About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherPalgrave Macmillan The Limited

ISBN-101349486701

ISBN-139781349486700

eBay Product ID (ePID)229000704

Product Key Features

Book TitlePerforming Objects and Theatrical Things

Number of PagesXv, 264 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year2014

TopicTheater / General, Theater / History & Criticism, General, Anthropology / General, Customs & Traditions

IllustratorYes

GenreArt, Performing Arts, Social Science

AuthorJ. Zerdy

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Weight16 Oz

Item Length8.5 in

Item Width5.5 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

Reviews'This valuable collection approaches performance through a focus on objects, and objects through a focus on performance. Across a variety of engaging essays, the book makes evident the range of new materialisms taking shape in and as performance studies as well as the contribution performance studies can make to the new materialist criticism.' - Rebecca Schneider, Brown University, USA 'Performing Objects and Theatrical Things is a stimulating, multifaceted intercisciplinary exploration of the theatrical and performance life of everyday objects in light of recent new materialist, actor network, 'thing' and other theories, held together by the conviction, as the editors say, that matter matters. It will be essential reading for students of theatre and performance for years to come.' - Ric Knowles, Editor, Theatre Journal 'This timely book offers multiple perspectives on the intersection between performance and materiality. With precision and daring, the essays analyze objects onstage, in archives, and in everyday life, as well as the material textures of performance itself. Marlis Schweitzer and Joanne Zerdy's masterful Introduction provides an ideal overview of the theoretical terrain, thus making the anthology accessible to those new to the field. This is a lively, useful, deeply interesting book.' Robin Bernstein, author of Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights, 'This valuable collection approaches performance through a focus on objects, and objects through a focus on performance. Across a variety of engaging essays, the book makes evident the range of new materialisms taking shape in and as performance studies as well as the contribution performance studies can make to the new materialist criticism.' - "Rebecca Schneider, Brown University, USA" '"Performing Objects and Theatrical Things" is a stimulating, multifaceted intercisciplinary exploration of the theatrical and performance life of everyday objects in light of recent new materialist, actor network, 'thing' and other theories, held together by the conviction, as the editors say, that matter matters. It will be essential reading for students of theatre and performance for years to come.' - "Ric Knowles, Editor, Theatre Journal " 'This timely book offers multiple perspectives on the intersection between performance and materiality. With precision and daring, the essays analyze objects onstage, in archives, and in everyday life, as well as the material textures of performance itself. Marlis Schweitzer and Joanne Zerdy's masterful Introduction provides an ideal overview of the theoretical terrain, thus making the anthology accessible to those new to the field. This is a lively, useful, deeply interesting book.' "Robin Bernstein, author of Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights""

Dewey Edition23

Number of Volumes1 vol.

Dewey Decimal792.01

Table Of ContentIntroduction: Object Lessons; Marlis Schweitzer and Joanne Zerdy PART I: ARCHIVAL DIGS 1. Technology and Wonder in Thirteenth-Century Iberia and Beyond; Christopher Swift 2. 'Nothing but a string of beads': Maud Allan's Salomé Costume as a 'choreographic thing'; Marlis Schweitzer 3. Cartomania and the Scriptive Album: Cartes-de-Visite as Objects of Social Practice; Nicole Berkin 4. The Linguistic Animation of an American Yorick; Lezlie C. Cross 5. House Arrest: Museological Performance and the Everyday; Margaret Werry PART II: EMBODIED RESEARCH PRACTICES 6. The Unfolding Roles of a Walking Map within NVA's Half Life; Joanne Zerdy 7. Military Memorialization and its Object(s) of Period Purification; Helene Vosters 8. Entided, Enwatered, Enwinded: Human/More-than-Human Agencies in Site-specific Performance; Minty Donald PART III: MATERIALIST SEMIOTICS 9. 'All Transparent': Pepper's Ghost, Plate Glass, and Theatrical Transformation; Aileen Robinson 10. Que(e)rying Theatrical Objects; Benjamin Gillespie 11. Making the Invisible Visible: Virtual Stage Props and Christopher Marlowe's Dr Faustus; Joanne Tompkins 12. Relic, Souvenir, or Just Hair?: Exploring the Complexities of Objects as Actants and Things as Mementos in the Merchandise of El Vez, The Mexican Elvis; Karen Jean Martinson PART IV: EXCAVATING BETWEEN THE LINES 13. Props Breaking Character: The Performance and Failure of Real Objects on the Naturalist Stage; Kee-Yoon Nahm 14. Bodied Objects: An Analysis of the Whip in George Aiken's Uncle Tom's Cabin and Matthew Lopez's The Whipping Man; Chandra Owenby Hopkins 15. Translocalized Drums: Mobilizing the Intercultural in the Cantares Mexicanos; Leo Cabranes-Grant Endnotes Works Cited Index

Synopsis"Performing Objects and Theatrical Things rethinks historical and contemporary theatre, performance, and cultural events from the perspective of the objects and things that activate stages, venues, environments, and archives. Embracing methodologies from across the humanities and social sciences, we understand physical materials as actants, with particular frequencies, energies, and potentials to affect human and nonhuman worlds. The texts, stage properties, instruments, costumes, photographs, and detritus that animate this collection emerge from the thirteenth- to the twenty-first century, traversing sites across Europe and North America. Challenging anthropocentric narratives that foreground humans as sole agents, our authors present object and 'thingcentric' methodologies that range from deeply personal autoethnographic reflections and close textual readings to carefully researched archival studies and rhizomatic explorations of an object's journey from one place and time to another"--, This book rethinks historical and contemporary theatre, performance, and cultural events by scrutinizing and theorizing the objects and things that activate stages, venues, environments, and archives.

LC Classification NumberPN2100-2193