Though modern readers no longer believe in the four humors of Galenic naturalism – blood, choler, melancholy, and phlegm – early modern thought found in these bodily fluids key to explaining human emotions and behavior. In "Humoring the Body", Gail K...

In this major contribution to theatre history and cultural studies, authors Lawrence Manley and Sally-Beth MacLean paint a lively portrait of the now-forgotten acting troupe, "Lord Strange's Men", a daring company of players that dominated the London...

In this monumental work, Laurence Senelick and Sergei Ostrovsky offer a panoramic history of Soviet theatre from the Bolshevik Revolution to the eventual collapse of the USSR. Making use of more than eighty years' worth of archival documentation, the...

As the old ways of the commercial theatre were dying and American playwriting was in crisis, the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center arose as a midwife to new plays and musicals, introducing some of the most exciting talents of our time (including August W...

"Walpurgis Night", by acclaimed Russian writer Venedikt Erofeev, is considered a classic in the playwright's homeland. Erofeev's dark and funny five-act satire of Soviet repression has been called the comic high-water maker of the Brezhnev era. "Walp...

Glamorous, talented, audacious – Lillian Hellman knew everyone, did everything, had been everywhere. By the age of twenty-nine she had written "The Children's Hour", the first of four hit Broadway plays, and soon she was considered a member of Americ...

Questioning the ethics of historical narratives and the construction of national identities, this anthology of Polish plays explores the trauma of war, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, and reappraisals of the post-communist reality in Poland. The ele...