Thinking Through Theatre and Performance

Maaike Bleeker is a Professor of Theatre Studies at Utrecht University, Netherlands. She has also worked as a dramaturge and costume designer. Her publications include Visuality in the Theatre (2008) and several (co)edited volumes, including Anatomy Live. Performance and the Operating Theatre (2008); Performance & Phenomenology (2015); and Transmission in Motion. The Technologizing of Dance (2016).Adrian Kear is Director of Programme Development, Performance Arts at the University of the Arts London, UK. His books include: Theatre and Event: Staging the European Century (2013); and the co-edited volumes International Politics and Performance: Critical Aesthetics and Creative Practice (with Jenny Edkins, 2013); On Appearance (with Richard Gough, 2008); and Psychoanalysis and Performance (with Patrick Campbell, 2001). Joe Kelleher is Professor of Theatre and Performance at Roehampton University, London, UK. His books include: The Illuminated Theatre: Studies on the Suffering of Images (2015); Theatre & Politics (2009); The Theatre of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio (co-authored with Claudia and Romeo Castellucci, Chiara Guidi and Nicholas Ridout, 2007); and Contemporary Theatres in Europe: A Critical Companion (co-edited with Nicholas Ridout, 2006).Heike Roms is Professor in Theatre and Performance at the University of Exeter, UK. Her books include: Silent Explosion (2015) and, co-edited with Jon McKenzie and C.J.W.-L. Wee, Contesting Performance – Global Sites of Research (2010). Her research into the history and historiography of early performance art won the David Bradby TaPRA Award for Outstanding Research in 2011.

An ideal textbook for introducing ideas of ‘performance philosophy’ within a range of curricular concerns … seasoned readers will equally find inspiration.

• Introduction, by Maaike Bleeker, Adrian Kear, Joe Kelleher and Heike RomsPart 1: Watching1. Why study drama? by Joe Kelleher (University of Roehampton, London, UK)2. What do performances do to spectators? by Maaike Bleeker (Utrecht University, Netherlands)3. How can the theatre be fully accessible? by Colette Conroy (University of Hull, UK)4. How does stage performance think through cultural convention? by Sean Metzger (UCLA, USA)5. How does theatre represent economic systems? by Louise Owen (Birkbeck, University of London, UK)Part 2: Performing6. What is Black dance? What can it do? by Thomas F. DeFrantz (Duke University, USA)7. How does scenography think? by Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink (Utrecht University, Netherlands)8. How does theatre think through things? by Mike Pearson (Aberystwyth University, UK)9. How does theatre think through incorporating media? by Steve Dixon (LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore)10. How does the trained body think? by Broderick D.V. Chow (Brunel University London, UK)11. How does theatre think through work? by Theron Schmidt (University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia)Part 3: Traces12. What is an intercultural exchange? by Miguel Escobar Varela (National University of Singapore)13. What is the impact of theatre and performance? by Sruti Bala (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands)14. Does staging historical trauma reenact it? by Tavia Nyong’o (Yale University, USA)15. How does theatre think through politics? by Jazmin Badong Llana (De La Salle University, Philippines)16. How and why are performances documented? by Heike Roms (University of Exeter, UK)Part 4: Interventions 17. How can performance disrupt institutional spaces? by Dominic Johnson (Queen Mary University of London, UK)18. How does theatre think through ecology? by Carl Lavery (University of Glasgow, UK)19. How does choreography think ‘through’ society? by Bojana Cvejic (Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway)20. How does theatricality legitimize the law? by Sophie Nield (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)21. How does theatre think through theatricality? by Adrian Kear (University of the Arts London, UK)Index