Theatre, Performance and Commemoration: Staging Crisis, Memory and Nationhood

How does the act of performance speak to the concept of commemoration? How and why does commemorative theatre operate as a conceptual, historical and political site from which to interrogate ideas of nationalism and nationhood? This volume explores how theatre and performance create a stage for acts of commemoration, considering crises of hate, nationalism and migration, as well as political, racial and religious bigotry. It features case studies drawn from across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America. The book’s four parts each explore commemoration through a different theoretical lens and present a new set of dramaturgies for research and study. While Section 1 offers a critical survey of 20th- and 21st-century discourses, Section 2 uncovers the commemorative practices underpinning contemporary dramaturgy and applies these practices to plays and performance pieces. These include works by Martin Lynch, Frank McGuinness, Sanja Mitrovic, Theater RAST, Les SlovaKs Dance Collective, Estela Golovchenko, Wajdi Mouawad, Áine Stapleton, CoisCéim, ANU Productions, Aubrey Sekhabi, and Indian and African dance practices. The final sections investigate how individual and collective memory and performances of commemoration can become tools for propaganda and political agendas.

Miriam Haughton is Director of Postgraduate Programmes in Drama and Theatre Studies at University of Galway, Ireland, Vice-President of the Irish Society for Theatre Research, author of Staging Trauma (2018) and co-editor of Legacies of the Magdalen Laundries (2021) and Radical Contemporary Theatre Practices by Women in Ireland (2015).

Alinne Balduino P. Fernandes is Associate Professor in English and Director of the Irish Studies research cluster at Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil, and editor of A virada cultural nos Estudos da Tradução (2022).

Anita Gonzalez is Professor of Theatre, Chair of Dance and Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs at the University of Michigan, US. Gonzalez is co-editor of the book Black Performance Theory with Thomas DeFrantz and author of Afro-Mexico: Dancing Between Myth and Reality and Jarocho's Soul, as well as of numerous articles and book chapters.

Pieter Verstraete is Assistant Professor at University of Groningen, the Netherlands, Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellow at Free University Berlin, Germany, and co-editor of Inside Knowledge: (Un)doing Ways of Knowing in the Humanities (2009) and Cathy Berberian: Pioneer of Contemporary Vocality (2014).

Claire Cochrane is Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Worcester, UK. She has published widely on regional British theatre with a particular focus on Black British and British Asian theatre. Her publications include Twentieth Century British Theatre Industry Art and Empire (2011).