Performance Research Books

New Publication
Spanish Verbatim Theatre: Putting Justice on Trial
Edited by Maria M. Delgado

Copies of ‘Spanish Verbatim Theatre’ have now landed in the CPR office!

Make the most of the special launch price of £22.50 before it ends on 28th February and purchase a copy now via the CPR Online bookshop (link in comments). Here, you will also find two open access chapters and more information about this captivating new publication

Our featured publication for September is ‘Love and Not Knowing’. Edited by Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca and Luke Pell, it provides an insight into the over 25 years of work from UK-based performance company Fevered Sleep.

Read more below and on the CPR online shop via bit.ly/loveandnotknowing

Fevered Sleep creates projects for adults and children that manifest in multiple forms and are as likely to be located in a gallery, a care home or a shopping centre as in a theatre. Nothing that Fevered Sleep does is ever just one thing: what might start out as an installation by day turns to a performance at night – a live event then remembered in another form, like a book. An improvised dance, over many hours, creates a photographic exhibition. A theatre work is re-imagined for screen. A question, a frustration, a feeling, leads to a gathering with more people (and sometimes animals), more questions, on streets, around a market stall, in a veterinary school, by the sea or in a forest. Love and Not Knowing is therefore not only about Fevered Sleep but is – in itself – a work by Fevered Sleep, a manifestation of Fevered Sleep and a part of the ever-evolving, open whole that is Fevered Sleep.

The six chapters of the book bring together a range of different voices from people with differing relationships to and perspectives on the company and their processes. They draw upon distinct memories, moments and projects to explore core themes that have continued to run through Fevered Sleep’s work over time: On Place, On Young People and Children, On Animals, On Care, On Being Together and On Love and Not Knowing. The result is a constellation of diverse voices, practices and experiences that illuminate the deeply researchful – and deeply felt – nature of the company’s work. Their reflections offer the reader a rich tapestry of material that unfolds Fevered Sleep’s practice and the ways in which their projects open out new ways of seeing and being in the world, with curiosity, compassion, care, love and not knowing.

We are proud to have collaborated with Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute in 2024 to publish 'A Lexicon of the Central Eastern-European Interwar Theatre Avant-garde', which forms part of the Reclaimed Avant-garde project.

The project was initiated by the institute in 2017 and involves collaboration between over 20 Central-Eastern European theatre scholars to explore the historic avant-garde in the region. In this context, it is understood as a phenomena developing under different historical, political, and cultural circumstances as countries in the region found themselves in new political situations between World War I and II.

The project now has its own website where you can explore its research, including 'A Lexicon' and seven other publications: oa.encyklopediateatru.pl/en

'A Lexicon...' is available to purchase on the CPR Online Shop: bit.ly/3KjIHXk

This weekend, Lola Arias received the International Ibsen Award for 2024 at the award’s formal presentation in Oslo. This is a massive and well-deserved achievement for this groundbreaking theatre director. The award honours ‘an individual, an institution or organisation that has brought a new artistic dimension to the world of drama or theatre’.

We were proud to have celebrated her work in our 2019 publication ‘Lola Arias: Re-enacting Life’, edited by Jean Graham-Jones, seen celebrating the award celebration at an Oslo bookshop this weekend.

Explore the work and impact of Lola Arias in ‘Lola Arias: Re-enacting Life’: bit.ly/lolaarias