{"id":459,"date":"2026-04-22T19:47:36","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T19:47:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/33\/?p=459"},"modified":"2026-06-23T18:43:47","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T18:43:47","slug":"global-revolutions-uneven-coverage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/33\/global-revolutions-uneven-coverage\/","title":{"rendered":"Global Revolutions, Uneven Coverage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Theatre and Revolution: Global Perspectives on Performance<\/em><\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Logan J. Connors, Lillian Manzor, and Emily Sahakian (eds.)<\/strong>
Routledge, 296 pp.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reviewed by Lenka Pichl\u00edkov\u00e1-Burke<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Theatre and Revolution<\/em> is a collection of essays on performance-related works associated with political revolutions, slave revolts, large-scale riots and other civic disturbances, anti-authoritarian dissident activities, and social manifestations\u2014generally of a progressive social nature\u2014throughout the world. These range from the French Revolution in 1790 to Tahrir Square in revolutionary Cairo in 2011, and from Communist East Berlin through Iran, China, Japan, Chile, and Mexico to the Antilles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Connors, Manzor, and Sahakian set the stage for the 15 essay-chapters with a historical, meta-historical, and theoretical \u201cIntroduction.\u201d Among their historical concerns is what constitutes a \u201crevolution\u201d\u2014a question they admit can be \u201csubtle and vague,\u201d but one that is most often socially progressive and certainly involves people\u2019s participation. They embrace Augusto Boal\u2019s ideas (Theatre of the Oppressed<\/em>) on the proper relationship of the dramatic arts to revolution and Richard Schechner\u2019s concept of \u201cPerformance Art,\u201d an umbrella term that applies both to many of the staged performances and to all of the public or social spectacles studied in the chapters. Among the theoretical and meta-historical concerns is something they call \u201cArchive,\u201d in which dramatic works serve to preserve stories of the social revolutions and revolts of the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chapters are organized into three groups: \u201cPerformance Archives, Repertoires, and Memories of Revolution\u201d; \u201cRuptures and Repetitions of Revolutionary Time\u201d (modern works recreating or inspired by historical revolutionary events); and \u201cPlaces and Spaces of Revolutionary Performance\u201d (documenting modern and contemporary revolutionary performance, along with a public festival from the French Revolution). The grouping seems arbitrary: either the first or the last category could have included a majority of the studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An important group of chapters documents theatre related to revolutionary themes in Latin America and Latin\u00e9 culture in the United States. Two of the most compelling narratives in the volume are Melissa Gonz\u00e1lez-Contreras\u2019s discussion of dissident theatre in Chile after Augusto Pinochet\u2019s right-wing coup d\u2019\u00e9tat in August 1973, and Neta Kanny\u2019s analysis of two contradictory performances in post-Ch\u00e1vez Venezuela. Two chapters focus on Latin\u00e9 theatre in the United States: Lilianne Lugo Herrera\u2019s study of three Cuban American plays from the 1980s and Briana Beeman\u2019s analysis of the \u201cGarbage Offensive(s)\u201d of the Puerto Rican Young Lords Organization (YLO), which may be considered \u201cperformance art\u201d in Schechner\u2019s sense. (Gonz\u00e1lez-Contreras discusses several Chilean performances as taking back popular control of cultural spaces\u2014essentially the same idea as Beeman\u2019s \u201cspatial intervention\u201d by the Young Lords.) At the same time, it is odd that two centers of revolutionary theatre in Latin America\u2014Cuba and Puerto Rico\u2014would be represented in the volume by performances and manifestations in the United States. In particular, Puerto Rican playwrights such as Ren\u00e9 Marqu\u00e9s (anti-colonial themes) and Francisco Arriv\u00ed (issues of racial identity) are absent, not to mention New York-based Puerto Rican authors such as Tere Mart\u00ednez (diaspora and identity). One also misses a discussion of the role of drama in contemporary Honduras, such as work by Melissa Cardoza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four chapters in the book analyze the dramatic and \u201carchiving\u201d aspects of revolutionary events in the non-Hispanic Caribbean: Stephen Cedars\u2019 narrative of the 1881 Carnival riots in Trinidad; Andy Stafford\u2019s analysis of Auguste Macouba\u2019s play about the December 1959 riot in Fort-de-France, Martinique; Soraya Limare\u2019s explanation of \u201crevolutionary time\u201d in plays by \u00c9douard Glissant (Martinique) and Maryse Cond\u00e9 (Guadeloupe) about the Haitian Revolution, 1791\u20131804; and Liam Johnston-McCondach\u2019s study of \u201crevolutionary time\u201d in Heiner M\u00fcller\u2019s The Mission<\/em> (1979), about French revolutionary agitators in 1790s Jamaica. Glissant was an important literary critic and philosopher, and Cond\u00e9 a significant political activist in France and the Antilles\u2014their absence from the other chapters is truly surprising. (There are still relatively few English translations of many Francophone Caribbean authors, as well as many Latin\u00e9 writers.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modern dramas in other areas of the Caribbean are omitted, including Haiti, home to a vibrant national dramatic tradition, and Jamaica, with modern playwrights such as Stafford Ashani (diaspora, cultural identity, Rastafari, Carnival), Pat Cumper (Afro-Caribbean identity), Basil Dawkins, Honor Ford-Smith (postcolonialism, police violence), Ginger Knight (partisan social violence), and David Tulloch examining \u201cpostcolonial\u201d themes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half a world away and a century earlier, plays about the French Revolution heroine Madame Roland inspired revolutionaries in late Qing dynasty China, as analyzed by Cecilia Feilla. (Only Feilla, among the authors, picks up on the editors\u2019 interest in Boal\u2019s ideas on theatre and revolution.) Even more fascinating is Siyuan Liu\u2019s chapter on Japanese proletarian theatre puppeteers who produced translations of German Marxist plays in 1920s Japan and, after 1927, in China. Liu points out that string-controlled marionettes attracted less censorship than plays spoken by human actors and removed the productions from the traditions of hand-controlled Bunraku puppets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of more contemporary interest, particularly in light of recent events in Palestine and Iran, are Yassaman Khajehi\u2019s chapter on the \u201cThree Stages of Iranian Theatre in Revolution\u201d (1979\u20132022) and Dalia Basiouny\u2019s narrative of the role of theatre in the context of the 2011\u20132012 Egyptian Revolution (\u201cR for Rehearsal, R for Revolution: Stories from and About Tahrir Square\u201d), including her memories of creating the pieces and their subsequent performance in the United States in 2014. The two essays are the opposite of each other: Basiouny describes theatre involved in the revolutionary process, while Khajehi analyzes reforms in theatre taking place in the wake of a pre-existing revolution and its evolving development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The chapter on Heiner M\u00fcller raises another significant gap in the topics covered in the volume: the East Central European anti-Communist dissident movement of the 1960s through the 1980s. While M\u00fcller had a difficult relationship with the East German Communist government, including repeated censorship and productions withheld, he was not exactly a dissident. His inclusion follows the editors\u2019 theoretical interests and the fact that M\u00fcller was able to publish and present plays in non-Communist countries. Perhaps Volker Braun (born 7 May 1939 in Dresden) might have been a better example of a revolution-minded author. Similarly, Janusz G\u0142owacki (1938\u20132017), who wrote Cinders and Journey to Gdansk in 1980 amid the \u201cPolish Summer\u201d semi-liberalization and the subsequent founding of the Solidarity union, would have been a good example of a dissident playwright who outlived the Communist regimes. Above all, there is V\u00e1clav Havel (1936\u20132011), a Czech playwright and essayist who initially used the \u201cTheatre of the Absurd\u201d to criticize the ruling Communist regime in the 1960s, culminating during the \u201cPrague Spring\u201d of 1968. Some of Havel\u2019s important plays include The Van\u011bk Plays and The Garden Party. Havel, an anti-Communist dissident thereafter, was the only playwright to have been a successful revolutionary political leader\u2014during the Czechoslovak \u201cVelvet Revolution\u201d of 1989\u2014and later the first non-Communist president of postwar Czechoslovakia, and then of the Czech Republic (1993).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One very useful aspect of the volume is its international perspective, since studies of this topic are, in general, almost exclusively focused on one country. The reader will find in this work a broad spectrum of international studies that will, in many cases, inspire contemporary drama in our challenging era. <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Photo: Dariusz Terepka<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

*<\/a>Lenka Pichl\u00edkov\u00e1-Burke<\/strong> (PhD), professor, actress and mime, has long researched the theatrical pedagogy of Michael Chekhov. The editor of a two-volume study of his work published by Routledge, she holds an MFA and PhD from the Faculty of Dramatic Arts (DAMU) in Prague and a Certificate of Completion from the Michael Chekhov Association (MICHA).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9<\/strong> 2026 Lenka Pichl\u00edkov\u00e1-Burke
Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em>, #33, June 2026
e-ISSN: 2409-7411<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Creative<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

This work is licensed under the
Creative Commons Attribution International License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":460,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/33\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/34\/2026\/04\/image1-9.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/33\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/33\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/33\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/33\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/33\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/33\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1156,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/33\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions\/1156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/33\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/33\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/33\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/33\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}