Overview
Explores the tacit politics to immersive theatre aesthetics
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
Immersive theatre currently enjoys ubiquity, popularity and recognition in theatre journalism and scholarship. However, the politics of immersive theatre aesthetics still lacks a substantial critique. Does immersive theatre model a particular kind of politics, or a particular kind of audience? What’s involved in the production and consumption of immersive theatre aesthetics? Is a productive audience always an empowered audience? And do the terms of an audience’s empowerment stand up to political scrutiny?
Beyond Immersive Theatre contextualises these questions by tracing the evolution of neoliberal politics and the experience economy over the past four decades. Through detailed critical analyses of work by Ray Lee, Lundahl & Seitl, Punchdrunk, shunt, Theatre Delicatessen and Half Cut, Adam Alston argues that there is a tacit politics to immersive theatre aesthetics – a tacit politics that is illuminated by neoliberalism, and that is ripe to be challenged by the evolution and diversification of immersive theatre.
Reviews
“Bringing to the table energy, rigour, and a depth of knowledge of an exciting range of companies and works, Alston's encompassing study is both robust and compelling.” (James Frieze, Liverpool John Moores University, UK)
“As immersive theatre grows ever more widespread, popular, and even loved, Adam Alston’s nuanced and rigorous political critique of it in Beyond Immersive Theatre becomes increasingly urgent. Not only one of the most important books about immersive theatre, this is an important book about the arts and inequality.” (Jen Harvie, Queen Mary University of London, UK)
“This book is full of exemplary, detailed expositions of the sensuous pleasure of participatory performances and environmental scenographies, along with a rigorous critique of the contemporary economy that drives and facilitates them.” (Gareth White, Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, UK)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Beyond Immersive Theatre
Book Subtitle: Aesthetics, Politics and Productive Participation
Authors: Adam Alston
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48044-6
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-69394-8Published: 26 September 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-48044-6Published: 18 May 2016
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 241
Number of Illustrations: 7 illustrations in colour
Topics: Performing Arts