🎉   Please check out our new website over at books-etc.com.

Seller
Your price
£70.09
RRP: £85.00
Save £14.91 (18%)
Printed on Demand
Dispatched within 7-9 working days.

Authenticity in Contemporary Theatre and Performance

Make it Real. Methuen Drama Engage

By (author) Daniel Schulze
Format: Hardback
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, London, United Kingdom
Imprint: Methuen Drama
Published: 23rd Mar 2017
Dimensions: w 140mm h 216mm d 18mm
Weight: 494g
ISBN-10: 1350000965
ISBN-13: 9781350000964
Barcode No: 9781350000964
Trade or Institutional customer? Contact us about large order quotes.
Synopsis
Authenticity is one of the major values of our time. It is visible everywhere, from clothing to food to self-help books. While it is such a prevalent phenomenon, it is also very evasive. This study analyses the 'culture of authenticity' as it relates to theatre and establishes a theoretical framework for analysis. Daniel Schulz argues that authenticity is sought out and marked by the individual and springs from a culture that is perceived as inherently fake and lacking depth. The study examines three types of performances that exemplify this structure of feeling: intimate theatre seen in Forced Entertainment productions such as Quizoola! (1996, 2015), as well as one-on-one performances, such as Oentroerend Goed's Internal (2009); immersive theatres as illustrated by Punchdrunk's shows The Masque of the Red Death (2007) and The Drowned Man (2013) which provide a visceral, sensate understanding for audiences; finally, the study scrutinises the popular category of documentary theatre through various examples such as Robin Soan's Talking to Terrorists (2005), David Hare's Stuff Happens (2004), Edmund Burke's Black Watch (2007) and Dennis Kelly's pseudo-documentary play Taking Care of Baby (2007). It is specifically the value of the document that lends such performances their truth-value and consequently their authenticity. The study analyses how the success of these disparate categories of performance can be explained through a common concern with notions of truth and authenticity. It argues that this hunger for authentic, unmediated experience is characteristic of a structure of feeling that has superseded postmodernism and that actively seeks to resignify artistic and cultural practices of the everyday.

New & Used

Seller Information Condition Price
-New£70.09
+ FREE UK P & P

What Reviewers Are Saying

Submit your review
Newspapers & Magazines
A fascinating and passionately-written study whose principal argument - that "authenticity arises as an ascription that is attached to the truthvalue of the performance" (228) - is both resonant and valuable to scholars working in the broad field of contemporary performance practice. As such, Schulze's monograph is a welcome addition to the innovative Methuen Drama Engage series. * Contemporary Drama in English *