The Theatre of Imagining

This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the fascinating and strikingly diverse history of imagination in the context of theatre and drama. Key questions that the book explores are: How do spectators engage with the drama in performance, and how does the historical context influence the dramaturgy of imagination? In addition to offering a study of the cultural history and theory of imagination in a European context including its philosophical, physiological, cultural and political implications, the book examines the cultural enactment of imagination in the drama text and offers practical strategies for analyzing the aesthetic practice of imagination in drama texts. It covers the early modern to the late modernist period and includes three in-depth case studies: William Shakespeare's Macbeth (c.1606); Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House (1879); and Eugène Ionesco's The Killer (1957).

Relevant for scholars with an interest in aesthetics and drama, theatre history and new analytical dramaturgic strategies Offers a broad history of the concept of imagination as well as analytical dramaturgic strategies that allow for an understanding of the imagination of the spectator Combines historical perspective with a focus on imagination in theatre

Autorentext
Ulla Kallenbach is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department for the Study of Culture, University of Southern Denmark. Previous publications include the co-edited anthology stage/page/play: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Theatre and Theatricality (2016). She has served as co-editor of Nordic Theatre Studies and worked as a freelance dramaturge.

Inhalt

1. Introduction.- 2. The Mirror and the Messenger.- 3. Corruption or Perfection? The Precariousness of the Early Modern Imagination.- 4. Macbeth: A Dramaturgy of Deceit.- 5. From Mirror to Lamp.- 6. The Disenchantment of the Idealist Imagination.- 7. A Doll's House - Performing the Cultural Imaginary.- 8. The Late Modern Re-Imagining Imagination.- 9. The Killer - The Interplay of Absence and Presence.- 10. Towards a Dramaturgy of Physicalization and Imagination.