Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture [Hardcover]

Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture addresses what may be the single most important question facing all kinds of performance today. What is the status of live performance in a culture dominated by mass media and digital technologies?

Praise for the Second Edition:

Auslanders Liveness emerges, then, not simply as a revised and updated version of the original text, but, more remarkably, as a better, more readable bookone that will almost certainly remain foundational for future historical, critical, and theoretical elucidations of the dynamic tension between the live and the mediatized, perhaps the defining paradox of contemporary performance. Brian Eugenio Herrera, University of New Mexico, USA

Almost twenty-five years since its original publication, during which digital culture and technologies have become increasingly integral to our lives and cultural practices, while the pandemic has rapidly necessitated a deeper conversation about mediatized performance, the questions Auslander asked in Liveness are still applicable to emerging forms, practices and experiences of liveness. These questions are as relevant today as ever, particularly in the current theatre landscape where mediatized performance is not only about prerecorded or live broadcast performance, but also about various modes of digital and hybrid performance that use technologies at the core of their formation, design, critical rationale, staging and audience engagement strategies.  Seda Ilter, University of London, UK, Theatre Research International, October 2022

Liveness: Performance in a Mediatizl³‰