Staging 21st Century Tragedies

Staging 21st Century Tragedies: Theatre, Politics, and Global Crisis is an international collection of essays by leading academics, artists, writers, and curators examining ways in which the global tragedies of our century are being negotiated in current theatre practice.In exploring the tragic in the fields of history and theory of theatre, the book approaches crisis through an understanding of the existential and political aspect of the tragic condition. Using an interdisciplinary perspective, it showcases theatre texts and productions that enter the public sphere, manifesting notably participatory, immersive, and documentary modes of expression to form a theatre of modern tragedy. The coexistence of scholarly essays with manifesto-like provocations, interviews, original plays, and diaries by theatre artists provides a rich and multifocal lens that allows readers to approach twenty-first-century theatre through historical and critical study, text and performance analysis, and creative processes. Of special value is the global scope of the collection, embracing forms of crisis theatre in many geographically diverse regions of both the East and the West.Staging 21st Century Tragedies: Theatre, Politics, and Global Crisis will be of use and interest to academics and students of political theatre, applied theatre, theatre history, and theatre theory.

Avra Sidiropoulou is Associate Professor at the M.A. in Theatre Studies Programme at the Open University of Cyprus and Artistic Director of Athens-based Persona Theatre Company. She is the author of Directions for Directing. Theatre and Method (Routledge 2018) and Authoring Performance: The Director in Contemporary Theatre (Palgrave Macmillan 2011). She was Visiting Researcher at MIT and the Graduate Centre at CUNY, the Freie University, the Universities of Surrey, Leeds, and Tokyo (Japan Foundation Fellow). Avra has lectured, directed, and conducted theatre workshops in many parts of the globe. Recent directing works include Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal (Cyprus Theatre Organization 2022), Bryony Lavery’s Frozen (Skala Theatre 2020), Phaedra I— (text: Sidiropoulou—Tristan Bates Theatre, London 2019), and A Doll’s House (Technochoros Ethal 2019). She was nominated for the League of Professional Theatre Women Gilder/Goigney International Award 2020. https://persona.gr/en/people/avra-sidiropoulou/.