Practical Spectating

The Creative Role of the Audience
Erscheinungsjahr 2027
ISBN: 978-3-032-43034-2
Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan

Buch, Englisch, Format (B × H): 148 mm x 210 mm

Audiences are evolving. Spectators of the future will engage with new forms of performance in ways unimaginable to theatre makers today. To understand what happens next in the ever-fluctuating relationship between artists and their audience, looks into the distant past. Drawing on anthropology and archaeology, the book examines how emerging forms of immersive, participatory and intermedial practice have deep roots in ancient narrative customs, many of which have been overlooked or erased. From Palaeolithic caves to digital theatre, from the deserts of Australia to VR installations,  reveals synergies between ancient cultural practices and new dynamics between performers and audiences in contemporary performance. It offers insights into the mysterious and mercurial relationships between the generation and reception of art and proposes fresh ways of thinking about the creative practice of spectating.

“This is one of the most exciting academic books I have read in a long time, and will make a superb contribution to discourse around spectatorship and to the study of participatory performance”.

James Frieze, Liverpool John Moores University.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Swift, Elizabeth

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Theaterwissenschaft
• Mathematik | Informatik EDV | Informatik Angewandte Informatik Computeranwendungen in Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

CHAPTER 1: What do Audiences do?.- CHAPTER 2: The ancient roots of contemporary immersive praxis.- CHAPTER 3: “Are you sitting comfortably? then I’ll begin” - the moving story of disbelief suspension.- CHAPTER 4. digital storytelling – bead threading to hypertext.- CHAPTER 5. Gaming Theatre – Non-trivial pursuits in immersive performance.- CHAPTER 6: The Dawn of the ‘Feely’ Effect- prototypes of virtual reality theatre in the Paleolithic cave art.- CHAPTER 7. The sacred spectator: embodied encounters and the Christian imagination.- CHAPTER 8. Conclusion: Critical futures.

Über Autor(innen)

Elizabeth Swift is a writer and director with a background in journalism and arts administration. She lectures in drama and intermedial performance at the University of Gloucestershire, UK, and holds a PhD in drama from the University of Exeter. She is director of Void Projects, whose performance work has toured internationally. Her writing has appeared in academic journals and books, and she has represented the UK at the British Academy’s Knowledge Frontiers Forum in Australia.