Authenticity and the electorate
I really didn’t want to do this, but I think I can’t help myself. The last thing I want to do is add to the cacophony of analysis surrounding Donald […]
How is verbatim theatre like a live rock concert?
In his book Liveness, Philip Auslander cites Lawrence Grossberg who writes: the importance of live performance lies precisely in the fact that it is only here that one can see […]
Zola’s bastards: The (non?)realism of the 21st century real
Here is a perhaps odd question: Are theatres of the real (documentary, verbatim, immersive, site-specific performance) realistic/naturalistic or non-realistic/non-naturalistic? What makes me ask? I am (re)reading essays in Get Real: […]
Shop No More: Immersive Theatre as Mall
Following up a citational reference from Liz Tomlin, I finally picked up Elinor Fuchs’ The Death of Character: Perspectives on Theater after Modernism. Like Hans-Thies Lehmann (Postdramatic Theatre), Fuchs is writing […]
Artist-tyrants and aspiring divinities
In a previous blog about Liz Tomlin’s fantastic book Acts and Apparitions (recently released in paperback), I quoted Tomlin’s challenge to the creators of radical performance: “In a world where we […]
Jumping through the fourth wall: realism and/or the real
In each chapter of Marvin Carlson’s Shattering Hamlet’s Mirror: Theatre and Reality, Professor Carlson follows essentially the same trajectory. Beginning with the earliest historical examples, Carlson traces the lineage of […]
Reality as Ideological Illusion
In her book Acts and Apparitions: Discourses on the Real in Performance Practice and Theory 1990-2010, Liz Tomlin begins with the premise that reality is persistently exposed as ideological illusion. […]
Dress warmly and wear sensible shoes
I’ve been doing a lot of immersive theatre lately. (Fun, but hard on the limbic system. That is a thought for another post.) What has struck me particularly is the […]
Verbatim without Words
Last Sunday I joined the revolution. Counting Sheep: A Guerrilla Folk Opera created by Mark Marczyk and Marichka Marczyk is presented by Lemon Bucket Orkestra (“Canada’s only balkan-klezmer-gypsy-party-punk super band”). In […]
Guest Post: My Ride on the Bum Bum Train
Below is a guest post from my student Rachel Manson. In the winter term of her third year, Rachel spent the semester at Queen’s UK campus, the Bader International Study […]
Upsurges of the Real: a performance research blog 