Description
This book presents an exploration of the under-explored terrain of visuality, demonstrating the use of new theoretical insights into vision for the analysis of theatre and performance and simultaneously shows theatre and performance to be an excellent ‘theoretical object’ for exploring the cultural, historical and embodied character of visuality.
MAAIKE BLEEKER is Professor of Theatre Studies at Utrecht University, Netherlands. She has previously lectured at the School for New Dance Development, the Piet Zwart postgraduate programme in Fine Arts and the Department of Theatre Studies at the University of Amsterdam. She also works as a dramaturg for various theatre directors, choreographers and visual artists.
‘This study by Dutch theatre and performance scholar Maaike Bleeker is an important work. Its subject – visuality within theatre and performance studies – is new and in many respects Bleeker is quite literally defining a field. Her book provides critical and theoretical tools with which to analyse and better understand postdramatic theatre as part of today’s visual culture.’ – Professor Christopher Balme, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munich
‘The book’s major contribution is to use theories of vision to track the mid-twentieth century shift from the avant-garde sublation of art and the everyday to a postmodern, deconstructive method a step towards addressing a curious oversight in theatre and performance studies: the absence of a convincing account of what we do when we look at events in the theatre.’- Dominic Johnson, Queen Mary University of London, Theatre Research International
