This chapter examines how a variety of twentieth-century popular forms – circus, Las Vegas spectacles, the modern pop/rock concert, living history museums, and theme parks – created new languages of performance and expanded the realm, scale, and scope of spectacle by borrowing and reshaping past forms and methodologies. These new languages of popular entertainment performance engage most directly with threads of technology, narrative, authenticity, and audience engagement. These threads in turn come to characterize the popular and influence contemporary traditional theatre practice, both nationally and internationally.

The relationship between business activity and human rights in the context of intellectual property (IP) is unique. First, it is an example of how national efforts to control the human rights impact of business activities can be frustrated by international agreements. Thus, the obligation under the Guiding Principles for states to maintain sufficient national policy space to address human rights impacts is particularly important in this area. Corporations also have a responsibility not to push for changes in domestic and international law that would enable them to maximize profits at the expense of human rights. Second, the case of human rights and IP provides an example of corporations taking advantage of legal rules that allow them to extract profits at the expense of human rights. These legal rules are directed toward a legitimate purpose, but they can also be abused in ways that harm human rights. Thus, the relationship between IP and human rights demonstrates that corporations may have a responsibility not to take maximal advantage of opportunities to make a profit where doing so would violate human rights. It also indicates that human rights law may constrain states in the choices they make about how to incentivize innovation.

Play development in the American regional theatre is a collaborative relationship between artistic directors, dramaturgs, literary managers, playwrights, directors, actors, and designers. Within this system artistic directors commission work and provide a “magic garden” where playwrights develop material from workshop through theatrical production; this is exemplified by Lauren Gunderson, who writes traditional plays appealing to America’s heartland; avant-garde director/playwrights Carey Perloff and Joanne Akalaitis, who develop challenging work from classic and contemporary sources; and Latinx playwright Elaine Romero, who has navigated this network for more than twenty years as a resident playwright. New York City is no longer the major incubator of new work; instead collaborative play development programs of regional theatre organizations as the Arena Stage, the American Conservatory Theatre, the Goodman Theatre, the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, and Chicago Dramatists dominate. Despite the harsh economic realities faced by playwrights, the regional theatre culture of commissions, residencies, development, and foundation support provides salaries, health care, and benefits to artists.

Cognizant of the risks of oversimplification and unavoidable omissions, Carpenter’s essay introduces major movements and advances within the African American and Latinx American dramatic canons from the era of the civil rights movement to the present. Referring to select playwrights (Amiri Baraka, Luis Valdez, Adrienne Kennedy, Maria Irene Fornes, Lynn Nottage, and Quiara Alegría Hudes) as exemplars for this exploration, Carpenter offers a progressive build in this historical account, closing by focusing on the most contemporary of these dramatists. These celebrated artists are mere “tips of the iceberg”; they are highlighted here to inspire readers to pursue research and gain a greater sense of familiarity with the rich history and proliferating presence of racially and culturally diverse in American theatre. Carpenter reminds us that utilizing expressions such as “diversity and inclusion” will fall flat as trendy phrases unless theatre practitioners and scholars recognize and actively address the fact America’s network of regional theatre still has much to accomplish when it comes to actualizing commitments to equity.

This chapter highlights the importance of the incorporation of international standards into national laws establishing ECAs. With this aim in mind, the global architecture would benefit from enhancing the commitments made through international standards so that adhering states shall be compelled to pass legislation mandating ECAs to conduct human rights due diligence. Furthermore, stakeholders should be properly consulted. Most important, efficient enforcement mechanisms are needed to ensure that a formal complaint process enables stakeholders to challenge loans granted by ECAs on the basis of human rights and environmental violations.

The American avant-garde theatre of the post-World War II era, with its underlying engagement with the betterment of society and a foregrounding of the body, either solo or collective, could be seen as an extension of the Romantic project. But by the 1990s, the ideas and impulses that fueled its artistic drive seemed to dissipate as it became subsumed by Postmodernism and also by popular culture. The avant-garde energies and impulses did not disappear, however, and increasingly they could be found in the theatre’s eager adoption and exploration of new technologies and digital media. By mediatizing live performance, the new technologies often became co-equal with, or dominant over, the human actors. Beginning with groups and individual artists such as Squat, The Wooster Group, and Laurie Anderson and continuing through The Builders Association, Big Art Group, and Annie Dorsen, among many others, a post-avant-garde has emerged that does not fetishize technology, but rather embraces it as a tool to alter consciousness—much as the historical avant-garde did—and to expand the possibilities and definitions of performance.

Reporting is an essential instrument for organizations to understand the impacts of their decisions and operations on people and the planet. Addressing the most serious corporate impacts on sustainability by means of reporting effectively creates an accountability mechanism that helps organizations embed critical issues such as human rights into their business practices and at the core of their strategy. Through the means of reporting, organizations identify their sustainability risks and impacts and are encouraged to be accountable for them. Reporting contributes to internal awareness and understanding of possible negative impacts, as well as the means to mitigate them while maximizing the positives. This accessibility of information enables informed decision-making by stakeholders, including civil society, investors, customers and regulators. Consequently, businesses are more inclined to avoid or limit negative impacts and hence strive to improve performance. Ultimately, effective reporting plays an important role in a company’s success, as it responds to its stakeholders’ needs for transparency and information. This chapter presents an overview of the sustainability reporting process, draws lessons from current practices on human rights reporting, and provides recommendations for (future) practitioners, presenting a snapshot of current challenges and practical thinking.

This chapter identifies the rise of a new paradigm of contracts within the modern global political economy: direct private contracts negotiated between companies and indigenous peoples (IPs) with a special socio-economic and cultural relationship to land.The above clause is taken from one such contract. These contracts are unique as IPs are one of the main negotiating parties and benefits for them are viewed as the main focus of negotiation. The contract cited above is special as it goes further than community development or social impact agreements, in order to translate indigenous rights to land by way of contract. These contracts effectively recognise indigenous rights on land and various forms of authority over said land, in addition, or in the absence of any formal title. They expose an emerging practice of formalizing free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) processes which may result (or not) in some procedural and substantive benefits for IPs. Consequently, we call this paradigm a contractualisation of indigenous land rights.

This chapter is organized under two main sections. The first discusses how the content requirements of HRIAs are conflated with the ethical requirements of the assessment itself. This, narrow and inadequate species of HRIA ethics is quite different from the extensive body of legal ethics. The second section provides a case study of a World Bank-related impact assessment, which gives rise to legal and non-legal ethical issues and which is meant to demonstrate that the absence of concrete human rights-centred ethical guidelines in HRIAs can, even with the best of intentions, lead to outcomes that effectively violate fundamental rights.

This chapter examines the emergence of a treaty regime at the UN on business and human rights. It examines the key provisions of the Zero Draft as well as the amendments addressed by the draft presented in August 2020. This is a welcome development and it is clear that the focus of the emerging treaty is not so much on the corporations themselves but on the necessary positive measures required of states in this field

MNCs have a central role, responsibility, and opportunity to foment change globally in fulfilling the rights of persons with disabilities. In addition to improving theiremployment practices, MNCs can leverage their economic power to fulfil other aspects of the human rights of persons with disabilities within their purview by: making physical and virtual environments accessible; ensuring that vendors, distributors and supply chains require equal employment opportunity for workers with a disability, produce accessible products and services, and take affirmative actions to employ and advance in employment workers with a disability; acknowledging the existence and value of customers with disabilities and their households and friends; marketing to such individuals; developing data accumulation and accountability instruments, including human rights impact assessments (HRIAs); and creating a general culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion of differences that includes disability. Acting in this manner would bolster rarely helpful corporate social responsibility (CSR) and diversity schemes, and position the business sector to become human rights change agents.

This chapter traces the development of American experimental theatre ensembles from the 1960s to the 2010s. It emphasizes how the values of the 1960s youth culture and Off-Off-Broadway, including egalitarianism and anticommercialism, informed the devising practices of groups such as the Open Theater, the Performance Group, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe. It also addresses how efforts to critique and expand on the work of 1960s ensembles have informed the work of such later groups as Spiderwoman, Split Britches, the SITI Company, Tectonic Theatre Project, Pig Iron Theatre, and the Nature Theatre of Oklahoma. It argues that developments in form and process by American devising ensembles reflect an evolving understanding of theatre’s relationship to the social sphere and to the practice of freedom.

The postwar years through to 1960 can be viewed as a Golden Age for American drama as distinctly American new plays, staging, and acting styles emerged. Changing social and political forces in the nation inspired dramatists to rewrite what was possible on an American stage, expanding themes, styles, and character types previously depicted. Women and minorities were finding their voices and making progress in writing, directing, and producing drama in mainstream theatres. Many of the period’s theatrical successes and innovations were fueled by groups of artists, whose collective vision helped bring new scripts, scores, and aesthetics to the American stage. During this period, Broadway established its primacy in musical and nonmusical theatre, but economic changes and artistic aspiration also fueled the growth of Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway, and regional theatre helping create an even more vibrant American theatre.