Theatricality and Performativity

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. Introduction: Theatrical Metaphors, Textile Philosophies

   • Teemu Paavolainen

   Pages 1-45

   PDF

3. Emptiness and Excess: The Cave, the Colonnade, and the Cube

   • Teemu Paavolainen

   Pages 47-90

   PDF

4. Directorial Perspectives: The Image, the Platform, the Tightrope

   • Teemu Paavolainen

   Pages 91-127

   PDF

5. “Revolving It All”: Weaves of Memory in Amadeus and Footfalls

   • Teemu Paavolainen

   Pages 129-168

   PDF

6. Smart Homes and Dwelling Machines: On Function, Ornament, and Cognition

   • Teemu Paavolainen

   Pages 169-209

   PDF

7. Protest in Colour and Concrete: Theatrical Textures in the Urban Fabric

   • Teemu Paavolainen

   Pages 211-251

   PDF

8. Knots and Loose Ends: Metaphors of Range, Cycles of Change

   • Teemu Paavolainen

   Pages 253-276

   PDF

9. Back Matter

   Pages 277-286

   PDF

This book defines theatricality and performativity through metaphors of texture and weaving, drawn mainly from anthropologist Tim Ingold and philosopher Stephen C. Pepper. Tracing the two concepts’ various relations to practices of seeing and doing, but also to conflicting values of novelty and normativity, the study proceeds in a series of intertwining threads, from the theatrical to the performative: Antitheatrical (Plato, the Baroque, Michael Fried); Pro-theatrical (directors Wagner, Fuchs, Meyerhold, Brecht, and Brook); Dramatic (weaving memory in Shaffer’s Amadeus and Beckett’s Footfalls); Efficient (from modernist “machines for living in” to the “smart home”); Activist (knit graffiti, clown patrols, and the Anthropo(s)cene). An approach is developed in which ‘performativity’ names the way we tacitly weave worlds and identities, variously concealed or clarified by the step-aside tactics of ‘theatricality’.

• Performance Philosophy
• Theatricality
• Aesthetics
• Metaphor
• Cognitive ecology

“Paavolainen suggestively traces the cultural dialectic between theatricality and performativity across a wide swath of modern culture. Reading theoretical texts from Plato to Michael Fried, the work of stage directors, the dramatic designs of Peter Shaffer and Samuel Beckett, machines for living from Le Corbusier to smart homes, and the work of a range of activist performance, Paavolainen searchingly unweaves the textures interanimating these two decisive terms of analysis, exploring the cognitive, philosophical, and social consequences enacted in the critical tension between seeing and doing, novelty and normativity. It's a striking, original book, certain to alter the ongoing encounter between theatre and performance studies.” (W. B. Worthen, Barnard College, Columbia University, USA)

“This a ‘knotty’ volume; but the ‘yarn’ it spins is new and refreshing. For a discipline that so often provides metaphors for everyday life, it offers exciting and provocative ways of envisaging the complex warp and weft of theatricality and performativity. It is an invaluable addition to an emerging literature that summons and employs sources beyond the familiars of continental theory, and reveals the very labour of creative work and its apprehension. From multiple threads of various deniers and hues, through the swift actions of an acute critical shuttle in highly original and increasingly complex Jacquard templates, Paavolainen weaves a vivid tapestry of dramaturgy.”  (Mike Pearson, Aberystwyth University, UK)

• University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland

  Teemu Paavolainen

Teemu Paavolainen is Research Fellow in Theatre and Performance at the University of Tampere, Finland. His Theatre/Ecology/Cognition: Theorizing Performer-Object Interaction in Grotowski, Kantor, and Meyerhold was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2012. His articles have appeared in Performance Philosophy, Theatre Symposium, Nordic Theatre Studies, and The Cognitive Humanities (2016).

Policies and ethics