Ebook: The Edinburgh Companion to Modernism in Contemporary Theatre

Explores modernism’s complex relationship with contemporary theatre

• Includes consideration of canonical as well as lesser-known theatre artists
• Offers an expansive range of case studies, featuring examples of theatre from around the world
• Connects modernist studies with theatre and performance studies
• Methodologically varied, including historiography, performance analysis, textual analysis, and practice as research
• Includes essays by leading theatre scholars, modernist specialists, and theatre practitioners, providing an eclectic mix of essay formats and approaches, including creative contributions

This volume highlights modernism as an impulse that can be carried forward to the present, re-embodied and re-encountered in theatrical performance. It demonstrates how modernist impulses spark contemporary theatre in dynamic ways, continuing the modernist imperative to ‘make it new’ and to engage meaningfully with the complicated situation of living in the contemporary world. A diverse set of contributions from scholars and theatre practitioners examines the legacy of modernism on the world stage in acts of remembrance, restaging, transmission and slippage. It investigates both well-known and less familiar aspects of modernist theatre history, engaging topics such as the revival of the first Black American musical, feminist and disability-led reinterpretations of canonical modernist plays, the use of modernist-inspired performance practice in contemporary university arts education and the continually contested meaning and importance of the avant-garde.