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This Companion, first published in 2000, addresses the work of women playwrights in Britain throughout the twentieth century. The chapters explore the historical and theatrical contexts in which women have written for the theatre and examine the work of individual playwrights. A chronological section on playwriting from the 1920s to the 1970s is followed by chapters which raise issues of nationality and identity. Later sections question accepted notions of the canon and include chapters on non-mainstream writing, including black and lesbian performance. Each section is introduced by the editors, who provide a narrative overview of a century of women's drama and a thorough chronology of playwriting, set in political context. The collection includes essays on the individual writers Caryl Churchill, Sarah Daniels, Pam Gems and Timberlake Wertenbaker as well as extensive documentation of contemporary playwriting in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, including figures such as Liz Lochhead and Anne Devlin.

This essay reexamines the role of empirical research in scholarship on spectators. Within the context of political debates in the UK about cultural value and, in particular, the value of the performing arts in relation to other claims on public funding, it reports on attempts to counter the historical battle between instrumental and intrinsic value with new information on what spectators actually value in their theatregoing experiences. After reviewing public-policy debates with regard to these questions, the essay moves on to describe a research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council during 2013–14 on \"Theatre Spectatorship and Value Attribution\" (TSVA). The objectives of TSVA were to drill down into audience experiences of attending theatre, focusing on phenomenological self-description and analysis in order to understand how those specific experiences were valued (or not) by spectators. The Royal Shakespeare Company, the Young Vic, and the Theatre Royal Plymouth (Drum) collaborated with researchers to study spectators in relation to fourteen productions. Surveys, structured interviews, and creative workshops were employed to collect the data. TVSA also investigated whether changes occur in audience spectators' thinking about their theatre experience over time. The project found that sociality is interwoven with value in theatre experiences, and that social interaction, stimulating thought, and connections to spectators' lives and the world are deeply valued attributes of the sample. The essay concludes with an appraisal of the research results and suggestions for future research that would combine empirical with analytic methods.

Looking at the murder case of Stephen Lawrence, and then at the art object made out of the event-the documentary play, The Colour of Justice-the interpenetration of performance codes and practices with \"real life\" demonstrates the explanatory power of performance to shape ideas, question truth claims, sway public opnion, and construct an aesthetics that might functions as an epistemology.

The picture of the group of scholars on the steps of the University of Helsinki in 1993 is typical of Thomas Postlewait and depicts at the same time an important moment in the history of the International Federation for Theatre Research (Fig. 1). Tom keeps in the background, furthest back in the top row, next to Selma Jeanne Cohen and Martine de Rougemont, then the vice president of IFTR. This position was in a way typical of Tom. He remained in the background and at the same time he supported and pushed those around him. This characterized his role as the editor of the University of Iowa Press series called Studies in Theatre History and Culture. During twenty years he published forty books by authors from many countries. Some of them can be seen assembled around him on the photograph. Anyone who was lucky to be coached by Editor Tom will easily confirm the strong directions that were given with a soft hand, preserving the particularities of the author within the overall framework of the series.

Essential for students of Theatre Studies, this series of six decadal volumes provides a critical survey and reassessment of the theatre produced in each decade from the 1950s to the present. Each volume equips readers with an understanding of the context from which work emerged, a detailed overview of the range of theatrical activity and a close study of the work of four of the major playwrights by a team of leading scholars. Chris Megson's comprehensive survey of the theatre of the 1970s examines the work of four playwrights who came to promience in the decade and whose work remains undiminished today: Caryl Churchill (by Paola Botham), David Hare (Chris Megson), Howard Brenton (Richard Boon) and David Edgar (Janelle Reinelt). It analyses their work then, its legacy today and provides a fresh assessment of their contribution to British theatre. Interviews with the playwrights, with directors and with actors provides an invaluable collection of documents offering new perspectives on the work. Revisiting the decade from the perspective of the twenty-first century, Chris Megson provides an authoritative and stimulating reassessment of British playwriting in the 1970s.

Literacy has been traditionally understood as the ability to read and write, in other words, to communicate through print culture. A larger view might see literacy as the ability to use language--to read, to write, to listen, and to speak. Here, Reinelt comments that both theatre and performance studies must ultimately find a way to truly internationalize one's research and post graduate education. She also discusses some aspects to develop international performance literacies.

Davis proved excellent at all aspects of conference problem solving: international diplomacy, programme design, financial management, local arrangements, improvising. When I applied for an Erasmus Mundus master's degree programme, Davis as head of department supported it fully. What I prized in all this was that Davis was building a research culture for Warwick in which everyone had their individual focus and yet felt connected to everyone else. Davis enjoyed teaching at all levels on many topics, and was very committed to his research students’ growth and development, painstakingly reading their dissertation chapters to provide intelligent feedback on their concepts and close editing of their prose.

This essay seeks to reconsider and appropriate the cultural politics of Raymond Williams for the project of formulating a critique of current ideas about politics and theatre. The residual values of cultural materialism as theorized by Williams, based on a concept of culture as productive, processual and egalitarian, have become less influential under the pressures of post-structuralism and neo-liberalism. The current attraction to Rancière, for example, emphasizes dissensus over consensus and singularity over collectivity. Post-dramatic theatre rejects direct engagement with political discourse altogether. While recognizing that these emerging theoretical ideas continue the historical romance of avant-garde theatre with rupture and dissent, Williams can remind us of still-powerful strategies that are rooted in identifying shared experiences, relating cultural production to its sociopolitical context, and the value of collective struggles.

Janelle Reinelt explores playwright Howard Brenton's return to Britain's national stages after almost a decade's absence, discussing recent productions that address the fraught relationship between religious belief and human conduct. Joshua Chambers-Letson contemplates the queer politics of failure in regard to Nao Bustamante's , which challenges the value of “normality” via the possibility of a communal being-in-failure for queers, people of color, and other nonnormative subjects. Engaging South Africa's 2006 National Arts Festival, Daniel Larlham addresses the country's national transformations through its changing artistic landscape, newly opened to a variety of imaginative, discursive, and affective spaces in which a communal historical consciousness might develop.

This essay seeks to reconsider and appropriate the cultural politics of Raymond Williams for the project of formulating a critique of current ideas about politics and theatre. The residual values of cultural materialism as theorized by Williams, based on a concept of culture as productive, processual and egalitarian, have become less influential under the pressures of post-structuralism and neo-liberalism. The current attraction to Rancière, for example, emphasizes dissensus over consensus and singularity over collectivity. Post-dramatic theatre rejects direct engagement with political discourse altogether. While recognizing that these emerging theoretical ideas continue the historical romance of avant-garde theatre with rupture and dissent, Williams can remind us of still-powerful strategies that are rooted in identifying shared experiences, relating cultural production to its sociopolitical context, and the value of collective struggles.