What do we mean when we talk about bodies in theatre? And how does theatre affect the way we think about the human body?

Bodies are vital elements of theatre production and spectatorship. But the body is not just physical, it is also conceptual. Drawing on many examples from contemporary performance, Theatre& the Body is a provocative starting point for understanding the surprisingly complex relationship between theatre and the body. Concise and clear, this book explores the revealing tensions between the body, bodies, language, representation and movement in the theatre.

Foreword by Marina Abramovic


'[a] brilliant series...these mini paperbacks each give an insightful, focused overview of a key topic...start collecting now.' - Whatsonstage.com '...Palgrave Macmillan's excellent new outward-looking, eclectic Theatre& ... series.These short books, written by leading theatre academics, do much to reintroduce some of the brightest names in theatre academia to the general reader. Plus, the matrix of references to bigger books soon builds quite a comprehensive catch-up reading list for those of us who graduated more than a decade ago and are interested in where contemporary thinking is at...' - Guardian Theatre Blog, September 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2009/sep/10/theatre-critics-academics-artists 'This book rightly complicates how we think of the body today.' - Marina Abramovi? 'For those of us interested in the knotty paradoxes that sit at the core of theatre's meta-theatrical truth-effects - an ethics that is no longer ethics, a politics that is political for how it is yet to be imagined, an idea of the human that displaces itself the moment it is performed - these pithy glimpses at the enigma of what theatre might be doing when it does itself well are timely engagements with some of the twenty-first century's most pressing philosophical preoccupations.' - Review of Theatre & series, Performance Paradigm 'Conroy's project in this book, as part of the admirable Theatre& series, is to complicate the body at the theatre by laying out a variety of philosophical approaches to the body, and by investigating how these approaches might also manifest themselves in theatrical performance...Given this volume's (and series') remit to provide a pedagogical intervention into a key conceptual issue in the field, Conroy provides a helpful starting point for theatre students, in their struggle with the peculiarly material aspects of theatrical performance.' - Contemporary Theatre Review

About the Author

COLETTE CONROY is Lecturer in Drama at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. She is editor of Research in Drama Education's themed issue 'Disability: Creative Tensions in Applied Theatre' (14.1, 2009).

Reviews
'[a] brilliant series...these mini paperbacks each give an insightful, focused overview of a key topic...start collecting now.' - Whatsonstage.com '...Palgrave Macmillan's excellent new outward-looking, eclectic Theatre& ... series.These short books, written by leading theatre academics, do much to reintroduce some of the brightest names in theatre academia to the general reader. Plus, the matrix of references to bigger books soon builds quite a comprehensive catch-up reading list for those of us who graduated more than a decade ago and are interested in where contemporary thinking is at...' - Guardian Theatre Blog, September 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2009/sep/10/theatre-critics-academics-artists 'This book rightly complicates how we think of the body today.' - Marina Abramovic 'For those of us interested in the knotty paradoxes that sit at the core of theatre's meta-theatrical truth-effects - an ethics that is no longer ethics, a politics that is political for how it is yet to be imagined, an idea of the human that displaces itself the moment it is performed - these pithy glimpses at the enigma of what theatre might be doing when it does itself well are timely engagements with some of the twenty-first century's most pressing philosophical preoccupations.' - Review of Theatre & series, Performance Paradigm 'Conroy's project in this book, as part of the admirable Theatre& series, is to complicate the body at the theatre by laying out a variety of philosophical approaches to the body, and by investigating how these approaches might also manifest themselves in theatrical performance...Given this volume's (and series') remit to provide a pedagogical intervention into a key conceptual issue in the field, Conroy provides a helpful starting point for theatre students, in their struggle with the peculiarly material aspects of theatrical performance.' - Contemporary Theatre Review



Book Information
ISBN 9780230205437
Author Colette Conroy
Format Paperback
Page Count 96
Imprint Methuen Drama
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Weight(grams) 111g