This book asks what are the challenges to theatre and the purposes of performance in an ecologically threatened world? Is there a future for theatre as an ethically and politically alert art through environmental action? How might ecological understandings refigure the natural virtues of theatre and performance? Theatre Ecology gets to grips with such questions by investigating an eclectic cosmopolitan sample of environments and performance events, in theatres and beyond. It proposes that performance is a peculiarly twenty-first century addiction at the root global warming. Encountering this prospect head-on, it searches for pathological hope in historical theatre at the end of its tether and rumbles the contemporary paradigm of performance for signs of eco-sanity. Recognising the future is always before its time, Theatre Ecology is a paradoxical tract for survival past the final ecological era.
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List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Prologue. A kind of storm: 1. An introduction to theatre and performance ecology; Part I. In the Present: Qualities of Theatre and Performance: Preamble; 2. Performance contexts: theatre at the end of its tether; 3. Performance archives: catching the Northern sublime; 4. Performance limits: steps to a paradoxology; Part II. Of the Past: Histories of Theatre and Performance: Preamble; 5. Economies of performance: theatre against democracy; 6. Audiences of performance: declining participation; 7. Spectacles of performance: excesses of power; Part III. For the Future: Ecologies of Theatre and Performance: Preamble; 8. Performance and black holes: on eco-activism; 9. Performance and energy: on free radicals; 10. Performance and biospheres: on hermetic theatre; Epilogue: listen up for the cracks; Appendix. A chronology of chapter sources; Bibliography, multimedia, websites; Index.
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A study into the relationships between performance, theatre and environmental ecology.

Product details

ISBN
9780521877169
Published
2007-12-13
Publisher
Cambridge University Press; Cambridge University Press
Weight
710 gr
Height
234 mm
Width
161 mm
Thickness
24 mm
Age
P, 06
Language
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Number of pages
370

Author

Biographical note

Baz Kershaw is Professor of Performance in the School of Theatre, Performance and Cultural Policy Studies at the University of Warwick.