Many of the essays locate their discussions of erotic desire and death as conflicting and entwining passions in specific cultural-historical contexts and provide a sense of how drama and theatre reflect and influence changing attitudes towards sexuality and death.

As well as offering particular historical perspectives, the collection contains essays that engage with contemporary dramatic writing and experimental theatre/performance practice, such as the drama of Howard Barker, the performance work of La Fura dels Baus, and the explicit body performances of Ron Athey.

Various ways of eroticising death in theatre and through performance are addressed, as well as the question of whether there is something intrinsically theatrical about our encounters with the ultimately unknowable nature of sexual desire and our relation to death.

The book combines theoretically informed criticism (drawing on psychoanalytical and philosophical models by Freud, Bataille, Lacan, Zizek, Lingis and others) with detailed text and performance analyses, giving a sense of the powerful appeal which death and the erotic exert on the human imagination.

The collection also includes essay contributions by dramatists David Rudkin, Dic Edwards, David Ian Rabey and an Afterword by Howard Barker.