Theatre And Aural Attention

Theatre and Aural Attention investigates what it is to attend theatre by means of listening. Focusing on four core aural phenomena in theatre – noise, designed sound, silence, and immersion - George Home-Cook concludes that theatrical listening involves paying attention to atmospheres.

This book is a timely contribution to the emerging field of the aurality of theatre and looks in particular at the interrogation and problematisation of theatre sound(s). Both approaches are represented in the idea of ‘noise’ which we understand both as a concrete sonic entity and a metaphor or theoretical (sometimes even ideological) thrust. Theatre provides a unique habitat for noise. It is a place where friction can be thematised, explored playfully, even indulged in: friction between signal and receiver, between sound and meaning, between eye and ear, between silence and utterance, between hearing and listening. In an aesthetic world dominated by aesthetic redundancy and ‘aerodynamic’ signs, theatre noise recalls the aesthetic and political power of the grain of performance. ‘Theatre noise’ is a new term which captures a contemporary, agitatory acoustic aesthetic. It expresses the innate theatricality of sound design and performance, articulates the reach of auditory spaces, the art of vocality, the complexity of acts of audience, the political in produced noises. Indeed, one of the key contentions of this book is that noise, in most cases, is to be understood as a plural, as a composite of different noises, as layers or waves of noises. Facing a plethora of possible noises in performance and theatre we sought to collocate a wide range of notions of and approaches to ‘noise’ in this book – by no means an exhaustive list of possible readings and understandings, but a starting point from which scholarship, like sound, could travel in many directions.

Brown explores relationships between sound and theatre, focusing on sound's interdependence and interaction with human performance and drama. Suggesting different ways in which sound may be interpreted to create meaning, it includes key writings on sound design, as well as perspectives from beyond the discipline.

This book explores the critical field of theatre sound and the sonic phenomena of theatre. It draws together a wide range of related topics, including sound design and sonic sonographies, voice as a performance of sound, listening as auditory performance, and audience as resonance. It explores radical forms of sonic performance and our engagement in it, from the creation of sonic subjectivities to noise as a politics of sound. The introductory chapters trace the innate aurality of theatre and the history of sound effects and design, while also interrogating why the art of theatre sound was delayed and underrepresented in philosophy as well as theatre and performance theory. Subsequent chapters explore the emergence of aurally engaged theatre practice and focus on examples of contemporary sound in and as theatre, including theatre in the dark, headphone theatre and immersive theatre, amongst others, through theories of perception and philosophies of listening, vocality, sonority and noise.

Examines the impact of hearing on the formal and generic development of early modern theatreEarly modern drama was in fundamental ways an aural art form. How plays should sound, and how they should be heard, were vital questions to the formal development of early modern drama. Ultimately, they shaped the two of its most popular genres: revenge tragedy and city comedy. Simply put, theatregoers were taught to hear these plays differently. Revenge tragedies by Shakespeare and Kyd imagine sound stabbing, piercing, and slicing into listeners' bodies on and off the stage; while comedies by Jonson and Marston imagine it being sampled selectively, according to taste. Listening for Theatrical Form in Early Modern England traces the dialectical development of these two genres and auditory modes over six decades of commercial theatre history, combining surveys of the theatrical marketplace with focused attention to specific plays and to the non-dramatic literature that gives this interest in audition texture: anatomy texts, sermons, music treatises, and manuals on rhetoric and poetics.Key Features Invites new attention to the theatre as something heard, rather than as something seen, in performanceProvides a model for understanding aesthetic forms as developing in competitive response to one another in particular historical circumstancesEnriches our sense of early modern playgoers' auditory experience, and of dramatists' attempt to shape it

How technology and the politics of attention changed the way we look at art The ways we encounter contemporary art and performance has changed. How are we expectedto engage with today's diverse practice? Is the old model of close-looking still the ideal, or has itgiven way to browsing, skimming, and sampling? Across four provocative and insightful essays, art historian and critic Claire Bishop identifies trends in contemporary practice. Charting a critical path through the last three decades, Bishop pinpoints how spectatorship and visual literacy are evolving under the pressures of digital technology. She explores how researched-based exhibitions have proliferated turning the artist into an investigator or archivist with mixed results. Spatial performance can now involve the artist, dancers, or even the audience as participants, often framed with Instagram in mind. The political event is not longer activated without an understanding of the media that will record and distribute it. The proliferation of works that use modernist architecture is noticeable; but has this become a shorthand for something else? Disordered Attention is a vital survey of 21st century art, from one of the leading art thinkers ofour times.

This book is about the centrality of movement, movement perception, and kinesthetic experience to theatrical spectatorship. Drawing upon phenomenological accounts of movement experience and the insights of cognitive science, neuroscience, acting theory, dance theory, philosophy of mind, and linguistics, it considers how we inhabit the movements of others and how these movements inhabit us. Individual chapters explore the dynamics of movement and animation, action and intentionality, kinesthetic resonance (or mirroring), language, speech, and empathy. In one of its most important contributions to the study of theatre, performance, and spectatorship, this book foregrounds otherness, divergence, and disability in its account of movement perception. The discussions of this and other issues are accompanied by detailed analysis of theatre, puppetry, and dance performances.

This book discusses an exciting laboratory that has been developing the practice of theatre music composition and sound design since 1961: the Royal Shakespeare Company. Musical practices have evolved as composers and musical directors inherited from the past and innovated with new technology; different interpretations of single plays in multiple iterations have provided a picture of developing styles, genres, working practices, technologies and contexts; actor musicianship has been practiced quietly and without fuss; and the role of the sound designer has appeared and transformed the theatrical soundscape. This book moves to musical theatre to evidence a continuum between its rich interdisciplinary textures and the musicodramatic world of Shakespeare’s plays, positioning the RSC as an innovative company that continually expands the creative and collaborative possibilities of the theatre.