Contents -- Preface - festival cultures -- Introduction - the festivalising process -- PART ONE: THEATRICAL EVENTS FESTIVALISED -- Festivals as theatrical events: building theories -- Festivals, theatrical events and communicative interactions -- Festivals as eventifying systems -- PART TWO: EVENTIFYING THEATRE FESTIVALS -- The theatricality of the Verona Opera Festival -- The Out-of-the-Box Festival of Early Childhood: fashioning the boutique festival for children -- In search of the rainbow: The Little Karoo National Arts Festival and the search for cultural identity in South Africa -- Playing politics at the Adelaide Festival -- Hybrid festivals. The Mickery Theatre: in search of A dramaturgy of fragmentation -- PART THREE: THEATRE FESTIVALS AS NATIONAL EVENTS -- Ideology in movement and a movement in ideology: the Deutsche Tanzfestspiele 1934 -- Iranian theatre festivalised -- The Israeli National Community Theatre Festival, the real and the imagined -- The values of a festival - the Swedish Theatre Biennale -- PART FOUR: FESTIVAL CULTURE AS THEATRICAL EVENTS -- Burning Man: festival culture in the United States - festival culture in a global perspective -- Community building within a festival frame - working-class celebrations in Germany 1918-33 -- Festivals in religious or spiritual contexts: examples from Japan, China, India and Bangladesh -- The Feast of Saint Nicholas in the Low Countries -- Searching for Tennessee: performative identity and the theatrical event. Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival -- Abstracts -- Biographies.