Part of the Transforming Literary Studies series, this collection explores how offstage theatrical performances-performances that are not on a theater stage or that break the fourth wall-impact the audience and, in fact, may be the necessary ingredient to the continued vitality of theatrical performance in general. Homan (English, Univ. of Florida) organizes the 12 essays into ... Read morethree sections: What Fourth Wall? The Theater of Everyday Life, and Presence and Factor-and Force. Contributors include both theater scholars and practitioners, and in their essays they describe how the use of the actor-audience relationship, inside and outside the theater space, can transform the audience's visceral involvement in the journey of the play. Flash mobs, political advocacy, and digital technology are some ways in which contemporary cultural phenomena are mined for these theatrical re-creations and representations. The volume offers unique and convincing perspectives on cinematic digital runs of Shakespeare productions, Germany's Citizen's Theater, Timothy Leary's Psychedelic Celebrations, and a staging of Waiting for Godot during Occupy Wall Street. Readers with exposure to the plays discussed or a background in theater will be at an advantage. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students.
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Scholar, performer, director, and learned impresario, Sidney Homan gathers an impressive array of artists, researchers, and writers to explore the endless possibilities of the theater. All the world is indeed a stage, it is many stages, and as these essays show, theatrical work exerts great power beyond the fourth wall and even beyond the walls of the theater building. Anyone interested in creative possibilities of improving our world will find something to love in this collection
Jerry Harp, Lewis and Clark University Show Less