Words, Space, and the Audience The Theatrical Tension between Empiricism and Rationalism

by Bennett, Michael Y.

• ISBN13: 9780230116801
• ISBN10: 0230116809
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-07-17
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

In this unique study, Michael Y. Bennett re-reads four influential modern plays alongside their contemporary debates between rationalism and empiricism to show how these monumental achievements were thoroughly a product of their time, but also universal in their epistemological quest to understand the world through a rational and/or empirical model. Bennett contends that these plays directly engage in their contemporary epistemological debates rather than through the lens of a specific philosophy. Besides producing new, insightful readings of heavily-studied plays, the interdisciplinary (historical, philosophical, dramatic, theatrical, and literary) frame Bennett constructs, allows him to investigate one of the most fundamental questions of the theatrehow does meaning get made? Bennett suggests that the key to unlocking theatrical meaning is exploring the tension between empirical and rational modes of understanding. The book concludes with an interview with performance artist, Coco Fusco.

Author Biography

Michael Y. Bennett is an assistant professor of English in Drama at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He is the author of Reassessing the Theatre of the Absurd: Camus, Beckett, Ionesco, Genet, and Pinter (2011). He is also the editor of Refiguring Oscar Wilde's Salome (2011) and the co-editor of Eugene O'Neill's One-Act Plays: New Critical Perspectives (2012).

Table of Contents

"'To act or not to act,' that is the question. Or is it rather, as in Waiting for Godot: 'What are we doing here?' Such anguished outcries serve as points of departure for Michael Y. Bennett's illuminating readings of canonical plays by Wilde, Pirandello, Beckett, and Albee. He shows with perfect logic and great zest that the only good answers will come from a dynamic phenomenology of performance that never brackets off the historical context." - Jean-Michel Rabaté, Vartan Gregorian Professor in the Humanities, University of Pennsylvania

"The experience of the audience in the theatre and how they interact and inter-relate with the activity on stage is one of the most exciting and rapidly expanding areas of contemporary performance studies. Michael Y. Bennett makes an important contribution to this ongoing discussion with his Words, Space, and the Audience, providing a fresh perspective on four familiar plays from Hamlet to Waiting for Godot, and exploring how each provides through words, space, and action a rational epistemological model of the world for their audiences. Bennett's book is a lively and engaging contribution to contemporary reception theory." - Marvin Carlson, Sidney E. Cohn Distinguished Professor of Theatre and Comparative Literature, The Graduate Center, City University of New York