Scenes from Bourgeois Life proposes that theatre spectatorship has made a significant contribution to the historical development of a distinctive bourgeois sensibility, as characterized by the cultivation of distance. In author Nicholas Ridout's formulation, this distance is produced and maintained at three different scales. First is the distance of the colonial relation, not just in miles between Jamaica and London, but also the social, economic, and psychological distances involved in that relation. The second is the distance of spectatorship, not only of the modern theatre-goer as consumer, but the larger and pervasive disposition to observe, comment, and sit in judgment, which becomes characteristic of the bourgeois relation to the rest of the world. The third is the mediated distance of social encounters, across cafE tables and through the haze of tobacco smoke, which are in turn captured in the distance-production technologies of capitalism's media: theatre, film, and television. This engagingly written treatise on history, class, and spectatorship offers compelling proof of "why theater matters," and demonstrates the importance of examining the question historically.

About the Author
Nicholas Ridout is Professor of Theatre at Queen Mary University of London. His many previous books include Passionate Amateurs: Theatre, Communism, and Love.

Reviews
Ridout's prose is a pleasure to read; his glosses on theory are illuminating; his excavations of primary texts are surprising; his argument is timely, and substantial enough to influence the course of scholarship in the field." -Julia Jarcho, New York University

"An important contribution to theater studies and the study of the role of spectatorship... the book also deepens our understanding of the public character of theater (and art in general) and their relationship to the social and cultural processes in capitalism." -Bojana Kunst, Justus Liebig University Giessen

"Ridout identifies what other scholars of spectatorship have failed to see: that the ongoing wrenching of hands about how spectators watch suffering on a stage but feel an inability to do anything about it is a historical condition that can be changed. This is the new necessary book on spectatorship." -Maurya Wickstrom, CUNY Graduate Center and the College of Staten Island



Book Information
ISBN 9780472132003
Author Nicholas Ridout
Format Hardback
Page Count 224
Imprint The University of Michigan Press
Publisher The University of Michigan Press
Weight(grams) 430g