Kingdom of Disorder: Theory of Tragedy in Classical France Book

Knowles' books is one of the most important texts on understanding theatre in its socio-cultural context. Although the wide variety of theatre companies, performance venues, performance contexts, and so on prevent Knowles from giving an ideally thorough examination, he provides a lot of clues for what to look at when examining theatrical materialism--including questions about perfromance production, locations, architecture, relations to space and community, promotion, and organization of spaces within the theatre building. The book provides illustrative examples--including a set of case studies which make up the latter half--that flesh out and clarify many of the issues Knowles raises as part of the meaning-making interplay of semiotics and cultural materialism that goes into theatrical production and reception.

Great combo of theory in the first section and case studies in the second section (case studies include Stratford Festival).