Edinburgh Companion to Modernism in Contemporary Theatre

Instead of treating modernism principally as a thing of the past, this volume highlights modernism as an impulse that can be carried forward to the present, re-embodied and re-encountered in theatrical performance. It demonstrates how modernist impulses spark contemporary theatre in electric and dynamic ways, continuing the modernist imperative to ‘make it new’ and to engage meaningfully with the complicated situation of living in the contemporary world. Through a diverse set of contributions from scholars and theatre practitioners, this book examines the legacy of modernism on the world stage in acts of remembrance, restaging, transmission and slippage. It investigates both well-known and less familiar aspects of modernist theatre history, engaging topics such as the revival of the first Black American musical, feminist and disability-led reinterpretations of canonical modernist plays, the use of modernist-inspired performance practice in contemporary university arts education and the continually contested meaning and importance of the avant-garde.

Adrian Curtin is Associate Professor in Drama at the University of Exeter. He is the author of Death in Modern Theatre: Stages of Mortality (2019) and Avant-Garde Theatre Sound: Staging Sonic Modernity (2014). He has co-edited special issues of Theatre and Performance Design and the Open Library of Humanities. He is a contributing editor for New Theatre Quarterly. Nicholas Johnson is Associate Professor of Drama at Trinity College Dublin, where he co-founded the Trinity Centre for Beckett Studies. His books include Experimental Beckett (with Jonathan Heron, 2020) and Bertolt Brecht’s David Fragments (1919–1921) (with David Shepherd, 2020), as well as several edited collections on Beckett. Directing credits include Virtual Play (2017–19), The David Fragments (2017) and Enemy of the Stars (2014–15). He works as dramaturg with Pan Pan, OT Platform and Dead Centre. Naomi Paxton is Knowledge Exchange Fellow at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama at the University of London. She received the TaPRA Early Career Research Prize in 2019 for her body of work on suffrage theatre, which includes events and curated exhibitions at the National Theatre and UK Parliament, a monograph with Manchester University Press (2020) and two edited collections of suffrage plays with Methuen Drama (2013 and 2018). Naomi is also a professional broadcaster, cabaret performer, comedian and magician Claire Warden is is Professor of Performance and Physical Culture at Loughborough University. Her research focuses on interdisciplinary modernism, performance practices and the intersection of sport and art. She is the author of three monographs, including the British Academy-funded Migrating Modernist Performance: British Theatrical Travels through Russia. She is also the founder and academic lead of the Arts Council-funded Wrestling Resurgence project and a past chair of the British Association for Modernist Studies.