Thinking Through Theatre and Performance

Thinking Through Theatre and Performance presents 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 Performance is 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.

About the Authors

Maaike Bleeker is a Professor and the Chair of Theatre Studies at Utrecht University, Netherlands. She is President of Performance Studies international, a Member of the International Advisory Board of Maska (Ljubljana) and of Inflexions: A Journal of Research-Creation (Montreal). Her publications include: Visuality in the Theatre: The Locus of Looking (2008); Anatomy Live: Performance and the Operating Theatre (2008); BodyCheck: Relocating the Body in Contemporary Performing Arts (with Stephen DeBelder, et al).

Professor Adrian Kear is Programme Development Director, Performance Arts, at Wimbledon College of Arts, University of the Arts London, UK. His books include: Theatre and Event: Staging the European Century (2013); International Politics and Performance: Critical Aesthetics and Creative Practice (with Jenny Edkins) (2013); On Appearance (with Richard Gough) (2008); Psychoanalysis and Performance (with Patrick Campbell)(2001).

Joe Kelleher is Professor of Theatre and Performance and Head of Department for Drama, Theatre and Performance at Roehampton University, London, UK. His recent books include: Theatre & Politics (2009); The Theatre of Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio, with Nicholas Ridout and the core members of SRS: Chiara Guidi, Claudia Castellucci, and director Romeo Castellucci (2007); and Contemporary Theatres in Europe: A Critical Companion co-edited with Nicholas Ridout (2006).

Heike Roms is Professor in Theatre and Performance at the University of Exeter, UK. Her books include: Silent Explosion (2015) and Contesting Performance – Global Sites of Research (co-edited with Jon McKenzie and C.J.W.-L. Wee, 2010). Her research into the history and historiography of early performance art won the David Bradby TaPRA Award for Outstanding Research in International Theatre and Performance 2011.