Real Theatre
Essays in Experience

Draws on musicals, plays and experimental performances to show what theatre is made of and how we experience it.

Paul Rae (Author)

9781316637340, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 12 November 2020

249 pages, 11 b/w illus.
22.7 x 15.1 x 1.4 cm, 0.368 kg

'It is the great strength and joy of Real Theatre that it recognizes that, whenever it comes to the matter of theatre, and sometimes most illuminatingly when it doesn't, that thing is forever and everywhere decidedly 'only theatre' and, as such, absolutely essential.' Alan Read, Modern Drama

Theatre is often said to offer unique insights into the nature of reality, but this obscures the reality of theatre itself. In Real Theatre, Paul Rae takes a joined-up approach to the realities of theatre to explain why performances take the forms they do, and what effects they have. Drawing on examples ranging from Phantom of the Opera and Danny Boyle's Frankenstein, to the performances of the Wooster Group and arthouse director Tsai Ming-liang, he shows how apparently discrete theatrical events emerge from dynamic and often unpredictable social, technical and institutional assemblages. These events then enter a process of cultural circulation that, as Rae explains, takes many forms: fleeting conversations, the mercurial careers of theatrical characters and the composite personae of actors, and high-profile products like the Hollywood movie Birdman. The result is a real theatre that speaks of, and to, the idiosyncratic and cumulative experience of every theatre participant.

Introduction: the reality of theatre
Part I: 1. Realtheatrick: material theatres and ordinary magic
2. That's entertainment: theatre and experience
Part II: 3. Theatre talk: the poetics of theatre at a distance
4. Peak performance and the construction of theatrical truths
5. Infratheatre: what theatre is when it's not quite theatre
6. The theatre assembled: technical theatre in performance
7. Theatre people: the actor and the unaccommodated man
Conclusion: real theatre studies?

Subject Areas: Literary theory [DSA], Musicals [AVGM], Film theory & criticism [APFA], Theatre studies [AN], Performance art [AFKP]