Performance and the medical body / edited by Alex Mermikides and Gianna Bouchard.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Mermikides, Alex, editor.

Bouchard, Gianna, editor.

Series:

Performance and science.

Performance and science : interdisciplinary dialogues

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Theater.

Human body.

Medicine.

Medicine in art.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (273 p.)

Distribution:

London, England : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020

Place of Publication:

London, England : Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2020.

Summary:

This edited collection focuses on performance practice and analysis that engages with medical and biomedical sciences. After locating the 'biologization' of theatre at the turn of the twentieth century, it examines a range of contemporary practices that respond to understandings of the human body as revealed by biomedical science. In bringing together a variety of analytical perspectives, the book draws on scholars, scientists, artists and practices that are at the forefront of current creative, scientific and academic research. Its exploration of the dynamics and exchange between performance and medicine will stimulate a widening of the debate around key issues such as subjectivity, patient narratives, identity, embodiment, agency, medical ethics, health and illness. In focusing on an interdisciplinary understanding of performance, the book examines the potential of performance and theatre to intervene in, shape, inform and extend vital debates around biomedical knowledge and practice in the contemporary moment.

Contents:

Cover

Contents

List of Illustrations

List of Contributors

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part One: Performing the Medical

1 A Cabinet of (Medical) Performance Curiosities

2 The Diagnostic Gaze: Nineteenth-Century Contexts for Medicine and Performance

3 The Bluer Flowers of the Medical Theatre: Visiting with Aliens, Poppies and Antipodean Spas

4 Performing Surgery

Part Two: Performing Patients

5 The Patient Performer: Embodied Pathography in Contemporary Productions

6 Fun with Cancer Patients: The Affect of Cancer

7 DOC: The Narrative Performance of Expertise

8 Cough, Bitch, Cough: Reflections on Sickness and the Coughing Body in Performance

Part Three: Performing Body Parts

9 The Pain of 'Specimenhood'

10 Clod Ensemble, An Anatomie in Four Quarters Rehearsal Notes

11 On the Emergent Properties of Death: When Words Fall Apart

12 Performing the Microscopic: Beyond Eye and Brain

13 Copy, Cut, Paste

Humans (Re- )Printed: Lynn Hershman Leeson's The Infinity Engine

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCOhost, viewed October 2, 2020).

ISBN:

9781472570819

1472570812

9781472570796

1472570790

9781472570802

1472570804

OCLC:

1201426439