How real and imagined theatrical spaces and the relationships between them evoke meaning

Theory for Theatre Studies: Emotion explores how emotion is communicated in drama, theatre, and contemporary performance and therefore in society. From Aristotle and Shakespeare to Stanislavski, Brecht and Caryl Churchill, theatre reveals and, informs but also warns about the emotions. The term 'emotion' encompasses the emotions, emotional feelings, affect and mood, and the book explores how these concepts are embodied and experienced within theatrical practice and explained in theory. Since emotion is artistically staged, its composition and impact can be described and analysed in relation to interdisciplinary approaches. Readers are encouraged to consider how emotion is dramatically, aurally, and visually developed to create innovative performance. Case studies include: Medea, Twelfth Night, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Ibsen's A Doll's House, and performances by Mabou Mines, Robert Lepage, Rimini Protokoll, Anna Deavere Smith, Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, Marina Abramovic, and The Wooster Group. By way of these detailed case studies, readers will appreciate new methodologies and approaches for their own exploration of 'emotion' as a performance component. Online resources to accompany this book are available at https://www.bloomsbury.com/theory-for-theatre-studies-emotion-9781350030848/.

This collection asks what's at stake when a theatrical space is created and when a performance takes place: under what circumstances the topology of theatre becomes political. It visits a politics of inclusion and exclusion, of distributions and placements, and of spatial appropriation and utopian concepts in theatre history and contemporary performance.

Performance, dramaturgy and scenography are often explored in isolation, but in Theatrical Reality, Campbell Edinborough describes their connectedness in order to investigate how the experience of reality is constructed and understood during performance. Drawing on sociological theory, cognitive psychology and embodiment studies, Edinborough analyses our seemingly paradoxical understanding of theatrical reality, guided by the contexts shaping relationships between performer, spectator and performance space. Through a range of examples from theatre, dance, circus and film, Theatrical Reality examines how the liminal spaces of performance foster specific ways of conceptualising time, place and reality.

Is "space" a thing, a container, an abstraction, a metaphor, or a social construct? This much is certain: space is part and parcel of the theater, of what it is and how it works. In The Play of Space, noted classicist-director Rush Rehm offers a strikingly original approach to the spatial parameters of Greek tragedy as performed in the open-air theater of Dionysus. Emphasizing the interplay between natural place and fictional setting, between the world visible to the audience and that evoked by individual tragedies, Rehm argues for an ecology of the ancient theater, one that "nests" fifth-century theatrical space within other significant social, political, and religious spaces of Athens. Drawing on the work of James J. Gibson, Kurt Lewin, and Michel Foucault, Rehm crosses a range of disciplines--classics, theater studies, cognitive psychology, archaeology and architectural history, cultural studies, and performance theory--to analyze the phenomenology of space and its transformations in the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. His discussion of Athenian theatrical and spatial practice challenges the contemporary view that space represents a "text" to be read, or constitutes a site of structural dualities (e.g., outside-inside, public-private, nature-culture). Chapters on specific tragedies explore the spatial dynamics of homecoming ("space for returns"); the opposed constraints of exile ("eremetic space" devoid of normal community); the power of bodies in extremis to transform their theatrical environment ("space and the body"); the portrayal of characters on the margin ("space and the other"); and the tragic interactions of space and temporality ("space, time, and memory"). An appendix surveys pre-Socratic thought on space and motion, related ideas of Plato and Aristotle, and, as pertinent, later views on space developed by Newton, Leibniz, Descartes, Kant, and Einstein. Eloquently written and with Greek texts deftly translated, this book yields rich new insights into our oldest surviving drama.

Discusses four types of theatrical landscapes; the deadly theatre, the holy theatre, the rough theatre, and the immediate theatre.

The experience of architectural spaces is formed by the way they are staged. The Drama of Space examines the composition and articulation of architectural spaces in terms of spatial dramaturgy, as a repertoire of means and strategies for shaping spatial experience. This fundamental approach to architectural design is presented in four parts: Archetypal principles of spatial composition are traced from the study of three assembly buildings of the early modern period in Venice. Theatre, film, music, and theory provide background knowledge on dramaturgy. Detailed analyses of 18 international case studies offer new perspectives on contemporary architecture. The book ends with a systematic presentation of the dramaturgy of space, its parameters and tools, in architectural design.

This volume explores the constitutive role played by space in the performance of Kutiyattam. The only surviving form of Sanskrit theatre, Kutiyattam is distinctive in terms of its performance conventions and its unique culture of extensive elaboration and interpretation. Drawing upon the concepts of phenomenology on the processes of perception, particularly on the works of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, it analyses the role of space in the communicative structures of performance of Kutiyattam and its contribution to the production of meaning in theatre, especially in the context of contemporary theatre. The book explores the theatrical event as a phenomenon that comes into existence through a triangular relationship among the ‘ways of being’ of the performers, the ‘ways of seeing’ of the audience, and the space which brings them together. Based on this formulation, Kutiyattam is approached as a ‘theatre of elaboration,’ made possible by the ‘intimate,’ ‘proximal’ ways of seeing of the audience, in the particular theatrical space of the kūttampalaṃs, the temple theatres, where Kutiyattam has customarily been performed for more than five centuries. This volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of cultural studies, theatre and performance studies, cultural anthropology, phenomenology and South Asian studies.

Sound provides a lively and engaging overview of relevant critical theory for students and researchers in theatre and performance studies. Addressing sound across history and through progressive developments in relevant technologies, the volume opens up the study of theatrical production and live performance to understand conceptual and pragmatic concerns about the sonic. By way of developed case studies (including Aristophanes's The Frogs, Shakespeare's The Tempest, Cocteau's The Human Voice, and Rimini Protokoll's Situation Rooms), readers can explore new methodologies and approaches for their own work on sound as a performance component. In an engagement with the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of sound studies, this book samples exciting new thinking relevant to theatre and performance studies. Part of the Theory for Theatre Studies series which introduces core theoretical concepts that underpin the discipline, Sound provides a balance of essential background information and new scholarship, and is grounded in detailed examples that illuminate and equip readers for their own sonic explorations. Volumes follow a consistent three-part structure: a historical overview of how the term has been understood within the discipline; more recent developments illustrated by substantive case studies; and emergent trends and interdisciplinary connections. Volumes are supported by further online resources including chapter overviews, illustrative material and guiding questions. Online resources to accompany this book are available at: https://bloomsbury.com/uk/theory-for-theatre-studies-sound-9781474246460/

The body in performance. The performing body. The body of the audience. How do these three, overlapping bodies determine how we understand the theatrical experience? In important ways, theatrical representations of the body and embodied performance allow audiences, performers, and scholars to consider how identity, authenticity, and physical experience intersect with understandings of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Using case studies including Marlon Brando's seminal Method performance in A Streetcar Named Desire, and the Wooster Group's recreation of Hamlet starring Richard Burton, this book explains several different theories of the body and embodiment in theatre practice. The book concludes with a special emphasis on how cognitive theory is influencing theatre praxis and suggests how questions of the body enable a new "cyborg theatre" of the future. Part of the Theory for Theatre Studies series which introduces core theoretical concepts that underpin the discipline, Bodies provides a balance of essential background information and original thinking, and is grounded in case studies to illuminate and equip readers. Volumes follow a consistent three-part structure: an overview of how the term has been understood within the discipline; current trends illustrated by substantive case studies; and emergent trends and interdisciplinary connections. Volumes are supported by further online resources including illustrative material, questions and exercises.