Theatre Symposium, V17 : Outdoor Performance

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.

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.