ABSTRACT
Dorothy Heathcote (Wagner, 1976), the leading drama educator, once stated: “Drama is about humans in a mess.” One of the first premises of this book is that the world is in a mess, or crisis-a crisis of knowledge, values, behavior, events, institutions, text, representations, images, film, history, and of political, social, and economic structures. In fact, any aspect of modern life is subject to interrogation or scrutiny through the dramatic arts. How convenient for participants and spectators-from directors to playwrights, actors, stage managers, costume designers, drama educators and students, and many others, including audiences. Informed by contemporary theories, modern life is undergoing a transformation of content, form, and structure, as are many of the arts, sciences, and other disciplines. The purpose of this book is to make accessible to undergraduates, graduates, and others in education, theater, and drama, the theories and practices of contemporary philosophical stances borrowed from deconstructionism, critical theory, cultural studies and criticism, postmodernism, poststructuralism, and postcolonialism. Although the boundaries of knowledge between these areas are blurred and many times cross over, the distinction between disciplines, between conceptualizations, between content and form, is clouded by the very knowledge that informs these contemporary theories and practices.
