Books by Leslie Hill

Devising Theatre and Performance is a hands-on guide for artists, students and teachers of performance at any stage of their practice. It offers a wide range of creative prompts and pathways enriched with critical thinking tools and questions, a hybrid approach Hill and Paris call 'Curious Methods'. This is a welcome addition to the field, created and curated by two experienced artists who have operated at the international interface of academia and professional practice for over three decades. The collection is packed with fun, creative, thoughtful exercises distilled from over twenty years of running interdisciplinary artist workshops and teaching both devising and performance making. As well providing numerous exercises and suggestions for devising, composing and editing original works, this book offers tools for giving and receiving feedback, critical reflection and framing artistic work within academic research contexts. Readers can choose to dip in and out, to follow the book as a course or to work section by section, focusing on organizing principles such as working from the body, working with site, working with objects or performance activism. The book includes a detailed production workbook and a practice-based research workbook you can tailor to your own projects. The 'Curious Methods' approach encourages users to take the time and space their practice deserves while offering tools, nourishment and encouragement and inviting them to take risks beyond their comfort zones. The exercises are carefully described so that they can easily be tested out by readers, and are well contextualized in relation to vivid examples from contemporary performance practice and relevant political contexts. This compelling approach goes beyond many other books on theatre devising, which merely provide performance recipes; they do so by repeatedly highlighting the vital cultural relevance and potential personal impact of the experiments that they invite us to undertake. The primary audience for this important new book will be academics, instructors and students in courses on devised theatre, improvisation, performance art, experimental performance and practice-based research. It will be essential for classroom use, for students of theatre and performance and live art - undergraduate, postgraduate and Ph.D., teachers and all those needing strategies for getting started. It will also appeal to readers from the broader arts, humanities and social sciences who are seeking resources for integrating creative methods into their research.

Marking the 100-year anniversary of womenΓÇÖs suffrage, Leslie Hill provides a fascinating survey of the history of first wave feminism in British theatre, from the London premiere of IbsenΓÇÖs A DollΓÇÖs House in 1889 through the militant suffrage movement.  HillΓÇÖs approachable overview explores some of the pivotal ways in which theatre makers both engaged with and influenced feminist discourse on topics such as sexual agency, reproductive rights, marriage equality, financial independence and suffrage.Clear and concise, this is an ideal resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Theatre and Performance Studies taking courses on Women in Theatre and Performance, Staging Feminism, Early Feminist Theatre, Theatre and Suffrage, Gender and Theatre, Political Theatre and Performance Historiography. This text will also appeal to scholars, lecturers, and Literature students.

This book offers the first fully documented and historically contextualised account of the origins and implications of the concept of community in the work of Nancy and Blanchot. It analyses in detail the underlying philosophical, political, literary, and religious implications of the often misrepresented debate between Blanchot and Nancy.

How does proximity between audiences and performers change the nature of live performance? Relating their practice to wider issues in contemporary performance and detailing workshop exercises that aid performance making, this unique fusion of artistic and academic reflection is crucial reading for students, scholars and practitioners alike.

Placing Blanchot at the centre stage of writing in the twentieth century, Maurice Blanchot: Extreme Contemporary sheds new light on Blanchot's political activities before and after the Second World War.

The first fully detailed, complete account in English of the fiction and films of France's best-known and most controversial woman writer. Leslie Hill throws new light on Duras' relation with feminism, sexuality and psychoanalysis.