Description
This book defines theatricality and performativity through metaphors of texture and weaving, drawn mainly from anthropologist Tim Ingold and philosopher Stephen C. Pepper. Tracing the two conceptsâ various relations to practices of seeing and doing, but also to conflicting values of novelty and normativity, the study proceeds in a series of intertwining threads, from the theatrical to the performative: Antitheatrical (Plato, the Baroque, Michael Fried); Pro-theatrical (directors Wagner, Fuchs, Meyerhold, Brecht, and Brook); Dramatic (weaving memory in Shafferâs Amadeus and Beckettâs Footfalls); Efficient (from modernist âmachines for living inâ to the âsmart homeâ); Activist (knit graffiti, clown patrols, and the Anthropo(s)cene). An approach is developed in which âperformativityâ names the way we tacitly weave worlds and identities, variously concealed or clarified by the step-aside tactics of âtheatricalityâ.
