This book presents an exploration of the under-explored terrain of visuality, demonstrating the use of new theoretical insights into vision for the analysis of theatre and performance and simultaneously shows theatre and performance to be an excellent 'theoretical object' for exploring the cultural, historical and embodied character of visuality.
Nicole R. Fleetwood explores how blackness is seen as a troubling presence in the field of vision and the black body is persistently seen as a problem. She examines a wide range of materials from visual and media art, documentary photography theatre, performance and more.
The Visual Life of Romantic Theater examines the dynamism and vibrancy of stage spectacle and its impact in an era of momentous social upheaval and aesthetic change. Situating theatrical production as key to understanding visuality ca. 1780-1830, this book places the stage front and center in Romantic scholarship by re-envisioning traditional approaches to artistic and social creation in the period. How, it asks, did dramaturgy and stagecraft influence aesthetic and sociopolitical concerns? How does a focus on visuality expand our understanding of the historical experience of theatergoing? In what ways did stage performance converge with visual culture beyond the theater? How did extratheatrical genres engage with theatrical sight and spectacle? Finally, how does a focus on dramatic vision change the way we conceive of Romanticism itself? The volume’s essays by emerging and established scholars provide exciting and suggestive answers to these questions, along with a more capacious conception of Romantic theater as a locus of visual culture that reached well beyond playhouse walls.
Visual culture, performance and spectacle lay at the heart of all aspects of ancient Greek daily routine, such as court and assembly, cult and ritual, and art and culture. Seeing was considered the most secure means of obtaining knowledge, with many citing the etymological connection between ‘seeing’ and ‘knowing’ in ancient Greek as evidence for this. Seeing was also however often associated with mere appearances, false perception and deception. Gazing and visuality in the ancient Greek world have had a central place in the scholarship for some time now, enjoying an abundance of pertinent discussions and bibliography. If this book differs from the previous publications, it is in its emphasis on diverse genres: the concepts ‘gaze’, ‘vision’ and ‘visuality’ are considered across different Greek genres and media. The recipients of ancient Greek literature (both oral and written) were encouraged to perceive the narrated scenes as spectacles and to ‘follow the gaze’ of the characters in the narrative. By setting a broad time span, the evolution of visual culture in Greece is tracked, while also addressing broader topics such as theories of vision, the prominence of visuality in specific time periods, and the position of visuality in a hierarchisation of the senses.
Thinking Through Theatre and Performance presents a bold and innovative approach to the study of theatre and performance. Instead of topics, genres, histories or theories, the book starts with the questions that theatre and performance are uniquely capable of asking: How does theatre function as a place for seeing and hearing? How do not only bodies and voices but also objects and media perform? How do memories, emotions and ideas continue to do their work when the performance is over? And how can theatre and performance intervene in social, political and environmental structures and frameworks? Written by leading international scholars, each chapter of this volume is built around a key performance example, and detailed discussions introduce the methodologies and theories that help us understand how these performances are practices of enquiry into the world. Thinking through Theatre and Performance is essential for those involved in making, enjoying, critiquing and studying theatre, and will appeal to anyone who is interested in the questions that theatre and performance ask of themselves and of us.
The Routledge Companion to Vsevolod Meyerhold brings together a wealth of scholarship on one of the foremost innovators in European theatre. It presents a detailed picture of the Russian director’s work from when it first emerged on the modern stage to its multifarious present-day manifestations. By combining an historical focus with the latest contemporary research from an international range of perspectives and authors, this collection marks an important moment in Meyerhold studies as well as offering a new assessment of his relation to today's theatre-making. Its dynamic blend of research is presented in five sections: Histories enlarges on more conventional subjects like the grotesque and Biomechanics, to overlooked topics such as Meyerhold's ‘failed’ projects and his work in film; Collaborations and Connections extends understandings of Meyerhold’s well-known collaborative capacities to consider new cultural influences and lesser known working relationships; Sources engages with hitherto untapped material in Meyerhold’s oeuvre by reproducing and contextualising previously untranslated primary sources on his work; Practitioner Voices offer lively, on the ground, testimony of the contemporary impact of Meyerhold's practice; Meyerhold in New Contexts maps the routes of his practice across continents and examines ways in which his work is being applied in a number of contemporary scenarios, such as motion capture, computer-based 3D visualisations, and the ‘new normal’ of digital pedagogy. This is a key resource for students and scholars of European Theatre, acting theory, and actor training, as well as for those more broadly interested in the socio-political impact of theatre.
An encyclopedic dictionary of technical and theoretical terms, the book covers all aspects of a semiotic approach to the theatre, with cross-referenced alphabetical entries ranging from absurd to word scenery.
This book challenges the focus on pictoriality as central constituent of visual culture from the perspective of literary studies, which in the wake of an ‘intermedial turn’ so far focused on the ways texts relate to pictures and visual media either in praesentia (e.g. word and image studies) or in absentia (e.g. ekphrasis). Instead, it emphasizes literature’s participation in visual culture at large and focuses on three areas of investigation: (1) the depiction of, for instance, visual perceptions in the literary mode of description, which is paramount to formatting the mental aspect of visual culture; (2) the readerly practice of visualising situations and events of the fictional world, which mediates between those mentefacts and techniques of writing; (3) textual visibilities which are grounded in materiality. The volume explores these three areas from a systematically integrated perspective and the essays include in-depth treatments of seminal examples taken from Western literatures (primarily English and German, but also French and American literature) from early modern times to the present. This book’s aim is to work out literature’s active role in shaping visual culture, thus demonstrating its relevance for “image studies”.