Theatre and the City

JEN HARVIE is Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance at Queen Mary, University of London, UK. She is co-editor of the Theatre& series, author of Staging the UK (2005), co-author of The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance (2006) and co-editor of Making Contemporary Theatre (2009).

• Series Editors' PrefaceForeword; Tim Etchells IntroductionCity & TextsCultural Materialism, Theatre & the CityCity & Performativity: Performing the CityConclusions: City, Theatre, Performance, Hybridity, Ambivalence & CosmopolitanismFurther Reading Index

'[a] brilliant series...these mini paperbacks each give an insightful, focused overview of a key topic...start collecting now.' - Whatsonstage.com '...Palgrave Macmillan's excellent new outward-looking, eclectic Theatre& ... series.These short books, written by leading theatre academics, do much to reintroduce some of the brightest names in theatre academia to the general reader. Plus, the matrix of references to bigger books soon builds quite a comprehensive catch-up reading list for those of us who graduated more than a decade ago and are interested in where contemporary thinking is at...' - Guardian Theatre Blog, September 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2009/sep/10/theatre-critics-academics-artists 'Harvie's engagingly presented and well organized study of theatre and the city effectively combines performative with cultural analysis and offers an introduction to this important subject that should prove attractive to students, scholars, and general readers alike.' - Marvin Carlson, Sidney E. Cohn Distinguished Professor of Theatre and Comparative Literature, City University of New York, USA 'Why city?... Because the city can trap you, nurture you, teach you, unravel you, unspeak you. Because you are just one amongst many here and the dynamic of one in relation to many (conversation, dialogue, difference, the negotiation of public space) is what theatre emerges from and thrives on, what art must address and what cities must somehow contend with if they are to survive.' - Tim Etchells 'Jen Harvie's combative Theatre& The City has an eye for the contradictions in the urban economy, wondering how the 'temporrary community of the auditorium reflects the city beyond.' - Plays International '...a persuasive argument that stresses the need for urban cultural practices to be understood through a methodological hybridization of cultural materialism and performative analysis.' - Theatre Research International 'For those of us interested in the knotty paradoxes that sit at the core of theatre's meta-theatrical truth-effects - an ethics that is no longer ethics, a politics that is political for how it is yet to be imagined, an idea of the human that displaces itself the moment it is performed - these pithy glimpses at the enigma of what theatre might be doing when it does itself well are timely engagements with some of the twenty-first century's most pressing philosophical preoccupations.' - Review of Theatre & series, Performance Paradigm