LibGuides: THEATRST 348S: Devised Performance and Physical Theater: Find Books

Document Delivery/Interlibrary Loan

Need a book or book chapter from a title we don't own or an article from a journal we don't subscribe to? Don't give up hope--use Interlibrary Loan! We will find a library that has the material you need and we'll borrow the book or get a PDF of an article scanned and email it to you. Create an account today - click on Go to Interlibrary Loan account to set it up!

Search by subject

Do some searching by subject and find fabulous resources
available from the Duke University Libraries.

Here are some subject headings to play with:

Experimental theater

Grotowski, Jerzy, 1933-1999

Grotowski, Jerzy, 1933-1999>Criticism and interpretation

Teatr Laboratorium (Wrocław, Poland)

Suzuki, Tadashi, 1939-

Movement (Acting)

Find Scripts

New Play Exchange This link opens in a new window
The New Play Exchange, a National New Play Network project, is the world’s largest digital library of scripts by living writers.
Play Index This link opens in a new window
Search for plays written from Antiquity to the present
Asian American Drama This link opens in a new window
Search for detailed information about Asian American plays
Black Drama This link opens in a new window
Search and find the full text of plays by 200 leading African dramatists from North America, Africa, and the Caribbean
Contemporary World Drama This link opens in a new window
Search in a collection of 1,000 international contemporary plays, from 2000 to present day.
North American Indian Drama This link opens in a new window
Search for the full text of plays by American Indian, First Nation, and Pacific Islanders playwrights of the 20th century.
North American Women's Drama, Second Edition This link opens in a new window
Search the full text of more than 1,000 plays written by female playwrights from the United States and Canada.
Drama Online This link opens in a new window
Contains plays from the earliest Greek works through the present day, in text, video, and audio formats. Includes background and contextual works on playwrights, theater movements, genres, practitioners and periods, as well as scholarly monographs, dictionary content, and practical books on acting and stage craft.
Duke has access to the following modules:
--Classic Spring Oscar Wilde Collection
--Core Collection
--Critical Studies and Performance Practice
--The Hollow Crown
--National Theatre Collection 1, 2, 3
--Nick Hern Books Modern Plays
--Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) Live Collection
--Shakespeare Video Collection
--Shakespeare's Globe on Screen
--Shakespeare’s Globe to Globe Festival on Screen 1 & 2
--Stratford Festival Shakespeare Collection 1 & 2
--Theatre Communications Group (TCG) Books Play Collection

Finding Books in the Library Catalog

Search in Books & Media to find print and online books, films, music--everything EXCEPT articles (which can be found in databases and online journals).

Background Material

The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater by Nadine George-Graves (Editor)
Call Number: eBook
Publication Date: 2015-07-13
Scholars of theater and of dance having long worked in isolation from each other, developing different theories and methodologies, have begun to identify and explore common ground and develop common methodologies. This work hopes to establish this research field, lay out its salient dialogues, widen horizons of scholarship in the performing arts, and move the fields of dance and theater closer together.
Devising Performance: a critical History by Graham Ley (Editor); Jane Milling (Editor); Deirdre Heddon
Publication Date: 2005-10-22
The book charts the development of collaboratively-created performances from the 1950s to the present day. Companies discussed include the Living Theatre, Open Theatre, Australian Performing Group, People Show, Teatro Campesino, Théâtre de Complicité, Legs on the Wall, Forced Entertainment and Third Angel. Against this background of enormous variety, fundamental questions are posed: "What is devised theatre?"; "Why have theatre-makers chosen to devise performances since the 1950s?" and "How has devised performance changed over the last fifty years?"

A flavor of what we collect

Here are some eBooks that you have access to; search in the online catalog for even more!

Imagining bodies and performer training: the legacies of Jacques Lecoq and Gaston Bachelard by Ellie Nixon
Publication Date: 2024-3-3
This book is a practical and theoretical exploration of devised performance in which the human and more-than-human are co-implicated in the creative process. The book charts the development of collaboratively-created performances from the 1950s to the present day. Companies discussed include the Living Theatre, Open Theatre, Australian Performing Group, People Show, Teatro Campesino, Théâtre de Complicité, Legs on the Wall, Forced Entertainment and Third Angel. Against this background of enormous variety, fundamental questions are posed: "What is devised theatre?"; "Why have theatre-makers chosen to devise performances since the 1950s?" and "How has devised performance changed over the last fifty years?"
Culture Is the Body by Tadashi Suzuki; Kameron Steele (Translator)
Call Number: Perkins PN2039 .S93 2015
Publication Date: 2015-08-04
One of the world's most revered theatre directors, Tadashi Suzuki is also a seminal thinker and practitioner whose work has had a profound influence on theatre worldwide. This landmark collection of his writings provides a thorough and invaluable look at his philosophical and practical approaches to the stage.
Acting with Grotowski: : theatre as a field for experiencing life by Paul Allain (Editor); Khalid Tyabji (Editor); Zbigniew Cynkutis
Publication Date: 2014-11-05
'Zbigniew Cynkutis' writings constitute invaluable testimony of his work with Jerzy Grotowski during the 'theatre of productions' phase and beyond. Cynkutis' insights elucidate aspects of the Laboratory Theatre's praxis and provide a unique perspective on the questions most often asked about Grotowski.
Rhythm in Acting and Performance by Eilon Morris
Publication Date: 2017-07-27
See chapter "Anne Bogart and Tina Landau : a horizontal viewpoint."
Rhythm is often referred to as one of the key elements of performance and acting, being of central importance to both performance making and training. It has often been identified as an effective tool for developing the coordination and conscious awareness of individual performers, ensembles and their immediate relationship to an audience. This text examines the principles and techniques underlying these processes, focusing on key approaches adopted and developed within European and American performance practices over the last century.
Western Theatre in Global Contexts by Yasmine Jahanmir; Jillian Campana
Call Number: Perkins Library PN2075 .W44 2021
Publication Date: 2020-08-01
See chapter "Collaborative creations : teaching devised performance in Santiago, Chile."
Western Theatre in Global Contexts explores the junctures, tensions, and discoveries that occur when teaching Western theatrical practices or directing English-language plays in countries that do not share Western theatre histories or in which English is the non-dominant language.
DAH Theatre by Dennis Barnett (Editor)
Publication Date: 2016-05-19
See chapter "On Making Devised Performances with DAH Theatre."
DAH Theatre: A Sourcebook is a collection of essays about the work of one of the most successful and innovative performance groups in contemporary history. With a direct line of descent from Jerzy Grotowski and Eugenio Barba, DAH Theatre, founded during the worst of times in the former Yugoslavia, amidst a highly patriarchal society, predominantly run by women, has thrived now for twenty-five years.
Performing Opposition by Neil Blackadder
Publication Date: 2003-11-30
Modern theater history is punctuated by instances of scandalized audience members disrupting and in some cases suspending the first production of a new play. Such incidents are usually dismissed as riots, as self-evident displays of philistinism. Neil Blackadder's intriguing new study reveals them in fact to be multifaceted conflicts, showing the ways in which these protesters-acting against plays by such notables as Jarry, Synge, and Brecht-creatively devised and enacted resistance through verbal rejoinders, physical gestures, and organized group demonstrations.
Making a Performance by Katie Normington; Emma Govan; Helen Nicholson
Call Number: Perkins Library PN2193.E86 G68 2007
Publication Date: 2007-06-22
Making a Performance traces innovations in devised performance from early theatrical experiments in the twentieth-century to the radical performances of the twenty-first century. This introduction to the theory, history and practice of devised performance explores how performance-makers have built on the experimental aesthetic traditions of the past. It looks to companies as diverse as Australia's Legs on the Wall, Britain's Forced Entertainment and the USA-based Goat Island to show how contemporary practitioners challenge orthodoxies to develop new theatrical languages.
Grotowski, Women, and Contemporary Performance by Virginie Magnat
Publication Date: 2013-10-10
Although the particularly strenuous physical training emblematic of Grotowski's approach is not gender specific, it has historically been associated with a masculine conception of the performer incarnated by Ryszard Cieslak in The Constant Prince, thus overlooking the work of Rena Mirecka, Maja Komorowska, and Elizabeth Albahaca, to name only the leading women performers identified with the period of theatre productions. This book therefore redresses this imbalance by focusing on key women from different cultures and generations who share a direct connection to Grotowski's legacy while clearly asserting their artistic independence.