Books in the In Performance - (Seagull Titles CHUP) series

Provides a window into the last thirty years of Japan's dynamic theater scene. This title provides an essential look into Japan's contemporary theater scene.

Includes seven plays that explore themes of memory and identity.

Follows journeys of spiritual destruction and redemption from the banks of the Mississippi River and the fallen levees of New Orleans to the conflict-ravaged streets of Sarajevo and Kabul. This title presents the topical and intense plays of one of the most interesting new voices in American theater.

An anthology of six contemporary plays from Turkey that captures such global themes as questions of identity, poverty, class conflict, oppression, and displacement while shedding light on current cultural and political matters in Turkey, a country literally at the border of the West and the East that is recovering from military coups.

A meditation on responsibility and parenthood that asks an audience not only to suffer the unthinkable loss of a child as the author's characters do, but also to laugh at the couple's flaws and at the hilarity of the suburban life they lead.

An anthology of contemporary Polish drama that exposes ways in which individual and social violence impinge upon each other, disrupt notions of a monolithic Polish identity, and try to find meaning within the post-9/11 global context. It also includes an introduction that situates each play within its historical, political, and theatrical context.

Questioning the ethics of historical narratives and the construction of national identities, this book explores the trauma of war, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, and reappraisals of the postcommunist reality in Poland.

Dramatist, poet, novelist, and journalist Matei Visniec, born in Romania and living in France since seeking political asylum in 1987, has been one of the most trenchant voices of Europe, condemning the atrocities of totalitarianism as well as excesses of consumer culture. This is an anthology of his dramatic work made available in English.

In Rechnitz, a chorus of messengers reports on the circumstances of the massacre of 180 Jews, an actual historical event that took place near the Austrian/Hungarian border town of Rechnitz. The author brings us a comedy of economics, where the babble and media spin of spectators leave small investors alienated.

Citizens of Tokyo is the first collection in English of plays by one of Japan's most important contemporary playwrights, Oriza Hirata, whose works have been performed all over the world. The first part of Citizens of Tokyo, "At Home and Abroad," presents two plays--Toyko Notes and Kings of the Road--that are exemplary of Hirata's unique neorealist dramaturgy, which created one of the most important trends in Japanese theater since the 1990s: Quiet Theatre. The second part of the book presents two short comedies that satirize the politics of decision-making in Japan and abroad: "Loyal Rōnin: The Working Girls' Version" and "The Yalta Conference." The final part, "Robots and Androids are People Too," presents two short plays created in collaboration with Ishiguro Hiroshi and the Osaka University Robot Theatre Project. The plays are accompanied by a context-setting introduction from editor and cotranslator M. Cody Poulton.