Beyond Failure: New Essays on the Cultural History of Failure in Theatre and Performance

by TonyFisher (Editor), EveKatsouraki (Editor), Tony Fisher (Editor), Eve Katsouraki (Editor)

New
Hardcover
2018
$146.26

In setting foot on stage, every performer risks the possiblity of failure. Indeed, the very performance of any human action is inextricable from its potential not to succeed. This inherent potential has become a key critical trope in contemporary theatre, performance studies, and scholarship around visual cultures. Beyond Failure explores what it means for our understanding not just of theatrical practice but of human social and cultural activity more broadly.

The essays in this volume tackle contemporary debates around the theory and poetics of failure, suggesting that in the absence of success can be found a defiance and hopefulness that points to new ways of knowing and being in the world.

Beyond Failure offers a unique and engaging approach for students and practitioners interested not only in the impact of failure on the stage, but what it means for wider social and cultural debates.

Synopsis

In setting foot on stage, every performer risks the possiblity of failure. Indeed, the very performance of any human action is inextricable from its potential not to succeed. This inherent potential has become a key critical trope in contemporary theatre, performance studies, and scholarship around visual cultures. Beyond Failure explores what it means for our understanding not just of theatrical practice but of human social and cultural activity more broadly.

The essays in this volume tackle contemporary debates around the theory and poetics of failure, suggesting that in the absence of success can be found a defiance and hopefulness that points to new ways of knowing and being in the world.

Beyond Failure offers a unique and engaging approach for students and practitioners interested not only in the impact of failure on the stage, but what it means for wider social and cultural debates.

$146.26

Quantity

5 in stock

More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 238
Edition: 1
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 16 Oct 2018
ISBN 10: 0815370989
ISBN 13: 9780815370987

Author Bio

Tony Fisher is Reader in Theatre and Philosophy at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London. His monograph, Theatre and Governance in Britain, 1500-1900: Democracy, Disorder and the State, was published in 2017 by Cambridge University Press. He is also co-editor (with Eve Katsouraki) of Performing Antagonism: Theatre, Performance and Radical Democracy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). Eve Katsouraki is co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal Performance Philosophy and Core-Convenor for the international Performance Philosophy Network. Her research concerns the intersections of philosophy and performance, especially in relation to modernism, animals and political performance. She is currently working on a monograph on philosophy, modernism and the theatre director. She is also co-editor (with Tony Fisher) of Performing Antagonism: Theatre, Performance and Radical Democracy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017).