Books in the Interdisciplinary Studies in Performance series

The book features a detailed analysis and interpretation of "The Saragossa Manuscript" (1964) by Wojciech Jerzy Has. The interpretative key is the director's reference to the aesthetics of various art trends, starting with baroque, through romanticism, symbolism, surrealism and the culture of Orient.

The book discusses the political dramas of Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard regarding their employment of the two critical terms used in its title. It provides a new look at the output of the artists in reference to the employment of the grotesque, justifying their classification together with the East European absurdist playwrights.

The book discusses the practices of Polish buto dancers. The author produces a generalised account of buto training. She explores various body-mind practices and so-called buto techniques used by the dancers. Her argument depicts the sequence of three phases which make up the processual structure of buto training: intro, following and embodiment.

Running off the Anger. British New Wave includes several areas of research that suggest interpreting the cinema of the British New Wave in relation to social realism, the construction of the main characters, popular culture and the way New Wave played with film-making.

The book focuses on the history and evolution of the national and transnational cinema from Iceland. The author analyses popular topics and narrative strategies in Icelandic films. The research covers local versions of black comedies, road movies, crime stories and figures connected with the motif of struggle between tradition and modernity.

The work presents performances of identity of Polish Tatars who are followers of Islam. Based on research and observations, it provides reconstruction of patterns, or performative scripts, of certain holidays, rituals and rules of daily life. Their liturgical calendar interweaves with a natural cycle of rites of passage.

The book argues that Don Quixote and Quixotism are relevant to cultural studies. Changing interpretations of Don Quixote reveal cultural dynamics, and Quixotism is value-loaded. The soaring humanistic interest in Don Quixote stems from the experience of 20th-century totalitarianisms. Quixotism's pivotal facets are now bibliomania and evil.

Die Rückkehr des Chores in die Theaterstücke und Inszenierungen der Gegenwart macht erkennbar, eine wie hohe Aktualität dieses seit der Antike bekannte Strukturelement des Dramas hat. Dabei werden die antiken Formen für die Bedingungen der Gegenwart überarbeitet und wirkungsvoll weiterentwickelt. Die Beiträge des Bandes leuchten vielfältige Formen der Aneignung und Neubildung aus. Die Position des Chores zur Bühnenhandlung, seine Dimensionen, Artikulationsweisen, Bewegungsmomente werden ebenso in den Aufsätzen diskutiert, wie seine Stellung zur Geschichte und sein Beitrag zum Verhältnis von Individualität und Gemeinschaft. In den Ergebnissen des Bandes wird deutlich, von welcher Wichtigkeit der Chor für das gegenwärtige Drama und die aktuelle Theaterarbeit ist.

The book presents a constructivist theory of relations between artistic forms and religious phenomena ("recapitulatory aesthetics"). The main theoretical concepts and knowledge resources are religion as a cultural system, social history, and aesthetics of main drama genres developed in the Middle Ages.

Jerzy Grotowski and the "Laboratory Theatre" presented his famous performance "The Constant Prince" to Iranian audiences in 1970. Artists who encountered Grotowski in person were fascinated by him. They applied his teachings in their own personal approaches to theatre and regarded themselves later as the people most influenced by Grotowski.

The monograph focuses on the twentieth-century American political opera, written from 1976 onwards in three new genres: video-opera (created by Steve Reich), opera based on contemporary topics that are manifested with documentary fidelity (created by John Adams) and a portrait opera (created by Philip Glass).

The book shows the connections between Japanese historical avant-garde movements and new Japanese experimental films. The author provides insight into the development of Japanese avant-garde visual culture and experimental aesthetics, also featuring the expanded cinema after 2000.

The author analyzes selected historical films of Steven Spielberg and Andrzej Wajda with respect to historical memory and its impact on national identity. The Holocaust, self-scrutiny in historical memory, and foundation myths are focused in relation to the sense of covenant in the films drawn from the respective national communities.

This book examines performative practices of the ancient Romans, and provides fresh insights into the contexts of the Roman theater. The author suggests looking at ancient Rome as a large stage for a variety of performances and complex negotiations. He reconstructs the main acting techniques employed in drama, Atellana, pantomime, and mime.

This book focuses on Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, philosopher and controversial artist. It expresses the opinions of philosophers, museologists and artists, for whom Stanislaw Ignacy Witkacy's 130th birthday anniversary became an opportunity to view his works from the perspective of postmodernity.

This book examines performative practices of Anglo-Saxon monks and provides fresh insights into the origins of early English theatre. The author argues that modern European theatre was reinvented in medieval monasteries and demonstrates the fundamental incongruences between ancient and Christian performativity.

The book deals with the Brazilian method of research and creation in dance and theater, called Bailarino-Pesquisador-Interprete (Dancer-Researcher-Performer BPI), which enables to develop the body identity of the individual. Through field research of ritual and Brazilian popular manifestations the author formulates a proposal for body work.

What's the role played by the invisible in our lives? At what level can it be perceived when explored in the theatre? Having as its focus the acting processes carried out by Peter Brook and his actors, the author tries to reveal the invisible that permeates their work in its dynamic manifestation.

This book presents an interdisciplinary investigation into the emergence of the actor and the theater. It explains the role of bipedality, toolmaking and trance in the evolution of the performer, examines the performativity of space and writing, and argues that ancient culture emerged from dance.

This book presents first-of-a-kind studies of films dealing with events of the recent past. The authors point to new phenomena which have been exposed by film directors. They deal with timely and important topics such as migration, diasporas, gender and stereotypes, post-communist political myths, social and political problems people face today.

The book analyses selected 19th-century operas based on Shakespeare's plays from the perspective of their relations to the literature, aesthetics and philosophy of the Romantic period. The texts discussed here include Verdi's Macbeth, Otello and Falstaff, Rossini's Otello", Halevy's "The Tempest", Gounod's "Romeo and Juliet" and Thomas's "Hamlet".