Metamodernism in contemporary British theatre : a politics of hope/lessness /
Postmodern theatre is dead. A new theater is rising, one that combines the well-worn postmodern aesthetics of irony, detachment and deconstruction with a paradoxical interest in authenticity, engagement and reconstruction. While recent scholarship has treated these evolving interests as unrelated sh...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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London ; New York :
Methuen Drama,
2024.
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| Series: | Methuen drama engage.
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| Summary: | Postmodern theatre is dead. A new theater is rising, one that combines the well-worn postmodern aesthetics of irony, detachment and deconstruction with a paradoxical interest in authenticity, engagement and reconstruction. While recent scholarship has treated these evolving interests as unrelated shifts in performance aesthetics, this volume proposes a new understanding: that these are part of a wider emerging cultural paradigm, metamodernism. Metamodernism in Contemporary British Theatre is the first book to focus on metamodernism and performance, offering a pioneering framework by which to identify and understand metamodern theater. By drawing critical links between the works of performance theorists such as Anne Bogart and Andy Lavender and the metamodern as defined by Timotheus Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker, this book makes a clear, vital and urgent case for the use of the term metamodernism within mainstream theater scholarship. Focusing on small-scale theater companies across the United Kingdom, including Poltergeist, YESYESNONO, Middle Child and The Gramophones, many of whom have not been documented in academia before. This book also provides a unique analysis of the theatere made by British millennials, a generation who have been distinctly affected by specific structures of contemporary precarity coinciding with this wider cultural shift. Through this, Metamodernism in Contemporary British Theatre makes a crucial contribution towards understanding emergent developments in post-millennial theatre practice across Britain and beyond. |
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| Physical Description: | xiii, 209 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages [181]-204) and index. |
| ISBN: | 9781350286429 1350286427 |