Theatre And Cartographies Of Power

Contributors -- Index -- Series Page -- Other Titles in the Series -- Back Cover

Recently in the field of theatre studies there has been an increasing amount of debate and dissonance regarding the borders of its territory, its methodologies, subject matter, and scholarly perspectives. The nature of this debate could be termed "political" and, in fact, concerns "the performance of power"—the struggle over power relations embedded in texts, methodologies, and the academy itself. This striking new collection of nineteen divergent essays represents this performance of power and the way in which the recent convergence of new critical theories with historical studies has politicized the study of the theatre. Neither play text, performance, nor scholarship and teaching can safely reside any longer in the "free," politically neutral, self-signifying realm of the aesthetic. Politicizing theatrical discourse means that both the hermeneutics and the histories of theatre reveal the role of ideology and power dynamics. New strategies and concepts—and a vital new phase of awareness—appear in these illuminating essays. A variety of historical periods, from the Renaissance through the Victorian and up to the most contemporary work of the Wooster group, illustrate the ways in which contemporary strategies do not require contemporary texts and performances but can combine with historical methods and subjects to produce new theatrical discourse.

This book is a compendium of resources largely by and for artists and scholars interested in engaging in conversations of justice, diversity, and historiography in the fields of theatre and performance studies. For these students, and for the future instructors in our field who will use this book, we hold a tripartite hope: to expand, to enable, and to provide access. In its whole, we intend for this book to provoke its readers to question the narratives of history that they’ve received (and that they may promulgate) in their artistic and scholarly work. We aim to question methods and ethics of reading present in the western mode of studying drama and performance history. The contributions in the book—not traditional chapters, but manifestos, experiences, articles, conversations, and provocations—raise questions and illuminate gaps, and they do not speak in a unified voice or from a static position. These pieces are written by artists, graduate students, teachers, administrators, and undergraduates; these are expressions of hope and of experience, and not of dogma. This book is aimed toward instructors of undergraduates, both graduate students and faculty at all levels of seniority within theatre and performance studies, as well as at artists and practitioners of the art that wish to find more just ways of viewing history.

This book examines contemporary English drama and its relation to the neoliberal consensus that has dominated British policy since 1979. The London stage has emerged as a key site in Britain’s reckoning with neoliberalism. On one hand, many playwrights have denounced the acquisitive values of unfettered global capitalism; on the other, plays have more readily revealed themselves as products of the very market economy they critique, their production histories and formal innovations uncomfortably reproducing the strategies and practices of neoliberal labour markets. Stage Business and the Neoliberal Theatre of London thus arrives at a usefully ambivalent political position, one that praises the political power of the theatre – its potential as a form of resistance to the neoliberal rationality that rides roughshod over democratic values – while simultaneously attending to the institutional bondage that constrains it. For, of course, the theatre itself everywhere straddles the line of capitulating to the marketization of our cultural life.

Fluid stages, morphing theatre spaces, ambulant spectators, and occasionally disappearing performers: these are some of the key ingredients of nomadic theatre. They are also theatre's response to life in the 21st century, which is increasingly marked by the mobility of people, information, technologies and services. While examining how contemporary theatre exposes and queries this mobile turn in society, Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink introduces the concept of nomadic theatre as a vital tool for analyzing how movement and mobility affect and implicate the theatre, how this makes way for local operations and lived spaces, and how physical movements are stepping stones for theorizing mobility at large. This book focuses on ambulatory performances and performative installations, asking how they stage movement and in turn mobilize the stage. By analyzing the work of leading European artists such as Rimini Protokoll, Dries Verhoeven, Ontroerend Goed, and Signa, Nomadic Theatre demonstrates that mobile performances radically rethink the conditions of the stage and alter our understanding of spectatorship. Nomadic Theatre instigates connections across disciplinary fields and feeds dramaturgical analysis with insights derived from media theory, urban philosophy, cartography, architecture, and game studies. It illustrates how theatre, as a material form of thought, creatively and critically engages with mobile existence both on the stage and in society.

Presence in Play: A Critique of Theories of Presence in the Theatre is the first comprehensive survey and analysis of theatrical presence to be published. Theatre as an art form has often been associated with notions of presence. The 'live' immediacy of the actor, the unmediated unfolding of dramatic action and the 'energy' generated through an actor-audience relationship are among the ideas frequently used to explain theatrical experience – and all are underpinned by some understanding of 'presence.' Precisely what is meant by presence in the theatre is part of what Presence in Play sets out to explain. While this work is rooted in twentieth century theatre and performance since modernism, the author draws on a range of historical and theoretical material. Encompassing ideas from semiotics and phenomenology, Presence in Play puts forward a framework for thinking about presence in theatre, enriched by poststructuralist theory, forcefully arguing in favour of 'presence' as a key concept for theatre studies today.

Each chapter of this book presents a different marginalized community and explores how it appropriates theatre for its own needs, which are often at odds with those of the powerful sponsoring organisations. This fresh approach to the topic provides the reader with an innovative, critical way of studying community theatre.

This book examines the justification, theorization, practice and implications of Participatory Action Research approaches and methods in the social and environmental sciences.