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List of contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part One: Configuring the Spectator-Subject
Chapter One: Real and Imagined Spectators
Chapter Two: The Autonomous Spectator
Chapter Three: Precarious Spectators
Part Two: Contemporary Political Dramaturgies
Chapter Four: Political Logics and Contemporary Dramaturgies
Chapter Five: Questions of Irony and Interpellation
Chapter Six: Questions of Autonomy and Affect
Chapter Seven: Questions of Empathy and Agonism
Chapter Eight: Questions of Antagonism and Agency
Epilogue
References
Index
About the author
Liz Tomlin is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Glasgow, UK.Enoch Brater is the Kenneth T. Rowe Collegiate Professor of Dramatic Literature, Professor of English and Theater at the University of Michigan and the series editor of Methuen Drama's Miller scholarly editions. He has written extensively on the work of Samuel Beckett and Arthur Miller.
Enoch Brater is the Kenneth T. Rowe Collegiate Professor of Dramatic Literature, Professor of English and Theater at the University of Michigan. He is series editor of Methuen Drama's Arthur Miller scholarly editions, and with Mark Taylor-Batty of Methuen Drama's Engage series. He has written extensively on the work of Samuel Beckett and Arthur Miller.
Mark Taylor-Batty is Associate Professor of Theatre Studies and Deputy Head of School in the School of English at the University of Leeds, UK. His previous publications include The Theatre of Harold Pinter (Bloomsbury, 2014), About Pinter: The Playwright and the Work (Faber and Faber, 2005), Roger Blin: Collaborations and Methodologies (Peter Lang, 2007) and, he co-authored with his wife, Juliette Taylor-Batty, Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (Continuum, 2009).
Summary
What do we mean when we describe theatre as political today? How might theatre-makers’ provocations for change need to be differently designed when addressing the precarious spectator-subject of twenty- first century neoliberalism? In this important study Liz Tomlin interrogates the influential theories of Jacques Rancière to propose a new framework of analysis through which contemporary political dramaturgies can be investigated. Drawing, in particular, on Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Lilie Chouliaraki and Judith Butler, Tomlin argues that the capacities of the contemporary and future spectator to be ‘effected’ or ‘affected’ by politically-engaged theatre need to be urgently re-evaluated.
Central to this study is Tomlin’s theorized figuration of the neoliberal spectator-subject as precarious, individualized and ironic, with a reduced capacity for empathy, agency and the ability to imagine better futures. This, in turn, leads to a predilection for a response to injustice that is driven by a concern for the feelings of the subject-self, rather than concern for the suffering other. These characteristics are argued to shape even those spectator-subjects towards the left of the political spectrum, thus necessitating a careful reconsideration of new and long-standing dramaturgies of political provocation.
Dramaturgies examined include the ironic invitations of Made in China and Martin Crimp, the exploration of affect in Kieran Hurley’s Heads Up, the new sincerity that characterizes the work of Andy Smith, the turn to the staging of the spectators’ ‘other’ in Developing Artists’ Queens of Syria and Chris Thorpe and Rachel Chavkin’s Confirmation, and the community activism of Common Wealth’s The Deal Versus the People.
Foreword
Liz Tomlin re-evaluates the political efficacy of a wide range of contemporary theatre practice in light of claims that the human subject is becoming increasingly individualized and precarious, with damaging consequences for the spectator’s capacity to empathize and envisage possible futures.
Additional text
Tomlin (Univ. of Glasgow, UK) carefully and rigorously lays out her thesis and premise, which is that the time has come to refresh dramaturgical thinking to further political provocations in theater spectatorship … Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.
