Theatre Symposium, Vol. 17

Book excerpt: Outdoor drama takes many forms: ancient Greek theatre, open-air performances of Shakespeare at summer festivals, and re-enactments of landmark historical events. The essays gathered in "Outdoor Performance," Volume 17 of the annual journal Theatre Symposium, address outdoor theatre's many manifestations, including the historical and non-traditional. Among other subjects, these essays explore the rise of "airdomes" as performance spaces in the American Midwest in the first half of the 20th century; the civic-religious pageants staged by certain Mormon congregations; Wheels-A-Rolling, and other railroad themed pageants; first-hand accounts of the innovative Hunter Hills theatre program in Tennessee; the role of traditional outdoor historical drama, particularly the long-running performances of Paul Green's The Lost Colony; and the rise of the part dance, part sport, part performance phenomenon "parkour"-- the improvised traversal of obstacles found in both urban and rural landscapes.