The Routledge Performance Archive is a developing resource produced in partnership with Digital Theatre, providing unique access to an unprecedented range of audio-visual material from past and present practitioners of performance. This ground-breaking and constantly growing online collection delivers essential resources direct to the classroom, lecture theatre and library. The video material spans more than fifty years of documented work direct from renowned practitioners and specialists, and ranges across the entire spectrum of theatre topics.
Practitioners
Browse the Archive through our list of practitioners, ranging from legendary figures to contemporary pioneers. Trace connections between individuals and entire movements, via specially commissioned biographies and peer-reviewed cross-referencing. All biographical information and video descriptions come direct from the practitioners themselves, unless otherwise stated.
Subjects
Explore content thematically through our carefully structured taxonomy, and reflect on fascinating new relationships between concept and content. All entries have been taken from Paul Allain’s and Jen Harvie’s Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance (Routledge: London, 2006), and are edited by Maggie B. Gale, unless otherwise indicated.
Levinsky, Alexey
Alexey Levinsky is an expert biomechanics practitioner working in Moscow. He was trained with Meyerhold’s collaborator, Nikolai Kustov, in the early 1970s at the Theatre of Satire.
Goat Island
Goat Island was a Chicago-based collaborative performance group that began in 1987. They made nine intimate, low-tech and intensely physical performance works that toured internationally.
Carnival
Carnival is popular street festival that usually combines music, masking or costume, dance, food, eroticism and performances such as parades, street theatre and puppetry.
Zinder, David
David Zinder was born in Jerusalem, and completed his Ph.D. at the University of California. He is a founding member of the Michael Chekhov Association and member of the Michael Chekhov Europe board.
Frayn, Michael J.
Born in London in 1933, Michael J. Frayn studied at Cambridge, and then began his working life as a journalist before starting to write plays and novels.
Hall, Peter
Hall’s work is characterised by attention to detail, meticulous verse speaking, and a strong design aesthetic. He has written and spoken at length about mask work, classical theatre and verse.
Expressionism
The term ‘expressionism’ describes a radical style of visual art that aimed to express emotion non-naturalistically, in violent protest against the perceived bourgeois repression of naturalism.
Performer Training
Performer training assumes skills can be developed to make communication clearer and the experience of performing easier. In training, the performer usually practises integrating voice and body.
Devising
Devising is a method of making performance that is not dominated by text and includes the collaborative participation of the whole creative company in all stages and aspects of performance-making.
Grotowski, Jerzy
Jerzy Grotowski was one of the major theatre directors of the twentieth century. He extended what theatrical activity comprises through focus on acting, space, and the actor–audience relationship.
Fava, Antonio
Actor, director, writer, flautist, mask-maker and teacher, Antonio Fava has worked with Dario Fo and Jacques Lecoq and founded Teatro del Vicolo with Dina Buccino.
Solo Performance
Examples of solo performance have existed since records of theatre and performance activity have been available, but often here the ‘solo’ involves the delivery of some sort of monologue or soliloquy.
Theatre-Making & Processes
The creation of a performance or a piece of theatre involves a process informed by method, aesthetic choice and economic context.