Staging strangers : theatre and global ethics /
Staging Strangers: Theatre and Global Ethics is a study of cultural difference in contemporary Canadian theater. Theatre in Canada has long been a forum for cultural communities to celebrate their traditions, but it has now emerged as a forum for staging stories that stretch beyond local and nationa...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Montreal ; Kingston :
McGill-Queen's University Press,
[2017]
|
| Subjects: |
| Summary: | Staging Strangers: Theatre and Global Ethics is a study of cultural difference in contemporary Canadian theater. Theatre in Canada has long been a forum for cultural communities to celebrate their traditions, but it has now emerged as a forum for staging stories that stretch beyond local and national communities. This book considers the new demand this global shift is placing on theater's narratives and strategies and asks how might theatre more meaningfully and ethically stage strangers? Combining archival research and performance analysis to discuss a set of performances mainly in Toronto, Staging Strangers offers a fresh look how theatre can be an important site of cultural encounter in a global age. Because the examples are mainly drawn from Toronto, the book is also a study of how cultural difference is realized in an emblematic "global city." The book adopts the guiding metaphor of "the stranger" to discuss the many ways cultural difference is made to appear-or disappear-onstage. Equally, the book considers the many ways the stranger on stage may be fetishized or domesticated, marked for assimilation or made an object of fear. It argues that a theater that only valorizes individual, cultural "self-realization" and concretizes cultural difference may at times also erect barriers to meaningful ethical engagement with strangers. More than a descriptive text about a shift toward the global, the book offers a vision of theatre that contributes meaningfully to global ethics, that is, a sense of ethical esponsibility to global issues and distant strangers. |
|---|---|
| Physical Description: | xxi, 198 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 0773549528 9780773549524 9780773549517 077354951X |