In this study, Hellier-Tinoco examines four performance projects created by Mexico’s La Máquina de Teatro, each exploring and experimenting with transtemporality, collective memory, and the palimpsest bodies of history. The first, Mexican Trilogy (2006–2009), is a collection of three transdisciplinary performances that explore 15th- and 16th-century conquest narratives through transtemporal embodiments of Emperor Nezahualcóyotl, Moctezuma II, and La Malinche, a slave girl turned translator to Cortés. The next, Zapata, Death Without End (2014–2015), connects five multiregional performance collectives in a participatory the atrical event focused on Mexican Revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata. War in Paradise (2015) is the culminating work-in-progress performance of a three-week workshop project focused on 1960s resistance leader Lucio Cabanas. Finally, La Máquina founder Clarissa Malheiros’s solo work, Time of the Devil (2015), explores existential issues and scenarios through the “spectral no-body of the Devil” (10). Hellier-Tinoco provides a close reading of each performance, exposing thematic resonances of history, memory, and corporeality through her analyses of performance methodology, staging, and audience interaction.

In this book of illustrations, diagrams, and photographs, choreographer Annie-B Parson presents visual records of dance pieces created between 1991 and 2018. For her “Biography in Charts,” Parson uses illustrations and scores to trace patterns in her work as it has evolved over time. The charts comprise the physical objects — the chairs, props, instruments, wigs, articles of clothing, and other artifacts—from the world of each dance. In her introductory essay, “Stuff,” Parson characterizes the charts and drawings as an effort to preserve something of the dance after its completion: “The charts are indexical, a cataloguing of the materiality of the piece” (8). Through this practice, Parson has amassed an archive that looks forward and backward simultaneously: back to her previous work, and forward to the potential uses and (re)uses of material for the future.

This collection of culturally and methodologically diverse community-conscious theatre initiatives draws largely from a 2015 conference on the island of Gozo in Malta. The conference presentations, workshops, and practice-based discussions resulted in an expanded understanding of theatre-making and community work. In sections on community perspectives, political ethics, the potential of global versus local initiatives, and emerging community practices, the collection engages theory and praxis to examine a variety of international strategies. “Our aim,” Galea and Musca write, “is to map new forms of communication, dialogue and engagement by which contemporary international theatre connects with its diverse communities” (2). The volume also includes a section of interviews and extensive notes to guide further research.

Eschewing highly produced Broadway musicals for community, local, and educational productions, Stacy Wolf undertakes a detailed and multifaceted exploration of contemporary musical theatre practices throughout the United States. Wolf provides narration of rehearsals and performances across her subject theatres, including a visit to the Junior Theatre Festival in Atlanta, Georgia. She dedicates chapters to community theatres, dinner theatres, and a type of theatre matriarch she terms the “Backstage Diva.” She analyzes the licensing practices of Musical Theatre International and Disney Theatrical Group, especially as they pertain to productions intended for young performers. Finally, Wolf observes the making and performing of musicals at high schools, summer camps, and outdoor venues, revealing the different ways that musicals are produced, performed, and attended in US American communities. In doing so, Wolf presents contemporary musical theatre as a “national folk practice” that thrives in a multitude of settings outside of Broadway-scale productions (4).

Kazimierz Braun and Justyna Braun have compiled a detailed and well-researched history of the great reform of theatre in Europe. Tracing a more-or-less chronological journey through European history, this study tracks changes in European theatrical practices from the late 1800s through the advent of World War II. The authors provide detailed biographical information about key figures in the European reform movement, paying particular attention to Edward Gordon Craig, Konstantin Stanislavsky, and Vsevolod Meyerhold. They also expose connections between theatrical practices and other interdisciplinary arts movements of the era, including Dadaism, Surrealism, and the Bauhaus. Though this study makes little to no use of primary sources, it is nevertheless a thorough and informative catalogue of historical and biographical knowledge.

In this collection of essays, editors Catherine Grant and Kate Random Love connect artistic theory, practice, and consumption with the emerging field of fan studies. Grant and Love hold that fandom, an umbrella term that encompasses the communities and practices of fans of a variety of media, provides a useful lens through which to examine contemporary art practices. The collection comprises three sections of essays, plus a section of color-printed artist pages that provide examples of fan-generated art and writing. The sections, “Artist as Fan,” “Fan Communities: From Screen to Stage to Network,” and “Art(ist) Historians and Fan Scholars” delineate some of the intersections of fan and artistic life. Each essay focuses on a project or body of work that manifests fan behavior within artistic practice. By exploring and analyzing these practices in the context of contemporary art, this volume reveals fandom’s potential to devise new forms, influence oppositional art practices, enhance accessibility through a do-it-yourself ethos, and forge connections between online and offline communities.