Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies
About the Book Series
This series is our home for cutting-edge, upper-level scholarly studies and edited collections. Considering theatre and performance alongside topics such as religion, politics, gender, race, ecology, and the avant-garde, titles are characterized by dynamic interventions into established subjects and innovative studies on emerging topics.
The Human Touch: Redefining the Art of British Contemporary Improvisational Theatre
1st Edition
By Chloé Arros
May 22, 2026
The Human Touch is a book focused on the creative processes at work in British contemporary improvisational theatre and how these processes draw on the humanity of the participants: their cognitive abilities, their lives, and their relationships to each other. Vulnerability is a main feature of ...
Archaeology of the Political Unconscious: Theater and Opera in East Berlin, 1967–1977
1st Edition
By Jennifer Williams
May 21, 2026
This book investigates the aesthetic and political dialectics of East Berlin to argue how its theater and opera stages incited artists to act out, fuel, and resist the troubled construction of political legitimacy. This volume investigates three case studies of how leading East Berlin stages ...
Post-choreography: Jérôme Bel’s Choreography and Movement in Malfunction
1st Edition
By Shuntaro Yoshida
May 21, 2026
This book sheds light on the practice of French choreographer Jérôme Bel, who is active in the fields of performing arts and contemporary art.Shuntaro Yoshida examines a case study of collective creation involving the choreographer and a group of amateur workshop participants. The focus is on ...
Puppet and Spirit: Ritual, Religion, and Performing Objects: Volume II Contemporary Branchings: Secular Benedictions, Activated Energies, Uncanny Faiths
1st Edition
Edited
By Claudia Orenstein, Tim Cusack
May 21, 2026
This anthology of essays, a companion to Puppet and Spirit: Ritual, Religion, and Performing Objects, Volume I, aims to explore the many types of relationships that exist between puppets, broadly speaking, and the immaterial world. The allure of the puppet goes beyond its material presence as, ...
Routledge Companion to Performance and Technology
1st Edition
Edited
By Maaike Bleeker, Norah Zuniga Shaw
May 18, 2026
Technology has become fully integrated into the ecologies in which we live, including our ways of making and making sense of theater, dance, and performance. While these practices have long histories of incorporating tools and instruments in live performances, from masks, to amplification, lighting...
Chekhov, The Anxious Playwright: His Four Great Plays in Their Cultural Context
1st Edition
By Jim Curtis
April 29, 2026
This book provides an in-depth analysis of Anton Chekhov’s four great plays within their cultural context: The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard. The author explores how Chekhov’s historical situation as a non-aristocratic writer gave him an intense awareness of his ...
Black Queer Dance: Gay Men and the Politics of Passing for Almost Straight
1st Edition
By Mark Broomfield
April 21, 2026
This book is a groundbreaking exploration of black masculinity and sexual passing in American contemporary dance. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in New York City, the book features keen observations and in-depth interviews with acclaimed dancer-choreographers Desmond Richardson and Dwight Rhoden ...
Diagrammatical Performances: Making Theatre with More-Than-Human Others
1st Edition
By Helen Billinghurst, Phil Smith
April 21, 2026
Diagrammatical Performances’ traces some of the traditions and contemporary developments in the uses of diagrams – actual and metaphorical – in the making of performance that nurtures a relationship between humans and more-than-humans. Addressing students, researchers, and teachers of radical ...
Artificial Savages in a Transcultural Landscape: Performance Art, Political Intention, and the Aesthetic Projects of Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Coco Fusco, Violeta Luna, Roberto Sifuentes, and La Pocha Nostra
1st Edition
By William Stark
April 20, 2026
This monograph explores the work of scholars and performance artists from the United States (U.S.) and México to expose the dire realities of white nationalist agendas in a global community. In this volume, William Stark, PhD, considers the U.S.-México borderlands in terms of sociocultural and...
Gina Pane: Actions Through Time: An Anthology
1st Edition
By Sophie Delpeux, Alice Maude-Roxby
April 17, 2026
Gina Pane (1939–1990) is acknowledged as one of the first artists to use her body as the medium for her practice through live works or Actions she began in the late 1960s. She became well known for this highly charged body of work, particularly her 1970s live Actions that were meticulously ...
Making Muslimness: Race, Religion, and Performance in Contemporary Manchester
1st Edition
By Asif Majid
April 15, 2026
Making Muslimness explores how British Muslims navigate the United Kingdom's sociopolitical and religious tensions through performance in everyday life. Drawing on nearly two years of interdisciplinary research in Manchester during the late 2010s and early 2020s, this book examines diverse ...
Stop Memorizing Your Lines: Be Undeniable and Ready for “Action!”
1st Edition
By Loren E. Chadima
March 23, 2026
In Stop Memorizing Your Lines, acclaimed Director and Acting coach Loren E. Chadima introduces an innovative methodology tailored precisely for the rapid demands of contemporary acting work. Unlike traditional methods that assume weeks of rehearsal time, Chadima's system equips actors to deliver ...