Performing Site-Specific Theatre: Politics, Place, Practice

Description: Performing Site-Specific Theatre turns a critical eye to the increasingly popular form of site-specific performance. By re-assessing this contemporary practice, the book investigates the nature of the relationship between 'site' and 'performance.' Site-specific performance operates differently from performance that takes place within a theatre venue because it seeks to match form and content (and place and space) more finely than does theatre that takes place inside conventional venues. Yet the form also encourages an investigation of how we might understand 'site' as less fixed or less specifically geographical; it broadens the types of relevant 'spaces' we might consider. The form also enables us to address a range of performative issues, from the development of site-specific 'soundscapes' to the role of the spectator in site-specific performance. The contributions in the book from leading theorists and practitioners demonstrate how site-specific performance extends theatre's potential engagement with its geographical and political communities, and cover an exceptional range of innovative performance practices. Students, scholars and practitioners of contemporary theatre and performance, space and place, and site-specific performance will find much to value in this timely interrogation of current trends, practices and implications of performance in which site/landscape is central.

Review: 'This excellent anthology provides a wide-ranging collection of essays on critical issues of place-based theatre. It includes articles that treat historical and contemporary themes from the perspectives of both theorists and practitioners in a variety of institutional contexts. As the best anthologies do, it both bolsters and challenges the discipline.' - Professor Laurie Beth Clark, University of Wisconsin Madison, USA

Contents: List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors The 'Place' and Practice of Site-Specific Theatre and Performance; J.Tompkins PART I: SITE-SPECIFICITY AND ECONOMICS Rethinking Site-Specificity: Monopoly, Urban Space, and the Cultural Economics of Site-specific Performance; M.McKinnie PART II: SITE-SPECIFICITY AND THE NARRATIVES OF HISTORY Rehearsing Across Space and Place: Rethinking A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle; S.Bennett & J.Sanders Embodied Presence and Dislocated Spaces: Playing the Audience in Ten Thousand Several Doors in a Promenade, Site-specific Performance of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi; J.Collins Haunted House: Staging The Persians with the British Army; M.Pearson Toiling, Tolling and Telling: Performing Dissensus; K.Irwin PART III: SITE SPECIFITIY AND THE SLIPPAGE OF PLACE Beyond Site-specificity: Environmental Heterocosms on the Street; S.Haedicke Repetition and Performativity: Site-specific Performance and Film as Living Monument; A.Birch Contemporary Ekkeklemas in Site-specific Performance; L.Ferris 'Places, like property prices, go up and down': Site-specificity, Regeneration and The Margate Exodus; L.Owen PART IV: SITE-SPECIFICITY AND THEATRICAL INTIMACY Ambulatory Audiences and Animate Sites: Staging the Spectator in Site-specific Performance; K.Zaiontz Immersive Negotiations: Binaural Perspectives on Site-specific Sound; B.Barton & R.Windeyer My Sites Set on You: Site-specificity and Subjectivity in 'Intimate Theatre'; H.Iball PART V: SITE SPECIFICITY AND POLITICS Siting the People: Power, Protest and Public Space; S.Nield Bibliography Index

Author Biography: ANNA BIRCH is Lecturer in Research at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, UK. She produces and directs performance and film projects as part of her engagement with practice as research. She is Artistic Director of Fragments & Monuments Performance and Film Company, based in Hackney, UK. JOANNE TOMPKINS is Professor of Drama in the School of English, Media Studies and Art History, University of Queensland, Australia. She is the (co-)author of Post-Colonial Drama (with Helen Gilbert), and of Women's Intercultural Performance (with Julie Holledge). She is author of Unsettling Space: Contestations in Contemporary Australian Theatre (2006).