Sign-In
Cart
The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre Censorship
Paperback
General World HistoryTheater HistorySocial Movements
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
ISBN13: 9783031673016
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Published: Nov 29 2025
Pages: 670
Language: English
This book incorporates a wide theoretical, cultural, literary and historical engagement in exploring the tension between dramatic productions and the forms of censorship they encounter from creation to reception. The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre Censorship offers global new insights into censorship practices, examining attempts at repression motivated either by fears that audiences gathering together to watch live dramatic events will lead to sedition and mass uprisings, or by moral or religious squeamishness requiring the establishment of institutional systems of censorship to curb or suppress the stage. As such, the Handbook aims to initiate redefinitions of what we understand or experience as censorship.
Who knew theatre could (still) carry so many threats, or be so widely provocative and dangerous? This is an extraordinary and often eye-opening set of thirty-six individually insightful, wide-ranging and oftentimes disturbing essays, each of which offers unique insights into theatre censorship practices and their impact within a specific political and moral culture. There is a particular emphasis on the recent and current, and the authors speak with first-hand knowledge and from direct experience not only about the restrictions but also how artists sometimes negotiate and evade these. What makes the book so especially fascinating and illuminating is seeing so many examples juxtaposed together. This enables the reader to hear the essays and the cultures talking to and alongside each other. The collection repeatedly breaks fresh ground, and the editors deserve enormous credit for gathering and effectively curating so many reports from the front-line.
- -Steve Nicholson, Emeritus Professor, University of Sheffield, UK
Anne Etienne and Graham Saunders's book is a wide-ranging, incisive and compelling collection of reflections and case studies on the theatre industry's relationship to censorship and self-censorship from a historical and contemporaneous perspective. An impressive array of authors have been assembled for this volume representing, among them, views on the subject from Spain, Denmark, Norway, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Germany, Italy, Indonesia, Iran, Portugal, Turkey, Brazil, Japan, Ireland, Australia, Russia, England and more. The book is by turns surprising in its curatorial and narrative design and wonderfully effective at delineating the complex and thorny paths that create socio-political cultures where the censorship and self-censorship of theatre artists thrives and/or is efficaciously contested and rebelled against. Of note is a through line of argument in the book around less overt modes of surveillance that police artists' imaginations and thereby the work they create and produce. At a time in the world where many governments are increasingly seeking to limit artistic expression, this book is a necessary reminder of the many freedoms that have been fought for in theatres around the globe, and how the power of being unsilenced must never be taken for granted.
- Caridad Svich. Playwright & Translator
This is a truly excellent collection of incisive studies. It is wide-ranging, impressively global in scope, with an illuminating balance of the historical and the contemporary. In its impressive and well-realised ambition, demonstrated by the well-focused intelligence and academic flair of its many contributors, this collection is both magisterial and vital. It is an essential contribution to censorship studies, fascinating and inspiring, a must-read for anyone interested in the subject.
- Aleks Sierz. Theatre critic and author of Rewriting the Nation: British Theatre Today (2011) & Good Nights Out: A History of British Theatre Since the Second World War (2021)
Also in
Theater History
History Hiding Around Broadway: Backstage Lore, Secrets & Surprises from New York's Famed Theater District
Dvornik, Teale
Hardcover
The Dream Factory: London's First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare
Swift, Daniel
Hardcover
Shakespeare's Margaret: The Dramatic Life of a Warrior Queen
O'Malley, Charles
Stern, Scott W.
Hardcover
Houdini's Library: Inside the Spellbinding Collections of the Great Illusionist
Colleary, Eric
Hardcover
The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition
Landau, Tina
Bogart, Anne
Paperback
Champions for the Arts: Lessons and Successful Strategies for Engaging Diverse Audiences
Walker-Kuhne, Donna
Paperback
Shakespeare's World: Seeing the Plays Through Elizabethan Eyes
Lubarr, Josh
Goodheart, Rebecca
Krausnick, Dennis
Paperback
Putting It Together: How Stephen Sondheim and I Created Sunday in the Park with George
Lapine, James
Paperback
Staging Blackface in Canada: Public Amusements, Variety Shows, and Racial Acts in an Age of Imitation, 1898-1919
Thompson, Cheryl
Paperback
The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War
Shapiro, James
Hardcover
Currencies of Cruelty: Slavery, Freak Shows, and the Performance Archive
Bainbridge, Danielle
Paperback
Free for All: Joe Papp, the Public, and the Greatest Theater Story Every Told
Turan, Kenneth
Papp, Joseph
Paperback
The Bird Cage Theater: The Curtain Rises on Tombstone, Arizona's National Treasure
Mihaljevich, Michael Paul
Hardcover
Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Gefter, Philip
Paperback
Playing to the Gods: Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, and the Rivalry That Changed Acting Forever
Rader, Peter
Paperback
Playhouse to Powerhouse: Locating Black Power Women and their Movement in the Black Theatre
Goldmann, Kerry
Paperback
Theatre/Theory/Theatre: The Major Critical Texts from Aristotle and Zeami to Soyinka and Havel
Gerould, Daniel
Paperback
Playhouse to Powerhouse: Locating Black Power Women and their Movement in the Black Theatre
Goldmann, Kerry
Hardcover
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Nineteenth-Century America: Discourse and Criticism
Rowland, Herbert
Hardcover
Undesirability and Her Sisters: Black Women's Visual Work and the Ethics of Representation
Barber, Tiffany E.
Paperback
Genos Dikanikon: Amateur and Professional Speech in the Courtrooms of Classical Athens
Bers, Victor
Paperback
Kissing the Mask: Beauty, Understatement and Femininity in Japanese Noh Theater
Vollmann, William T.
Paperback
The Second City: The Essentially Accurate History
Kozak, Liz
City, The Second
Patinkin, Sheldon
Hardcover
Moment Work: Tectonic Theater Project's Process of Devising Theater
Kaufman, Moises
Pitts McAdams, Barbara
Paperback
Les Misérables: The Story So Far of the World's Longest Running Musical
Palmer, Martyn
Nightingale, Benedict
Wolf, Matt
Hardcover
Cocktails with George and Martha: Movies, Marriage, and the Making of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Gefter, Philip
Hardcover
Chasing the Sun: Staging Black Life and Belonging in California's Bay Area
Thompson, Wendy M.
Paperback
Listening for America: Inside the Great American Songbook from Gershwin to Sondheim
Kapilow, Rob
Hardcover
Something Wonderful Right Away: The Birth of Second City--America's Greatest Comedy Theater
Sweet, Jeffrey
Paperback
Collaboration in Theatre: A Practical Guide for Designers and Directors
Domer, K.
Roznowski, Rob
Paperback
Mediatic Shakespeare: The Dynamics of Orality, Script and Print in the Plays and Poems
Cavell, Richard
Hardcover
The Untold Stories of Broadway: Tales from the World's Most Famous Theaters
Tepper, Jennifer Ashley
Paperback
Artistic Collaboration, Exile, and Brecht: A New Intellectual History, 1900-1950
Hollander, Katherine
Hardcover
The Long Revolution: Sixty Years on the Frontlines of a New American Theater
Fichandler, Zelda
Paperback
Japanese No Masks: With 300 Illustrations of Authentic Historical Examples
Perzynski, Friedrich
Paperback
Sistren Theatre Collective and the Politics of Space in Jamaica: Woman Talawa
Smith, Karina
Hardcover
Harold Pinter, Fascism, and Outrage: Aesthetic and Moral Implications
Russell, Dennis Eugene
Hardcover
Currencies of Cruelty: Slavery, Freak Shows, and the Performance Archive
Bainbridge, Danielle
Hardcover
Making Pagans: Theatrical Practice and Comparative Religion in Early Modern England
Kuhn, John
Hardcover
A Revolution in Three Acts: The Radical Vaudeville of Bert Williams, Eva Tanguay, and Julian Eltinge
Carey, John
Hajdu, David
Paperback
A History of Leadville Theater: Opera Houses, Variety Acts and Burlesque Shows
Scanlon, Gretchen
Hardcover
Beyond the Sewol: Activist Theatre and Performance in South Korea and the Diaspora
Jeong, Areum
Paperback
The Dream Factory: London's First Playhouse and the Making of William Shakespeare
Swift, Daniel
Paperback
¡A Teatro Camaradas!: Dramaturgia militante y política de masas en Colombia (1965-1975)
Parra Salazar, Mayra Natalia
Paperback
Shakespeare's Compassion: Emotion and the Classics on the Early Modern Stage
Refskou, Anne Sophie
Hardcover
Pioneering Theatre-in-the-Round: The Victoria Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent, 1962-1986
Walker, Rachel
Hardcover
F*ck the Army!: How Soldiers and Civilians Staged the GI Movement to End the Vietnam War
Goss, Lindsay
Paperback
New Directions in Tarot: Decoding the Tarot Illustrations of Pamela Colman Smith
Martin, Scott
Hardcover
Artists in Exile: How Refugees from Twentieth-Century War and Revolution Transformed the American Performing Arts
Horowitz, Joseph
Paperback
Theatergeschichte Osterreichs / Theatergeschichte Vorarlbergs. Von Den Anfangen Bis Zum Beginn Des 20. Jahrhunderts
Fuhrich, Fritz
Paperback
Up Your Ass: Or from the Cradle to the Boat or the Big Suck or Up from the Slime
Solanas, Valerie
Paperback
Theatergeschichte Osterreichs / Burgenland / Das Alte Volksschauspiel Des Burgenlandes
Schmidt, Leopold
Paperback