The Canada Research Chair in Performance and Culture is held at York University by Christopher Innes, Distinguished Research Professor, and past Canada Council Killam Fellow.
A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and of the Royal Society of Arts (UK), Christopher Innes is the author of more than 12 books on modern drama, and over 200 articles or essays. He is the general editor of the Cambridge "Directors in Perspective" series, as well as a co-editor for the "Lives of the Theatre" series published by Greenwood, and has served as a co-editor for the quarterly journal Modern Drama. He is also on the Editorial Advisory Board and one of the contributors for The Cambridge Guide to Theatre, and is on the Editorial Boards of various other series and international journals: including Theatre in the Americas, Theatre International: East-West Perspectives on Theatre (Calcutta), The Humanities, (Hong Kong), Symbolism: An International Journal of Critical Aesthetics (Würzburg & New York).
In addition to his full-time position at York University in Toronto, Christopher Innes has held Fellowships at Corpus Christi College and St. John's College, Cambridge, and has been Visiting Professor at Ohtani Women's University in Osaka, Japan, University-Professor at the Johannes Gutenberg Universität, Mainz, and Visiting Eminent Scholar at the University of Newcastle, Australia. He is also the founding Director of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Programme at York University.
He has lectured widely -- most recently in India, the USA, England, Germany, Japan and Scandinavia -- and is involved with the Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake. He has also served on the Board of the Canadian Stage Company in Toronto, where he lives with his family and other animals.
20TH-CENTURY BRITISH AND AMERICAN THEATRE: A CRITICAL GUIDE TO ARCHIVES
ASHGATE 1999
In order to develop the field of theatre studies by promoting the study of performative elements, this Guide indicates the potential values of the documentary material listed, covering all the material generated by any stage production: unpublished playscripts, stage- and costume designs, director's books and promptbooks, lighting plots, stage-photos, correspondence, theatre programs, etc.
Examining the development of avant-garde theatre from its inception in the 1890s right up to the present day, this book exposes a central paradox of modern theatre: that the motivating force of theatrical experimentation is primitivism. What links the work of Strindberg, Artaud, Brook and Mnouchkine is an idealization of the elemental and a desire to find ritual in archaic traditions. The avant-garde movement is traced from its origins in Bakunin and Bakhtin to such contemporary performance artists as Robert Wilson and Murray Shafer. And this widespread primitivism is shown to be the key to understanding both the political and aesthetic aspects of modern theatre, and provides fresh insights into contemporary social trends.
DESIGNING MODERN AMERICA: BROADWAY TO MAIN STREET
YALE 2005
This book tells the engrossing story of how two of Broadway's leading theatre designers, Joseph Urban and Norman Bel Geddes, turned their talents to industrial and commercial design, fashion, city planning, architecture and interior design. They shaped, publicized and promoted the most quintessential symbols of the modern American lifestyle. Illustrated with more than 130 photographs, it shows how these two men lent dramatic flair to everything they designed, and how this theatricality gave the distinctive modernity they created such wide appeal.
(WITH FREDERICK J. MARKER) MODERNISM IN EUROPEAN DRAMA: IBSEN, STRINDBERG, PIRANDELLO, BECKETT
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS 1998
This collection of essays, drawn from scholarship over the last forty years, explores the drama of four of the most influential proponents of modernism in European drama: Ibsen, Strindberg, Pirandello, and Beckett. Although there are there dramatists who also contributed to Modernism, these four illustrate widely different and contrasting aspects of the movement. Since discussions of Modernism are generally restricted to poetry, novels, or the fine arts (painting, sculpture), examining theatre from this perspective covers new ground.
ROUTLEDGE LITERARY SOURCEBOOK ON HENRIK IBSEN'S HEDDA GABLER
ROUTLEDGE 2003
Since Hedda Gabler exploded onto European and American stages in the1890s, the play and its title character have troubled and transfixed audiences, performers, and critics the world over.
THE CAMBRIDGE GUIDE TO THEATRE -- NEW EDITION
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1995
Written by a team of international experts the Guide clearly depicts the dynamic interaction of performance traditions from all cultures in present day theatre. While saluting the history and traditions of "high" art in the theatre, the Guide also celebrates the importance of "low" art: the energy and animation that has infused popular theatre and popular entertainment for thousands of years.
THE CAMBRIDGE GUIDE TO THEATRE -- UPDATED PAPERBACK EDITION
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1992
The illustrated Cambridge Guide to Theatre is the most comprehensive and up-to-date single-volume reference source on theatre available today. This Guide is truly global: alphabetical entries span the world and the ages, from Shakespeare to Broadway; and Japan to India -- every country with a significant theatrical past or present is included. Over 100 specialist writers cover everything the theatergoer could want to know.
THE CAMBRIDGE GUIDE TO WORLD THEATRE
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1988
This is a comprehensive guide to theatre with emphases on international theatre and on performance in its widest sense. The entries are arranged alphabetically and provide factual information on important traditions, theories, companies, playwrights, practitioners, venues and events, with over 250 informative illustrations keyed into the text. The Guide is a rich source of information for students, professionals, theatregoers and the general reader, and also acts as a stimulus to further exploration of areas of world theatre unduly neglected in many contemporary works of reference.
SAM SHEPARD AND THE AMERICAN THEATRE
Leslie A. Wade
PRAEGER 1997
No dramatist in the recent history of the American theatre has gained more celebrity than Sam Shepard. Exploring a career that includes fifty stage and screen plays, four books of nondramatic writings, and over a dozen appearances in feature films, this work traces Shepard's rise from an Off-Off Broadway renegade to a Hollywood leading man, and explores his evolution from counterculture to cultural icon. The study situates Shepard's career within the shifting production modes and economic contexts of the American entertainment industry, and views his popularity against the identity politics of postwar American culture. Through an analysis of his life, plays, and screen roles, this book investigates how Shepard's dramatic voice and film persona address issues of American consensus and community. The study argues that Shepard's popularity -- in an era of cultural diversification and dissent -- owes much to nationalism and nostalgia and begs important questions concerning American myths, media representations, and the construction of an American audience.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE AND THE RENAISSANCE OF TRAGEDY
Douglas Cole
PRAEGER 1995
This work focuses on Marlowe's works as an index of the major transformation of Elizabethan theatrical practices. In the opening chapter, Cole reviews the unusually intriguing historical record of Marlowe's life outside the theatre. The body of the book addresses Marlowe's individual plays as experiments in extending and redefining the traditional concepts and techniques of tragic drama, and suggests how his contemporaries and followers made use of his innovations. Intended as an introduction to the subject, this book provides an insightful approach to Marlowe's work and the study of Elizabethan thought and theatre.
MODERN THEATRE IN CONTEXT is an interactive chronology.
It includes facts and commentary about plays and performances, as well as biographies, information about genres and movements, headlines and news items illustrating Political, Artistic and Scientific developments through each decade.
