Theatre, intimacy & engagement : the last human venue / Alan Read.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Read, Alan, 1956-

Series:

Studies in international performance

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Theater and society.

Physical Description:

xvi, 323 pages, 24 pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 23 cm.

Other Title:

Theatre, intimacy and engagement

Place of Publication:

Basingstoke [England] ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Summary:

The last human venue marks the location and moment of human beings' awareness of their own eventual extinction. Taking this sober end as an affirmative starting point Theatre, Intimacy & Engagement explores ways in which performance operates as an exciter of sentience, kick-starting our sense of being alive, acting as a pleasurable lengthening device to extend our inevitable fate.

Humans in this venue distinguish themselves from other animals through their experiencing of an extended childhood, in their ability to sustain a controlled, unbroken outward breath and by their unique capacity to aesthetically disappoint. Theatre companies in this venue, Forced Entertainment, Societas Raffaello Sanzio and Goat Island, generate images of epochal endings, profane resistance to sacred separation and the ecological potential of repair. Those who are stage-struck in this venue think through theatre ideas about matters of human animal concern: the politics of nature, the anthropological machine, the distribution of the sensible and the inoperative community.

Theatre, Intimacy & Engagement continues Alan Read's work on radical inclusion by proposing how a social science of appearance disturbs our assumptions as to what a politics of performance can do when it comes to expanding the collective.

Contents:

Self-evident: intimacy and engagement 1

The human laboratory: parable of a recent past 2

Nature, theatre politics: the present project 5

A second naivete: the future constitution 14

Part I On The Social Life of Theatre: Towards a Science of Appearance

The Ends of Politics 25

A Singular Art 30

The Social Conditional 40

Begin Again 44

Sufficient Goods 46

The Present Imperfect 53

Discipline in Distress 58

A Life in Theatre 68

Theatre Returns 70

Part II On Performance as Such & On Human Performance in Particular

1 The Anthropological Machine 81

2 Nature Table 102

Play ground 105

Swimming pool 111

Class room 113

3 Stage Play 120

Acknowledging 123

The imperative of performance 124

In the infancy of theatre 126

4 Ring-Side 132

5 Redeemed Night 145

Fear 146

Fauna 149

Fur 152

6 Infant Enthusiasm 157

Infant 158

Infant animal 161

Interval 164

Infant, animal, automata 165

Infant 'inhuman' Auschwitz 171

Part III On The Part of Those Who Have No Part

7 The Distribution of the Sensible 175

8 Recalling the Collective 187

9 Forensic Display 207

10 Arrested Life 218

11 The Democracy Machine 229

Memoir: Civil Service 231

Memorial: Military Service 238

Memory: Secret Service 244

Part IV In the Event of Extinction: Natural History & Its Ends

Destination Nature 252

Natural History 263

In the Event of Extinction 268

The Last Human Venue 271

The Franciscan Model 274

The paradox of the actor 277

The parallax of the performer 278

The Lazarus affect 279.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 299-307) and index.

ISBN:

0230572618

9780230572614

OCLC:

187549011

Online:

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