Postdramatic Theatre and Form (Methuen Drama Engage)

by EnochBrater (Series Editor), Mark Taylor - Batty (Series Editor), Michael Shane Boyle (Editor), Brandon Woolf (Editor), Matt Cornish (Editor)

• New

  Hardcover
  2019

  $147.64

  Postdramatic theatre is an essential category of performance that challenges classical elements of drama, including the centrality of plot and character. As conversations about postdramatic theatre have proliferated, however, so too have the term's meanings and the practices it is presumed to describe. This collection redirects ongoing debates about postdramatic theatre, turning attention to the foundational and overlooked issue on which they hinge: form. Tracking key developments in contemporary European and North American performance, Postdramatic Theatre and Form shakes off common understandings of form as mere ornamentation or as something that cuts an artwork off from society. Instead, this book proposes an avowedly social definition of form. Contributors draw on literary studies, film studies and critical theory to reimagine the formal aspects of theatre, such as space, media and text. In addition, the volume expands how we think of theatrical form in order to study the modes of production and consumption that give shape to and are shaped by theatre. Chapters focus on a range of interdisciplinary artists from Tadeusz Kantor to Ryan Trecartin and Lizzie Fitch, as well as theatre's enmeshment within institutional formations like funding bodies, festivals, and real estate. A timely investigation of the aesthetic structures and material conditions of contemporary performance, this collection refines what we mean, and what we don't, when we speak of postdramatic theatre.