Theatre in the Expanded Field

Theatre in the Expanded Field

Author: Alan Read

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2013-12-05

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1408185644

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Theatre in the Expanded Field is a fiercely original, bold and daring exploration of the fields of theatre and performance studies and the received narratives and histories that underpin them. Rich with interdisciplinary reference, international, eclectic and broad-ranging in its examples, it offers readers a compelling and provocative reassessment of the disciplines, one that spans pre-history to the present day. Sixty years ago, in 1962, Richard Southern wrote a remarkable book called The Seven Ages of the Theatre. It was unusual in its time for taking a trans-disciplinary, new-historical and avowedly internationalist approach to its subject - nothing less than a totalizing view of its field. Theatre in the Expanded Field does not attempt to mimic Southern's work but rather takes his spirit of adventure and ambition as its frame for the contemporary moment of performance and its diverse pasts. Identifying seven ways of exploring the performance field, from pre-history to postdramatic theatre the book presents studies of both contemporary and historical works not as a chronological succession, but in keeping with their coeval qualities, as movements or 'generations' of connection and interaction, dissensus and interruption. It does this with the same purpose as Richard Southern's original work: to provide for the planning of responsive performance spaces 'now'. Illustrated throughout with line-drawings, Theatre in the Expanded Field is as richly rewarding as it is ambitious and expansive in it vision.


Theatre and Everyday Life

Theatre and Everyday Life

Author: Alan Read

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2003-09-02

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1134914598

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Read examines the relationship between an ethics of performance, a politics of place and a poetics of the urban environment.


Experimental Irish Theatre

Experimental Irish Theatre

Author: I. Walsh

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2012-03-13

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 1137001364

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This book examines experimental Irish theatre that ran counter to the naturalistic 'peasant' drama synonymous with Irish playwriting. Focusing on four marginalised playwrights after Yeats, it charts a tradition linking the experimentation of the early Irish theatre movement with the innovation of contemporary Irish and international drama.


Reframing Immersive Theatre

Reframing Immersive Theatre

Author: James Frieze

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-03-30

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1137366044

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This diverse collection of essays and testimonies challenges critical orthodoxies about the twenty-first century boom in immersive theatre and performance. A culturally and institutionally eclectic range of producers and critics comprehensively reconsider the term ‘immersive’ and the practices it has been used to describe. Applying ecological, phenomenological and political ideas to both renowned and lesser-known performances, contributing scholars and artists offers fresh ideas on the ethics and practicalities of participatory performance. These ideas interrogate claims that have frequently been made by producers and by critics that participatory performance extends engagement. These claims are interrogated across nine dimensions of engagement: bodily, technological, spatial, temporal, spiritual, performative, pedagogical, textual, social. Enquiry is focussed along the following seams of analysis: the participant as co-designer; the challenges facing the facilitator of immersive/participatory performance; the challenges facing the critic of immersive/participatory performance; how and why immersion troubles boundaries between the material and the magical.


Postdramatic Theatre

Postdramatic Theatre

Author: Hans-Thies Lehmann

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2006-09-27

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 1134496826

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Newly adapted for the Anglophone reader, this is an excellent translation of Hans-Thies Lehmann’s groundbreaking study of the new theatre forms that have developed since the late 1960s, which has become a key reference point in international discussions of contemporary theatre. In looking at the developments since the late 1960s, Lehmann considers them in relation to dramatic theory and theatre history, as an inventive response to the emergence of new technologies, and as an historical shift from a text-based culture to a new media age of image and sound. Engaging with theoreticians of 'drama' from Aristotle and Brecht, to Barthes and Schechner, the book analyzes the work of recent experimental theatre practitioners such as Robert Wilson, Tadeusz Kantor, Heiner Müller, the Wooster Group, Needcompany and Societas Raffaello Sanzio. Illustrated by a wealth of practical examples, and with an introduction by Karen Jürs-Munby providing useful theoretical and artistic contexts for the book, Postdramatic Theatre is an historical survey expertly combined with a unique theoretical approach which guides the reader through this new theatre landscape.


Beyond Immersive Theatre

Beyond Immersive Theatre

Author: Adam Alston

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-05-18

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 1137480440

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Immersive theatre currently enjoys ubiquity, popularity and recognition in theatre journalism and scholarship. However, the politics of immersive theatre aesthetics still lacks a substantial critique. Does immersive theatre model a particular kind of politics, or a particular kind of audience? What’s involved in the production and consumption of immersive theatre aesthetics? Is a productive audience always an empowered audience? And do the terms of an audience’s empowerment stand up to political scrutiny? Beyond Immersive Theatre contextualises these questions by tracing the evolution of neoliberal politics and the experience economy over the past four decades. Through detailed critical analyses of work by Ray Lee, Lundahl & Seitl, Punchdrunk, shunt, Theatre Delicatessen and Half Cut, Adam Alston argues that there is a tacit politics to immersive theatre aesthetics – a tacit politics that is illuminated by neoliberalism, and that is ripe to be challenged by the evolution and diversification of immersive theatre.


Postdramatic Theatre and Form

Postdramatic Theatre and Form

Author: Michael Shane Boyle

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2019-03-21

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1350043176

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Postdramatic theatre is an essential category of performance that challenges classical elements of drama, including the centrality of plot and character. Tracking key developments in contemporary European and North American performance, this collection redirects ongoing debates about postdramatic theatre, turning attention to the overlooked issue on which they hinge: form. Contributors draw on literary studies, film studies and critical theory to reimagine the formal aspects of theatre, such as space, media and text. The volume expands how scholars think of theatrical form, insisting that formalist analysis can be useful for studying the ways theatre is produced and consumed, and how theatre makers engage with other forms like dance and visual art. Chapters focus on a range of interdisciplinary artists including Tadeusz Kantor, Ann Liv Young and Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch, as well as theatre's enmeshment within institutional formations like funding agencies, festivals, real estate and healthcare. A timely investigation of the aesthetic structures and material conditions of contemporary performance, this collection refines what we mean, and what we don't, when we speak of postdramatic theatre.


The Great European Stage Directors Volume 8

The Great European Stage Directors Volume 8

Author: Luk Van den Dries

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-10-07

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 1474259960

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This volume foregrounds Pina Bausch, Romeo Castellucci and Jan Fabre as 3 leading directors who have each left an indelible mark on post-war European theatre. Combining in-depth discussions of the artists' poetics with detailed case studies of several famous and lesser-known key works, the authors featured in this volume trace a range of foundational aesthetic strategies that are central to the directors' work: the dynamics of repetition vis-à-vis fragmentation, the continued significance of language in experimental theatre and dance, the tension between theatricality and the performative reality of the stage, and the equal importance attached to text, image and body. This volume develops a vivid picture of how European stage directors have continued to redefine their own position and role throughout the latter half of the 20th century.