What do we watch when we watch war? Who manages public perceptions of war and how? Watching War on the Twenty-First-Century Stage: Spectacles of Conflict is the first publication to examine how theatre in the UK has staged, debated and challenged the ways in which spectacle is habitually weaponized in times of war. The 'battle for hearts and minds' and the 'war of images' are fields of combat that can be as powerful as armed conflict. And today, spectacle and conflict – the two concepts that frame the book – have joined forces via audio-visual technologies in ways that are more powerful than ever. Clare Finburgh's original and interdisciplinary interrogation provides a richly provocative account of the structuring role that spectacle plays in warfare, engaging with the works of philosopher Guy Debord, cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard, visual studies specialist Marie-José Mondzain, and performance scholar Hans-Thies Lehmann. She offers coherence to a large and expanding field of theatrical war representation by analysing in careful detail a spectrum of works as diverse as expressionist drama, documentary theatre, comedy, musical satire and dance theatre. She demonstrates how features unique to the theatrical art, namely the construction of a fiction in the presence of the audience, can present possibilities for a more informed engagement with how spectacles of war are produced and circulated. If we watch with more resistance, we may contribute in significant ways to the demilitarization of images. And what if this were the first step towards a literal demilitarization?

What do we watch when we watch war? Who manages public perceptions of war and how? This publication examines how theatre in the UK has staged, debated and challenged the ways in which spectacle is habitually weaponised in times of war

Presenting a rigorous critical investigation of the reinvigoration of the political in contemporary British theatre, Ecologies of Precarity in Twenty-First Century Theatre provides a fresh understanding of how theatre has engaged with precarity, affect, risk, intimacy, care and relationality in recent times. The study makes a compelling case for reading precarity as a 'sticky' theatrical trope which carries the potential to re-animate our understanding of identity politics and responsibility for the lives of Others in an age of uncertainty. Approaching precarity as an ecology cutting across various practices, themes and aesthetics, the book features a comprehensive selection of theatre examples staged in the UK since the 1990s. Works by debbie tucker green, Alistair McDowall, Complicite, Simon Stephens, Stan's Cafe, Mike Bartlett, Caryl Churchill, The Paper Birds, and Belarus Free Theatre are put in dialogue with interdisciplinary feminist vocabularies developed by Judith Butler, Sara Ahmed, Lauren Berlant and Isabell Lorey. In focusing on areas such as children and youth at risk, human rights, environmental ethics and the politics of debt, the study makes a vital contribution to the burgeoning field of politics and theatre in the 21st century.

This significant contribution to the study of the live and recorded broadcasting of stage plays focuses on National Theatre Live a decade after its launch in 2009. Assessing livecasting through the concepts of spectacle, materiality and engagement, it examines the role played by audiences in livecasting. Illustrated by in-depth analyses of recent NT Live shows, including A Midsummer Night's Dream (2019), Antony and Cleopatra (2018) and Small Island (2019), the book is complemented by insights from practitioners involved in the making of the livecasts. Finally, livecasting is contextualized within recently emerged forms of Covidian (virtual) theatre during the pandemic in order to offer some thoughts on the future of the genre of theatrical performance. Combining lively analyses of recent theatre performances with auto-ethnographic accounts, Heidi Lucja Liedke turns to 20th-century thinkers such as Walter Benjamin and Bertolt Brecht in order to understand livecasting's place in a continuum of developments taking place on the borders of media, film and performance for the past 100 years. As well as embedding livecasting in its historical context of 19th-century electrophone technology, Liedke assesses its position in contemporary discourses on the meaning of theatre for spectators in the pre- and post-pandemic moment, and points towards the form's future.

In/Visible War addresses a paradox of twenty-first century American warfare. The contemporary visual American experience of war is ubiquitous, and yet war is simultaneously invisible or absent; we lack a lived sense that “America” is at war. This paradox of in/visibility concerns the gap between the experiences of war zones and the visual, mediated experience of war in public, popular culture, which absents and renders invisible the former. Large portions of the domestic public experience war only at a distance. For these citizens, war seems abstract, or may even seem to have disappeared altogether due to a relative absence of visual images of casualties. Perhaps even more significantly, wars can be fought without sacrifice by the vast majority of Americans. Yet, the normalization of twenty-first century war also renders it highly visible. War is made visible through popular, commercial, mediated culture. The spectacle of war occupies the contemporary public sphere in the forms of celebrations at athletic events and in films, video games, and other media, coming together as MIME, the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last, a bold framework for leadership in today’s ever-changing world. How do we win a game that has no end? Finite games, like football or chess, have known players, fixed rules and a clear endpoint. The winners and losers are easily identified. Infinite games, games with no finish line, like business or politics, or life itself, have players who come and go. The rules of an infinite game are changeable while infinite games have no defined endpoint. There are no winners or losers—only ahead and behind. The question is, how do we play to succeed in the game we’re in? In this revelatory new book, Simon Sinek offers a framework for leading with an infinite mindset. On one hand, none of us can resist the fleeting thrills of a promotion earned or a tournament won, yet these rewards fade quickly. In pursuit of a Just Cause, we will commit to a vision of a future world so appealing that we will build it week after week, month after month, year after year. Although we do not know the exact form this world will take, working toward it gives our work and our life meaning. Leaders who embrace an infinite mindset build stronger, more innovative, more inspiring organizations. Ultimately, they are the ones who lead us into the future.