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Publisher: Columbia University Press, New York, NY, 2007, £255/$450.
ISBN: 978 0 231 14032 4. 2 vols
Covering dramatic writing and performance from Henrik Ibsen to the present, this monumental encyclopaedia, edited by two professors from Vassar College, New York, is an epic enterprise in every sense. Gabrielle H. Cody and Evert Sprinchorn have been assisted by an advisory board of 26 experts drawn from across the world, each specialising in a region or genre, and overall there are over 450 academics and research students contributing signed articles. In a brief preface, the editors explain that they have sought to differentiate this encyclopaedia from its predecessors by highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of drama, treating plays and playwrights within their specific historical, cultural and social contexts. There is, they explain, "less concern with detailed plot summaries" and a deliberate inclusion of more women and non-western, indigenous and postcolonial writers and works. In fact, The Columbia Encyclopedia covers some 64 countries, from Western and Eastern Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australasia. There is even an entry on Yiddish theatre. The result is imposing, and is a considerable achievement, even if it is just a little unsatisfying in detail.
Cody and Sprinchorn have obviously assembled this project with great care. A synoptic outline of contents at the end of the second volume gives the browser an idea of the Encyclopedia 's breadth. There are lists of writers, plays, movements and concepts followed by grouping of entries under countries, for example four under Cuba compared with 69 for Japan. In the absence of a substantial introduction or...