More Books

Performing Palimpsest Bodies: Postmemory Theatre Experiments in Mexico. By Ruth Hellier-Tinoco. Bristol: Intellect, 2019; 261 pp.; illustrations. $29.00 paper.

In this study, Hellier-Tinoco examines four performance projects created by Mexico's La Máquina de Teatro, each exploring and experimenting with transtemporality, collective memory, and the palimpsest bodies of history. The first, Mexican Trilogy (2006–2009), is a collection of three transdisciplinary performances that explore 15th- and 16th-century conquest narratives through transtemporal embodiments of Emperor Nezahualcóyotl, Moctezuma II, and La Malinche, a slave girl turned translator to Cortés. The next, Zapata, Death Without End (2014–2015), connects five multiregional performance collectives in a participatory theatrical event focused on Mexican Revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata. War in Paradise (2015) is the culminating work-in-progress performance of a three-week workshop project focused on 1960s resistance leader Lucio Cabañas. Finally, La Máquina founder Clarissa Malheiros's solo work, Time of the Devil (2015), explores existential issues and scenarios through the "spectral no-body of the Devil" (10). Hellier-Tinoco provides a close reading of each performance, exposing thematic resonances of history, memory, and corporeality through her analyses of performance methodology, staging, and audience interaction.

Drawing the Surface of Dance: A Biography in Charts. By Annie-B Parson. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2019; 175 pp.; illustrations. $26.00 paper, e-book available.

In this book of illustrations, diagrams, and photographs, choreographer Annie-B Parson presents visual records of dance pieces created between 1991 and 2018. For her "Biography in Charts," Parson uses illustrations and scores to trace patterns in her work as it has evolved over time. The charts comprise the physical objects—the chairs, props, instruments, wigs, articles of clothing, and other artifacts—from the world of each dance. In her introductory essay, "Stuff," Parson characterizes the charts and drawings as an effort to preserve something of the dance after its completion: "The charts are indexical, a cataloguing of the materiality of the piece" (8). Through this practice, Parson has amassed an archive that looks forward and backward simultaneously: back to her previous work, and forward to the potential uses and (re)uses of material for the future.

Redefining Theatre Communities: International Perspectives on Community-Conscious Theatre-Making. Edited by Marco Galea and Szabolcs Musca. Bristol: Intellect, 2019; 262 pp.; illustrations. $100.00 cloth.

This collection of culturally and methodologically diverse community-conscious theatre initiatives draws largely from a 2015 conference on the island of Gozo in Malta. The conference presentations, workshops, and practice-based discussions resulted in an expanded understanding of theatre-making and community work. In sections on community perspectives, political ethics, the potential of global versus local initiatives, and emerging community practices, the collection engages theory and praxis to examine a variety of international strategies. "Our aim," Galea and Musca write, "is to map new forms of communication, dialogue and engagement by which contemporary international theatre connects with its diverse communities" (2). The volume also includes a section of interviews and extensive notes to guide further research.

Beyond Broadway: The Pleasure and Promise of Musical Theatre Across America. By Stacy Wolf. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020...