Making Contemporary Theatre International Rehearsal Processes

by Harvie, Jen; Lavender, Andy

• ISBN13: 9780719074912
• ISBN10: 0719074916
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-07-01
• Publisher: OXFORD UNIV PR

Summary

*Making contemporary theatre* reveals how some of the most significant international contemporary theatre is actually made. Using eye-witness accounts and over 80 photographs, it offers extraordinary insights into the innovative and exciting methods used by the most influential emerging theatre companies, including the UK’s Complicite and Forced Entertainment and New York’s The Builders Association, as well as directors such as Belgian-Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Where other books on theatre-making tend to focus on playwriting, acting or directing, this book explores the contributions made by all of theatre’s creative artists, from directors to scenographers to multimedia artists.*The book opens with an introd*uctory chapter which contextualises recent trends in approaches to theatre-making. In the ensuing eleven chapters, eleven different writer-observers describe, contextualise and analyse the theatre-making practices of eleven different companies and directors, including Japan’s Gekidan Kaitaisha and the Québécois director Robert Lepage. Each chapter is enriched with extensive illustrations as well as boxed-off ‘asides’, giving the reader different perspectives on the work. Chapters usually focus on a single production, such as Complicite’s 2003-04 The Elephant Vanishes, allowing detailed investigations of complex practices to emerge. The book concludes with a brief manifesto for making contemporary theatre by the editors, plus a bibliography suggesting further reading.Making Contemporary Theatre is a rich resource for the theatre-making student and the theatre-goer alike, full of diverse examples of how the most exciting theatre is actually made.

Author Biography

Jen Harvie is Reader in Theatre and Performance in the Drama Department at Queen Mary, University of London. Andy Lavender is Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Dean of Research at the Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London.

Table of Contents

LIST OF FIGURES * CONTRIBUTORS * PREFACE -- Andy Lavender * ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS * Introduction Witnessing postdramatic theatre-making --
Jen arvie * The Builders Association: Super Vision (2005) * Digital dataflow and the synthesis of everything -- Andy Lavend * Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui: My (2007) Mapping the multiple --
Lou C * Complicité: The Elephant Vanishes (2003/04)‘The elephant and keeper have vanished completely… They will never be coming back’ -- Catherine Alexander * Elevator Repair Service: Cab Legs (1997) to Gatz (2006) Reversing the ruins: the power of theatrical miscomprehension -- Sara Jane Baile* Forced Entertainment: The Travels (2002) The anti-theatrical director -- Alex Mermikide* Rodrigo García and La Carnicería Teatro: Une façon d’aborder l’idée de méfiance [One Way to Approach the Idea of Mistrust] (2006) Approaching mistrust -- Lourdes Orozc* Gekidan Kaitaisha: Bye Bye: the New Primitive (2001) Theatre of the body and cultural deconstruction -- Adam Broinowski * Robert Lepage and Ex Machina: Lipsynch (2007) Performance transformations and cycles -- Aleksandar Saša Dundjerovic * Richard Maxwell and the New York City Players: The End of Reality (2006) Exploring acting -- Sarah Gorman * Not Yet It’s Difficult: Blowback (2004)
Unmaking Blowback – a visceral process for a political theatre -- Peter Eckersall * Luk Perceval: Platonov (2006) Rules for a theatre of contemporary contemplation -- Zoë Svendsen * POSTSCRIPT: -- Andy Lavender and Jen Harvie * SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY * Index