Modernism and Performance

The idea of performance as distinct artistic practice emerges in the context of modernity. This guide to modernism and performance introduces key developments and debates of the period (the rise of the director, new theories of acting, new modes of production, complex relationships to classical and oriental drama); debates that helped to create new languages of performance. It suggests that our understanding of the workings of performance in the period might help to reconfigure our general understanding of modernism.

OLGA TAXIDOU is Senior Lecturer in Drama, University of Edinburgh, UK

List of Illustrations * Preface * Acknowledgements * Introduction * Puppets and Actors * The Director, the Playwright and the Actress * Poetic Drama and Theatricality * Orientalism, Interculturalism and the Performance Event * Neo-Hellenism, Primitivism and Performance * Performance and Engagement * Notes * Name Index * Index