Theatre Censorship in Contemporary Europe

Silence and Protest

ANNE ETIENNE, CHRIS MEGSON

• The book discusses censorship through the work of key European playwrights, directors, and theatre makers, as well as significant theatre (and opera) productions.

• It engages with urgent and topical debates on freedom of expression, multiculturalism, religious co-existence, cancel culture, populism, nationalism, and globalisation in contemporary Europe.

• The contributors are specialist experts from across Europe and include both leading academics and emerging scholars.

This edited collection is the first pan-European study of contemporary theatre censorship. An international range of scholars assess how new forms of censorship operate to silence artists and control performances; they explore how theatre artists respond to constraints placed upon their work across territories, and analyse how age-old political, religious, and moral taboos impact on theatrical creation and reception. Readers are invited to consider not only the varied mechanisms of censorship, including its more covert iterations, but also what is censored, when, how, and why, particularly in relation to the sensitive issues of religion, race, sexuality, and nationalism. By focusing on the work of key European theatre practitioners, as well as significant productions and performances, contributors reflect on the impact of censorship on artistic policies and cultural activity, and the forms of protest mobilized against it.

Biographical Note

Anne Etienne lectures in Modern and Contemporary Drama in the School of English, University College Cork. Her publications explore theatre censorship, Arnold Wesker and contemporary Irish theatre. She co-edits the series Palgrave Studies in Cultural Censorship.

Chris Megson is Reader in Drama and Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London. His publications focus on post-war and contemporary British playwriting, theatre censorship, and global theatres of the real. He co-edits the series Playwriting and the Contemporary: Critical Collaborations (LUP).

PUBLICATION DATE

31 December 2023

PUBLISHER

University of Exeter Press

FORMAT | ISBN | PRICE

Hbk | 9781804130513 | £85.00 | $120.00 eBook available

SIZE

234 x 156 mm

PAGES 336pp

SERIES

Exeter Performance Studies

BIC SUBJECTS

AN, DSG, JFMD, HBTB, HBJD

BISAC SUBJECTS

PER011000, POL039000, LIT013000, HIS054000, HIS010000

RIGHTS

World