Viral Performance Contagious Theaters from Modernism to the Digital Age / Miriam Felton-Dansky.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Felton-Dansky, Miriam, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Theater and social media.

Theater and society.

Experimental theater--21st century.

Experimental theater.

Experimental theater--20th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Northwestern University Press 2018

Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press, 2018.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This volume proposes the viral as a means of understanding socially engaged and transmedial performance practices since the mid-20th century. It rethinks the Living Theatre's Artaudian revolution via the lens of affect theory, brings attention to General Idea's media-savvy performances of the 70s, explores Franco and Eva Mattes and Critical Art Ensemble, and surveys the dramaturgies and political stakes of global theatrical networks. Viral performance practices testify that when people gather, something spreads. Performance renders spreading visible, raises its stakes, and encodes it in theatrical form. The artists explored here rarely disseminate their ideas as directly as a marketer or movement would; rather, they undermine simplified forms of contagion while holding dialogue with the discourses that have surrounded viral culture. This work argues that the concept of the viral is historically deeper than the digital landscape suggests, and intimately linked to performance.

Contents:

Introduction: A history of contagion

Performing plague : the Living Theatre and Antonin Artaud

Towards an audience vocabulary : Marc Estrin, Augusto Boal, and General Idea

Germ theater : Critical Art Ensemble, Eva and Franco Mattes, and Christoph Schlingensief

"Everything is everywhere": viral performance networks

Conclusion: Virus in the theater.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

CC BY-NC-ND

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780810137172

0810137178

OCLC:

1034583428

Access Restriction:

Open Access Unrestricted online access