Theatre Research

Why theatre history? / David Wiles -- Modernist theatre / Stefan Hulfeld -- Baroque to romantic theatre / Christopher Baugh -- Medieval, renaissance and early modern theatre / David Wiles -- Classical theatre / Erika Fischer-Lichte -- Liverpool / Ros Merkin -- Finland / S.E. Wilmer -- Egypt / Hazem Azmy -- Traditional theatre : the case of Japanese Noh / Diego Pellecchia -- Reflections on a global theatre history / Marvin Carlson -- The audience / Willmar Sauter -- The art of acting / Josette Féral -- Music theatre and musical theatre / Zachary Dunbar -- Circus / Marius Kwint -- The nature of historical evidence : a case study / Thomas Postlewait -- The visual record : the case of Hamlet / Barbara Hodgdon -- Museums, archives and collecting / Fiona Macintosh -- Re:enactment / Gilli Bush-Bailey -- The internet : history 2.0? / Jacky Bratton and Grant Tyler Peterson.

Reviews current knowledge of the character and operation of theatres in Shakespeare's time, with an explanation of their origins. Coverage includes the practices of Elizabethan actors and script writers: methods of characterization; gesture, blocking and choreography, including music, dance and fighting; actors' rhetorical interaction with audiences; and use of costumes, stage props, and make-up.

The birth of the rock musical in New York City -- Interlude 1: rock "authenticity" and the reception of the staged rock musical -- Hair and its imitators -- Interlude 2 : audiences -- Rock concept albums and the fragmented musical of the 1970s -- Interlude 3 : megamusicals -- Spectacles of the 1980s -- Interlude 4 : economics and marketing -- Rock musicians in the musical theater : the 1990s -- Interlude 5 : merging aesthetics, making performances -- Rock-influenced musicals at the millennium : the dawning of the age of-- the revival.