Visuality in the Theatre The Locus of Looking

by Bleeker, Maaike; Aston, Elaine; Reynolds, Bryan

• ISBN13: 9780230547094
• ISBN10: 0230547095
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-05-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Visuality in the theater is as yet rarely a subject of theoretical investigation. This book presents an exploration of this under-explored terrain, demonstrating the use of new theoretical insights into vision and visuality for the analysis of theater and performance - and simultaneously shows theater and performance to be an excellent 'theoretical object' for exploring the cultural, historical and embodied character of visuality.

Author Biography

Maaike Bleeker is Professor of Theatre and Dance, Utrecht University, The Netherlands.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. x
Acknowledgements	p. xii
Dissecting Visuality in the Theatre - Introduction	p. 1
The anatomy of 'just looking'	p. 5
Performing analysis	p. 7
Staging the construction of the real	p. 9
Perspective as key to the locks of our senses	p. 12
Procedure	p. 15
The seer	p. 18
Step Inside!	p. 19
Do you see what I mean?	p. 24
Speech acts in the field of vision	p. 26
Internal focalization	p. 27
External focalization	p. 31
Absorption	p. 32
Drama as a strategy of de-theatricalization	p. 34
Landscapes and points of view	p. 35
The drama of deconstruction	p. 37
Showing What Cannot Be Seen	p. 41
The paradox of post-dramatic subjectivity	p. 45
Staging vision	p. 48
A few inquiries	p. 54
Hallucinations	p. 60
Walking the Landscape Stage	p. 63
Getting lost	p. 66
Staging the subject of vision	p. 68
Wo ist der Menscher?	p. 69
Caught between two mirrors	p. 71
Moving along	p. 72
The stage as mirror	p. 74
Aspiring to the landscape	p. 76
Navel Gazing as Critical Practice	p. 80
The Bas Raadsheer versus Elze Struijs case	p. 82
Punctum	p. 85
The navel	p. 87
The navel of the dream	p. 90
Always already dead	p. 92
Re-animation	p. 95
Retheatricalizing Sexuality in the Field of Vision	p. 98
Semiotic disruptions	p. 100
Facing lack	p. 101
Back to nature	p. 108
To have or not to have	p. 111
Gender as performance	p. 111
Productive looking: the penis as prop	p. 113
Empowered transvestism	p. 116
Disorders That Consciousness Can Produce	p. 120
Mirror, mirror on the wall	p. 121
Inner mimicry	p. 123
Spacing-out the mirror stage	p. 125
Embodied presence	p. 127
The screen	p. 128
The gaze	p. 131
Paradise regained?	p. 134
Gestures of exposure	p. 137
Exposing the audience	p. 139
Looking back at Lacan	p. 141
Death, Digitalization and Dys-Appearance	p. 146
Anatomical theatre	p. 148
A convenient cadaver	p. 150
Carried away on a data stream	p. 152
Come to your senses!	p. 153
A place of intertwining	p. 155
Managing the Attention of the Audience	p. 160
Bentham's theatre	p. 163
Managing attention	p. 165
Mirror/stage	p. 167
His father's voice	p. 170
Mimicry, again	p. 172
Perceptual systems	p. 174
'It's there, it's me'	p. 175
Welcome to What You Think You See	p. 178
'Turkish' delights	p. 180
Meet the other	p. 182
Total abduction	p. 186
Hearing and feeling	p. 192
House of mirrors	p. 194
Notes	p. 199
Bibliography	p. 217
Index	p. 223
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