Metatheatrical Dramaturgies of Violence

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. Introduction: Staging the Role of Theatre

   • Emma Willis

   Pages 1-43

3. Performative Violence and Self-Reflexive Dramaturgy: A Study of Guillermo Calderón’s Kiss and Other Works

   • Emma Willis

   Pages 45-73

4. “Touching Something Real”: The Critique of Historical and Theatrical Methodology in Jackie Sibblies Drury’s We Are Proud to Present…

   • Emma Willis

   Pages 75-103

5. The Ethics of Imagining Others: The Limits of “Performative Witness” in Michael Redhill’s Goodness and Erik Ehn’s Thistle

   • Emma Willis

   Pages 105-136

6. Staging Rage: A Feminist Perspective on Theatrical Self-Reflexivity in Ella Hickson’s The Writer and Tim Crouch’s The Author

   • Emma Willis

   Pages 137-165

7. Metatheatrical Dramaturgies of Reception: Mirroring the Audience in Ontroerend Goed’s Audience and Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview

   • Emma Willis

   Pages 167-195

8. Conclusion

   • Emma Willis

   Pages 197-207

9. Back Matter

   Pages 209-226

   PDF

This book examines a series of contemporary plays where writers put theatre itself on stage. The texts examined variously dramatize how theatre falls short in response to the demands of violence, expose its implication in structures of violence—including racism and gender-based violence—and illustrate how it might effectively resist violence through reconfiguring representation. Case studies, which include Jackie Sibblies Drury’s We Are Proud to Present and Fairview, Ella Hickson’s The Writer and Tim Crouch’s The Author, provide a range of practice-based perspectives on the question of whether theatre is capable of accounting for and expressing the complexities of structural and interpersonal violence as both lived in the body and borne out in society. The book will appeal to scholars and artists working in the areas of violence, theatre and ethics, witnessing, memory and trauma, spectatorship and contemporary dramaturgy, as well as to those interested inboth the doubts and dreams we have about the role of theatre in the twenty-first century.

• dramaturgy
• metatheatricality
• violence
• playwriting
• acting
• spectatorship

Close to the end of her book, Emma Willis shares with readers the hope that she has been able, not only to fulfil the book’s aim of analysing the relationship between violence and theatre, but also to ‘broaden insights into the contemporary challenges facing theatrical practice’. With Metatheatrical Dramaturgies of Violence: Staging the Role of Theatre, she certainly achieves this. Willis has written a profound volume that tackles the key issues often hinted at but not always fully investigated in theatre scholarship. Empathy and its limits, the role of metatheatricality, questions of solidarity, trauma and suffering are all given detailed consideration. Each topic and idea are explored through detailed engagement with playwrights, their works and the voices of critics and scholars. This is a breathtaking book that will make an excellent contribution to disciplinary conversations. 

- Professor Helena Grehan, Murdoch University, Australia

Thisis a very timely and important text that offers detailed and thought-provoking commentary on theatre’s capacity to ethically stage and efficaciously critique structural, psychological, and physical violence. The text focusses on key play texts that employ metatheatrical techniques to address a variety of issues related to representations of violence and its reception. The analysis reveals dramaturgical practices and conditions that work as an effective form of critical action as well as those that inadvertently reinstate the power structures and objectifying practices at play in acts of violence. This is a rich, deeply considered, and useful investigation that not only examines theatrical representations of violence but theatre’s own implication in the objectifying nature of violence. Its insights will be of use to scholars, students, and practitioners.

- Dr Suzanne Little, University of Otago, New Zealand

 

• University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

  Emma Willis

Emma Willis is a senior lecturer in Drama at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Her research lies at the intersection of contemporary performance and dramaturgy, spectatorship and ethics and investigates the roles that theatre and theatricality play in our negotiations of subjectivity, community and responsibility in contemporary life. Recent publications include Theatricality, Dark Tourism and Ethical Spectatorship: Absent Others (2014), and journal articles and chapters variously exploring metatheatricality, acting pedagogy, kindness and shopping malls.

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