The Theatre of Death – The Uncanny in Mimesis

The Theatre of Death – The Uncanny in Mimesis
Author: Mischa Twitchin
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2016-10-20
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1137478721

This book is concerned with such questions as the following: What is the life of the past in the present? How might “the theatre of death” and “the uncanny in mimesis” allow us to conceive of the afterlife of a supposedly ephemeral art practice? How might a theatrical iconology engage with such fundamental social relations as those between the living and the dead? Distinct from the dominant expectation that actors should appear life-like onstage, why is it that some theatre artists – from Craig to Castellucci – have conceived of the actor in the image of the dead? Furthermore, how might an iconology of the actor allow us to imagine the afterlife of an apparently ephemeral art practice? This book explores such questions through the implications of the twofold analogy proposed in its very title: as theatre is to the uncanny, so death is to mimesis; and as theatre is to mimesis, so death is to the uncanny. Walter Benjamin once observed that: “The point at issue in the theatre today can be more accurately defined in relation to the stage than to the play. It concerns the filling-in of the orchestra pit. The abyss which separates the actors from the audience like the dead from the living...” If the relation between the living and the dead can be thought of in terms of an analogy with ancient theatre, how might avant-garde theatre be thought of in terms of this same relation “today”?

The Theatre of Death – The Uncanny in Mimesis

The Theatre of Death – The Uncanny in Mimesis
Author: Mischa Twitchin
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2016-07-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9781349693481

This book is concerned with such questions as the following: What is the life of the past in the present? How might “the theatre of death” and “the uncanny in mimesis” allow us to conceive of the afterlife of a supposedly ephemeral art practice? How might a theatrical iconology engage with such fundamental social relations as those between the living and the dead? Distinct from the dominant expectation that actors should appear life-like onstage, why is it that some theatre artists – from Craig to Castellucci – have conceived of the actor in the image of the dead? Furthermore, how might an iconology of the actor allow us to imagine the afterlife of an apparently ephemeral art practice? This book explores such questions through the implications of the twofold analogy proposed in its very title: as theatre is to the uncanny, so death is to mimesis; and as theatre is to mimesis, so death is to the uncanny. Walter Benjamin once observed that: “The point at issue in the theatre today can be more accurately defined in relation to the stage than to the play. It concerns the filling-in of the orchestra pit. The abyss which separates the actors from the audience like the dead from the living...” If the relation between the living and the dead can be thought of in terms of an analogy with ancient theatre, how might avant-garde theatre be thought of in terms of this same relation “today”?

Theatre and the Threshold of Death

Theatre and the Threshold of Death
Author: Kathleen Gough
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2024-01-25
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1350385522

On the eve of a global pandemic, Kathleen Gough, a theatre professor, becomes immersed in the lives of five artist-mystics, each of whom is a pioneer in her field: Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), the first known musical composer; Eleanora Duse (1858-1924), the first modern actor in the Western world; Simone Weil (1909-1943), philosopher, activist, and mystic, whom Albert Camus called “the only great spirit of our time”; Marina Abramovic (b. 1946), “the grandmother of performance art”; and Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), the first known (and belatedly acknowledged) abstract painter. Each time Gough crosses a threshold into their world, she is compelled to attend courses, seminars and workshops that are simultaneously about dying and healing. Curious to learn more about the relationships between art practice, dying, and healing, Gough imagines the five artists as wisdom teachers in a mystery school. In a series of eight lectures, she turns to performance theory to provide a framework for engaging with the unknown world. In Theatre and the Threshold of Death, Gough makes a persuasive argument for the world-making power of relational thinking in our increasingly polarized age.

Theatre and the Macabre

Theatre and the Macabre
Author: Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr.
Publisher: University of Wales Press
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2022-03-15
Genre: Art
ISBN: 178683846X

The ‘macabre’, as a process and product, has been haunting the theatre – and more broadly, performance – for thousands of years. In its embodied meditations on death and dying, its thematic and aesthetic grotesquerie, and its sensory-rich environments, macabre theatre invites artists and audiences to trace the stranger, darker contours of human existence. In this volume, numerous scholars explore the morbid and gruesome onstage, from freak shows to the French Grand Guignol; from Hell Houses to German Trauerspiel; from immersive theatre to dark tourism, stopping along the way to look at phantoms, severed heads, dark rides, haunted mothers and haunting children, dances of death and dismembered bodies. From Japan to Australia to England to the United States, the global macabre is framed and juxtaposed to understand how the theatre brings us face to face with the deathly and the horrific.

Theatre and Death

Theatre and Death
Author: Mark Robson
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 74
Release: 2019-05-25
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1350315958

This new title in the Theatre And series confronts the complex relationship between theatre and death. Taking the position that all humans need to 'live' with the reality of death, Mark Robson draws on a range of examples, from Greek theatre to contemporary practitioners, in order to testify to the potency of both theatre and death in contemporary culture. Striking and thought-provoking, this book is ideal for undergraduate and postgraduate students of theatre and performance, or English literature students with an interest in tragedy.

Death in modern theatre

Death in modern theatre
Author: Adrian Curtin
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2019-02-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1526124726

This book analyses representations of death and dying in modern Western theatre from the late nineteenth century onward, examining how and why historically informed conceptions of mortality are dramatized and staged.

The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance

The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance
Author: Paul Allain
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 389
Release: 2024-10-09
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1040127797

What is theatre? What is performance? What connects them and how are they different? How have they been shaped by events, people, companies, practices and ideas in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? And where are they heading next? The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance offers some answers to these big questions. This third edition has been updated to now include over 160 entries, with all entries brought up to date and new topics added, including Caryl Churchill, Black Lives Matter and Hamilton, among others. This book provides an accessible, informative and engaging introduction to important people and companies, events, concepts and practices that have defined the complementary fields of theatre and performance studies. Three easy-to-use alphabetized sections include entries on topics and people ranging from performance artists Marina Abramović and Pope.L to directors Vsevolod Meyerhold and Robert Wilson, the haka, Taking the Knee and disability, theatre and performance. Each entry includes important historical and contextual information, extensive cross-referencing, detailed analysis and an annotated bibliography. The Routledge Companion to Theatre and Performance is a perfect reference guide for the keen student and the passionate theatre-goer alike.

Difficult Death, Dying and the Dead in Media and Culture

Difficult Death, Dying and the Dead in Media and Culture
Author: Sharon Coleclough
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2023-11-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3031407326

This book responds to a growing interest in death, dying and the dead within and beyond the field of death studies. The collection defines an understanding of ‘difficult death’ and examines the differences between death, dying and the dead, as well as exploring the ethical challenges of researching death in mediated form. The collection is attendant to the ways in which difficult deaths are imbricated in power structures both before and after they become mediatised in culture. As such, the work navigates the many political and social complexities and inequalities – what might be deemed the difficulties – of death, dying and the dead. The book seeks to expand understandings of the difficulty of death in media and culture through a wide range of chapters from different contexts focused on literature, film, television, and in online environments, as well as several chapters examining news reportage of difficult deaths.

Foucault’s theatres

Foucault’s theatres
Author: Tony Fisher
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2019-11-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1526132087

The volume contributes to a new articulation of theatre and performance studies via Foucault’s critical thought. With cutting edge studies by established and emerging writers in areas such as dramaturgy, film, music, cultural history and journalism, the volume aims to be accessible for both experienced researchers and advanced students encountering Foucault’s work for the first time. The introduction sets out a thorough and informative assessment of Foucault’s relevance to theatre and performance studies and to our present cultural moment – it rereads his profound engagement with questions of truth, power and politics, in light of previously unknown writings and lectures set in relation to current political and cultural concerns. Unique to this volume is the discovery of a ‘theatrical’ Foucault - the profound affinity of his thinking with questions of performativity. This discovery makes accessible the ‘performance turn’ to readers of Foucault, while opening up ways of reading Foucault’s oeuvre ‘theatrically’.

Creative Practice Research in the Age of Neoliberal Hopelessness

Creative Practice Research in the Age of Neoliberal Hopelessness
Author: Piotrowska Agnieszka Piotrowska
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Total Pages: 497
Release: 2020-07-06
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1474463592

In Creative Practice Research in Film and Media, creative practitioners discuss their experiences and examine how to retain integrity during times of political and economic battles in higher education, and attempts to quantify creative work. It uses the notion of tactical compliance to evaluate whether and when creative practitioners compromise their creativity by working within the higher education system. It offers a space for reflection for both practitioners and theorists, and it presents a much-needed intervention, which will be of interest to all academics engaged with creative practice as research.