Why the Theatre: In personal essays, college teachers, actors, directors, and playwrights tell why theatre is so vital to them

Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Why?
Part I The Creative Role of the Audience
	1 Vouchsafe Me Audience
	2 Training the Eye
	3 Undeveloped Freight: Listening Together in the Playhouse
	4 A Shakespeare Professor Becomes a Playgoer
	5 Acting the Storm: Twenty Years of Tempests
	6 From Theatre to Classroom: Making Teaching Effective
Part II The Life of the Actor, Director, and Playwright in Performance
	7 Why the Theatre?: The Breaking of the Fourth Wall
	8 Play, Devising, and the Creative Process
	9 I Am Thrilled by an Impure Theatre
	10 In the Nick: Theatre in and of Our Times
	11 “The Play” May Not Be “The Thing”—But Something Is
	12 Why Butoh Theatre: Thoughts of the Actor, Questions From the Director
	13 Amateur Hour, or Notes From a Hack Playwright
Part III When the Theatre Moves Beyond the Stage Into the Real World
	14 Theatre for Health
	15 Why Make Theatre in the South Pacific? A Personal View of Theatre in Aotearoa/New Zealand
	16 Empathy Is Essential
	17 The Art of Failure
	18 Why Teach Theatre?
	19 Making Theatre Around the World, and What It Has Taught Me
Part IV Theories and Thoughts About What the Theatre Can Do When Given Form Onstage
	20 The Cruelty Tourist and the Emancipated Spectator: Looking for an Essential Theatre
	21 Theatre and the Digital Native
	22 Remembering Dreams
	23 Theatrical Pleasure and Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel
	24 Yeats’s “Lapis Lazuli” as Theatrum Mundi
	25 Why (Not) Theatre? Stage, Screen, and Streaming in a Pandemic
	26 Because
Epilogue: “Yeh, Boss”
About the Authors
Index