Anna Furse

Surveying how Performance as a form has evolved as a distinct artistic sector to where it is today, Performance Making: a pedagogy for precarious times provides insight into the impact the artform has had across the creative sector and argues for its defence in higher education today.Drawing on over 40+ years’ worth of experience as artist and academic, Anna Furse interrogates the ways in which the practice of Performance is truly interdisciplinary, offering a specific creative and critical practice approach. Chapters address the neo-liberal turn and its effect on culture; the history of the emergence of the genre within Performance Studies; the underlying political and cultural message of Performance as independent and necessary; wider philosophical and critical theoretical thinking that can support innovation within the field; and the key principles in the creation of live work such as space, site, scenography, the body, collaboration, and composition. Each chapter includes an essay, case studies, and exercises, empowering students to apply critical thinking to their own work.Focusing on developing creative-critical methodologies in Performance Making at postgraduate level for international cohorts, this textbook will equip students, instructors, and practitioners to contextualise and enrich their Performance practice and leadership.

Surveying how Performance as a form has evolved as a distinct artistic sector to where it is today, Performance Making: a pedagogy for precarious times provides insight into the impact the artform has had across the creative sector and argues for its defence in higher education today.Drawing on over 40+ years’ worth of experience as artist and academic, Anna Furse interrogates the ways in which the practice of Performance is truly interdisciplinary, offering a specific creative and critical practice approach. Chapters address the neo-liberal turn and its effect on culture; the history of the emergence of the genre within Performance Studies; the underlying political and cultural message of Performance as independent and necessary; wider philosophical and critical theoretical thinking that can support innovation within the field; and the key principles in the creation of live work such as space, site, scenography, the body, collaboration, and composition. Each chapter includes an essay, case studies, and exercises, empowering students to apply critical thinking to their own work.Focusing on developing creative-critical methodologies in Performance Making at postgraduate level for international cohorts, this textbook will equip students, instructors, and practitioners to contextualise and enrich their Performance practice and leadership.

Academic interest in hysteria has burgeoned in recent decades. The topic has been probed by feminist theorists, cultural studies specialists, literary scholars, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, medical and art historians, as well as novelists. The hysteric is construed as a powerless, voiceless subject, marginalised by the forces of the patriarchy that have been the root cause of their distress, dissembling, and disablement. In Performing Nerves, Anna Furse interweaves her artistic and academic practice, drawing on her own performance texts to explore four different versions of debilitating hysteric suffering. Each text is extensively annotated, revealing the dramaturgical logic and, in turn, the historical, medical, and cultural contexts behind their protagonists' illnesses, which are argued as environmentally caused in each case. This unique, reflective insight into a playwright and director’s craft offers not only an account of how mental suffering can manifest in different contexts and times, from the 19th century to today, but also a breadth of access to the ideas that can motivate creative research.This book is an invaluable resource for scholars of theatre studies, performance studies, dramaturgy, 20th-century history, gender studies, and medical humanities.

Academic interest in hysteria has burgeoned in recent decades. The topic has been probed by feminist theorists, cultural studies specialists, literary scholars, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, medical and art historians, as well as novelists. The hysteric is construed as a powerless, voiceless subject, marginalised by the forces of the patriarchy that have been the root cause of their distress, dissembling, and disablement. In Performing Nerves, Anna Furse interweaves her artistic and academic practice, drawing on her own performance texts to explore four different versions of debilitating hysteric suffering. Each text is extensively annotated, revealing the dramaturgical logic and, in turn, the historical, medical, and cultural contexts behind their protagonists' illnesses, which are argued as environmentally caused in each case. This unique, reflective insight into a playwright and director’s craft offers not only an account of how mental suffering can manifest in different contexts and times, from the 19th century to today, but also a breadth of access to the ideas that can motivate creative research.This book is an invaluable resource for scholars of theatre studies, performance studies, dramaturgy, 20th-century history, gender studies, and medical humanities.

First Published in 1997. Contemporary Theatre Studies is a book series of special interest to everyone involved in theatre. It consists of monographs on influential figures, studies of movements and ideas in theatre, as well as primary material consisting of theatre-related documents, performing editions of plays in English, and English translations of plays from various vital theatre traditions worldwide. Augustine (Big Hysteria) by Anna Furse, first produced in Plymouth in1991, is one of the most important plays in the new feminist theatre of hysteria.

Celebrating 50 years of Theatre Centre Edited and Introduced by Rosamunde Hutt Foreword by Pam St. Clement Listen To Your Parents by Benjamin Zephaniah | Precious by Angela Turvey | Look At Me by Anna Reynolds | Gorgeous by Anna Furse | Glow by Manjinder Virk | Souls by Roy Williams A challenging and culturally diverse collection of new plays by some of the UK's foremost writers. dealing with topics such as domestic violence, eating disorders, mother/daughter relationships and sibling rivalry, written by some of Britain's foremost writers. Beautifully written and tested in performance, these plays which deal with topics such as domestic violence, eating disorders, mother/daughter relationships and sibling rivalry, will become essential texts for theatres, schools, colleges and youth centres.

This guide provides information on: different causes of fertility problems; the drug and treatment options available; the medical technology - how does it work?; and self-help and complementary medicine. It also provides a guide to every UK clinic and hospital offering IVF.

First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.