Thinking Through Theatre and Performance [Hardcover]

Thinking Through Theatre and Performancepresents a bold and innovative approach to the study of theatre and performance. Instead of topics, genres, histories or theories, the book starts with the questions that theatre and performance are uniquely capable of asking: How does theatre function as a place for seeing and hearing? How do not only bodies and voices but also objects and media perform? How do memories, emotions and ideas continue to do their work when the performance is over? And how can theatre and performance intervene in social, political and environmental structures and frameworks?

Written by leading international scholars, each chapter of this volume is built around a key performance example, and detailed discussions introduce the methodologies and theories that help us understand how these performances are practices of enquiry into the world.

Thinking through Theatre and Performanceis essential for those involved in making, enjoying, critiquing and studying theatre, and will appeal to anyone who is interested in the questions that theatre and performance ask of themselves and of us.

Maaike Bleekeris a Professor of Theatre Studies at Utrecht University, Netherlands. She has also worked as a dramaturge and costume designer. Her publications includeVisuality in the Theatre(2008) and several (co)edited volumes, includingAnatomy Live. Performance and the Operating Theatre(2008);Performance & Phenomenology(2015); andTransmission in Motion. The Technologizing of Dance(2016).

Adrian Kearis 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 volumesInternational Politics and Performance: Critical Aesthetics and Creative Practice(with Jenny Edkins, 2013);On Appearance(with Richard Gough, 2008); andPsychoanalysis and PerfolS.