Where is real?
As part of an opening exercise in a recent dramatic theory class, my students were asked to respond with coloured Sharpies to a variety of prompts scattered on chart paper […]
Tag Archives: real
The Thing that Doesn’t Fit
During my PhD studies at the University of Toronto, I had the great privilege of having for my supervisor Shakespearean scholar par excellence Alexander (Sandy) Leggatt. This was back when […]
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 […]
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 […]
The Uncanny and the Real
In her book Culture and the Real, Catherine Belsey suggests that the source of uncanny unease in horror films is the incursion of patently non-real/supernatural objects into the real world. […]
Red Lipstick Macbeth and Masculinity
In her post “Red Lip, Classic(al)” theatre blogger (and my senior thesis student) Morgan Anderson considers two specific costuming choices in Queen’s School of Drama and Music’s recent production of […]
The readymade real: selectivity and the frame
Last weekend I had the privilege to attend the Festival of Original Theatre conference 2016 presented by the students at the Graduate Centre for Study of Drama, Theatre and Performance […]
The Theatrical Affect of Haunted Houses
In the past several months, I have done two immersive theatre performances. Not ‘done’ as a performer-creator-producer, mind you. And yet saying I ‘went’ to the performance or I ‘saw’ […]
How to be a gentleman
Yesterday I finally caught up with Rebecca Northan’s Blind Date. First created in 2007, the show has toured extensively in Canada, the US and the UK. The premise of the […]
Upsurges of the Real: a performance research blog 