Worlds In Words: Storytelling In Contemporary Theatre

Description:
The collection of essays 'Worlds in Words: Storytelling in Contemporary Theatre' takes up the currently widely debated issue of the revival of various techniques of storytelling in contemporary theatre practice and playwriting. This topic is set in a larger context of the crisis of traditional theatrical and dramatic representation in the 20th century and sets the discussion of new storytelling techniques within the framework of cultural and postcolonial studies, as well as the recent theories of performativity. These new performative modes of theatre practice in the recent decades have exerted a strong impact on the mainstream staging techniques as well as on the form and use of texts written for the theatre today. By focusing on the basic relationship between the text, the stage and the audience, the papers collected in this volume trace these fundamental changes taking place nowadays, which testify to the major shifts in the understanding of the very concept of theatre, its place among other arts and media, as well as in culture, especially in the marginalized cultures and diasporas. The authors of the papers collected here undertake a comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon of storytelling and adopt an interdisciplinary approach which will makes it possible to give account of the diverse cultural and socio-political grounding of the contemporary theatrical and dramatic techniques.

Author Biography:
Mateusz Borowski is Assistant Professor in Drama Department of Jagiellonian University, Krakow. His main research area is contemporary European and American drama, queer theory and translation studies. Malgorzata Sugiera is Head of Drama Department of Jagiellonian University, Krakow. She has published a number of books and essays on the 20th century German, French, Polish and Anglo-American theatre and drama, contemporary rewritings of Shakespeare, as well as postcolonial, feminist, gender and queer drama and theatre.