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Full Description
This book explores how avant-garde directors in French theatre play on their audiences' frustration to generate an encounter with the real.
Focusing on the work of directors such as Gisèle Vienne, Jan Lauwers, Rodrigo Garcia, Jan Fabre and Romeo Castellucci, the book looks at how these directors manipulate their audiences to experience a raw perception of materiality and physical bodies on stage, set within narratives of mystery and the uncanny. This approach has led to these directors' work described as 'obscene', 'pretentious', 'demagogic' and 'provocative'.
Because of this, the act of spectating and the nature of spectatorship itself becomes complicated and tends to leave French audiences doubting traditional codes and practices. It leads to the directors' work being misjudged and to contradictory discourses between critics, researchers and directors.
The book examines how directors implement strategies on stage to trigger such experiences, while evaluating how problematic these strategies are. It develops critical and philosophical tools that help spectators extend their field of perception and better engage with these contemporary practices. And, in doing so, it analyses a fascinating paradox: the French theatre scene hosting both active avant-garde practices, especially when it comes to spectator experience, and strong rejections from audiences.
Contents
Introduction
Section I: In The Audience: Misunderstandings Over Contemporary Theatre in France
1. Lack of Pleasure, Lack of Meaning
2. Anglophone v French Practices
3. The French Political Problem
Section II. On Stage: Strategies to Challenge Perception
1. Our Processes of Recognition
2. Strategies to Thwart Processes of Recognition
Section III. Spectatorship as a Philosophical Practice
1. Becoming Masters of Our Own Gaze
2. Do We Really Want to Encounter the Real?
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
