Thinking Through Theatre and Performance presents a bold and innovative approach to the study of theatre and performance. Instead of topics, genres, histories or theories, the book starts with the questions that theatre and performance are uniquely capable of asking: How does theatre function as a place for seeing and hearing? How do not only bodies and voices but also objects and media perform? How do memories, emotions and ideas continue to do their work when the performance is over? And how can theatre and performance intervene in social, political and environmental structures and frameworks? Written by leading international scholars, each chapter of this volume is built around a key performance example, and detailed discussions introduce the methodologies and theories that help us understand how these performances are practices of enquiry into the world. Thinking through Theatre and Performance is essential for those involved in making, enjoying, critiquing and studying theatre, and will appeal to anyone who is interested in the questions that theatre and performance ask of themselves and of us.

Introduction, by Maaike Bleeker, Adrian Kear, Joe Kelleher and Heike RomsPart 1: Watching1. Why study drama? by Joe Kelleher (University of Roehampton, London, UK)2. What do performances do to spectators? by Maaike Bleeker (Utrecht University, Netherlands)3. How can the theatre be fully accessible? by Colette Conroy (University of Hull, UK)4. How does stage performance think through cultural convention? by Sean Metzger (UCLA, USA)5. How does theatre represent economic systems? by Louise Owen (Birkbeck, University of London, UK) Part 2: Performing6. What is Black dance? What can it do? by Thomas F. DeFrantz (Duke University, USA)7. How does scenography think? by Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink (Utrecht University, Netherlands)8. How does theatre think through things? by Mike Pearson (Aberystwyth University, UK)9. How does theatre think through incorporating media? by Steve Dixon (LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore)10. How does the trained body think? by Broderick D.V. Chow (Brunel University London, UK)11. How does theatre think through work? by Theron Schmidt (University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia) Part 3: Traces12. What is an intercultural exchange? by Miguel Escobar Varela (National University of Singapore)13. What is the impact of theatre and performance? by Sruti Bala (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)14. Does staging historical trauma reenact it? by Tavia Nyong'o (Yale University, USA)15. How does theatre think through politics? by Jazmin Badong Llana (De La Salle University, Philippines)16. How and why are performances documented? by Heike Roms (University of Exeter, UK) Part 4: Interventions 17. How can performance disrupt institutional spaces? by Dominic Johnson (Queen Mary University of London, UK)18. How does theatre think through ecology? by Carl Lavery (University of Glasgow, UK)19. How does choreography think 'through' society? by Bojana Cvejic (Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway)20. How does theatricality legitimize the law? by Sophie Nield (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)21. How does theatre think through theatricality? by Adrian Kear (University of the Arts London, UK) Index