Crisis: The Theatre Responds

This new book by Dr Carol Rocamora (New York University's Tisch School of the Arts) explores the courageous playwrights of the world who used the stage as a platform to address crises of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. From Bertolt Brecht to present day playwrights, Carol Rocamora discusses how theatre has addressed crises from World War II to the present, including war, apartheid, communism, authoritarianism, racism, immigrant and refugee issues, environmental peril, and the pandemic.

Dr. Carol Rocamora is a New York-based author and educator with a rich and extensive background in the theatre. She is a respected translator, playwright, biographer, and critic.

Carol's play I take your hand in mine... premiered in London in 2001 at London's Almeida Theatre with Paul Scofield and Irene Worth in the original cast, directed by Jonathan Kent. The play was next seen in Paris in 2003 at the Theatre des Bouffes du Nord directed, by Peter Brook, starring his wife Natasha Parry and Michel Picoli. (It toured for two years before appearing in London's Barbican Centre in 2005). Based on the correspondence between Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper, I take your hand in mine..., has been translated and shown in cities around the world, from Mexico City to Shanghai.

Carol has written two biographies: Anton Chekhov: A Life in Four Acts (published by Smith & Kraus in 2013) and Acts of Courage: Václav Havel's Life in the Theatre (published by Smith & Kraus Global in 2005).

She has taught dramatic literature in the Department of Dramatic Writing at the New York University's Tisch School of Arts since 1993 and received the David Payne Carter Award for Teaching Excellence. In addition to her teaching at NYU, Carol serves on the faculty of the Juilliard School. She has taught theatre history at Columbia University, and has also lectured on Chekhov at The Yale School of Drama and Oxford University.

Carol has written about theatre for The Nation, The New York Times, The Guardian, and American Theatre magazine.

She is also the translator of the complete dramatic works of Anton Chekhov, published in several volumes: Chekhov: Four Plays, Chekhov: The Early Plays, and Chekhov: The Vaudevilles. She has also adapted twenty Chekhov short stories for the stage, published in two volumes called Rubles (all published by Smitth & Kraus).

Before coming to New York, Carol was founder and artistic director of the Philadelphia Festival Theatre for New Plays at the Annenberg Center.