Hamlet and the Baker's Son is the autobiography of Augusto Boal, inventor of the internationally renowned Forum Theatre system, and 'Theatre of the Oppressed' and author of Games for Actors and Non-Actors and Legislative Theatre. Continuing to travel the world giving workshops and inspiration to teachers, prisoners, actors and care-workers, Augusto Boal is a visionary as well as a product of his times - the Brazil of military dictatorship and artistic and social repression and was once imprisoned for his subversive activities. From his early days in Brazil's political theatre movement to his recent experiments with theatre as a democratic political process, Boal's story is a moving and memorable one. He has devised a unique way of using the stage to empower the disempowered, and taken his methods everywhere from the favelas of Rio to the rehearsal studios of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Recounts the author's life growing up in the Bronx in a family of Jamaican immigrants and how he went on to achieve the American dream by co-founding a Caribbean restaurant chain.

This dynamic book offers a comprehensive companion to the theory and practice of Theatre of the Oppressed. Developed by Brazilian director and theorist Augusto Boal, these theatrical forms invite people to mobilize their knowledge and rehearse struggles against oppression. Featuring a diverse array of voices (many of them as yet unheard in the academic world), the book hosts dialogues on the following questions, among others: Why and how did Theatre of the Oppressed develop? What are the differences between the 1970s (when Theatre of the Oppressed began) and today? How has Theatre of the Oppressed been shaped by local and global shifts of the last 40-plus years? Why has Theatre of the Oppressed spread or "multiplied" across so many geographic, national, and cultural borders? How has Theatre of the Oppressed been shaped by globalization, "development," and neoliberalism? What are the stakes, challenges, and possibilities of Theatre of the Oppressed today? How can Theatre of the Oppressed balance practical analysis of what is with ambitious insistence on what could be? How can Theatre of the Oppressed hope, but concretely? Broad in scope yet rich in detail, The Routledge Companion to Theatre of the Oppressed contains practical and critical content relevant to artists, activists, teachers, students, and researchers.

An inspirational rags-to-riches memoir by the founder of the most successful Caribbean business ever established in the US. “The American question gets a great, real-life look in The Baker’s Son . . . Hawthorne’s story is at once inspirational and revelatory.” —Publishers Weekly The Baker’s Son is a charming and well-crafted memoir by the co-founder of Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery & Grill, the hugely successful Jamaican-owned and -run enterprise that reaches from Massachusetts to Florida with over 120 franchise locations. Today the Golden Krust brand represents the most lucrative Caribbean business ever established in America. An independently owned family enterprise, Golden Krust was established in 1989 by members of the extended Hawthorne family. Within a few short years, Golden Krust developed into a very successful business. The original inspiration for the company came from the family patriarch, Ephraim Hawthorne, who for many years ran a successful bakery in the secluded hamlet of Border, in the rural parish of St. Andrew in Jamaica. The Baker’s Son is a deeply moving account that tells the story of an immigrant family from rural Jamaica that relocated to the Bronx in the 1980s. Starting from humble beginnings, and after weathering several major crises along the way, personal as well as professional, the Hawthorne family has scaled the heights of success to achieve the American Dream to an unprecedented degree. Not content to rest on its well-deserved laurels, the family has, in addition, established an innovative and very successful philanthropic foundation to give back to the community. As much a “business memoir” as it is a “spiritual memoir,” the book records a profound journey of the author from his childhood within the Hawthorne family in Jamaica to his spiritual rebirth and conversion in the recent past. The author attributes the real source of his success in business to his wife, siblings, and children, and to the deep Christian faith inculcated in him by his father and mother from a young age.

Since the 1990s, critics and curators have broadly accepted the notion that participatory art is the ultimate political art: that by encouraging an audience to take part an artist can promote new emancipatory social relations. Around the world, the champions of this form of expression are numerous, ranging from art historians such as Grant Kester, curators such as Nicolas Bourriaud and Nato Thompson, to performance theorists such as Shannon Jackson. Artificial Hells is the first historical and theoretical overview of socially engaged participatory art, known in the US as "social practice." Claire Bishop follows the trajectory of twentieth-century art and examines key moments in the development of a participatory aesthetic. This itinerary takes in Futurism and Dada; the Situationist International; Happenings in Eastern Europe, Argentina and Paris; the 1970s Community Arts Movement; and the Artists Placement Group. It concludes with a discussion of long-term educational projects by contemporary artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn, Tania Bruguera, Pawe? Althamer and Paul Chan. Since her controversial essay in Artforum in 2006, Claire Bishop has been one of the few to challenge the political and aesthetic ambitions of participatory art. In Artificial Hells, she not only scrutinizes the emancipatory claims made for these projects, but also provides an alternative to the ethical (rather than artistic) criteria invited by such artworks. Artificial Hells calls for a less prescriptive approach to art and politics, and for more compelling, troubling and bolder forms of participatory art and criticism.

Assembling a remarkable group of scholars, these essays explore how the circulation and exchange of 'vectors of the radical' shape the avant-garde. Mapping the movement of scripts, theatre activists, performances, and other material entities, they provide unprecedented perspectives on the transnational performance culture of the avant-garde.

Hamlet stands as a high water mark of canonical art, yet it has equally attracted rebels and experimenters, those avant-garde writers, dramatists, performers, and filmmakers who, in their adaptations and appropriations, seek new ways of expressing innovative and challenging thoughts in the hope that they can change perceptions of their own world.