*Making contemporary theatre* reveals how some of the most significant international contemporary theatre is actually made. Using eye-witness accounts and over 80 photographs, it offers extraordinary insights into the innovative and exciting methods used by the most influential emerging theatre companies, including the UK#146;s Complicite and Forced Entertainment and New York#146;s The Builders Association, as well as directors such as Belgian-Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Where other books on theatre-making tend to focus on playwriting, acting or directing, this book explores the contributions made by all of theatre#146;s creative artists, from directors to scenographers to multimedia artists.*The book opens with an introd*uctory chapter which contextualises recent trends in approaches to theatre-making. In the ensuing eleven chapters, eleven different writer-observers describe, contextualise and analyse the theatre-making practices of eleven different companies and directors, including Japan#146;s Gekidan Kaitaisha and the Québécois director Robert Lepage. Each chapter is enriched with extensive illustrations as well as boxed-off #145;asides#146;, giving the reader different perspectives on the work. Chapters usually focus on a single production, such as Complicite#146;s 2003-04 The Elephant Vanishes, allowing detailed investigations of complex practices to emerge. The book concludes with a brief manifesto for making contemporary theatre by the editors, plus a bibliography suggesting further reading.

Making Contemporary Theatre is a rich resource for the theatre-making student and the theatre-goer alike, full of diverse examples of how the most exciting theatre is actually made.