over 20 years until his untimely death in...
By Blake Morris
December 31, 2021
Routledge Performance Practitioners is a series of introductory guides to the key theatre-makers of the last century. Each volume explains the background to and the work of one of the major influences on twentieth- and twenty-first-century performance. Antonin Artaud was an active theatre-maker ...
By Ralph Yarrow
September 02, 2021
Regarded by Augusto Boal as the international icon of his vision, Jana Sanskriti are the leading practitioners of Theatre of the Oppressed and Forum Theatre in India and the East. The group has worked continuously with rural communities in West Bengal since its beginnings in 1985 to reconfigure ...
By Mark Evans, Mark Smith
May 31, 2021
Frantic Assembly have had a powerful and continuing influence on the popularisation of devising practices in contemporary theatre-making. Their work blends brave and bold physical theatre with exciting new writing, and they have collaborated with some of the leading theatre-makers in the UK. The ...
By Aleksandar Saša Dundjerović
May 31, 2019
Robert Lepage is one of Canada’s foremost theatre authors and directors. His company, Ex Machina, has toured to international acclaim and he has lent his talents to areas as diverse as opera, film, solo performance and installation art. His most celebrated work blends acute personal narratives with...
By Thomas Leabhart
December 20, 2018
Etienne Decroux is the primary creator of Corporeal Mime and one of modern theatre’s most charismatic innovators, known for his ground-breaking use of the body as the principal means of expression on stage. This second edition combines: an overview of Decroux’s life and work an analysis of ...
By Maria Shevtsova
October 25, 2018
Robert Wilson is an American–European director who is also a performer, installation artist, writer, designer of light and much more besides – a crossover polymath who dissolves both generic and geographical boundaries and is a precursor of globalisation in the arts. This second edition of Robert ...
By Mary Richards
October 17, 2018
Marina Abramović is the creator of pioneering performance art which transcends the form’s provocative origins. Her visceral and extreme performances have tested the limits of both body and mind, communicating with audiences worldwide on a personal and political level. Updated and revised throughout...
By Franc Chamberlain
September 13, 2018
Following in the footsteps of his renowned teacher Konstantin Stanislavsky, Michael Chekhov’s work as an actor, author and theatre practitioner gave great insight into how to access the creative self. This revised and updated edition of Michael Chekhov includes: • A biographical introduction to ...
By Noel Witts
August 24, 2018
Tadeusz Kantor – a theoretician, director, innovator and painter famed for his very visual theatre style – was a key figure in European avant-garde theatre. He was also known for his challenging theatrical innovations, such as extending stages and the combination of mannequins with living actors. ...
By Karen K. Bradley
August 01, 2018
Rudolf Laban was one of the leading dance theorists of the twentieth century. His work on dance analysis and notation raised the status of dance as both an art form and a scholarly discipline. This is the first book to combine: an overview of Laban’s life, work and influences an exploration of ...
By Jane Turner
June 27, 2018
Eugenio Barba is recognized as one of the most important theatre practitioners working today. Along with the company he founded over fifty years ago, the world-acclaimed Odin Teatret, he continues to produce extraordinary theatre performances that tour the world, and his International School of ...
