Theory for Theatre Studies

Theory for Theatre Studies: Bodies offers a rich survey of the body in performance through a broad and diverse range of examples that refer to wider socio-cultural movements and concerns yet are firmly placed in theatre practice. Soyica Diggs Colbert draws arguments fluently, shifting from illustration to illustration, theory to theory, with ease and in a way that remains focused for the reader. -- Josephine Machon, Middlesex University, UK Soyica Diggs Colbert's extraordinary new book Theory for Theatre Studies: Bodies is a comprehensive and complex consideration of the discontinuities of material and discursive theatrical histories from Medieval Drama to the contemporary period, which challenges scholars and artists to reconsider how embodied meaning is created by and through performance on stage. This game-changing text deftly argues that bodies carry meaning into every theatrical text and event and thus directly impact how shifting understandings of race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality and ability become inseparable facets through which modalities of power, economics and privilege are realized on and off stage. Colbert connects both theatrical and critical theoretical discourses of the acting body in Theory for Theatre Studies: Bodies as she translates new possibilities of imagining, seeing and reading the body. This book unhinges notions of classical texts and is poised to become a 'must read' book for any artist, scholar and/or theater enthusiast who believes that equitable and inclusive theater is not only obtainable in the 21st century, but necessary for manifesting anti-racist futures. * Nicole Hodges Persley, University of Kansas, USA *